1. Welcome to Baptist Board, a friendly forum to discuss the Baptist Faith in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to all the features that our community has to offer.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon and God Bless!

Historic Baptist Doctrine

Discussion in 'Baptist History' started by michael-acts17:11, Nov 30, 2011.

  1. michael-acts17:11

    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Sep 30, 2010
    Messages:
    857
    Likes Received:
    0
    There are groups of Baptists who believe that their doctrine & distinctives can be traced directly back to the time of Christ through a succession of churches. If you believe this, how would the revelation that certain groups of baptist prerunners held beliefs that many modern baptists would call false doctrine in the least & heretical in the worst?

    The Paulicians believed in a "holy, universal, and apostolic church", that Christ was not God but the Son of God, and that water baptism was an integral part of salvation. They held that received authority, the high-priesthood, became the way the truth and the life, and was filled with the Godhead at His water baptism.

    The Donatists believed in an uncorrupted and true Catholic church. This belief was an aggravation to the Catholics which they strongly apposed.

    If pastors actually studied the original writings, I wonder how many would change their teachings on baptist history to conform to the historical truth, and how many would ignore the truth & continue to teach revisionist history to their congregations? What are your thoughts?
     
  2. matt wade

    matt wade Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jan 6, 2009
    Messages:
    6,156
    Likes Received:
    78
    So is it better to think that you came out of the heretical and murderous Catholic Church?
     
  3. preachinjesus

    preachinjesus Well-Known Member
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Feb 9, 2004
    Messages:
    7,406
    Likes Received:
    101
    Anyone who does serious historical inquiry into the "Trail of Blood" theory about Baptist origins quickly discovers that it is full of holes and theological vexation.

    I have no problem saying that within the larger structure of the Catholic church, both Roman and Eastern, faithful Christians maintained the faith and communicated to through generations. (Note it is believers who maintained this and not the organizations themselves) Baptists are a happy result of doctrinal purification in the post-Reformation era. But Baptists don't have a corner on the market of theological purity.

    I know plenty of Baptists (SBC, IFB, fundamentalist, GARB, etc etc etc) that have terrible doctrine. I'm not so sure I want to believe they are the inheritors of a faithful theological legacy anymore than the Roman Papal State was the means whereby it was communicated.

    Thanks be to God that He is gracious and still uses corrupt and spiritually desolate people for His glory...myself include. :)
     
  4. glfredrick

    glfredrick New Member

    Joined:
    Aug 5, 2010
    Messages:
    4,996
    Likes Received:
    2
    While it is true, and we can readily (and happily!) admit that God has always caused a remnant of true believers to persevere, we cannot with any sense of doctrinal or historical accuracy suggest that we have come from an unbroken line of anti-Catholic congregations into the truth we possess today.

    We are a mix of all those who came before us, with reformation all along the way as group after group found and exegeted the Scriptures so as to know God's revelation and doctrines derived from that revelation.

    And, yes, that includes Catholics as well as the Orthodox Church (which preserved the Scriptures in the original languages instead of just the Latin), and we are also indebted to the men who were active during the early days of the Enlightenment, when the Scriptures were recovered, studied, and distributed for others to read and study.

    Truly, we stand on the shoulders of those who came before, even where they were wrong, for it is the contrast of their errors that allow us to better see the truth when all is examined in the Berean sense against the Word.

    As an interesting side note, King James, who produced the Bible that so many who prefer to follow the Trail of Blood doctrine accept as accurate, was himself a Catholic, so even in that those who wish to revise the historical record for their own use cannot avoid the influence of Catholicism.

    Further, all this issue is wrapped up SOUNDLY in anthropological terms. Those who depend on the insights and continuence of human activities have failed to see that God is the author and finisher of our faith and that God can raise up followers from amongst the rocks on the side of the road if He so deems. No need to invent a human history that just makes us feel good. Rather, stick to the truth that God moved in the hearts of men who caused a reformation in doctrine, theology, and the study of the Word that gave the church new life 1000 years after its introduction when the enemy had ravaged her so fiercely that there was hardly a church left in the world!
     
  5. Zenas

    Zenas Active Member

    Joined:
    May 7, 2007
    Messages:
    2,703
    Likes Received:
    20
    Pastors teach history to their congregations? :confused:
     
  6. glfredrick

    glfredrick New Member

    Joined:
    Aug 5, 2010
    Messages:
    4,996
    Likes Received:
    2
    This one does...

    If we fail to understand church history, we are doomed to repeat the heresies and errors that have gone before. While we think that we may have invented something "new under the sun" the truth is that most doctrines have been tried before and the results from them are both known and tested.
     
  7. rsr

    rsr <b> 7,000 posts club</b>
    Moderator

    Joined:
    Dec 11, 2001
    Messages:
    11,850
    Likes Received:
    1,084
    Faith:
    Baptist
    While I agree with much of your post, James was by no stretch of the imagination a (Roman) Catholic. He was raised as a Reformed Protestant (John Knox preached at his coronation as king of Scotland). While he was a champion of the episcopacy (under the control of the crown, to be sure), he was essentially Protestant in doctrine. He was no friend of the Puritans (partly because of his early experiences in Scotland and partly because they seemed to threaten Elizabeth's precarious religious settlement), calling them "verie pests in the Church and Commonwealth, whom no deserts can oblige neither oaths or promises bind, breathing nothing but sedition and calumnies, aspiring without measure, railing without reason, and making their own imagination (without any warrant of the world) the square of their conscience."

    Certainly his Catholic subjects didn't consider him Catholic, or at least Catholic enough, even attempting to blow up the House of Lords and replace James with a Catholic monarch.
     
  8. michael-acts17:11

    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Sep 30, 2010
    Messages:
    857
    Likes Received:
    0
    I'd like to hear from those who believe the doctrine of the spiritual, universal church is not a historical baptist doctrine and that the doctrine of an exclusively local New Testament church was held by our pre-baptist Christian forefathers. The true test of whether our beliefs are based in ideology or historic reality is seen in what we do with evidence which directly contradicts them.
     
  9. Tom Butler

    Tom Butler New Member

    Joined:
    Dec 20, 2005
    Messages:
    9,031
    Likes Received:
    2
    I don't know what our spiritual ancestors believed about the Universal Church and the local church. But I know what they taught in the first century. We'll find it in the scriptures.

    The vast majority of NT teaching is in reference to local congregations.

    There are passages where the church is a generic sense, in the same way we refer to the family. But generic families take meaning only with real families.

    Then the church is referred to in a prospective sense, as in the great general assembly in heaven.

    Bottom line: true churches assemble with real people. Imaginary churches exist only in the mind.

    But to answer the question: A congregation's view of what the church is is not a Baptist distinctive. The view that it holds does not make it Baptist, or anything else. Otherwise, we'd have to kick some of your churches out of the club.

    Or, you'd have to kick out some of our churches.
     
    #9 Tom Butler, Dec 1, 2011
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 1, 2011
  10. Jerome

    Jerome Well-Known Member
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Aug 21, 2006
    Messages:
    9,788
    Likes Received:
    698
    Faith:
    Baptist
    :confused:

    What in the world?!

    http://evangelica.de/articles/the-synod-of-dort/

     
  11. glfredrick

    glfredrick New Member

    Joined:
    Aug 5, 2010
    Messages:
    4,996
    Likes Received:
    2
    It is rather simple...

    Define the difference in the Anglican Church between their Catholic roots and their Protestant expression. Let me know where that dividing line exists. Especially when they flip-flopped back and forth every time another head rolled.

    Though I'm not with the crowd that sees Catholicism as the "evil whore of Babylon" and the work of Satan, I do realize that during the time of King James that they were off the wall with their doctrines, revisionist history, and persecution of those who were serving God as expressed in the Scriptures. I can easily lump James with that set.

    I should have more clearly defined my terms above. My mistake.
     
  12. michael-acts17:11

    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Sep 30, 2010
    Messages:
    857
    Likes Received:
    0
    Local assemblies are visible members of the universal Church/Body of Christ. The two are as coexistent as the humanity & deity of Christ.

    And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (Mat 16:18)

    And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd. (John 10:16)

    Praising God, and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved. (Acts 2:47)
    Not possible for sinners to be a part of the true church. God does the adding; not men via majority vote or consent.

    And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues. (1Cor 12:28)
    Generic apostles in a generic church or the apostles in the church?


    And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all. (Eph 1:22-23) No hint of a generic family here.

    Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God; And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.(Eph 2:19-22)
    Do you seriously believe this is speaking of a now nonexistent local church in Ephesus?

    Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen. (Eph 3:21)
    Glory in the church at Ephesus throughout all ages or in THE Church throughout all the ages?

    For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, (Eph 5:23-26)
    No generic or plural use of church here either. It takes a lot of spinning to generalize the use of church in these passages.

    And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.
    Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the church(Col 1:18 & 24)
    I'm amazed at the hermeneutic & theological twisting that must be done to explain away such clear teaching.



    There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism, (Eph 4:4-5)
    ONE baptism of the Holy Spirit into ONE body

    For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. (1Co 12:12-13)
    Are we baptized into a local church by the Holy Spirit? If so, then changing membership requires a rebaptism of the Spirit. Think about it.
     
    #12 michael-acts17:11, Dec 3, 2011
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 3, 2011
  13. Tom Butler

    Tom Butler New Member

    Joined:
    Dec 20, 2005
    Messages:
    9,031
    Likes Received:
    2
    The Universal Church is the invisible church? Yep, so invisible nobody can find it.
    Jesus was referring to the only church in existence at that time: the one he established early in his ministry. A real, visible assembly.

    The other sheep are Gentiles. The fold is not the church--it's the kingdom.

    The Lord added to the local congregation in Jerusalem.


    If I remember right, the apostles were located at FBC Jerusalem.
    Later, Paul affiliated with the local assembly at Antioch. Local congregations.

    BTW, my church has no apostles prophets, healing gifts or tongues.


    On the contrary, that's exactly what he's saying. Incidentally, Paul called the congregation at Corinth THE body of Christ.

    The kingdom, not the church.

    There's the institutional or generic sense again.

    When one says the husband is the head of the wife, it takes concrete expression only with a real live husband and a real live wife. Same with the church. Christ is head of a real, live, visible church.

    My love is not for a generic wife, but for a real wife.
    Christ is head of my congregation, just as he is head of yours.

    What about water baptism? Calling it HS baptism is an unwarranted inference.

    The Greek "en" translated in the KJV as "by" can just as easily be translated "in." The verse may easily be rendered "In one Spirit..."
    That being the case, baptism in v. 13 is water baptism. That is the door to the church membership. We are led by the Spirit to seek water baptism.
     
  14. michael-acts17:11

    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Sep 30, 2010
    Messages:
    857
    Likes Received:
    0
     
  15. rsr

    rsr <b> 7,000 posts club</b>
    Moderator

    Joined:
    Dec 11, 2001
    Messages:
    11,850
    Likes Received:
    1,084
    Faith:
    Baptist
    This is the history forum. As such, discussion of what Baptists have historically believed about the universal church is fair game.

    Polemics about the matter should be directed to other forums.

    Thank you for your cooperation.
     
  16. Tom Butler

    Tom Butler New Member

    Joined:
    Dec 20, 2005
    Messages:
    9,031
    Likes Received:
    2
    You are right. Thanks for pointing us back to the right track.

    I find it difficult not to chase rabbits when someone waves a red flag in front of me.

    How's that for mixing metaphors?
     
  17. Bro. James

    Bro. James Well-Known Member
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Sep 14, 2004
    Messages:
    3,130
    Likes Received:
    59
    Faith:
    Baptist
    History, History, History

    We do err trying to make the history of Jude 3 fit the history of secular history and that of nominal Christianity. We have difficulty recognizing the mystery of iniquity which was already at work in the first century. The universal church h____ came on the scene during the time of the "Holy Fathers". Constantine the Great One gathered many of them at Nicea in 325. Universal church was pretty well established by the State from then until now--the concept is very pervasive, but still h_____ . Sorry, that word is banned--"false doctrine" fits.

    "The Church" has allowed State religions controlled by the unregenerate for well over 1600 years. While most States are run by agnostics and atheists, those who know about The Faith once for all delivered to the Saints seem to be a bit complacent of late.

    God still has a remnant, Noah was one of eight. You will not find them listed in Who is who in the religious world nor the Catholic Encyclopedia.

    The gates of hell are still assailing.

    Have a Happy.

    Bro. James
     
  18. OldRegular

    OldRegular Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Nov 21, 2004
    Messages:
    22,678
    Likes Received:
    64
    Those who are interested in Baptist History and Doctrine should read By His Grace and For His Glory by Thomas J. Nettles.
     
Loading...