Courier Conversations
This Podcast of Courier Conversations will be a conversation of topics with a variety of guests that concern, inspire and inform Christians about current events Worldwide. We hope you'll find our stories informing and encouraging in your daily walk with Christ.
Courier Conversations
Why I'm Baptist: Beyond Tradition
What makes someone truly Baptist? Is it simply family tradition, or are there deeper theological convictions at play? In this thought-provoking episode, Jeff Robinson and Travis Kearns dive into the heart of Baptist identity, challenging the common notion that most people identify as Baptist merely because "that's how I was raised."
The conversation explores the foundational Baptist distinctive of believers' baptism by immersion and why this practice matters theologically. Robinson and Kearns skillfully dismantle arguments for infant baptism, examining how Baptist understanding of baptism connects to regenerate church membership and a biblical view of covenant signs. Their biblical analysis of Romans 2:25-29 reveals how physical circumcision corresponds to spiritual heart change rather than physical baptism, contradicting common Reformed arguments.
Beyond baptism, the hosts trace Baptist origins to English Puritan separatism in the 17th century, positioning Baptist emergence as a continuation of the Reformation into matters of ecclesiology. They highlight South Carolina's significant historical importance in Baptist life and discuss how Baptist identity encompasses four key principles: orthodoxy, evangelicalism, integrated ecclesiology, and confessionalism.
The discussion takes on added relevance in light of recent high-profile departures from Baptist life to Anglican or Catholic traditions, with the hosts cautioning against reading Scripture through the lens of church history rather than the other way around. Their passionate defense of Baptist distinctives demonstrates why these theological positions remain compelling in an age that often dismisses denominational differences.
Tune in to our upcoming series on denominations, where we'll explore why denominational identity matters in today's anti-authority culture and explain the unique structure of the Southern Baptist Convention. Subscribe, leave a review, and join the conversation about what it means to embrace Baptist identity with biblical conviction rather than mere tradition.
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Welcome to another episode of Courier Conversations. My name is Jeff Robinson, I serve as president and editor-in-chief of the Baptist Courier and Courier Publishing and as usual, I have with me Travis Kearns my friend and cohort in the ministry and all these things and also happens to be the mission strategist at the Three Rivers Association, which, I love to tease, is not in Pittsburgh, it is in South Carolina, and so today we're going to talk about a topic that some say is defined subjectively. We would argue it's defined objectively, but we both had to get some more advanced Sunday learning to figure out what it meant in the first place, didn't we?
Travis:Yep, we did.
Jeff:The question is why am I a Baptist? We are Southern Baptists here at the Baptist Courier, been Southern Baptist for 157 years Long time, one of the oldest Baptist newspapers in the country. This ministry has been Southern Baptist from the beginning. I'm from a Southern Baptist family for a decade after Baptist from the beginning. I'm from a Southern Baptist family from decade after decade from the beginning, as I love to say over in Georgia, and you'll remind me, I'm sure, of where the most important state in Baptist life is, and that's here in South Carolina.
Travis:I would just remind you where the most important state is, but nonetheless, yes, in Baptist life as well.
Jeff:Now, we will debate that for sure, but we'll leave that for another podcast. So, travis, if we were to survey here at the Baptist School or maybe we'll do this sometime if we were to ask the question why are you a Baptist, how do you think most people would answer that? Do you think most people know why they're a Baptist?
Travis:Yeah, I think most people by far would answer, by an overwhelming majority, that they're Baptist because that's where their parents raised them. They were raised in a Baptist church, maybe attended Baptist churches with grandparents or with extended family members outside of parents and grandparents. But I think, without a doubt, the number one answer would be because that's how I was raised. I don't think there would be many answers that would say I'm Baptist because of biblical conviction or theological conviction. I think, again, without a doubt, it would be because that's how I was raised.
Jeff:Well, and I think a lot of people I teach Baptist history at seminary level have for many years in Austin, north Greenville, and I'm fixing, as we say here, to do it in the church I belong to, which is in your association at Abner Creek, and you know we talk about Baptist origins. Where did we come from? And I think the answer to that, if I were to ask that question as a sub-question or question number one, it would be we came from John the Baptist.
Jeff:John the Baptist that's right, he was the first Baptist. He probably pastored First Baptist Church of Galilee or something like that. Yeah, First Baptist Jerusalem.
Travis:Yeah and I think it's interesting the state that we lived in both of us lived in for some time, the state of Kentucky. There was a church there that sponsored the publication of a book called the Trail of Blood by BH Carroll's brother JM, that argues that Baptists as a denomination, as a movement, could trace their way back to John the Baptist himself in the Gospels, which you and I both do not in any way shape or form believe that that's a traceable lineage or a traceable history, but nonetheless there are people who, even in SBC life today, who still would argue for that particular position, called landmarkers.
Jeff:That's right and that was very prominent near where you and I lived for many years in the Ohio Valley, that whole region. Landmarkism took root there and some of them would even go so far as to argue that Baptists were the only denomination, they were the only true Christians. They would not allow non-landmark pastors to preach in their pulpits, supply the pulpits and things like that. So Baptists, we're an interesting people. There's no question we are.
Travis:Interesting is a good way to put it. Sometimes I prefer ornery, but interesting might be better.
Jeff:Theologically. I've always said we're the most interesting group sociologically if you study us, because, kind of what we're going to discuss today, there's really two different views of Baptist identity. The Baptistness, the essence of us, what it is that makes us Baptist. Now you and I will define that more objectively. And there is a group out there, more moderate to liberal, left-leaning Baptists, who would say there's really not one defining trait of Baptists. The defining trait is liberty. It's kind of a libertarian free will applied to theology.
Travis:Might we go so far as to say a soul competency or a soul freedom?
Jeff:Yes, we're getting to that.
Travis:That's right.
Jeff:You're way ahead of me, so that's right, but I did not grow up knowing why I was a Baptist. I come from. My family's been from Georgia, where we were founded in Augusta.
Travis:And so let's stop for just a second and talk about this, because, yes, the Southern Baptist Convention may itself have been founded in Augusta, georgia, in the mid-19th century Just barely in Georgia, just barely just across the border there.
Travis:However, as a good South Carolinian, as a good native of the Palmetto State, I must ask Mr Peach State where was the first Baptist church in the South? And don't answer yet, let me finish. Where was the first Baptist association in the South? Where was the first state convention in the South? Where was the first WMU in the South? Where was the first Baptist institution of higher learning in the South? And from which state was the first president of the Southern Baptist Convention? And two words will answer every one of those questions Mr Peach State. What is the answer?
Jeff:Well, I think it's the right Carolina, the South Carolina versus the North Carolina. You could say South Carolina, you could say Palmetto.
Travis:State. This is the center of SBC life, without a doubt.
Jeff:Well, and one of the great bonuses of my job is that my office, when you look out my window, you see a street sign, a corner, and we sit on the corner of Manly and Pettigrew streets and, of course, james Pettigrew Boyce being the first, the founding president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where you and I and proud of that, professor at Furman University.
Jeff:That's right, that's exactly right. And Basil Manley Jr, the architect of the abstract principles, the confession of faith that you and I both have signed to teach you in accord with, and not contrary to, the doctrines contained herein. So yeah, and as we were talking about before we started here, kerr Boyce, james Pettigrew Boyce's father, owned this entire historic district. He did.
Travis:And much more, Most of what is now downtown Greenville. That's right. And when the war hit, mid-19th century sold that land. To move the seminary to Louisville, to save the seminary from what would become the war, had three options Atlanta, Nashville and Louisville. Thankfully didn't pick Atlanta or Nashville because the seminary would have been destroyed by the Northern Army. But, yeah, moved it to Louisville and that's very likely, if not really likely, what saved the seminary's existence.
Jeff:It is because the Kentuckians are like Switzerland they didn't take a side.
Travis:Yeah yeah, they had a Confederate legislature, a federal legislature. Both Lincoln and Davis were both from Kentucky. More brothers fought against each other from Kentucky than any other state, that's right.
Jeff:So why are we Baptists? We know we can trace out Baptist distinctives, what it is that makes us Baptists, and of course the leading distinctive is believers' baptism by immersion. We call ourselves Credo Baptists versus Paedo Baptists, paedo being the Greek word for infant. We don't baptize babies, at least not intentionally. Sometimes we baptize young. We do baptize young believers, unnecessarily perhaps, or young pseudo-believers, but we hold to the baptism of believers only conscious. There can be children, but true believers who've given a credible profession of faith, and those only. And so that's probably our leading distinctive.
Jeff:Of course, other things like regenerate church membership, which goes with baptism by immersion, believers baptism by immersion, because the reasoning being that if God has an elect people, a chosen people, then the church should look a certain way. And of course the model baptism that's given us in Scripture, mainly by our Lord Jesus Christ, and of course John the Baptist, that first Baptist, is believers' baptism by immersion. And so we have no precept. We have no example in Scripture of an infant being baptized, and really no reason at all to baptize infants, other than perhaps the Reformers and we love the Reformers and we don't agree with them on this score that it's a leftover remnant of the Roman Catholic Church.
Travis:Yeah, it's very interesting that the more Reformed argument, so Presbyterian argument, even an Episcopalian or an Anglican argument, would be for paedo-baptism, as you mentioned earlier, the baptism of infants, and that baptism being done usually by sprinkling, some by pouring, but most times by sprinkling, never obviously by immersion. They're not dunking babies in a small little bathtub type thing. But the argument is simply by drawing an analogy between circumcision of the flesh in the Old Testament and then baptism of the flesh in the New. But from a hermeneutics perspective, so from reading the Bible covenantally, what we see is that everything that is done physically in the Old Testament becomes spiritual in the New Testament. So physical great high priest to a spiritual great high priest, a spiritual or physical temple to a spiritual, physical food laws to spiritual. But then you get physical circumcision showing the entrance of an infant into the covenant community of Israel. Our Presbyterian friends would argue that then the same sign to show the entrance of a small child, an infant, into the covenant community, not for salvation but showing entrance into the community generally speaking, would be baptism, physical baptism. So what I think, jeff, you and I would argue very strongly, is that no, there is also a spiritual analogy, a spiritual movement from circumcision of the flesh to circumcision of the heart. One is not given entrance into the covenant community through water. One is given entrance to the covenant community through regeneration by the Holy Spirit. So you see Jesus in John 3 arguing for water birth. So birth physically and then spiritual birth, birth spiritually physically and then spiritual birth, birth spiritually.
Travis:So there's just no real good argument for infant baptism in the New Testament. You don't see it in Acts, you don't see it in the Gospels, you definitely don't see it in any of Paul's letters. The closest thing you might find would be if a family, the head of a family, gets saved we see this in Acts at least once and a family is baptized. So the Presbyterian argument is well, that family must have included small children. Therefore small children can be baptized.
Travis:But that's an argument from silence. It's not an argument from actual black and white text. It's not an argument from prescription or from description. It's an argument from silence. It's also really for them an argument from theology. So it's a family argument. If in the Old Testament the man was the head of the family, then so in the New Testament the man is still the head of the family. We show entrance into that family, generally through birth, but then the covenant family, the church, would be through baptism. But it just doesn't make any sense to have that one dissonance from the Old and the New Testament that goes from physical to physical rather than physical to spiritual. It just doesn't make any sense at all and again there's no textual basis for it whatsoever.
Jeff:No, that's exactly right. And the vast majority of paedo-baptists do not offer also paedo-communion. And to me that's inconsistent, because we would argue that baptism precedes being allowed to the table, to come to the Lord's Supper, to the Lord's table. It's not an altar, because we don't believe that we don't worship the host. It's a table, which is why if you're a Baptist out there listening to this and you probably are, if you're listening to this, then that's why you have a table. We use language of coming to the Lord's table and not to the altar, like Anglicans and others do. But to me, the most important text for us and the most damning text for infant baptism is Romans 2, 25, where Paul writes for circumcision is indeed a value if you obey the law. But if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. So if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his circumcision be regarded as circumcision? Then he who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision but break the law. And then he shifts to this. He shifts to kind of the application. This is the important part of this for our sake here, argument's sake, for no one who is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical, but a Jew is one inwardly and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God, and that gets to exactly what you said. It's the new birth, it's regeneration, it's a circumcised heart. And so it seems here that Paul is redefining Jewishness in terms of the covenantal categories, here that the circumcision is not baptism, it's circumcision of the heart. And even in Romans 6, he's going to go on to talk about how, to speak of how baptism gives a picture of all the elements of salvation, of judgment and resurrection and cleansing and all those things that we believe about baptism. And so I don't know how it would be possible to read this text and accept infant baptism. It'd be possible to read this text and accept infant baptism I think you and I have talked before about.
Jeff:When I lived in Alabama, pastored a church down there, a Southern Baptist church. Of course, one of my dear friends was Harry Reeder at Briarwood PCA Church, a fine man, a former Baptist, seven years as a Baptist pastor, a Reformed Baptist pastor, and I would always joke that he pastored the largest Southern Baptist church in Birmingham because, a he sounded like Adrian Rogers when he preached and, b 90% of his membership role had been Southern Baptist at one point. And they went there because of the preaching and the ministry, the wonderful evangelistic ministry they had there but we spoke of. I had some time there before I moved back to Louisville and he asked are you all able to join the church? We would develop a relationship with him.
Jeff:And I really couldn't because I couldn't affirm that part of the Westminster Confession of Faith. Now, the Confession of Faith that I subscribe to, that you also subscribe to, is the Second London Confession of 1689, which is 95% like the Westminster Confession, except in baptism. That's right in church polity. So anyway, we were unable to sign off on that confession of faith because it wasn't baptistic at points we believe are important. Now, in this anti-denominational age where people say well, baptism, that's not important, right? How much water you get on you and how old you are when the water gets on you and the timing of when it gets on, that's not really important. Ecclesiology is not important, but we would bapt, speaks of that. So it all matters.
Travis:Right, yeah, the amount of water you get on you is simply following in the footsteps of Christ, as portrayed in the Gospels. It's following the command of Christ, I would argue, in Matthew 28, 19, with the word baptizo, to go under and come back up completely under. Not just get sprinkled or poured on, but to go under the water and come back up, symbolizing the death, burial and resurrection of Christ and showing your agreement with and oneness with him through salvation, not obviously salvation and baptism, but your salvation prior to baptism. I think it's also interesting that we should point out here, just briefly, why we're even talking about this subject. To begin with, because just very recently, a professor at Midwestern Seminary in Kansas City announced that he left Baptist life to join a more mainline denomination, that of the Anglican Church, and he argues so because he studies the church fathers predominantly and believes that he finds more in alignment with the church fathers in the Anglican Church than he does in Baptist life. And that professor's name was Matthew Barrett. When Barrett leaves Midwestern and joins the Anglican church, he posted a social media reasoning for doing so and basically the reason was I found it in the church fathers and found it now because I've read the church fathers. In a certain way I found it in Scripture, but I think it's important to point out just just because now I know I'm saying this to a historian when I say this, but just because somebody in history said it doesn't make it right.
Travis:You know, for hundreds and hundreds of years the Roman Catholic church persisted until October 31st 1517, and Martin Luther put 95 points of disagreement with the Catholic church on the door of the church in Wittenberg, germany. So you've got hundreds and hundreds of years of history there where people theologically are just wrong, until Luther begins the Protestant Reformation. We would say the same thing about Baptist life. There were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years where there were no Baptists as we would know a Baptist today, and thankfully that comes around Now. Obviously the tradition that comes from is a point of debate, even among Southern Baptists. If it's Sandy Creek, if it's through other means, through the regular Baptist, the separate Baptist, particular Baptist, whoever it might be, we'll leave that to the Baptist historians. But it's important. What's that?
Jeff:We love talking about that.
Travis:You do love talking about that. But it's important to point out that we're not talking about this just for no reason. There's been just in recent days I don't want to call it a defection, even though I think Anglican theology is in part defective a movement away from Baptist life because of a reading of the church fathers and in fact that seems to be a bit of a movement in Baptist academics to try to reclaim the church fathers and move back to them. That could be good, could be bad. You know, you look at a guy like Origen that used to have Gonzalez.
Travis:The church historian argues Origen would write about things freely unless the church had made a particular declaration on an issue. Otherwise he felt free to explore it with his pen. So you never really know what he believes or what the church believes, if he's just exploring something or not. He's just out there in never-never land exploring things. So we have to be very cautious when we read church history because if you don't know the context very, very well and read history through the lens of Scripture rather than Scripture through the lens of history, if you do it the wrong way, you might end up Anglican, sure enough.
Jeff:That's right. Or Roman Catholic? Yeah, which is the next step away from you know, the next step backward?
Travis:Yeah, which is where the then president of the Evangelical Theological Society about what 15 years ago or? So ended up becoming Roman Catholic while he was president of that organization.
Jeff:And a dear friend of mine from Southern Seminary, who had been a landmarkist, actually followed him in that, which is interesting because of the question of authority. Well, I think we have Baptists have, I would almost argue, a distinctive view of the Reformation too. Baptists, I would argue, rose out of Puritan separatism English separatism in the 17th century, and, of course, the Reformation began in the 16th century with Luther and Calvin, and they were seeking to recover the gospel as a recovery model. That's what they were doing recovering the gospel, justification by faith, the soul of scripture, the faith alone, grace alone, christ alone. And so we would argue, though, that the Reformation outlasted the 16th century. It continued to the 17th century. So, when you had the gospel settled right, you've recovered the gospel. Now we're going to work on matters of ecclesiology, and that's where Baptists were continuing the Reformation, continuing to read the Bible. In terms of ecclesiology, he said, okay, we've recovered the gospel, but since that gospel is true, then what should the church look like? And so you have the rise of Baptists in the early 17th century in England, out of separatism.
Jeff:They suffered terribly for their faith. Doctrines like baptism by immersion, regenerate church membership, are distinctive. Many were thrown in the rivers and drowned and burned at the stake many of our forefathers. So this was not something that, like today, we just got to shluff up. Well, we can do it from baptism. It wasn't like that. They were seen as heretics and that's why they 1689, the first London Confession of Faith in 1644 and the second in 1689 was written to show our solidarity with other evangelicals that were not heretics but were continuing the reformation. The crime was simple reformanda, always reforming, reformed, always reforming. And so we continued the reformation in the area of ecclesiology.
Jeff:And so tom nettles, my, my dear friend and mentor and phd supervisor at southern seminary, would always jokingly say that if jonathan edwards had lived 10 more years, he he would have been a Baptist because he was coming, you know, into the areas of ecclesiology. And maybe that's true. And so we see Baptist identity as something that is tangible, that's objective, in fact, tom's view of Baptist identity. He sees four things, four principles that undergird what he calls a coherent truth model of Baptist, of defining Baptist characteristics.
Jeff:And one is we're Orthodox, so you must first be a Christian before we can be a Baptist. We believe that right, we're Christians first and not Baptists first. We're evangelical, we believe the central doctrines of the gospel, the doctrines, the good news, the evangelion. We believe that we believe in a theologically integrated view of the local church. Again, what I just said, the ecclesiology and soteriology and all the doctrines are wed together. And finally, we're conscientiously confessional. We are a people who write confessions of faith. We write the Second Lenten Confession and the Armenian Baptist Orthodox Confession, of course, the New Hampshire Confession, out of which came the BF&M 1925, 1963, and then, in its best expression, baptist Faith and Message 2000.
Travis:And if you're a Baptist history nerd, like my friend Jeff, here you can always get the big green monster, the Baptist Confessions of Faith book, and see as many Baptist confessions as have ever been written and study them until your heart's desire is content.
Jeff:By William Lumpkin. If you want a volume that will warm your heart or put you to sleep, that will do it. Either one. Well, I think we're out of time Boy. We're just getting started here. It feels like we just launched out into this conversation. We'll be back at it again maybe the next time. We're going to do a series coming up in the very near future on denominations. Why we have denominations and why we think they're important in an anti-denominational, anti-authority age. Why we believe that it's good to be a Southern Baptist.
Travis:And, interestingly, why the Southern Baptist Convention is not a denomination.
Jeff:That's exactly right and we'd love to point that out, and we will explore that again next time. Well, thank you for joining us today. Be sure to give us a five star review. We're available on all the social media platforms. Don't miss our books. We have a whole gaggle of books and coming mine, including my next book, called kept by God A look, examination for lay people of the doctrine of perseverance of the saints, coming out on Reformation Day, october 31st, along with several other books in the near future. That's the other side of our ministry, courier Publishing. That's wwwcourierpublishingcom. So go there and look at our books that we have already out and that will be coming up in the coming months and order those and those are also available on Amazon and at your finer bookstores, like the bookstore at Southern Seminary. You can see our books now. Well, again, great conversation. We'll continue once again next time on Courier Conversations.
Speaker 3:We're glad you joined us for Courier Conversations, where we are informing and inspiring South Carolina Baptists and beyond. For more information about these topics and more, subscribe to our e-edition or go to our website at baptistcouriercom. The Courier is located in Greenville, south Carolina. As a multimedia ministry partner of the South Carolina Baptist Convention. To comment about today's podcast, email us at conversations at baptistcouriercom. This podcast, produced by Bob Slone Audio Productions,
