I attended a “celebration of life” (read: post-funeral party) this afternoon with my wife. It was for my wife’s friend. She was only 36 and had a 3-year-old son. Absolutely tragic.
It was a bit of a weird scene. They had a DJ who was playing dance music and dancing in the corner. Lot’s of drinks, food, and chatter. They were going for good vibes as a way of honoring this woman who lived life full of energy. But it was a jarring juxtaposition given the reason that brought us together.
Have you ever noticed that some don’t call them funerals anymore, “but celebration of life” services? Our culture doesn’t like to deal with death. We like to keep it out of sight and out of mind. We find it unsettling. We probably don’t know what to do with it existentially. So even when we do have to deal with it, like at a funeral, we like to recast it as life, “a celebration of life.”
But the juxtaposition made me think: Gosh, this is all so tragic, this woman dying at the mere age of 36, leaving her son behind who will likely barely even remember her. It’s heart-breaking.
But the reason it’s so heart-breaking isn’t because we’re the natural result of some mere evolutionary process that causes us to develop attachments to others due to its evolutionary advantage, with the byproduct that we grieve their loss. No, the reason we experience such deep tragedy in this world is because it’s haunted by what it should be. And the more beautiful and good something is meant to be, the more tragic and distressing its loss and destruction is.
We don’t just live in a world where unfortunate things happen—and that’s just the way it is. No, I think we sense something more sinister at play. Thus, we’re instinctually unwilling to accept this world as is. We internally want to resist it. We internally protest. We feel it as evil. We deeply sense something has gone wrong, that things are not the way they are suppose to be. And not just that, but that something good and beautiful has been disrupted—making it all the severer.
Think about those movies where a curse is invoked. The curse becomes an active force wreaking havoc, ruining the good, a force of harm. Tragic events aren’t just happenstance, the way things are. They are the torturous workings of the curse. The characters are constantly haunted by its reality. It chases them down. It won’t leave them alone. They struggle to escape it’s presence.
C.S. Lewis speaks of Christianity as the “true myth.” By this, he wasn’t saying that Christianity is unhistorical or untrue. No, he was saying, Christianity makes sense of our myth making. Myths provide meaning. And Christianity is that meaning-making story that explains all of our other attempts to make meaning.
So too Lewis said he believes in Christianity like he believes in the sun, because it illuminates and makes sense of everything else. It resonates with reality, our existential longing, our deep desires and sense of this world. Christianity “resonates” with the way things actually are.
One of the ways I think Christianity resonates with reality is this idea of the curse. When Adam and Eve sin, creation came under God’s curse (Gen 3).
The older I get, the more and more messed up I feel this world and this life are. It’s not just happenstance unfortunate events. It’s like a curse from a movie, an active presence wreaking havoc. We feel the tragedy not merely of unfortunate things we wish weren’t the case but of things we know ought to be beautiful and good, like the life of a young 36-year-old woman and her three-year-old boy.
Hercules Collins’ An Orthodox Catechism is a Baptist adaptation of the Reformed Heidelberg Catechism. In his, preface, Collins compares the theological development by these early Baptists to the reforms under Joshua, Hezekiah, and Ezra and Nehemiah, as they went back to scripture to recover “true worship” as prescribed by God. Collins specifically mentions that these Particular Baptists agree with the other “orthodox divines” in the “fundamental principles.” They simply differ on some things about “church-constitution” (ecclesiology). In other words, Collins sees the Baptists as providing further reformation (like Joshua, Hezekiah, Ezra, Nehemiah) specifically in the realm of ecclesiology (“church-constitution,” “the true form of God’s house”). In other words, early Baptists saw themselves as simply continuing in the spirit of the Protestant Reformation, extending Reformation principles to ecclesiology.
I will quote the entirety of his explanation:
“In what I have written you will see I concenter with the most orthodox divines in the fundamental principles and articles of the Christian faith, and also have industriously expressed them in the same words, which have on the like occasion been spoken, only differing in some things about church-constitution, wherein I have taken a little pains to show you the true form of God’s house, with the coming in thereof, and the going out thereof. But I hope my zeal in this will not be misinterpreted by any that truly fear God. That God whom we serve is very jealous of his worship; and forasmuch as by His providence the law of His house has been preserved and continued to us, we look upon it as out duty in our generation to be searching out the mind of God in His holy oracle, as Ezra and Nehemiah did the Feast of Tabernacles, and to reform what is amiss, as Hezekiah, who took a great deal of pains to cleanse the house of God, and set all things in order, that were out of order, particularly caused the people to keep the Passover according to the institution. For it had not, says the text, been of a long time kept in such sort as it was written., And albeit the pure institutions of Christ were not for some hundred of years practiced according to the due order, or very little through the innovations of antichrist; and as circumcision for about forty years was unpracticed in the wilderness, yet as Joshua puts this duty in practice as God signified His mind in that particular, so we having our judgments informed about the true way of worship, do not dare to stifle the light God has given us.
Now albeit there are some differences between many godly divines and us in church constitution, yet inasmuch as those things are not the essence of Christianity, but that we do agree in the fundamental doctrine thereof, there is sufficient ground to lay aside all bitterness and prejudice, and labor to maintain a spirit of love each to other, knowing we shall never see all alike here. We find in the primitive times that the baptism of Christ was not universally known. Witness the ignorance of Apollos that eminent disciple and minister, which knew only the baptism of John. And if God shall enlighten any into any truth, which they shall stifle for base and unwarrantable ends, know that it is God who must judge, and not man. And wherein we cannot concur, let us leave that to the coming of Christ Jesus, as they did their difficult cases in the Church of old until there did arise a priest with Urim and Thummin, that might certainly inform them of the mind of God thereabout.”1
Likewise, earlier in the preface, in explaining his reason for constructing this catechism, he remarks,
“Now that … you may be the better established, strengthened, and settled on that sure rock and foundation of salvation, Christ’s merits, in opposition to the poor imperfect works of an impotent creature; also settled on the foundation of church-constitution, on which you are already built, through the grace of God which stirred you up to search the divine oracle, and rule of Divine service, as Ezra and Nehemiah searched into the particular parts of God’s worship, by which means they came to the practice of that almost lost ordinance of God, the Feast of Tabernacles, which for many years was not practiced after the due order, though a general notion was retained about it.”2
The early Particular Baptists saw themselves as part of a larger family along with the Reformed Presbyterians and Congregationalists (see The Savoy Declaration, which is based on The Westminster Confession of Faith). This is evidenced by the fact that these Particular Baptists seem to deliberately repurpose The Westminster Confession of Faith (as The Second London Baptist Confession), The Westminster Catechism (as Benjamin Keach’s The Baptist Catechism), and The Heidleberg Catchesim (Hercules Collins’ An Orthodox Catechism). They did this, among other reasons, presumably to show their general alignment with these Reformed brethren and the broader Reformed tradition. In fact, we see this motivation explicitly stated by Keach in his preface to The Baptist Catechism:
“Having a desire to show our near Agreement with many other Christians, of whom we have great esteem; we some years since put forth a Confession of our Faith, almost in all points the same with that of the Assembly and Savoy, which was subscribed by the Elders and Messengers of many Churches, baptised on profession of their faith: and do now put forth a short account of Christian principles, for the instruction of our families, in most things agreeing with the shorter Catechism of the Assembly. And this we were the rather induced to, because we have commonly made use of that Catechism in our families, and the difference being not much, it will be more easily committed to memory.”3
So the preface to earlier confession, The First London Baptist Confession opens with the following, clarifying that these Baptists considered themselves among the Reformed and thus were “unjustly” labeled Anabaptist by their detractors:
“A confession of faith of seven congregations or churches of Christ in London, which are commonly, but unjustly called Anabaptists; published for the vindication of the truth and information of the ignorant; likewise for the taking off those aspersions which are frequently, both in pulpit and print, unjustly cast upon them.”
Likewise see the assessment of Reformed scholar, Richard Muller, on the 18th century Particular Baptist John Gill:
“The eminent Particular Baptist preacher, theologian, and exegete, John Gill (1697-1771), stands as proof, if any were needed, that the thought of English nonconformity and, within that category, English Baptist theology, is in large part an intellectual and spiritual descendant of the thought of those Reformers, Protestant orthodox writers, and Puritans who belonged to the Reformed confessional tradition. This must be acknowledged despite the pointed disagreement between Baptists and the Reformed confessional tradition over the doctrine of infant baptism; this one doctrine aside, their theology is primarily Reformed and what disagreements remain are disagreements with and often within the Reformed tradition rather than indications of reliance on another theological or confessional model.”4
Or hear from Reformed theologian, Herman Bavinck: “From the outset Reformed theology in North America displayed a variety of very diverse forms.” Among whom he mentions Baptists who “gained a firm foothold on Rhode Island under Roger Williams in 1639.” He concludes:
“Almost all of these churches and currents in these churches [Baptists and the others he mentions] were of Calvinistic origin. Of all religious movements in America, Calvinism has been the most vigorous. It is not limited to one church or other but—in a variety of modifications—constitutes the animating element in Congregational, Baptist, Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, and German Reformed churches, and so forth.”5
Tom Hicks explains at greater length:
“In England during the post-Reformation period, there were great debates over the nature of the church, even though the heirs of the Reformed faith agreed on the gospel and most other doctrines. The Reformed Anglicans wanted an English state-church with an Episcopalian form of government. The English Presbyterians also sought cooperation between church and state, but with a Presbyterian form of government. Independents agreed with the Anglicans and Presbyterians that infants should be baptized, but they did not agree with any kind of formal church-state synthesis. … Independents also believed in a congregational form of church government….
The first ‘Reformed Baptists’ … founded ‘baptistic congregationalist’ churches because, while they agreed with the Independents on almost all other doctrines, they disagreed on infant baptism. It is important to understand that the first Reformed Baptists didn’t see themselves as a certain kind of ‘Baptist.’ Rather, they viewed themselves as congregationalists with baptistic convictions when it came to the subject of baptism.
It is common for teachers of Baptist history to identify Arminian ‘General Baptists’ (Smyth and Helwys), who held to a general atonement, as part of the same group as the Calvinist ‘Particular Baptists’ (Spilsbery, Kiffin, Knollys), who held to a particular atonement. Most Baptist scholars today would say that the term ‘Baptist’ merely identifies the genus of churches that baptist believers. Therefore, they think Baptist churches come in two different species: General Baptists (Arminians) and Particular Baptists (Calvinists). …
[But] the General and Particular Baptists did not consider themselves two different kinds of Baptists. They would never have joined in formal association with one another, and, in fact, the Particular Baptists regarded the General Baptists as dangerously heterodox. … The General Baptists had been heavily influenced by the continental Anabaptists and their theological errors. …
Reformed Baptists, therefore, are not a species of the genus ‘Baptist.’ Rather, they are a species of the genus ‘Reformed.’ Reformed Baptists are not a branch of a Baptist tree; rather they are a branch of the Reformed tree. … Reformed Baptist identity is catholic first, then confessionally Reformed, and finally Baptist.”6
Matthew Bingham agrees, writing,
“[T]hese men and women [mid-seventeenth-century ‘Baptists,’ and, more specifically, those commonly known as ‘Particular Baptists’] are most helpfully understood, not by any of these labels, but rather as congregationalists who, as it happened, reached novel conclusions regarding the legitimacy of infant baptism. This repudiation of paedobaptism did not instantaneously alter either their basic theological orientation or their relational networks; nor did it automatically confer upon them a new ‘Baptist’ identity, a supposition strongly supported by their basic inability to settle upon a consistent term of self-identification.
A coherent, overarching pan-‘Baptist’ identity may well have developed over subsequent decades, but it is problematic to project this back on to the English Revolution and Interregnum. Moreover, even the rejection of paedobaptism was itself made possible and plausible by a more basic congregational ecclesiological paradigm, a conclusion substantiated by the intense conceptual pull which believer’s baptism would exert throughout congregational circles on both sides of the Atlantic. Thus, I have suggested that the mid-seventeenth-century dissenters ubiquitously referred to as ‘Particular Baptists’ would be better described as ‘baptistic congregationalists,’ a label which more accurately describes their mid-seventeenth-century self identity, and does not insert them retroactively into an imagined pan-‘Baptist’ denomination which, at that time, clearly did not exist. This leaves open, of course, the question of what term might best describe the so-called General Baptists. I am inclined toward something like ‘baptistic separatists,’ a term that highlights their distinctive sacramentology without also implying that they exhibited relational and theological continuities with mainstream congregationalists. To properly locate them, however, will require sensitivity to the unique relational and theological matrix out of which they emerged, a task only possible when one jettisons unhelpful and anachronistic denominational categories.”7
Some have argued that Baptist ecclesiology, e.g., believers-only baptism, was so novel it excludes Particular Baptists from the Reformed tradition. Regarding credobaptism specifically, Hick’s responds that the Particular Baptists were simply attempting to recover the original practice of the church catholic. “The early Particular Baptists understand that prior to Augustine, the baptism of believers alone was widespread.”8 Furthermore, he notes,
“It’s important to remember that there is a sense in which all of the church polities of the post-Reformation period were somewhat novel when compared to the time just before the Reformation. … Baptist polity was no more of less novel than the other ecclesiastical polities of the post-Reformation period. Rather, Baptists were simply trying to apply the biblical doctrines of sola Scriptura (Scripture alone) and justification sola fide (faith alone) to the church.”9
In other words, these earliest Particular Baptists sought to take the principles of the Reformation and simply apply them further, more consistently and exhaustively, to the life of the church.10
Notes
Collins, Hercules. An Orthodox Catechism. Edited by Michael A. G. Haykin and G. Stephen Weaver, Jr. Palmdale, CA: RBAP, 2014. Pages 3–4. ↩︎
Richard Muller, “John Gill and the Reformed Tradition: A Study in the Reception of Protestant Orthodoxy in the Eighteenth Century,” in The Life and Thought of John Gill: A Tercentennial Appreciation, ed. Michael A. G. Haykin (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 51. ↩︎
Herman Bavinck, John Bolt, and John Vriend, Reformed Dogmatics: Prolegomena, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 200–201. ↩︎
Tom Hicks, What Is a Reformed Baptist? (Pensacola, FL: Founders Press, 2022), 17–18, 20. ↩︎
Matthew C. Bingham, Orthodox Radicals: Baptist Identity in the English Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 152–53. ↩︎
The Athanasian Creed famously confesses, “We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the substance.” But what exactly does this mean that God is one and yet three persons? And why is The Athanasian Creed so concerned about the doctrine of the Trinity as it relates to our salvation? In this episodes Kirk is joined by Brandon Smith to discuss these questions and more!
(We apologize for the poor quality audio on Kirk’s end. His computer was experiencing a technical problem during the recording which affected the audio.)
Crossway was kind enough to send me a review copy of Joel Beeke and Paul Smalley’s recently completed, four-volume Reformed Systematic Theology. Altogether it’s a hefty 5,216 pages.
I’ve created a reading plan that I thought I’d share in case others might benefit. The plan is currently set up with one chapter assigned per day, meaning one can complete all four volumes in a little less than seven months. However, one can adjust the spreadsheet according to preference.
No, divorce was never God’s original intention for marriage. Divorce was not part of the equation when he created marriage: “from the beginning it was not so,” as Jesus said quoting Gen 2:24 (Matt 19:9).
Nonetheless, on this side of the fall, we find in scripture that, in his mercy, God gives certain allowances for divorce.
My experience as a pastor, counseling people with abusive spouses, helped me better understand God’s hatred of divorce. I’m not saying experience determines our theology or should be used to overrule scripture. But sometimes experience can expand our understanding.
God always hates divorce. But sometimes he hates it because it’s unwarranted, it’s wrong to pursue, he doesn’t allow it (like in Malachi 2:16). In other instances though, God hates divorce because, although he warrants it, he nonetheless hates the sin that made it warranted.
In other words, all divorce involves sin. But not all divorce is sinful.
I’ve seen first hand the negative impact when pastors fail to grasp this. Very practically, they see divorce as a greater evil than the abuse the spouse is enduring. Divorce is never seen as God’s mercy to the abused spouse.
Divorce is never the outcome we want for any marriage. But sometimes it’s God’s mercy in a fallen world—”because of your hardness of heart,” as Jesus says (Matt 19.8).
Kirk E. Miller 