DRAFT OF A CHAPTER
Charles P. Poole, Jr.
CONTENTS
1. Introduction
2.
Baptist Faith and Message
3.
Comparison of Three Faith Statements
4.
Discussion
1. INTRODUCTION
The largest
Protestant church in the
Some
Baptists trace their origin to the Puritan reform movement of the 17th
century, or more specifically to a Baptist church founded by Thomas Helwys in
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2. BAPTIST FAITH
The
website www.sbc.net/bfm/ contains the
Baptist Faith and Message promulgated in the year 2000, and compares it with
the prior statements that were adopted in 1925 and 1963. In this document they state,
“We honor the principles of soul
competency and the priesthood of believers, affirming together both our liberty
in Christ and our accountability to each other under the Word of God.” They “adopted confessions of faith as a
witness to the world, and as instruments of doctrinal accountability.” They continue, “As a committee we have been charged to
address the “certain needs” of our own generation. In an age increasingly hostile to Christian
truth, our challenge is to express the Christian truth as revealed in
Scripture, and to bear witness to Jesus Christ, who is “the Way, the Truth, and
the Life”.”
The
Faith and Message contains 18 sections, and we will comment on several of
them. Section I begins “The Holy Bible
was written by men divinely inspired and is God’s revelation of Himself to man.
. . . It has God for its author,
salvation for its end, and truth, without any admixture of error, for its
matter.” It is “The supreme standard by
which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions would be tried.” Sect. II entitled “God” states “The eternal
triune God reveals Himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with distinct
personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence, or being.” “God the Father reigns with providential care
over His universe, His creatures, and the flow of the stream of human history according
to the purposes of His grace.” “Christ
is the eternal Son of God. In His incarnation as Jesus Christ He was conceived
of the Holy Spirit, and born of the virgin Mary.” “The Holy Spirit is the spirit of God, fully
divine. He inspired holy men of old to
write the scriptures. Through
illumination He enables men to understand truth.” Section
In Sect.
VI “The Church” the Baptist definition is interesting: “A New Testament church
of the Lord Jesus Christ is an autonomous local congregation of baptized
believers, associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel;
observing the two ordinances of Christ, governed by His laws, exercising the
gifts, rights, and privileges invested in them by His Word, and seeking to
extend the gospel to the ends of the earth.
Each congregation operates under the Lordship of Christ through
democratic processes. . . . The office of pastor is limited to men as qualified
by Scripture.” Section
Section
X “Last Things” says “Jesus Christ will return personally and visibly in glory
to the earth; and Christ will judge all men in righteousness. The unrighteous will be consigned to Hell,
the place of everlasting punishment. The
righteous in their resurrected and glorified bodies will receive their reward,
and will dwell forever in Heaven with the Lord.” Section XI proclaims “It is the duty and
privilege of every follower
of Christ and of every church of the Lord Jesus to endeavor to
make disciples of all nations.” Section
XII asserts “In Christian education there should be proper balance between
academic freedom and academic responsibility.”
Section XIII mentions the “obligation to serve Him with their time,
talents, and material possessions . . . cheerfully,
regularly, systematically, proportionately, and liberally.” Section XIV urges “cooperation . . . between
the various Christian denominations.”
In Section XV we read “Christians should oppose racism, every form of
greed, selfishness, and vice, and all forms of sexual immorality, including
adultery, homosexuality, and pornography.”
Section XVII claims that “The state owes to every
church protection and full freedom in the pursuit of its spiritual ends.” Finally Section XVIII on The Family says “God
has ordained the family as the fundamental institution in human society . . . Marriage is the uniting of one man and one
woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime . . . A wife is to submit herself
graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church
willingly submits to the leadership of Christ.”
3. COMPARISON OF THREE FAITH STATEMENTS
The
first two Faith formulations emphasized the desire of the convention committees
to adhere to the “statement of the historic Baptist conception of the nature
and functions of confessions of faith in our religious and denominational
life.” The 1925 statement was much
shorter, while the 1963 and 2000 ones were comparable in length. The first part of the preamble is quite
similar in the 1925 and 1963 statements, but they differ in what they say
toward the end of the preamble. The 1925
statement does not have the much expanded material on the individual three
divine persons that is in the two later statements. The 1925 and 1963 statements admonish
refraining from “worldly amusements and . . . secular
employments” on the Lord’s Day, and this was omitted in 2000. The 1925 statement says even less about the
Lord’s Supper than the later ones. Apparently this is not of much concern to
Baptists, and it explains why Baptist Sunday services are centered around scripture readings and a sermon. The predestination statements that I found
problematical appear in 1963 and 2000, but not in 1925; they were later additions. Last Things is treated much differently in
the two more recent statements than it was in 1925. Education is treated somewhat differently in
all three statements. The family section
was absent in 1925.
4. DISCUSSION
In the previous section we summarized via many quotations what appeared to us to be the essentials of the Baptist Faith and Message as recorded on their website. I was very impressed by most of what I read, and in many respects the emphasis is quite similar to what we believe in the Catholic Church. I had trouble with the statement on predestination in Sect. V “God’s Purpose and Grace”: “Those whom God has accepted in Christ, and sanctified by His spirit, will never fall from the state of grace, but shall persevere to the end . . . believers may fall into sin . . . yet they shall be kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.” In Sect. XII the statement on the Lord’s Supper is very short, indicative of a lack of emphasis on the advisability of receiving regular spiritual nourishment by partaking of the “body and blood of the Lord.” We show in the chapters Tradition and Historical Perspective listed on the Tradition page of this website that the early Christians stressed the importance of frequently celebrating and partaking of the Lord's Supper.
As a concluding remark let me state that I am impressed by the extent to which our two faiths are in accord on so many fundamental issues.