The First Baptist Church of Granada Hills

“The Nastiness of the Old Testament” (Luke 24:36-48)
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The Old Testament poses a number of problems for some Christians; it can just seem a bit crude, cruel, and even immoral at times.  This sermon explores how Jesus helps us to overcome these difficulties.

“Light Praise” (Mark 11:1-10)
Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and what would follow should lead us to consider the significance of our own worship.
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“Impossible… and yet…” (John 20:1-20)
The Easter story is beautiful, impossible, and yet, apparently, true.
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 The Biblical Situation

            When one seeks to develop an idea of the biblical structure of the Church one encounters a problem.  Clearly the Bible speaks of “servants” (generally just transliterated into English as “deacons”, 1 Tim. 3:8) and “elders” (generally called pastors, priests, or preachers, 1 Tim. 4:14).  The Bible also speaks of “overseers” (1 Tim. 3:1), which were probably the same thing as elders. But we’re told that not all elders were involved in the teaching or preaching of scripture (1 Tim. 5:17). Additionally, it’s clear that the Apostles exercised control over multiple congregations and sometimes delegated this regional authority to proxies (Titus 1:5).  What’s more, when Paul spoke of the various kinds of people in leadership in the church he included all sorts of “offices” in his lists (1 Cor. 12:28, Eph. 4:11).

            Given all this, it appears that, as a recent Baptist theologian, Millard Erickson, has conceded, “There is no prescriptive exposition of what the government of the church is to be [in the Bible].”  Further, even when we look for a description of the way it was (as opposed to the way it should be), Erickson admits, “the evidence from the New Testament is inconclusive,” and, “There may well have been rather wide varieties of governmental arrangements.”

Uniformity and Diversity

            Be this as it may, the post-New Testament Church quickly came to adopt a three-tiered model of government as the official standard with deacons below priests who were in turn below bishops.  As time went on this model was further embellished with subsets of each layer of the hierarchy: sub-deacons, archdeacons, archpriests, archbishops, and so on.  When the Protestant Reformation rolled through Europe, though, this structure was challenged and abandoned in many places.  As each group sought to be faithful to the larger Protestant rallying-cry of “scripture alone”, the various sects were forced to once again face the ambiguity of the New Testament text and, not surprisingly, produced various ecclesiologies.  Anglicans and some Lutherans kept the classic episcopal three-tiered structure, Presbyterians and other Lutherans embraced synodical governance predicated on a two-tiered structure with serious congregational interconnectedness, and Baptists and Congregationalist opted for a two-tiered structure without much in the way of interconnectedness.

The Baptist Mainstream

            As it stands today, most Baptists continue the tradition of only recognizing two levels within the clergy: deacons and elders.  Generally speaking these are the only two offices for which one must be ordained. Other positions within the church (secretary, treasurer, usher, etc.) are not normally counted as clerical in the sense of being a part of the clergy.  It should be noted, though, that even among mainstream Baptists this two-tiered structure is not as simple as it first appears.  Just as in the medieval period these two tiers have been further subdivided by many congregations by postulating chairmen of deacon bodies and senior pastors which exercise authority over other pastors.

Exceptions and Corollaries

            Despite the broad consensus of the Baptist mainstream, there are a handful of Baptist groups that do not embrace a two-tiered model or modify it in significant ways. On the one hand there are episcopal Baptists groups such as the Evangelical Baptist Union of Georgia, the Union of Baptist Churches in Latvia, and the Episcopal Baptist Church in Congo which all embrace a three-tiered view of the clergy with bishops at the top.  On the other hand, a growing number of Baptist churches in the U.S. (including many Southern Baptists) are moving toward an “elder led” model of church governance in which the “two-offices” of the Baptist mainstream are retained but the office of elder is divided into “teaching elders” and “lay elders” resulting in something of a de facto three-tiered model of church government

The doctrine of individual soul liberty (sometimes called “soul competency”) is the belief that each individual is ultimately and personally responsible to God.  Given this, it would be inappropriate for human persons or institutions to set themselves up as spiritual authorities who must be obeyed on pain of penalty; such a position would be, at least implicitly, a usurpation of God’s own role.

            In a sense this doctrine is very much related to the belief in the priesthood of all believers.  In both cases a distinct anti-authoritarian disposition is very much in view.  Likewise, both dogmas stress the importance of personal involvement in one’s spirituality.  Thus, at times, these two related concepts are used almost interchangeably but helpful distinctions can still be made: Whereas the priesthood of all believers asserts the responsibility of every Christian to participate personally in God’s redemptive mission, the notion of individual soul liberty asserts the responsibility of all Christians to relate personally to God with faith and love.  One might say that while the priesthood of all believers is a centrifugal doctrine, pushing believers out into the world on mission, individual soul liberty is a centripetal doctrine, pulling believers in towards God in worship.

            While almost universally recognized in the modern world, this doctrine was quite revolutionary in its infancy and was distinctly Baptist.  During the Reformation many groups sought to impose doctrinal uniformity through force.  Executions by burning, drowning, hanging, beheading and tortures of all sorts intended to bring about obedience to a dogmatic standard were common in the Christian world.  It was against this backdrop that Baptists articulated the doctrine of individual soul liberty and its ideological cousin “voluntarism”.

            Since during the 16^th and 17^th centuries most church bodies were officially connected in some way to civil authority, the doctrine of individual soul liberty led very naturally to a belief that government should not meddle in religious matters.  As the Baptist patriarch Thomas Helwys famously opined, “[O]ur lord the king is but an earthly king, and he has no authority as a king but in earthly causes. And if the king’s people be obedient and true subjects, obeying all human laws made by the king, our lord the king can require no more. For men’s religion to God is between God and themselves. The king shall not answer for it. Neither may the king be judge between God and man. Let them be heretics, Turks, Jews, or whatsoever, it appertains not to the earthly power to punish them in the least measure.”

            It must be noted though that in recent years this radical separation of Church and State has proven increasingly problematic.  As the Western world enters a “post-Christian” phase many moral principles, once considered universal, have been seen to be religiously grounded.  As such, to retain a sense of explicitly moral governance, many Baptists (particularly conservatives) have distanced themselves from the absolutist perspectives of their forefather in favor of a more moderate alternative.

 When Christ established His Church He provided it with both His teachings and a number of sacred rituals for its guidance.  These rituals, sometimes called “sacraments” (from the Latin for “to consecrate”), sometimes called “ordinances” (from the Latin for “to put in order”), move the Christian faith out of the purely intellectual realm and into the embodied physicality of real life since they involve some material element.  As such, just as Jesus was the incarnation of God, one could argue that the sacraments/ordinances are the “incarnation” of Jesus’ teaching.

            In the medieval period the Western Church defined seven distinct acts as sacraments: baptism, confirmation, the Lord’s Supper, penance, marriage, “Holy Orders” (the act of entering the clergy or para-clergy), and “Last Rites”. However, during the Reformation, many theologians questioned the sacramental status of some of these acts.  While all (or at least most) of these practices could be supported biblically, some of them lacked a material component (i.e. penance and Holy Orders) and others were not specifically instituted by Jesus Himself (confirmation, marriage, and possibly Last Rites).  As a result the Protestant reformers generally recognized only two rituals of the Church as sacraments/ordinances proper: baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

            As a second generation Protestant group, the Baptists inherited this more limited view of the sacraments.  But at the same time Baptists have historically understood the two ordinances somewhat differently than most other Protestants.  Specifically Baptists have embraced a view of both baptism and the Lord’s Supper that is decidedly more rationalistic and less mystical than most of their fellow Protestants.

Baptism

            Baptists, like all Christians, view baptism as the definitive rite of initiation into the Christian Church.  Like all historical Christians, Baptists believe baptism involves contact with water and the pronouncement of the Trinitarian formula recorded in Matthew 28:19.  Additionally, Baptists have made a very serious point of imitating the New Testament practice of Baptism as closely as possible.  This entails reserving baptism for only those with conscious faith in Jesus as their Lord and Savior.  As such, Baptists do not baptize babies.  Additionally, for most of their history, Baptists have baptized only by immersion, or, more specifically, by submersion—placing the entire body of the one being baptized under water.  Again this is seen as an attempt to follow New Testament practice as closely as possible (Romans 6:4). 

            While there is uniform agreement on the regular method of baptism (believers, by submersion), a diversity of views exist regarding the question of whether rites called baptism which do not meet this standard may be considered valid—albeit irregular—baptisms.  For instance, is the baptism of a five year-old child by submersion valid?  Is the baptism of a believer by infusion (pouring) valid?  On these issues Baptists disagree.

The Lord’s Supper

            Baptists, like all Christians, view the Lord’s Supper as a repeated rite of Christian discipleship.  Like all historical Christians, Baptists believe the Lord’s Supper involves the consumption of bread and the juice of grapes. 

            Interestingly though, while Baptists have been firmly committed to practicing baptism in strict accordance with the New Testament model, the same cannot be said regarding the Lord’s Supper.  Whereas it appears that the Lord’s Supper was a part of normal weekly worship of the first Christians, many Baptist churches partake of the rite monthly and some churches do so only quarterly.  Also, while the New Testament makes it clear that the Lord’s Supper was instituted using actual alcoholic wine (1 Cor. 11:21), beginning in the 19^th century many Baptists in the United States began substituting non-alcoholic juice for the wine and most Baptist churches in North America have followed this tradition ever since.

            As for the significance of the meal, most Baptists embrace what can be called a Memorialist or Zwinglian (after the Swiss reformer, Huldrick Zwingli) view: the meal is symbolic of Christ’s body and draws our attention to His death and coming return.  It may be said that, in the Lord’s Supper, a real change takes place, but it takes place in the mind of the worshipper and not in the physical elements of the rite.

            During the medieval period, a serious division was introduced into Christ’s Church.  This division was not so much between one region and another region or one theological position and another theological position.  Instead this particular division cut through each and every congregation separating the people behind the altar from those in front of it.  Put another way, this was a division between the clergy (ordained religious specialists) and the laity (non-ordained Christians in general).  It was believed that clergymen, at the moment of their ordination by a bishop in a valid line of apostolic succession, were changed in some miraculous way so as to enable them to transform the elements of the Lord’s Supper into the literal body and blood of Jesus Christ.     This belief, in turn, slowly gave rise to what is now called “clericalism”, the elevation of the clergy as a class to greater and greater levels of power and prestige.  Eventually, Christians began to think of clergymen (along with some non-ordained monks and nuns) as “the real Church” with ordinary Christians functioning largely as spectators during religious services.  Thus, when one spoke of “the Church” doing something, what was generally meant was that the clergy (priests and bishops and some monastic groups) were doing something.  It was the clergy who were to represent Jesus, study His words, oversee His people, and evangelize the world; the laity were pretty much just along for the ride. 

            During the Protestant Reformation a number of reformers vigorously opposed this now entrenched situation.  These men sought to return to an earlier and more biblical view of the Church as all of God’s people—both ordained and not—working towards God-pleasing goals and prosecuting the Church’s mission.  This belief came to be known as the doctrine of the “priesthood of believers” and finds its clearest biblical support in such passages as 1 Peter 2:4-5 & 9, Revelation 1:5b-6 and Revelation 5:9-10.

            While the priesthood of all believers is a doctrine embraced by all Protestants (and even more recently by the Roman Catholic Church in a limited form, Lumen Gentium II.10) Baptists have emphasized the belief far beyond most other groups.  As such it is generally considered a hallmark of Baptist theology and has been implemented in a variety of ways—some good and some less so.  Two alternative approaches appear below.

The Priesthood of the Believer

            Baptist ideology has had a significant role in the development of American political philosophy.  At the same time, American political philosophy has had a significant role in the development of Baptist ideology.  As a result some Baptists have uncritically embraced the radical individualism of American culture and read that back into their view of the Bible.  When this happens a radically individualistic spirituality is often the result in which each believer feels himself an island and thinks that his theological views are equally as valid as any other’s.  This is sometimes called the priesthood of the believer, as if the individual has some office which he exercises as an individual.  Such a stance generally leads to a great deal of theological diversity within communities since, if no one person’s interpretation is more authoritative than any other’s (the whole concept of theological authority being relativized), all competing interpretations are merely “perspectives” to be graciously tolerated.

The Priesthood of All Believers

            It is important to note that in the passages of the Bible where the priesthood of believers is mentioned it is always applied to the Church as a group and not to individuals.  What’s more, 1 Peter 2:4-5 & 9, while foundational to the concept as a whole, is not a New Testament novelty; it is simply a quotation from the Old Testament, specifically Exodus 19:5-6.  Thus, what Israel was the Church now is.  But if ancient Israel, God’s priestly people, nevertheless contained genuine religious authorities (specifically, the Levitical priesthood) we should not expect the Church, God’s priestly people, to lack them.  Indeed the New Testament clearly indicates that the local church should have religious specialist who function as religious authorities (1 Timothy 3, Hebrews 13:17). Rather, all Christians are part of a universal abstract priesthood in the sense that they are, just as Israel was, intended to be a light to the nations, functioning collectively as a witness to the truth of God in the midst of spiritual and moral confusion.  In this broader sense the Church is a priest and each of its members has some part to play in that identity.

The Old Order

            From about the year AD 150 to 1500 the Church was uniformly organized along geographic lines.  Generally speaking a number of local congregations were clustered together into what is called a diocese under the authority of a bishop.  Additionally, individual dioceses were often further grouped around archdioceses under the authority of archbishops.  And at times these archdioceses were likewise under the authority of a patriarchate.

            The question of whether this policy (or some simplified version of it) was practiced in the New Testament period (AD 30 to 90) is a difficult one.  On the one hand, some sort of regional authority does seem to have been exercised by the Apostles (e.g. James in Jerusalem) and this role was even exercised by men who were not Apostles themselves (e.g. Titus 1:5).  In the Book of Revelation (written circa AD 90), Jesus commends the church at Smyrna (2:8-11) for its rich spirituality; Ignatius of Antioch (died AD 117) would also write to this region and addressed his letter to the bishop, Polycarp. 

            On the other hand, there is evidence that especially large cities with multiple Christian communities did not always have a single bishop running the show: there is some confusion as to who succeeded Peter as the leader of the Christians in Rome and this may be explained by the presence of numerous cooperating but not consolidated church bodies in the city.  Also, when Ignatius wrote a letter to the Roman Christians, he interestingly didn’t mention a bishop.  It may be that the Church in the New Testament era was home to a number of different organizational models and that only over time did the hierarchical model become normative.

The Revolution

            In any event, the Protestant Reformation disrupted the organizational unity of the Western Church and the classical episcopal system found itself rubbing shoulders (once again?) with other systems.  Those Protestant groups which had de facto control over a geographical area generally maintained some form of regional inter-congregational control: Calvinist synods in Scotland, Lutheran dioceses in Sweden, etc.  But other groups which were less numerous and thus less dominant (such as Baptists) were compelled to adopt congregational polity in which individual congregation, often separated by great distances, functioned independent of any overarching control.

The Baptist Mainstream

           Most Baptist churches continue to maintain congregational autonomy, allowing each church to govern itself.  Despite this, though, many churches choose to freely cooperate with other likeminded churches to advance causes beyond the reach of a single congregation including missions work, seminary and university education, and publishing.  These cooperating churches often organize themselves into loose, non-binding confederations to aid in this work.

Minority Reports

            Two distinct trends away from the aforementioned mainstream are apparent in modern Baptist life: one discouraging cooperation altogether and the other advocating a far more aggressive form of interconnectedness.

            The former trend is represented by so-called “hard shell” or anti-missionary Baptist churches and strident Independent Baptist churches that refuse to cooperate with other congregations either for matters of doctrine (hyper-Calvinism) or polity.

            The later trend takes two forms: episcopal Baptists and local churches employing a satellite campus model.  Episcopal Baptists are Baptist groups which have embraced the hierarchical model described above.  Major expressions of this tradition exist in Congo, Latvia, Georgia, and India.  The satellite campus model is largely an American experiment pursued by mega-churches in which a sermon is recorded at a central location and rebroadcast to a variety of satellite congregations under the central church’s control.

             The center of the Christian faith is Jesus Christ.  Christ’s life, death, and resurrection form the core of our beliefs and it’s only through His person and work that we are lead to other theological issues.  Of course, since Jesus’ actions lie in the distant past and He is no longer physically present to continue His teaching, a problem naturally arises: “How do we know anything about this Man who is the foundation of our spirituality?”

            Anticipating this question, Jesus called a community into being.  This community (the Church) remained in existence after Christ’s ascension and preserved the knowledge of His ministry in the form of sacred tradition which was handed on to posterity (1 Cor. 11:2).  At various points in the first century this oral tradition was written down and thus became written tradition about Jesus.  Eventually various examples of the written tradition (various individual books and letters of the New Testament) were brought together to form anthologies in different parts of the Church. This process of anthologizing continued through the third century until, essentially, all Christians affirmed the same basic collection of writings related to Jesus—what we now call the New Testament.  This collection of writings presupposed another collection, the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament) so both collections were fused to produce the Bible.

            Of course the Church’s tradition continued to be promulgated independent of this central written record through teaching, preaching, singing, and so on.  And eventually, as traditions are inclined to do, the tradition evolved and diversified, leading to the existence of multiple and contradictory theologies within Christianity.  To meet this challenge, Baptists (as with many other Christians) asserted that the written tradition, the Bible, should be privileged over all other instances of the tradition since the Bible is fixed and early whereas other possible authorities are fluid and late.  This policy of asserting the Bible over against later examples of the tradition is know as the resort to “biblical authority”, or as it’s sometimes called, the doctrine of Sola Scriptura.

            While almost all Baptists would affirm the belief in biblical authority, this principle can be understood in a number of ways.  Some of these ways are helpful, and some are not.  Examples of each approach appear below.

“No Creed but the Bible”

            Some interpret the principle of biblical authority as a rejection of all other guiding documents and principles.  As such, these groups would consider themselves “anti-creedal” in that they refuse to use creeds (both ancient and modern) to define their identity.  The Baptist General Convention of Texas (along with other groups) distanced itself from the SBC on the grounds that the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message sounded like a creed and “Baptists don’t believe in creeds.”  Despite the no-nonsense appeal of this position, it suffers from a number of drawbacks.  First, the statement “I believe no creed but the Bible” is itself a creed (“creed” coming from credo which means, “I believe”) and is thus an apparent violation of its own principle.  Second, all sorts of groups claim to base their faith on the Bible alone only to create widely divergent ideologies (cp. Jehovah’s Witnesses and Lutherans).  It seems that at least some summary statement of what the Bible actually says is needed.  And third, all churches inevitably produce policies for guiding their operation that are not explicitly biblical (e.g. bylaws, usher rotation charts, etc).  Thus the “no creed but the Bible” slogan seems to be self-contradictory, unhelpful, and ultimately impossible.

“Norma Normans”

            Historically (and despite sometimes shrill claims to the contrary) Baptists have always been comfortable with creeds.  The first Baptist groups known to have existed developed statements of faith (e.g. the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, the Philadelphia Confession of 1742).  Some of these confessions, like the Orthodox Creed of 1678, even reproduce the three ancient creeds of Christianity: the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed.  What’s more, the first meeting of the Baptist World Alliance, in 1905, began with a group recitation of the Apostles Creed.  What then of biblical authority?  In this context the Bible is seen as the ultimate standard and one from which summaries can be derived.  In so far as these derivative standards accord with the Bible they are legitimate.  Still excluded is any belief or practice which contradicts the Bible, the earliest and most reliable standard for Christian faith, either explicitly or in general character.

 This series of posts is based on a series of Wednesday night studies centering on the Baptist tradition.  The first article in this series concerns the various views of Baptist origins and an overview of distinctly Baptist doctines and following articles will center on one specific doctrine mentioned below.

Origins

      Perpetuity Theory: “Baptists have always existed since the time of Christ.” This view is generally associated with “Landmarkism” which asserts that the practice of believer’s baptism is definitional to a true church and   thus a church that doesn’t practice the rite is therefore not a true church.  But since, as Jesus said, the true Church would stand through all time (Matt.16:18) there must have been Baptist churches all along. The most famous advocate of this perspective was James Milton Carroll (pastor and president of Oklahoma Baptist University and Howard Payne University) who wrote the definitive treatment of this idea in a pamphlet entitled “The Trail of Blood”.  The most serious problems for this theory are the highly dubious Landmarkism that undergirds it and the heretical nature of many of the groups identified as proto-Baptists.

[Apostles à Baptists]

      Continental Anabaptist Theory: “Baptists are an outgrowth of the Anabaptists which came into being as the left-most fringe of the Protestant Reformation in the 16^th century in continental Europe.”  This view recognizes the similarity between modern Baptists and 16^th century Anabaptists (as represented by men such as Balthasar Hubmaier and Menno Simons) in such matters as church government and believer’s baptism.  Similarly, it takes serious account of the close temporal connection between the rise of the two groups.  However, there are significant differences between mainstream Baptists and historical Anabaptists in terms of both political theory and geographical distribution that makes a simple development from one to the other unlikely.

[Apostles à Classical Church à Catholic Church à Anabaptists à Baptists]

      British Separatist Theory: “Baptists are a splinter group that developed in the aftermath of the English Reformation in the 17^th century.”  This view is based largely on the recorded history of the earliest known self-identifying Baptist church.  This congregation was initially led by John Smyth, a former Anglican priest, who had converted to, essentially, Congregationalism.  The church fled to the Netherlands to escape persecution and subsequently embraced believer’s baptism as articulated by the Mennonites.  Upon Smyth’s death the congregation split with some joining the Mennonites and the rest moving back to England to establish the first Baptist church now known to us. 

[Apostles à Classical Church à Catholic Church à Anglicanism à Separatists à Baptists]

Overview of Distinct Beliefs

      Biblical Authority: The Bible alone is the final “court of appeals” for matters of theology and religious practice.  All other legitimate theological guides must derive from the Bible.

      Autonomy of the Local Congregation: Individual local churches are to be self-governed.

      Priesthood of All Believers: All Christians, both ordained and lay, have direct access to God through Jesus.

      Two Ordinances: The Lord’s Supper and baptism are the only biblically mandated sacraments.

      Individual Soul Liberty: Each individual must have faith—as such, coercion in religion is out of order.

      Separation of Church and State: The Church and civil authority are distinct institutions of God and ought to retain their independence of one another.

      Two Offices: Only the offices of elder (or pastor) and deacon are established in Scripture as enduring positions of leadership within the church and therefore only these offices are to be considered normative.