A Conversation Between Baptists and Anglicans | Theocast

Theocast, Pietism, and Resting in Christ

What do Baptists and Anglicans have in common? John and I recently had the opportunity to be on the Doth Protest podcast with our friends, James and Drew, who are Anglican. And we talked about pretty much everything, guys.

We talked about the Reformation, where we hail from, and we talked about what we believe and what we have in common in particular was the emphasis of the podcast. And that all centered around Jesus and God's grace and the sufficiency of our Savior.

We were encouraged by the conversation we trust that you will be, too. Stay tuned. If you're new to Theocast, you may not have heard of this word. It's called pietism. You ever felt like the Christian life is a heavy burden versus rest and joy, that you wake up worrying about how well you're gonna perform instead of thinking about what Christ has done for you?

It's dread versus joy, really. That's pietism. Pietism causes Christians to look in on themselves and find their hope, not in what Christ has done, but what they're doing. And we have a little book for you.

It's free. We want you to download it. And we're gonna explain the difference between pietism and what we call confessionalism, Reformed theology, really, how it is that we walk by faith, seeing the joy of Christ, and when Jesus says, come to me and I will give you rest, what does that look like?

You can download it on our website. Just go to theocast .org.

Theocast, Historical Theology, and the Problem of Pietism

Welcome to Doth Protest, a podcast of historical theology and Reformation theology and practice. And we are here today. This is not Drew. That's why I stumbled through that. But I'm here with Drew and with the gentleman from Theocast, a well-renowned podcast that, as they say on their website, seeks to clarify the gospel and reclaim the purpose of the kingdom from a Reformed and pastoral perspective.

We're here today with the co-hosts of that podcast, John Moffitt. John was born and raised in the sunny desert of Southern California. As his church website says, he is married to Judith and they have four children.

I don't want to mispronounce your first child's name, Karis, I'm assuming. Very close, Karis, very close. Karis, Karis, Fidus, Jane, and Knox. John's father was a pastor for 25 years in California before moving to Utah, where the Lord took him home in 2002 after graduating from college in California.

John spent several years working in a small church as a youth pastor in Utah. It was while ministering there that he began to feel the need for more theological training and moved back to California to attend seminary.

While in seminary, he became involved in a local church as the college and young adults pastor until graduating in December of 2011. 30 days later, with his wife and three kids, John moved to Nashville, Tennessee to become a young adult pastor at Community Bible Church.

In 2017, John was sent out to Plant Grace Reform Church in Spring Hill. John is one of the founding members and director of Theocast Ministries. And with Justin Perdue. Justin was born in Newport News, Virginia, but grew up in Asheville, North Carolina.

He graduated from T .C. Roberson High School in 2001 and went on to Furman University where he got a BA in business administration and played football for four years, likely against my alma mater, Appalachian State.

Although he had been from a fairly young age, the Lord brought Justin to a fresh appreciation and understanding of his gospel and his word beginning in 2001, or 2007, excuse me. In 2011, Justin moved to Washington, D .C. to begin the pastoral internship program at Capitol Hill Baptist Church.

During that time, he met his wife, Michelle. They were married in December of 2012. He began his studies at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2012 and continues to pursue the Master of Divinity degree.

In 2013, Justin took a position as Mark Dever's pastoral assistant at Capitol Hill Baptist Church and served in that capacity until he and his family moved back to the Asheville area. Justin has served as lead pastor of Covenant Baptist Church since it was constituted in August of 2015.

He and Michelle have four children. That's quite a mouthful, gentlemen, but we are so glad to have y 'all on the podcast. That is quite a mouthful.

I forgot that was even on our website, so thanks for reminding me to update that. Yeah, those are like website bios that sound a little dated, and there we go.

Well, you know, anything you wanna update from there? It's not the purpose of today's show, brothers.

No, we're good. And you did a good job with the intro, James. I mean, I feel like one third of the episodes we do, I stumble through the intro. I forget what our podcast is about, apparently.

Well, and that's okay, because as we're going to talk about quite a bit today, we are all miserable sinners constantly in need of God's saving grace. Amen. So, but we are so glad to have y 'all on, and especially because y 'all represent a very particular brand flavor of Reformed theology being Reformed Baptists.

And before we get into that particularity, I wanna just get a little bit about Theocast on here for our listenership. Sure. From what I've done, I've gone into your podcast and listened to a number of them, and I have to say, I was telling my wife this morning, when I listen to Theocast, I just find myself at peace.

And I know, obviously, the subtitle is Rest in Christ, but that's something that in the midst of the tumult, just a constant reminder theologically of the need for and the beauty of resting in Christ, trusting in God's grace and mercy.

It's something that affects people not just from the Reformed Baptist bin. It affects us here in the Anglican world. So I'm very appreciative for that. But Theocast, in some ways, it seems like it's kind of a response to and a corrective to pietism.

And we talk about pietism on Doth Protest often without mentioning the term. You know, we may talk about it as legalism or as, you know, you might hear me say being overly law-heavy, that kind of thing.

But can you explain briefly what pietism is and why Theocast sets out to encourage Christians to rest in Christ?

Pietism, Revivalism, and the Better Way of Union with Christ

Go ahead, Justin. A simple way to talk about pietism is that it is an overemphasis on what we like to call the interior of the Christian life. So what pietism does in some way, shape, or form at the end of the day is point the believer back in on himself, on herself, to know that you're legit.

So I'm going to be inspecting my discipline, my fervor, my devotion, my dedication, my sincerity, my performance. You fill in the blank. And that's where ultimately peace with God is found. Now, it's not that the gospel, in a pietistic context, it's not that the gospel isn't preached.

It's not that Christ isn't held out. But it ends up being this kind of Jesus and you dynamic. And I think any sane person listening to this is rightly thinking, if I'm responsible for any of this, that's not good news.

That's not a good word. That is a burden and a weight that I cannot bear. If my peace with the Lord and my standing with God is contingent upon anything other than Christ for me, then what are we doing?

And so that's effectively what we're trying to get at is we're trying to pull people out of pietism, which we may get into this in a minute, but I know before we recorded, for us certainly as Baptists, the Baptist tradition in the United States has been routed by pietism and revivalism.

And those two things typically go together. And so for John and myself, we're trying to pull people out of that. We're trying to help people see the environment they're in, help the fish understand the water it's swimming in.

Like let's describe some of this and put some words to your experiences and so that you see what pietism is and what revivalism is. And now that we've described some of that, let's pull you onto something better, namely the rock that is higher than you, who is Jesus Christ and everything that he has accomplished in our place.

And he is actually better than you think. He's done more than you think. And so that's really the ethos of what we're trying to accomplish is to encourage us all. I mean, John and I are encouraged as we have the conversations because we're all inner pietists.

We're inner legalists. We always tend to want to look back to what we're doing or what we're producing to know that we are legitimately in the faith. And it's really good to be pointed outside of ourselves that cry of the reformation, right?

Extranose, to be pointed outside of ourselves to Christ who has accomplished our salvation and the work that he's accomplished is not changing. It's not going anywhere. And the father always sees it. And so we're secure.

Yeah, that's beautiful. Very well put. Yeah, within the Lutheran sphere, we're all opinion legates. We're all of the opinion of the law. We all are law creatures. It's just our natural proclivity. Within the lectionary that we use on Sundays, this week we're going through John 15, I am the true vine.

And so the refrain for my sermon is we are not fruit inspectors. That is our natural inclination is to sort of look and see what we've done and to try and judge whether it's worthy, whether it's enough.

That's right. And ultimately that's only going to be devastating. Yeah, exactly. And that's the problem that I think, Protestantism has in general, not just the Reformed Baptists, not just Episcopalians, not just Lutherans, but we've all got, as you were saying, Justin, that tendency to, well, to use my own language or Paul's language to sort of be shackled again to the law instead of being free in Christ.

If I may really quickly, James, sorry, Drew. The question, like you said it, we're always looking at what we've done. We're inspecting our fruit to determine if it's enough or not. And the answer to that is, well, of course it's not enough, but Christ is enough.

We always think that what we have done, it's like, okay, well, let me do this. Let me achieve this and that will do. It's like, no, it won't, but Christ will do. That's the answer. Well, and just to even jump on the illustration of the vine, we miss at times, when we talk about fruit inspection, we miss the picture.

So for instance, the tree that produces the fruit, that fruit's not for that tree. If you think about it, right? It gets its sustenance from the ground and from the rain and from, but the fruit is for others, is for to be consumed by other people.

And we often somehow attribute that God needs our fruit. And so we better be inspecting our fruit that is sufficient. And it's not other people need our fruit because what are fruits of the Spirit? The fruits of the Spirit are to be experienced by other people around us, right?

They're the ones consuming the fruit and it's produced by the Spirit. So, you know, there are times where, at times when we, when people hear theocast, they assume, oh, well, you guys don't care about the fruit of the Spirit.

I'm like, oh, we care much about it because it's beneficial for other people, but it's of no value for your relationship with the Lord. He does not look to your fruit for that. Other humans who are sinful, they can consume, you know, okay, fruit, but God can't, he rejects it.

And that's how, the whole illustration is really healthy to remember yourself by, because like the fruit of the Spirit is vitally important, just not for your salvation at all. And it's fruiting out by the Spirit.

Yeah, one thing I was, that was on my mind, sometimes I do, I like to throw in, I like to try the best I can play a devil's advocate with, sometimes just so we can fully hash out. There always has to be one, Drew.

Well, no, so I fully, obviously I fully hear you all out because the point, I mean, one of the main points behind what James and I do with this podcast of Doth Protest is, and I touched on it in our pre-show conversation is that we thought, we think the magisterial reformers were really onto something when they did the work that they did 500 years ago.

And we tried to keep their message alive and we stand on their principles on this podcast as much as even the magisterial reformers themselves maybe diverge between one another. And you heard me say before, like, you know, we're kind of, we can sometimes feel like alone, this reformational mindset can kind of seem like a, we can often seem very lonely in a sea full of later, of greater Protestant landscape that was developed, that was influenced by the later developments you both just spoke to, revivalism, pietism, you know, and I think all you have to do is go back to Luther who so much of his early life was him fretting because he was always looking within and he found the comfort and freedom from seeing that the salvation comes from outside yourself.

And it's that anchor that will not change. You just cling to that. It's not based on how much you're feeling inside. But, you know, I always try to see like what, you know, I try to see was there a genuine good impulse behind some of these later Protestant developments like pietism, for instance, is there, you know, in the century following the reformation when they had a whole lot of councils and diets and they, where they were trying to get very, to very precisely hammer out confessions as to what we need to believe.

It was, was there a point, and especially when you, when it, when you get the scholastic period of the 17th century, was there a point where Protestantism did especially, because we all know there is a type of confessionalism out there that is very much about intellectual assent to propositions.

Yeah. Regardless of that person's, I don't want to say that their character, but just like, you know, there is such, I mean, the scripture speaks of dead faith, obviously. I mean, obviously James writes a lot about that, but even I would say Paul, when he talks about the fruit.

So I guess what would, is there a good impulse to recognize behind these later things like revivalism and pietism, which have seeped so much into especially American Protestantism, as much as we, and I agree, I feel it is gone.

It is just gone. So it becomes so excessive and dangerous.

Yeah, I'm happy to respond to that. We say this a lot, and we even try to do this in our writing. We never want to impugn motivations. We assume well of our brothers and sisters and thereby assume that the intentions are good behind a lot of these things.

And even in our present moment, I have a number of friends who I would say are pietistic evangelicals, revivalistic evangelicals, maybe even in some ways, who are sincere, love the Lord, love their neighbor, and mean well.

And so never want to impugn motivations. I do agree. So I mean, effectively what you're pointing to, Drew, is the reality of dead orthodoxy. That does exist. I mean, that's one of the pitfalls in confessionalism is dead orthodoxy.

So then you have to ask the question, if pietism and revivalism were well-intentioned, we still want to evaluate the doctrinal underpinnings and even the methodology on their own merit. And that's where I think I would begin to have some concerns.

And rather than outlining what all those are, I would ask the question, what's the better way? What is the antidote? Like if what we're concerned for, rightly, is that people do experience real God-wrought transformation of life.

If what we're concerned for is that sanctification happens amongst God's people and that the church grows and that we're loving our neighbor and we're seeking to honor the Lord in our lives, amen to all of that.

And so the question is, how do you rightly attack that? How do you rightly go after it? And I think the answer is quite simple and it's in the scriptures. And my last, I could talk of many of these, but my last line of defense on this is always Romans chapter six, where Paul is dealing with, there he is anticipating the objection of effectively antinomianism and licentiousness, but it still is a different kind of dead faith if we want to use that language.

And he asks the question, should we go on sinning so that grace might abound? And he says, by no means. But then he does not say, by no means, here's what the law says. He doesn't say, by no means, if you are a legitimate Christian and would prove yourself to be legit and not a faker, here's how you'll live.

He says, by no means, we have been united to Christ. We've been baptized into Jesus. We have been justified from sin's guilt and thereby have been set free from sin's dominion and have become obedient from the heart.

And so now let's live accordingly. And of course, he's gonna go on and say a number of other things about the internal war that we fight, the internal security that we have, how God saves all of his people.

And then he pivots in chapter 12 to talk very specifically about how we live. I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, present yourselves as living sacrifices. So I think that's a better way to go at it is to not introduce this kind of false dichotomy.

It's like, well, and not that you're saying this at all, Drew, where it's like, either we emphasize the objective realities of Christ for us, or we emphasize godly living. It's like, no, we preach Christ and his sufficiency in union with Christ for not just justification, but also sanctification.

And we trust that the Lord is going to use the preaching of Christ, the means of grace, the fellowship of the saints, life in the church. He's gonna use all of those things to produce fruit in us and to transform us.

And just so y 'all know, it took a lot for me to try to articulate the counter-argument there, because I was really struggling with it, because I don't No, brother, you're good. I don't buy it at all, but I like that.

But I like to But here's the instinct, right? It's that objective, yeah.

Right, we want religion deep down. It needs to be real and sincere. People feel this. And there needs to be something authentic about it, including the transformation of life. I mean, that's the methodology of revivalism, right?

We're going to go hear a fiery preacher, and we're gonna have this conversion experience, and then it's about the transformation of my life thereafter, right? And what pietism and revivalism represent, and I'm gonna try to use these words precisely, it is a subjectivizing of religion that is unhelpful, where it becomes so much about me and my experience of the divine, my conversion moment, my transformation.

That becomes the emphasis. And at least becomes, it's woven into the fabric of my salvation. And I have to look to it somehow. And that's what we're trying to argue against, is that it is always and only Jesus when it comes to salvation.

And then there are all kinds of consequences and outflows of the fact that we've been vitally united to him. Amen.

And isn't sanctification, it's really rooted in gratitude. I mean, to speak of, James and I, a big important person for us in our Anglican tradition is, of course, Thomas Cramner, the English reformer, principal architect behind the book, A Common Prayer, of which even modern prayer books still retain a lot of what he gave us.

And he speaks so much of transformation of life. And it's not in the context of putting the onus on the believer, but just that is, like you said, woven right into the tapestry of what God through the Holy Spirit does in us.

So it's all out of gratitude and giving thanks for what God has done that we could not even begin to pay back or as much as that's the human temptation.

Reformed Baptist Theology and 1689 Federalism

With other people who have the same questions and share resources. We have started something called the Theocast Community. And we're excited because not only is it a place for you to connect with other like-minded believers, all of our resources there, past podcasts, education materials, articles, all of it's there, and you can share it and ask questions.

You can go check it out. The link is in the description below. This is, I think, really helpful.

To give us kind of a perspective and give our listenership and hopefully y 'all's listenership a good idea of where we are. Simpatico, we're in agreement about the essentials, right? So I would like, if y 'all could, to give us, and I know this is always hard to sort of distill what it is to be Reformed Baptist into a short time, but could you give us a picture of what Reformed Baptist theology is all about, where it comes from, what its major foci are, and then perhaps even how it might differ from Presbyterian Reformed theology?

I know y 'all have done some episodes on this. So I'm hopefully teeing you up for something you've been talking about recently.

Yeah, I could probably summarize it in like five seconds. Reformed Baptist is biblical and it comes from the Bible. So next question. You mentioned that, so thank you. Don't you love it when people do that?

As if you don't believe you come from the Bible. That statement is not endorsed by Theocast. Those thoughts are the thoughts of John and John will not. I love it when I get into a discussion with somebody on a theological difference, like we're talking about now, and their phrase is, well, I just believe the Bible.

And it's like, well, yeah, I believe the Book of Mormon. So that's how we got here. So, you know, whatever. Yeah. Yeah, what's interesting about the Reformed Baptist faith that Justin and I often allude to is the historicity of it is not very short.

It's not a short history. It's a very long history. It is rooted in the Reformation. And so we find a lot of comfort in that. I do know that there's a resurgence in the history of this particular movement in that, which is good.

There was some confusion that we were a part of the Anabaptist movement, which we weren't. And there's a lot of radicalism and just heresy that comes out of that movement. We really do herald from our Presbyterian brothers.

So our confession, which is the London Baptist Confession, there's a second one. So there's the first one from 1644. And then this is the 1677 printed in 1689 is really a plagiarism and pridefully so.

We're so thankful that we plagiarized both the Westminster Confession and the Savoy Declaration. And what was being, a lot of the men and women using these confessions were raised on them. They found a lot of deep affection for them.

But as they studied scripture in their conscience, they were finding a harder time applying. This is why the Savoy existed, because there was a polity disagreement. And then on top of the polity disagreement, there was a disagreement on the administration of baptism.

Besides that, there is so much unity and harmony when it comes around the primary doctrines of the faith. And I'll throw this over to Justin here for a moment, but just kind of like as a high watermark.

What we did, we did a three-part episode, kind of really walking through the history of explaining this, in that there's a difference in covenant theology, meaning there's just a difference of understanding how the covenants unfold and play out.

And it will influence your understanding of, ultimately in the end, your understanding of the new covenant and who the new covenant is applied to as far as those are professing faith or those who are brought into the covenant by baptism.

So we did a long, we can talk more about that if you want. But from a historical standpoint, Justin and I come from what's called 1689 federalism. When the writers of the 1689 were putting the document together, there was some disagreement on certain parts of theology.

So you had some variants, a little bit on, and this is even true of the Westminster, so there was some disagreements on how the Westminster were put together, but disagreements a little bit on covenant theology.

And so the document is a little bit broader, thankfully, to allow some variant views on the covenant of grace. And so in that line, when someone says they're 1689ers, like I hold to that confession, Justin and I are thankful for that, but then there's still a little bit of a clarity of, great, but what does that mean to you?

And then, I won't do this now, Justin, I'll save it later. I can let you add to that. But there's another aspect of being Reformed Baptist is not just being confessional, but it's really emphasizing to understand the reality of the ordinary means of grace in the life of the believer in the church, which is very important to what it is to us, to understanding of what it means to be Reformed Baptist.

So Justin, I'll throw it over to you. I might just put it in my own words a little bit, just so that people are crystal clear on where we come from. So as the Protestant Reformation happens, there are two major traditions that flow out of it.

One is the Lutheran tradition, one is the Reformed tradition, broadly speaking. And so then in the Reformed tradition, broadly, you have the Continental Reformation and then the English Reformation. In the Continental Reformation, many out there know, I mean, the three documents there are referred to as the three forms of unity, in terms of the ties that bind, and that is the Belgic Confession, Heidelberg Catechism, and Canons of Dort.

But then in the English Reformation, you have the Anglican tradition and the 39 Articles, but then you also have those three major confessions that are comprising the Puritan tradition, right? So it's the Westminster Standards, which everybody's familiar with, the Presbyterian Confession, that pretty much all Presbyterians use these days.

And then you have the Congregationalists, the Independents, come up with the Savoy Declaration, the Savoy Platform in 1658, and then we subscribe to the Second London Confession, which John has already said, well, there's 90 to 95 overlap with Westminster, and the real differences are simply polity, and then what our understanding of covenant theology means for the administration of the Sacrament of Baptism, and so that's where we differ.

So our forebears understood themselves to be planting their flag firmly within the English Reformation and the Reformed tradition, and so that's where we understand that we come from, and we have nothing in common with Anabaptists and the Radical Reformation, save the way they administer baptism, but their understanding of baptism is not what ours is, and it's not coming from a covenantal place at all.

It's a very different thing. And so don't think Anabaptist when you think confessional Reformed Baptist. I can speak more on anything you guys have particular questions about, but I'd rather you guys tee us up so that we're talking about what you wanna talk about.

Reformed Baptist Distinctives: Calvinistic, Covenantal, Confessional

Yeah, and I just wanna add one more thing to that. So when people come to our church and they say, what does it mean to be Reformed Baptist? I wanted to give the historical answer, but these are the five areas that I always tell them.

I said, there's five points because every good Reformed Baptist Calvinist has five points. So five points. But we have three Cs, right? So that's right. We have three Cs, so we're gonna definitely be, that's right, Calvinistic, covenantal, and confessional.

And it's important for us to help people understand that those, you know, because sometimes when people say they're Calvinistic, that's about as far as they go, but those three are important for us as a Reformed Baptist.

And then the other two points that we emphasize is a law gospel distinction in our hermeneutic understanding of scripture. So when we read scripture, we understand how to divide the law from the gospel in our applications.

And then the last would be a proper emphasis on the ordinary means of grace. So the preaching of the word, preaching, teaching of the word, sacrament, fellowship, and prayer. So that's what really, what historically make up a Reformed Baptist is an emphasis on those five theological distinctions.

And we've done an episode, I know, that's entitled, What is Reformed Theology? And we kind of answered it with those five prongs. And so I say the same thing whenever people ask, like, what does it mean to be Reformed and particularly to be a Reformed Baptist?

There it is. We're covenantal, confessional, Calvinistic. We distinguish between the law and the gospel. And we are committed to the ordinary means of grace as the way that the Lord imparts, sustains, nourishes, and strengthens faith.

And I would say you're a typical evangelical Baptist, might get a hybrid of one of those, maybe. You would get Calvinism and then that would be about it. Maybe, it depends. Yeah, I mean, for many Calvinistic Baptists in America, that's the case.

Yeah.

Baptism, Covenant Theology, and the Regulative Principle

Yeah, so growing up among the Carolinas, of course, the primary form of Baptist theology that we got would be sort of an Armenian Southern Baptist.

Yeah, semi-Pelagian, Arminian, yeah.

Yeah, Decisionist theology would be the direct opposite of what y 'all are talking about. You still talk about, of course, God's predestinating electing grace. And so that would be where they break off and tend, although I don't mean this to be mean or rude, but they would tend more towards the enthusiasm of the Anabaptists.

Yes, for sure. They're looking within for God and looking within for, as we were talking about earlier, for assurance and whatnot. And so, y 'all have, of course, had to sharpen your edges a bit in the way that you think about and talk about what it means to be Baptist because of the differences within the broadly speaking Baptist umbrella.

Although you have rightly pointed out that Baptists and Baptists don't mean the same thing. And so, you even come from two different places, two different seeds, two different theological camps, which, again, I think is very helpful for our listenership to understand.

And we understand what it means to be distinctive within the Reformed tradition. We're the only Reformed tradition that maintains bishops, for instance. So that's something that we would have more in common with Scandinavian Lutheranism or Roman Catholicism, Roman Catholicism.

So like that more so than Presbyterians or other Reformed folks. Some of the distinctives of the 1689, or rather, as John was pointing out, 1677, technically printed in 1689.

Yeah, publicly adopted in 1689 because of persecution. I mean, it was not safe to adopt it in 1677.

Yeah, on behalf of all of Anglicanism, my bad.

Hey, man, we could talk about the Great Ejection of 1662, but we won't go there.

Good, good. So back to what we were talking about. So some of those distinctives are areas where we would differ, right? And we talked about this in the pre-show. This is, we are pedo-Baptists within Anglicanism.

In one of our articles, which Drew and I would refer to as our confession of formulary, but many Anglicans, many Episcopalians would turn their nose up at that. And say that this is not only not our confession, but we really have a hard time with any but the Catholic articles.

But we would say otherwise here. But in the article on

And he's referring to the 39 articles for listeners, yeah. Right, right.

And of course, as I was adding that caveat, I completely lost what I was trying to say here. Baptism, yeah. So article, my Roman numerals stink. It's been a long time. 27, there we go. The baptism of young children is in any wise to be retained in the church as most agreeable with the institution of Christ.

That's one of the things that we say. And by no means do I wanna get into a debate or even really an extensive conversation about this, but this is one area where I think Anglicanism and reform of Adventist theology disagrees and perhaps correct me if I'm wrong here, but maybe this stems from the reform tendency towards what you would call the regular principle in worship.

So if it's something that is directly ordained in scripture, then it's fair game. And therefore, it's actually really to be enjoined almost upon the church. But if it's not, then depending on how you take that, either you shouldn't do it or it shouldn't be required of the conscience, that kind of thing.

Whereas Anglicans come from, in this regard, a more Lutheran perspective of, unless it is directly opposed in scripture, like a Roman Catholic practice, unless it's directly opposed, then it can be retained and there's no issue with it.

And that perhaps is even a difference in generation. So we would probably land as Anglicans in sort of late first, early second generation Reformation theology, and the London Baptist Confession would probably be late second, maybe early third generation of Reformation theology.

And so we were dealing with different issues, right? We were still trying as Anglicans with the 39 Articles in 1571 to keep the English church together, the Romans who remained, and of course, the evangelicals to the end where you might find John Knox on the Presbyterian end, right?

And so that's where we're coming from. But would y 'all agree that that's perhaps what's undergirding some of the Baptist theology about baptism? Very ecumenical, James.

Good job. I mean, in terms of the regular principle of worship directly, I mean, it's an interesting observation. I mean, for us, I will say this, and this is just an observation, not me also wanting to introduce a debate.

So one thing that you will notice about Baptists and Presbyterians, and I would argue just P and R, Presbyterian and Reformed church folks, is that we are going to appeal directly to Scripture for even polity.

Whereas I think, as you've rightly pointed out, Anglicans, Lutherans tend to not feel the burden to do so in the same way. And you guys are much more comfortable to appeal, I think, to the light of nature and Christian wisdom directly when it comes to some of those things.

Whereas for us, I think there is an impulse to appeal to Scripture first, and then underneath that, our confession certainly makes room for the light of nature and Christian wisdom when it comes to governing the church.

So that's maybe an observation for me as well, where maybe you're onto something in terms of how we seek to look to the Scriptures and what we look to it for, how we all would understand its sufficiency, because we all would understand that Scripture is sufficient, and we're gonna agree on that.

We may have some points of disagreement on exactly what the Lord has prescribed or know in His Word. Now, when it comes to how we administer baptism, that is really downstream of our understanding of the biblical covenants and how the Lord is working redemptively through those covenants, and how we would then understand the covenant of grace to be promised and revealed, how we would understand that baptism is actually not the fulfillment of circumcision, but actually the fulfillment of circumcision is the circumcision of the heart, and so we would then connect those things in terms of the covenant sign of the new covenant, et cetera, et cetera.

So our administration of baptism is downstream from our view of covenant theology. Having said that, you're not gonna hear most Baptists talk that way. This is where we're getting back to observations we've already made on this podcast.

Some Calvinistic Baptists will talk biblically and will even cite the Old Testament in good ways, but then many Baptists in America are kind of like, well, baptism by immersion is the clear pattern in the New Testament, and that's about all they have to say about it, and that's lamentable.