Can a Baptist be Reformed

Hopefully he can read it.

I'm not left, but this elephant won't fight. There's nothing left but the spotlight. Hold my beer, you can find me in the moonlight. You can say what you want. You can say what you want, what you want around me.

You can say what you want. You can say what you... I'm within the deep end and I can't find my assigned seat to sit in. My theology don't fit in. Black sheep of the reformation sheep pen. To the reformed, I'm just another Baptist baptized again.

The bastard child of Anabaptist. Host to child of reformation society. We don't need your education. Give me a Bible and a bookshelf of dead men. Cigars, bourbons, and beer cans. Bow ties, tattoos, and bearded men.

Making reformation great again. You can say what you want. You can say what you want, what you want around me. You can say what you want. You can say what you want, what you want around me. All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Open Air Theology.

We are going to be bashing on Presbyterians tonight.

Hallelujah. My name is Jeff.

And I'm one of the pastors of Covenant Reformed Baptist Church in Tallahoma, Tennessee. And it is such a pleasure to be on here speaking with you tonight. And to hang out with these two brothers right here.

And it's really going to be bashing on one Presbyterian. But I'm going to go ahead and pass it downward to the Brayden Patterson.

Yeah, so I'm Pastor Brayden. I pastor in Hagerman at a church called Valley Baptist Church. We worship God on Sundays on the Lord's Day or the Christian Sabbath according to 1689. At 11 a .m. it would be a blessing if you live in southern Idaho to come meet up with us.

And just to worship our triune God together. I also have a YouTube channel called Reformed Ex-Mormon. It's a real blessing to be able to be on here with these brothers. And really looking forward to this conversation that we're going to be talking about with bashing on a brother in the faith.

But nonetheless, doing a little bit of defense after some bashing he did towards us as Reformed Baptists. So I'll pass the mic up to Brother Tom up here.

Hey, my name is Tom Shepherd and I'm a member of Grace Bible Church of Burney, Texas. And also there's going to be a podcast coming up soon. You guys might have seen it and I've sent you invitations to it.

Even if none, Reformed Evangelism. So join me there. Look for these brothers here too. And we'll reclaim biblical evangelism. Excited to be here.

All right. All right. Sounds good. So now that we got out of the way, the gloves are off. We're ready to rock and roll. So there's this guy, you know, you've probably heard of him. This famous Presbyterian.

His name is R. Scott Clark. And the crowd goes boo! Wait, who is it? R. Scott Clark.

I thought we were talking about R .C. Sproul tonight.

Oh, Lord. Come on, Lord. You need to repent. Look, R .C. Sproul is a Baptist.

That's right.

Yeah, I call him R .C. the Baptist.

That's right.

Anyway, so one of our friends, you might know him, Keith Foskey, with his YouTube channel, Conversations with a Calvinist. Is that what it is? No, he changed it, right?

No, I thought it was still it.

You are Calvinist? I know that's what his favorite Facebook page is called.

Something Calvinist, right? And so he interviewed R. Scott Clark. And R. Scott Clark, he doesn't think that a Baptist can be reformed. And so I'm trying not to come at this with animosity. I'm trying not to get all streets on him.

But y 'all know how I am. I get a little out there sometimes. So please forgive me. If I need to repent, I'll repent later. But I've got to get this up. We, Corporate Lee, Open Air Theology, we've got to get this stuff off of our chest.

Because, well, I'll give you my thoughts later. Brayden, I'm going to let you take the mic.

I was just going to say we're trying to come at this without emotion. So we're trying to set our emotion.

I'm all emotions. I can't do anything without emotions.

Check it at the door, Jeff, and let's talk about this logically.

I brought me some snacks just in case I need to figure something out.

So, I mean, there was a lot of things that were said that were very and come to find out, I'm not a guy on Twitter. But my elder is, and he was informing me that there's some interesting stuff from this guy on the Twitter side of things.

And he is a lot more famous than what I realized. I didn't really know the guy, to be honest with you. And the thing is, is when you make flabbergasting claims, you better expect there's going to be pushback to it.

And so I'm just going to call him what I say he is right now, is a halfway Catholic. So that's what he's a halfway Catholic right now. So I don't even think he should be taking the title Reformed, to be honest with you.

So we'll get into that later. But anyway, if you guys want to take the mic.

Defining What It Means to Be Reformed

Yeah, so one of the things it seems like he has an ax to grind with anybody who claims to be Reformed. And he had said he calls it the Young and Restless Reform Movement. Now, whoever that is, I'm not young, might be a little bit restless.

But anyway, he talks about if you believe in the doctrine of predestination, people are calling themselves Reformed, which I would probably agree. A lot of people say that they're Reformed because their doctrine of salvation is Reformed.

But what he was quoted as saying is we believe in a lot more than that, i .e. the doctrine of man, the doctrine of God, the doctrine of salvation, the doctrine of sin, the doctrine of church, the doctrine of sacrament.

The thing is we believe exactly the way he does in the doctrine of God, the doctrine of man, the doctrine of sin, the doctrine of salvation, all these things. But he had said that we don't have the claim to be called Reformed because we're Baptists.

So that's the issue he has.

Just to like, Brian, we will answer that question, but just to put this out on front straight, I didn't come up with the name, right? This isn't something that I came up with. This is something that I, whenever I first read this right here, the 1689, I was struggling.

Like I was a part of a Reformed Baptist church, and I was very, very MacArthurist, leaky dispensationalism, right? Like being presented with covenant theology from a classical view, I rejected it from the very beginning and still reject it today.

And it wasn't until this document got placed in my hands, and I read it, and I was like, this is gold. This is gold. And then it really started to transform my life, right? Like I didn't know everything that was laid out in a Reformed Baptist church until I started going to it.

And I didn't know there was like this big difference, like there was this infighting taking place between Presbyterians and Baptists. I didn't choose to be a Reformed Baptist, but I'm telling you that for my convictions, it is, excuse me, I didn't choose the name Reformed Baptist, but for my convictions what this document teaches is biblical, right?

And so like if we could get like a, you know, like a voting of hands between all Reformed Baptists in the world, and we can congregationally change it to something else, listen, I'm down for it. But if I start calling myself something different, people are going to start thinking that I'm a cult leader.

You see what I'm saying? Like we are what we are.

Yeah.

So his issue is that, well, and really he said the term Reformed Baptist didn't even come about until the 1990s. And Keith Foskey agreed. And that, you know, if you look back in history, that we would call ourselves particular Baptists, which he doesn't have a problem with that.

But he has a problem thinking that we're stepping on his heels. Matter of fact, I think the words he used was that, you know, you could live in my tent, but you can't come in my house. You know, you can't claim my house.

And so he said we were poachers.

Well, yeah.

He said we were squatters.

Squatters. Okay. Yeah.

I mean, if that was the case, we would be taking what they believe hook, line, and sinker.

Right.

And it's not the case. Like I was saying earlier, like if classical covenant theology, if I believe that that was biblical, I would be a Presbyterian. Like no problem. Like there's no way that I could be a Baptist and ho to classical covenant theology, like a lot of Baptists do.

Right.

In my line of thinking and the way that I study scripture, I want to be consistent. I don't want to have any problem passages. I want everything to connect. And what we're hoping to do is to show that those dots connect under Baptist covenant theology.

And we also should at least define what is, what does it mean to be reformed?

Yeah.

So Brian asked that question.

The Meaning of Reformed, Theonomy, and the 1689 Confession

So there's a lot of different thinking on it. And so I would first articulate this in trying to defend what I would say that we're going to be defending tonight. Let me talk first about the term theonomy.

Right.

When we talk about the word theonomy, Jeff, what does theonomy mean in its truest sense of what the word, the epitomology of the word is? What does that mean?

God's law.

God's law.

Yeah.

God's law.

Is that what anybody in the post-millennial theonomist crowd means in a sense? Is that the only definition that they mean when they say that they're a theonomist?

Well, they say that, but then they add on to it.

All these definitions, right? That word has changed in its defining moments throughout history so far. And therefore I can't claim the title of being a theonomist, even though the words of those.

Right.

So gay first met happy. Jeff would say he's gay because he's happy.

No.

I don't use that word no more.

I've never.

Right.

So.

Happy is gay.

Happy is gay. Todd is gay.

With one D.

One D.

One D.

Since he's not on here, we can bash him.

We can make fun of him. So has has the term reformed changed throughout the years to now include Baptists? And I would disagree with that. I think when we're talking about reform, we're talking about the same definition of a word that was being used in the 1600s to distinguish Baptists and Presbyterians with each other.

And that's why the 1689 is worded in such a way as that. It's actually showing a fellowship with the Presbyterians in reformed theology, but is at the same time, just distinguishing them from Anabaptists and other sorts of Christians or non-Christians, other sorts of movements in that day.

And so reformed, we're trying to define reformed in the same sense. So it's not a changing of a word. It's not trying to expand this tent or stretch this canvas to meet our needs. We're trying to say that we are in every sense, covenantal, confessional, and Calvinist as what the Presbyterians were.

But our covenant theology is slightly different. It's still covenant theology and there's Presbyterians that would hold to what our covenant theology is, which we'll get into a little bit.

There's Presbyterians that hold to Baptist covenant theology.

I was listening to a Samuel Renahan podcast or not podcast, but thing earlier that we talked about. Right.

Oh yeah.

Well, John Owen's different because John Owen is congregational.

So there was a gentleman, what was his name? William Perkins who used the exact same words as the 16, almost a word for word, this exact same words as the 1689 chapter seven, paragraph three, and defining his covenant theology.

The point of why that I'm going at this, this is if covenant theology or reformed reformed theology could be defined as the big three Cs. And that's what's talked about in that podcast with, with, with Scott is that it's confessional, Calvinistic and covenantal is the three big Cs that define reformed theology.

And so in the 1600s, you had Baptists who were being lumped in to the radical movement of Anabaptists, which was a, which was a terrible radical movement of those time. And Baptists were trying to distinguish themselves by saying, we're not like them.

We're not like them. We're more like you Presbyterians. We, we hold very similarly. We have fellowship with you. We are not doing the radical things that the Anabaptists are, except us as these reformed brothers in the faith at the time in the 1600s.

So this is, this is not a changing of a definition. This is the Baptist of that day trying to say, no, we are too reformed. And the title that they took was particular Baptist, which included reformed theology.

Law and Gospel, Covenant Theology, and the Particular Baptists

Yeah. Yeah.

That's good. Like I would, I would definitely expand from the three Cs a little more. Like I would also say that reformed theology is not necessarily limited to,.

I mean,.

That law and gospel distinction is not necessarily limited to reformed theology. But I would say that in order to be truly reformed, you have to have a long gospel distinction. And yet there are many Presbyterians who hold the, the name reformed who, who, who, who would say that they are, you know, everything that the Westminster represents and they don't hold to a long gospel.

Distinction.

Right.

And so, and there's other things too, when you, whenever you talk about the solos of the reformation and I can dive deeper, but it's definitely more than the three Cs. But, but what we're saying is, is basically this, we are confessional, like our first confession came out in 1644 before there's, and then it was revised in 16.

So I wouldn't say the revised version is a new confession, like it was edited. It was just revised in 1646. And then in 1677, they wrote this document, but it wasn't published until 1689. But famously it carries the name, the 1689.

Right.

So I went back. I did a little history regarding Baptist, the general Baptist and particular.

First church plant was 1608.

Right. Yeah.

By John Smith.

Yeah, actually. Well,.

So I had it by that, that the particular Baptist and the, in the confession. So the general Baptist actually wrote a confess confession in 1611, 1651, 1666.

I mean,.

These, these are all confessions by the general Baptist.

Yeah.

Baptists had a, had a confession like you had just mentioned in 1644. And the first particular Baptist church was established by John Spillsbury of London. It was a particular Baptist church of 1633 in opposition to general Baptist and others.

And it says that in 1644, the Calvinistic anti-patel Baptist of London adopted and adopted a baptism by immersion as the only exclusive way to be, you know, to baptize people, adults, professing believers.

I mean,.

We're, we're talking,.

Our history goes all the way back to 1633 is the first established particular Baptist church. And they're saying we don't have a right to be called reformed.

I know.

Like we have a confession from the 17th century. We are Calvinistic and we are covenantal. And I would say that our covenant theology, the one that we represent brought to you last week, and we might touch on it again tonight.

I would say that it is the biblical superior covenant theology.

Yes.

Like show me one Presbyterian that can,.

That,.

That can refute the argument we made last week. Like I've spoken with a bunch of Presbyterian since, since I seen this revealed to me in scripture, since me and Brayden started walking through this.

And,.

And every one of them walked away with their mouth, either hung down, not knowing what to say or shut completely. There is no covenant of grace in Genesis chapter three. And if there isn't, then their covenant theology is false.

Baptists have, have had the superior covenant theology.

And yet,.

Even though we think their covenant theology is false, we still accept them as covenantal.

Right.

Hey,.

We still accept them as covenantal.

Brayden.

So Brian Anthony just said, reformed Presbyterians would argue that theirs goes all the way back to the.

Apostles.

You want to, you want to make her remark?

Yeah.

So,.

So I totally disagree with any Presbyterian that would state such.

I,.

I think actually the greatest argument for this is, is while reform theology is commonly defined as, as post-reformation in that sense, that's where it's really starting to be articulated. You see those five souls, as Jeff mentioned earlier, however, covenant theology extends far back, further than any confession ever named of it.

So one of the founding principles of covenant theology is that it's been one people of God throughout all of time, pre and post cross. It's the elect,.

Right?

That there's no distinction between Israel and the church, essentially true Israel in the church. I want to read a quote from Justin martyr, from his book called the dialogue with Typho, the Jew, he says in there for the true spiritual Israel, the descendants of Judah, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham are who have been led to God through the crucified Christ.

So right here, we can, we can see that the early church was calling themselves true Israel. They had covenant theology in some shape or form or fashion. And that day in the very first century, second century of the church, they are articulating it, believing it,.

Promoting it.

However, what is another document from around that exact same time period? The did a K the earliest document that talks about baptism outside of the Bible and guess what? It teaches in their believers, baptism.

So the earliest form and earliest examples of churches practicing baptism that held to covenant theology is a Baptist.

It's a,.

It's Baptist by definition. And so if we want to talk about reformed and going back to reforming our theology, reforming our churches, reforming ourselves to individually to what God's word says, I'm going to look and see what the early church was saying about the Bible.

And I'm not,.

I want to go back to that. And guess what? They were covenantal and they were Baptists. And so I would argue that Presbyterians, if we really want to start claiming titles and saying, we can't, if you can't call yourself this and I can only call myself this, I think it's improper for a Presbyterian to try to claim the title of covenant theology.

Then at that point,.

Uh,.

Early church was covenant theology and they were all Baptists at that point. And according to the did a K.

You know, something else that we always, all of us always say as, as being reformed,.

We, we, we,.

We named the German, we call out and we say simple referendum, which means what always reforming, always reforming back to what the scriptures say. And so if that's the case, if all of us who are reformed hold to simple referendum on to always reforming back to the scripture say, then as the,.

As,.

As covenant theology develops, you should be able to include the reformed Baptist. It's just a development further on from the,.

From,.

From the reformers back from seven or 15, 17.

So how can,.

How can you say we cannot be reformed if we are always reforming? It's that doesn't make any sense.

Yeah.

I heard Jim Renahan speak on this as well.

And like,.

He's like, you can tell he's kind of aggravated with the same things that that's going on about the name and all this. He said that he wished that we could be called covenantal Baptist,.

You know,.

But, but,.

But,.

But the fact remains,.

You know, like,.

Like unless Baptist, like all the Baptist churches got together and are willing to change their.

Name,.

Like the church that I pastor, the name is covenant reformed Baptist church.

Right.

And so every, every one of these churches that have a similar name would have to rebrand if the vote went through. And,.

You know,.

But it just doesn't make sense.

Right.

If I was just start saying,.

Like,.

If he was to ask me,.

So,.

So,.

So what denomination are you?

I was like,.

I'm covenantal Baptist. Like no one's ever heard of anything like that.

Right.

And so like this guy,.

Man,.

Like it just, and listen,.

I really like a lot.

Some of what our, our Scott Clark says,.

Like,.

Like his, his law and gospel distinction. I think it's really good.

Like,.

Like,.

Like I think he,.

You know,.

Like,.

I think he's really solid in those areas, but I think that just refusing to accept us because,.

You know,.

Because our,.

You know,.

Accept, accept our name or accept us into the reform community just because there's just very little differences.

Like,.

You know,.

Like we don't baptize infants.

Our,.

Our church polity is different.

And, and, and,.

And,.

And,.

And our covenant theology is better.

Right.

That's just, that's just garbage,.

Man.

Right.

You know,.

Like we're supposed to be known by our love for one another. And I think that where we can accept someone, we need to accept someone. Like he got me thinking about,.

You know,.

All these churches out here, like assemblies of God, churches of God,.

Or,.

Or just named the, the different kind of churches that practice believers, baptism. Imagine if us Baptist were to say, hold up, you can't baptize someone as a believer. That's ours.

Yeah.

That's all.

We're bad.

Or imagine.

Yeah.

We're Baptist.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or imagine if we walked up to our Presbyterian brothers who had someone to join their church as an adult. And that became a believer and they go to baptize him.

We'll say,.

Oh,.

He's a believer. Now you can't baptize them. That's us. We go to believers, baptism. You got to catch them as an infant. Like it's just garbage. And we would never do that because we want community. We want fellowship with our, with our Presbyterian brothers, but they seem to always keep pushing us away.

And if I'm not mistaken, that was the reason why the whole confessions were written in the first.

Place, right?

To get along.

And it's the Baptist who were trying to get along with the.

Presbyterians.

Right.

And it's, it seems to me also that the people that I think there was a distinction between, you know, some, so I think cheap Kiefoski holds the 1646, the edited version. He was talking about that. And I guess because he holds the progressive covenantalism.

What's interesting is we did a little research and James Renahan. Wrote an article on that, talking about there were four of the same authors or the, for the same churches that wrote the 1646 that, that signed the 1689.

So they were,.

It was the exact same. They were still covenantal. They still believe the same thing. It might not have been written, but they still believe the same thing. It was the same people.

And it was also, it's also speculated that those three churches that didn't sign the 1689 didn't because they ceased to be a church. And they probably joined into the other churches, the four that signed.

And so I would argue that all the churches that wrote that went on because it further developed what they were trying to articulate in the 1644 and the.

1646.

Right.

And as far as somebody asked, so are Presbyterians and they're not covenantal. I would argue that they are covenantal. I'm saying if I was to apply the same type of reasoning that, that Scott is doing, I would say that they're not because that's, that's what he's trying to do.

I mean, he went so far as a saying that Baptists shouldn't even call themselves Calvinists.

We will,.

But we wouldn't be accepted to go into Geneva and we'll, we'll get to it. But that's just ridiculous. That's a ridiculous claim. The Baptist can't call themselves Calvinists.

Yeah. Yeah.

And just like what Brian was just saying,.

Brian,.

I appreciate that you said that we are a form that's really kind of your brother, but concerning what you said about sprinkling, you still like, if we wanted to be jerks or something like that, we would say,.

Yeah,.

But you're still sprinkling a believer,.

You know,.

Because Baptist is a believer.

And listen,.

That argument, if a Baptist was ever making is absolutely stupid, it's absolutely stupid. We want to lock hands and arms with our brothers in the faith and,.

And,.

And concerning like the covenant theology issue. So we do believe that that Baptist covenant theology is superior. If we didn't believe that we wouldn't believe we wouldn't hope to the position.

All right.

But at the same time, we would still, we still recognize the Presbyterians as true covenantal, truly covenantal.

Right.

Like,.

Even though we think it's wrong, we still think it's,.

It's still covenantal received.

It's still covenantal. And it's still received. It's Orthodox.

It's still Orthodox.

They still believe in some sense of a covenant of redemption, covenant of words, covenant of grace. They're just placing things differently and applying them in the ways that they worked and functioned throughout a redemptive history differently than what we are.

Same with a progressive covenantalism.

Yeah.

They may see the covenants differently, but they,.

They, they,.

They are confessional.

Yep. And,.

And I think the underlying, you know, one of the things that, that is, that we're all unified in is the doctrines of grace. And even progressive dispensationalists who hold to the doctrines of grace, even though they are not covenantal,.

Matter of fact,.

Opposed to covenantalism. One thing that we do have unity with them and Presbyterians is the doctrines of grace. And that affects a lot of how we evangelize, how we do church,.

How,.

How we get along with one another. We would disagree with the, how they, you know, what they believe as far as the covenant and in Israel. But other than that, we could still have unity and brotherhood and lock arms with them in terms of.

The gospel.

Which I really appreciate. So one thing I was going to say with the 1689, what you just were saying, talking about with Tom, I can't remember. Samuel Renahan also mentioned this gentleman in his, in his, his speech that he sent us.

His,.

I,.

His last name was Knight. I can't remember what his first name was, but he was also a signature that was to the 1689. And he, he would deny what we would commonly call 1689 federalism. He was saying that I believe there's one covenant of grace in two administrations, the old covenant and the new covenant and the new to old Testament, new Testament.

And guess what? He signed the 1689 and the chapter was worded in such a way so that he could be included Baptists. And that they were trying to not divide Baptists. They were trying to distinguish themselves from Anabaptists and trying to show we have community with the Presbyterians.

We're like you, we hold to covenant theology and we're willing to, to not divide over this.

And I,.

And I think it's through the Samuel Renahan said that there's nothing in the, in chapter seven of the, of the London Baptist confession of faith that a Presbyterian would not agree.

With.

It was written so that we would get along so that, that it would be vague enough. Now, once you get dive in deeper, there's going to be differences, but it was written so that you could, we would get along and have unity as brothers.