July 5, 2016 Show with Michael Haykin on “The Baptist Story: From English Sect to Global Movement”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century Gospel Minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon, Cumberland County,.

Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this fifth day of July 2016, and I hope that you all had a wonderful time gathered with family, friends and loved ones yesterday for the last day of the Fourth of July weekend, and I hope that you all are able to launch off into a new week all refreshed and invigorated and ready to meet anything that God has in store for us, and I am so delighted that we have back on our program a man who is certainly quickly becoming one of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron.

Many of my fellow Baptists, especially those from a Sovereign Grace background, Reformed Calvinistic Baptists, consider him a modern-day hero of sorts, and I may be embarrassing him by saying that, but it happens to be true, and I'm speaking about Dr. Michael Haken, and he is Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality and Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

He's also the author of many books, including a book that we are going to be focusing on largely today, The Baptist Story, From English Sect to Global Movement, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Dr. Michael Haken, and in studio, my very frequent co-host, the Reverend Buzz Taylor.

It's great to have you back in studio, and why don't you greet Dr. Haken today? Dr. Haken, it's so good to be on with you. Thank you. It's good to be with you as well. And today is one of those moments that I relish in because the Baptists outnumber the baby sprinklers today.

We have two Baptists to one baby sprinkler. Well, we have days like yesterday though where we outnumbered you. Yes, yesterday we had the honor of having my dear friend Pastor Jason Wallace of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City, Utah discussing Mormonism yesterday, and I hope that you all enjoyed that MP3 as soon as possible, especially if you missed the live show.

But Dr. Haken, if you could briefly let our listeners know who are perhaps discovering this show for the first time, they're not very familiar with the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

It kind of does, maybe not even kind of, it certainly does stand out among the major Southern Baptist seminaries in the nation, and of course the current president is Dr. Al Mohler, who God used to bring great transformation to that institution.

If you could tell us something about the Southern.

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Its Conservative Resurgence

Baptist Theological Seminary. In 1959, many of the faculty in the 1980s and 1990s, you know, it's a faculty-wise century, and we're deeply shaped, and so for the sesquicentennial of the school, he concluded the account by saying that the, and we've gone back to those, to use a biblical phrase, those old paths that have been such a...

Yes, and I have interviewed.

Several of the faculty members at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, not only you, but Dr. Mohler himself, had the privilege of interviewing him on his most recent book on the homosexual controversy, and I've had, now retired from the faculty there, Dr. Thomas Nettles on many times, and other brethren as well, and in fact I did a program on the biography of J. Pettigrew Boyce, so I thoroughly enjoyed that and know something about him.

And you are director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies. Andrew Fuller has been claimed as a hero by both Calvinist and non-Calvinist Baptists, and some of our non-Calvinist Baptist friends insist that he was not a Calvinist, and some of our even perhaps more strongly sectarian Calvinistic Baptists say that he was not a Calvinist.

Tell us something about Andrew Fuller.

Andrew Fuller, Calvinism, and the Need for Missions

A deism, Sasanianism, Sandemanianism, which is really what we call easy belief, Arminianism, antinomianism, and Fuller had a deep, deep above active figure. He was Anglicans like John Newton, William Belogian in Scotland, regarded him as one of the most preeminent in a review of his work in the 1840s.

His theology in the 19th century, on both sides of the Atlantic, the formation of Baptist missions in America, the Triennial Convention, and then the Southern Baptist Missions, were deeply shaped by men who had imbibed a lot of Fuller's theological convictions about the sovereignty of grace, but also the responsibility, human responsibility, and that's where the necessity of missions.

And so there's much that is very, very likable about, and important about Fuller.

Now would you say that's, I'm sorry, go ahead.

Fuller has recently emphasized that Fuller may well be one of the 18th century, because of his...

And William Carey was indeed a thoroughgoing Calvinist as well, was he not?

...of the Bible into a multitude of work. One of the need is for somebody to do a solid study of William Carey as a Calvinist. It's never been done.

Huh, really?

No, amazing.

You mean just on him, because I know by his grace and for his glory...

Just on him.

Yes, right.

Would find that he's a solid Calvinist out there.

Reverend Buzz wants us to ask a tale...

I don't want to get too far away from...

I just actually want to ask one more question about Andrew Fuller before you derail that. You can just hold on for a second.

Oh, okay, I'll try.

Is one of the reasons that some, maybe perhaps more sectarian Calvinist Baptists have a problem with Fuller's Calvinism is because of the way he explained definite atonement and the sufficiency of the atonement.

Okay, I'm sorry. Okay.

Yeah, that's one reason why...

Well, Reverend Buzz, I'm sorry.

How the Southern Baptist Convention Turned Conservative

Yeah, before we get too far away from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the way you're describing it, that is a rarity in church history for a group to start going, shall I say, the wrong direction, liberal, and then coming back.

Could you tell us a little bit more about how that happened, and if you know of any other groups that have done that?

Well, that's where the resurgence began, because when they had the annual conventions, the way that the Southern Baptist Convention is structured, very simplistically, is that they have a committee called the Committee on Committees, and the Committee on Committees, the membership, appoint the various boards, the International Mission Board, etc., eventually be able to turn up the Committee on Committees and begin to turn around the membership of the various boards.

For 15 years, they were a complement of delegates to the annual convention, and so you were getting conventions in the 1980s and 1990s, where you might have 14 ,000, 15 ,000 delegates, voting delegates.

And generally speaking, except for this period of time in which these large numbers came out, voted in a conservative president in... It might have been Adrian Rogers, I think, in 1989. I may be wrong on that, but from that point on, all through the 90s, they were a conservative president, and they began to turn around the various...

They, first of all, replaced the Committee on Committees with a conservative membership, and then they began to turn around the boards. And that's what led to Dr. Mohler's being voted on to become the president in 1993.

The faculty was 95 or more against him.

Wow.

And they had a vote of non-confidence when he came, and basically, it was like 95 basically voted against him. At his first faculty meeting, when he gave his address as to where, only two men came up to shake his hand and thank God that he had come there.

They could then control the seminary through the board, and I think that's the best way for... I think seminaries need to be controlled by denominations. It has its... If the denomination goes, then the seminary is probably going to go too, but in this case, it was a blessing.

If the board had been a self-perpetuating board, not voted in by the churches, then there would be no way of recovery.

Yeah, yeah.

And you also, you mentioned there Adrian Rogers,.

So there was obviously another transformation in regard to the doctrines of sovereign grace, because the late Adrian Rogers, although a Calvinist now in glory, I'm sure, was not a fan of the doctrines of Reformed theology or Calvinism at all, am I correct?

Calvinism.

Yeah, that would be the majority, wouldn't it?

Wow.

Yeah, and I know that one of the reasons we have what is called the Founders Ministries, the Founders Conference, a group of sovereign grace-believing Southern Baptists, the reason why they call it the Founders is because all of the Founders were Calvinists, weren't they?

In the 1800s?

You just have to do the arithmetic.

Yeah, well, praise God for that. And let me give our email address to those listening who would like to join us on the air with a question of your own. Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, that's C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA. And as I mentioned earlier, one of the primary focuses that we have today is the book The Baptist Story, From English Sect to Global Movement.

And before I even go into that, we already have a question that I think is relevant to bring up from a listener before we even get into that very title, because I don't want to steal the listener's thunder here.

The question is, can we trace the Baptists all the way back to John the Baptist in the Bible? And there is, as you know, Dr. Haken, by the way, it's Susan in Newville, Pennsylvania. I'm sorry, Susan. That was Susan's question.

And that is a very good question because there are a considerable number, perhaps a minority, but there is still a considerable number of Baptists who do believe that. Landmark Baptists is what they're typically known as.

But if you could comment on that.

Baptist Origins Beyond John the Baptist

The thinking about Baptists, they don't emerge out of the Protestant Reformation. And they deny the reality. The statement is to be seen as a faithful local church in every generation, largely in Ephesians and Colossians interpretation.

Get beyond the Reformation until you get to the early church era, the Patristic period, definitely before Constantine and definitely before Augustine. If you argue for Anabaptist church in the medieval period, it doesn't make you a Baptist.

Right.

Yet it's ironic that some of the very, very sectarian and isolationist fundamentalist Baptists would claim the Anabaptists as a part of their lineage, and yet they would probably never let an Anabaptist join their churches today, because of some of the other things that they believed.

Some of the groups, the politicians, are just outbound heretics.

So this was a group, this was not a monolithic group, the Anabaptists. They come from a wide variety of backgrounds, but they all have in common the nickname Rebaptizer Anabaptist because they believed, for the most part, in adult or believer baptism, and some of them even did it by effusion and not by immersion, correct?

Immersion.

Okay.

Anabaptist baptism.

That's what a lot of the Roman Catholic priests do, I believe, today, don't they? I'm sorry?

I don't know.

Oh, okay.

I'm not sure either.

Yeah, well, I think that I've seen them do that when I've been to a christening, as they call it. Oh, by the way, Susan, you have won a free copy of The Baptist Story from English Sect to Global Movement.

We thank you very much for your question, and we look forward to sending that out to you. And that's being sent out to you, by the way, by our friends at CVBBS, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, who are sponsors of Iron Sharpens Iron, and ship out all of our giveaways for us at no expense to Iron Sharpens Iron.

And we also obviously have to thank B &H, Broadman and Holdman, Academic Press for giving those to us to send out today. Now, just a question about this, I don't want to belabor this issue, but if you believe as a Baptist, and I am also, as you know, a Baptist, if you believe that our beliefs are not inventions of men, that they are not something that were developed and, you know, invented by modern writers outside of the New Testament, and we believe that everything that we teach is based on Scripture, why isn't there some validity to thinking you can trace Baptists all the way back to New Testament days?

Where does the disconnect come in that logic if you believe that what you do is based on Scripture in your polity, in your view of ecclesiology, in your view of the ordinances, in your view of missiology and soteriology?

How come a Baptist couldn't rightly say, we can trace ourselves all the way back to the Bible?

The position, essentially, but some truths have, some of them might, is where they confuse primary issues with secondary, share the gospel, and to see men and women reconciled, brought into a living faith, before it makes its emphasis, and I primarily make men and women Baptists.

We miss, to make men and women,.

So are you, okay, I'm sorry.

Because initially, many of the Baptist leaders stood aloof from the revival, even though their churches were desperate. Because in his mind, if the revival was truly, they may not have gone faster, is again, the driving, the landmark position is this idea of the church, probably find people in the medieval period, who may have held to immersion of believers, there's not going to be tons of them, the Lord Jesus Christ.

God has his church all through the medieval period, even if there aren't significant numbers of Baptistic believers, been building his church, real decline comes in the 700s, and runs to about the 1300s, before the rise of Wycliffe, long period of time, though.

Why? Well, providentially, that's the way God ordered his history of it. And yet there were believers in that period.

Mm-hmm.

And they may not have been Baptistic believers, but they were...

Baptist Identity, Church History, and the Limits of Landmarkism

Now, let me see if I can gather this together and summarize it, and you can let me know if I did a good job or not. So you're basically saying that Baptists, and of course, there are all different kinds of Baptists, there are Calvinist Baptists, freewill Baptists, there are liberal Baptists, there are conservative Bible-believing Baptists, but let's just take for the sake of argument that we're talking about sovereign grace-believing Baptists.

Although we believe all of our beliefs and doctrines can be traced and verified in the scriptures, we do not believe, or you are saying, that as a movement, all of these collective biblical views were not present for great lengths of time prior to the 17th century, where you could actually say that these people were Baptist in the same way they were after the 17th century.

Is that basically what you're saying? That over the centuries, some things, just due to the traditions of men being dominant and smothering, and some things that may have been lost that are distinctively found among the Baptist people, even though there were obviously Christians ever since the first century, there hasn't been necessarily a lineage of people that held on to all of the distinctives of the Baptist people throughout the ages.

Is that basically what you're saying? Okay, great. And I'm not as dumb as I thought I was. We're going to a break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air, and I thank you who are waiting patiently to have your questions asked and answered on the air.

We'll get to you when we come back from the break, God willing, as quickly as possible. But if you'd like to join them with a question of your own, for Dr. Michael Hagen, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, and please give us your first name, city, and state, and country of residence if you live outside of the United States.

Don't go away. We're going to be right back with Dr. Michael Hagen and the Baptist story. Hi, I'm Chris Arnson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, here to tell you about an exciting offer from World Magazine, my trusted source for news from a Christian perspective.

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Find Harvey Cedars on Facebook or at hcbible .org, hcbible .org. Call 609 -494 -5689, 609 -494 -5689. Harvey Cedars, where Christ finds people and changes lives. Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today is Dr. Michael Haken, and we are addressing his book, primarily, that he co-authored with two other authors, and it is titled The Baptist Story, From English Sect to Global Movement.

And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com, chrisarnzen at gmail .com. We have David in Midland, Michigan, writing, and he says, Thanks for your faithful service at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

A few years ago, Southern Baptists debated and approved a name change for their denomination. That name, Great Commission Baptists, didn't seem to take. What are we to make of that? That's news to me, I haven't heard of that.

Dr. Haken, can you explain? Well, thank you, David, and guess what, David? You've also won a free copy of The Baptist Story, From English Sect to Global Movement. Right now, we just have your city and state, if you could send us your full mailing address, we'll get that out to you as soon as possible, God willing.

And we have Tyler from Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York, who asks, Do you think many modern evangelical Baptists don't look into their rich Calvinistic history, particularly the 1689 London Confession?

Well, my co-host, the Reverend Buzz Taylor can tell you that that's true, because you have told me on many occasions, Reverend Buzz, that when you were a Baptist pastor, you knew very little about Baptist history.

And when I speak with Baptists about Calvinistic theology, I use the 1689 Confession to show them the roots there.

Even though you're a Presbyterian, you obviously know that that's nearly identical to the West.

Oh, yeah, yeah, I've read it. As a Presbyterian, I've read your confession.

And if you could, Dr. Haken, comment?

Yeah, I think that's true, as I indicated.

Now, the thing that's true...

I think it's a burden that a lot of...

Well, I came to Christ in a... Actually, it was a GARB church. And of course, like I said, my first pastor, it was an independent fundamentalist Baptist church.

The General Association of Regular Baptists.

Right.

And of course, my church was an independent Baptist church. We were totally alone.

Well, some of my other fundamentalist Baptist friends call it the GARB, the Grand Army of Rebelling Baptists.

Yes, yes, and brag backwards and all that. But when my pastors in the past went to define what Baptists were, they tried to define it more theologically than historically. And they would use... Like, you know, I remember one in particular that was an acrostic on the word Baptist, but you never really got into the history of it.

Well, the thing that amazes me, though, Dr. Haken, is that, especially with a denomination like the Southern Baptist Convention, you have such a rich history of Calvinism that is easily proven. And these leaders, many of whom are vehemently opposed to the doctrines of grace or Calvinism, are not dummies.

They're very intelligent men. It just seems to me amazing that they could not easily discover that this is the truth about the heritage of their own denomination.

And the other argument... They're long subverted during the Great Awakening in the 18th century. And now the argument, in fact, of the 18th century is it's different from what he represented. And I think you start to find that in the United States, dies in 1928.

But by the time that he dies, you're starting to find a much more different mode of thinking about Christianity, which is not as amenable to the Calvinism. But the reality is that our roots as English-speaking Baptists are in.

Calvinistic...

The soil of Calvinism.

Mm-hmm.

Oh, okay.

...who aren't Calvinistic, that then becomes a problem, because their forebears don't align with where they're at.

And the thing that I have found in discussing the doctrines of grace in regard to the Baptist history, when I have these discussions with Baptists that are either not committed very much to either side of the coin, or at least that's what they would say, or they're vehemently anti-Calvinist, it seems to me that very often what comes up is that they...

The reason why they think that most of their Baptist heroes were not Calvinist is because they assume, if you are a Calvinist, you have no passion to evangelize the lost, and you don't really believe God uses means such as the preaching of the gospel and evangelizing to save people.

So you have people saying, well, obviously Spurgeon wasn't a Calvinist, because look at the passion that he had in calling men to repentance and salvation and so on. Do you think that this has a lot to do with the reason why our modern-day non-Calvinist Baptists cannot believe that their heroes, many of them, if not most or all of them, were Calvinist?

Mm-hmm. Yes. Right.

And of course there are people that sadly live up to the stereotype that aren't Calvinist that...

Yeah, they do. I mean, like if you were Baptist in the Appalachians, you know, like the Netherlands are formed.

Yes, right.

The charge in America today is really false.

Yeah, because most of the time the term, the pejorative term is being used against anyone who is a Calvinist of any kind.

Yep.

If you really believe it, yeah.

And the irony is that there are many Armenians or non-Calvinists who live exactly like hyper-Calvinists in regard to their lack of zeal or passion to evangelize. They're just lazy or they're frightened or embarrassed and do not want to make a spectacle of themselves by evangelizing or, you know, having arguments or debates with their family friends and loved ones over 4th of July barbecues.

They would rather, you know, be liked than see their loved ones saved. But that is something that is a universal sin amongst people of many different theological backgrounds. We do have, I believe she may be a first-time, at least, questioner.

I don't know if she's a first-time listener. We have Nancy in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. Do you think conservativism is not enough to stern the tide of liberalism? Is there a link in history within the Southern Baptist Convention with the strength of Calvinistic teaching and some compromise when sound doctrine is held not to matter or Arminianism is equal?

Since Albert Moeller, some strange things have happened. Muslims entering seminary without conversion, easy believism tactics, questions may have just been answered but wondering if history of Southern Baptists verify this.

I don't know if you can make out the intent of that question.

It sounds like there's not. There needs to be more into the seminary. Two years ago, and Southern itself, definitely the Spirit of God's been at work. We desperately need the presence and blessing of the Father.

Amen. Well, thank you very much for writing, Nancy. And although we have run out of copies to give away of the Baptist story, providentially, Crossway has sent us copies of another book that we are sending you a free copy of for writing in today, Eight Women of Faith that has been co-authored by our guest, Michael Haken.

So we hope that you enjoy Eight Women of Faith. But I also need your full mailing address, Nancy, because the only thing that I have here is Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. We're going to another break right now.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Dr. Michael Haken, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. And please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA.

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If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours is Dr. Michael Haken. And today we are primarily addressing his book, The Baptist Story. And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address here is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence. If you live outside of the USA. Before we go into something that I wanted you to address, because it seemed to stir up a lot of fascination with our fellow Calvinistic Baptists on the internet, the issue regarding antinomianism, which you discovered new things in regard to that heresy in Baptist history or in church history while you were studying Andrew Fuller in greater depth.

Before we go into that, I wanted to find out from you, what is the first church that you are aware of that actually officially, by name, identified itself as a Baptist? And where do you actually trace what is called this movement known as the Baptists?

If you can't, as a landmarker, trace it back to John the Baptist, where do you trace it to?

The First Baptist Church and the Origins of the Baptist Movement

They needed to separate in London where...

Did you say Spiddlefields?

Spiddlefields, yeah.

Yes, so our origins are in Spiddle. And did they actually use the term Baptist as a way of identifying their church name?

No, they weren't Baptists. It was in 1638. They did not use the term Baptist. It would be interesting to know if it starts to be used positively.

Hmm.

I had a very comic experience years ago as a person who has been involved in radio for 30 years, approximately, and Christian radio for most of it. I was at a meeting of pastors who were from independent fundamentalist Baptist background, and they were all cooperating on a program that I had sold to them, being a salesman for the Christian network I worked for.

And this program was one where all of these independent fundamentalist Baptists were taking turns hosting the program and helping to pay for it. And they were having a meeting to set the ground rules, and they had a big disagreement if they should allow Bible church pastors to participate.

They were wondering if this was appropriate and if they had to make an insistence upon the word Baptist being used in the title of the church. And one of the men who was adamant that a pastor must call his church a Baptist church said, it's time for us to stop arguing about all this nonsense and just stick to what the Bible says.

And everybody just fell silent there, and where in the Bible does it say we have to call ourselves Baptist? But anyway, and I hope that pastor is not listening right now as we laugh at his comment. But now, just recently, you on the internet were saying you were fascinated by some discoveries or a discovery about antinomianism in Baptist history that surfaced while I believe you were doing some more research on Andrew Fuller.

And before we even go into that specific discovery, if you could define antinomianism, I know it means against law is what the word actually literally means, but it has taken on different forms of usage throughout the centuries.