Category: Issues

various issues within fundamentalism specifically or evangelicalism as a whole

"Regeneration Precedes Faith", a Baptist Belief

~ fundyreformed ~ 25 Comments

Some say “ignorance is bliss”, but in discussions of theology, this is definitely not the case. Especially in fundamentalist Baptist circles, to bring up the topic of Calvinism is always to start a fiery discussion. And one of the chief factors in making this topic so heated and controversial (you could call it emotional) is ignorance.

As a former non-Calvinistic (some would say Arminian) fundamental Baptist, at one time I was quite ignorant concerning Calvinism. And one of the points Calvinists believe which was most repugnant to me was their belief that regeneration precedes faith. Such a doctrine seemed to make faith not essential. It made the human response less important. As a fundamentalist, I prized the “sinner’s prayer” and “altar call” methodology, and everything about this strange teaching about regeneration seemed wrong.

If you had told me then, while I was a non-Calvinist, that Baptists historically have believed in this doctrine, if you had told me my Baptist forbears were almost all Calvinists, I would have been astounded. And I am sure many other fundamental Baptists still would share my amazement. I have even seen some people on one particular fundamentalist forum site claim that the belief that regeneration precedes faith is a 20th Century innovation of “neo-Calvinists” like Piper and Mohler. And surely there are many fundamentalists all too eager to believe that such is the case. (Case in point, the widespread fundamental belief that Charles Spurgeon wasn’t really a Calvinist, and that he didn’t really believe in all 5 points of Calvinism—even though he wrote a booklet defending all 5 points!)

With the above background, let me provide a quote from the 1833 New Hampshire Baptist Confession, one of the earliest Baptist Confessions of Faith in America. I recently stumbled upon this quote, and was delighted with what I found. In no uncertain terms, it declares that the Baptists who developed this Confession, believed that regeneration precedes faith. Let me quote from section 7, “Of Grace in Regeneration”.

We believe that, in order to be saved, sinners must be regenerated, or born again (Jn. 3:3, 6-7; 1 Cor. 1:14, Rev. 8:7-9; 21:27); that regeneration consists in giving a holy disposition to the mind (2 Cor. 5:17; Ez. 36:26; Deut. 30:6; Rom. 2:28-29; 5:5; 1 Jn. 4:7); that it is effected in a manner above our comprehension by the power of the Holy Spirit, in connection with divine truth (Jn. 3:8; 1:13; Jam. 1:16-18; 1 Cor. 1:30; Phil. 2:13), so as to secure our voluntary obedience to the gospel (1 Pet. 1:22-25; 1 Jn. 5:1; Eph. 4:20-24; Col. 3:9-11); and that its proper evidence appears in the holy fruits of repentance, and faith, and newness of life (Eph. 5:9; Rom. 8:9; Gal. 5:16-23; Eph. 3:14-21; Matt. 3:8-10; 7:20; 1 Jn. 5:4, 18).

If you are wondering what I am seeing here, let me make it simple. The above says that the “fruits” of regeneration are “repentance, and faith, and newness of life”. In other words, regeneration comes first and the result is repentance, faith, and newness of life. Regeneration precedes faith.

Just to prove that this doctrine was historically held by most Baptists does very little in proving that it is a correct and Biblical doctrine, I know. If you would like an explanation and defense of this doctrine, see my attempt in this post.

MacArthur & Company on KJV Onlyism

~ fundyreformed ~ 7 Comments

I’m quite busy today, but let me inform you of an interesting series of articles over at Pulpit, the blog of John MacArthur and company. They are taking on the subject of KJV onlyism, because (surprise, surprise!) some people have been bringing up the issue in the comments sections over on their blog. So they have begun “A Short KJV Detour”. See below for the links. Their interaction with KJV onlyism is more informed than most conservative evangelicals, as fundamentalists tend to cross their paths more often. These articles are informative yet simple—they will be helpful to many who are somewhat unfamiliar with this issue, so dive in!  

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Like Hearts

~ fundyreformed ~ 6 Comments

Just a quick post here. This week in an exchange of emails with one of my readers, a phrase was brought up that has stuck with me. The gentleman mentioned that so many people strive for “like-mindedness” but what is most important is “like-heartedness“.

I tend to agree. Certainly if we are like-minded we can have more cooperation and greater fellowship, with each other. But there are many issues about which we will never be totally like-minded with anyone! But we can be like-hearted.

We can agree to hold to different positions on lesser issues and yet still acknowledge that we share a similar heartbeat. And if our hearts are pointed in the same direction, we should be able to have meaningful fellowship, even if our heads get in the way at times.

Since starting this blog, I have encountered many different people. And I have found that even when I differ with some on mind-issues, I can appreciate that their heart is pointed in the right direction. Early on I found that I needed to tone down my posts and acknowledge that there are many fundamentalists who are like-hearted with me. And many from even the more “hyper” circles have right hearts.

Scripture asks us and demands us to maintain the unity of the Spirit with fellow believers. We should yearn for such unity and look for the good hearts in people, even when our minds might be contradictory. Hopefully as fellowship continues a greater like-mindedness will develop. But ultimately it isn’t important if you agree with me, or if I approve of your distinct positions on any number of issues. What matters is that God approves of our hearts, and that we don’t disown and malign fellow believers.

By all means stand for truth. And defend your positions. (You know I will!) But please listen for the heart of those whom you may be quick to condemn. Let us all  strive for like-heartedness! [Oh, and take a moment and look up the verses supporting my motto  in the top right sidebar]

Bobspotted Blogroll: January 13, 2007

~ fundyreformed ~ 11 Comments

Well, I have been exceptionally busy this week and have not kept up on the blogosphere (or contributed to it) as much as I’d like. So I thought I’d put together a good blogroll for you all. And in truth, there really were a lot of good posts out there to highlight. Some of these, particularly the last two, I could devote whole posts to, but won’t due to time constratints.

Expositional Preaching

  • Joe at the Big Orange Truck recounts the benefits of his first full year of expositional preaching.

    • …I have learned more Bible in one year of expositional sermon preparation than I did in 4 years of Bible college….

The Bus Ministry

  • Mike Hess of Extreme Fundamental Makeover wrote an interesting piece entitled “Bowing at the Altar of our Methodologies“.

    • …we have become dependent and downright addicted to particular methodologies in fundamentalism. If you don’t believe me, then I challenge you to go into your average IFBx church and propose to them that it may NOT be a good idea for them to have a bus ministry…. To say that every church should have a bus ministry is like saying every church should have a gymnasium or Christian school. It simply does not fit into the framework of every church.

Fundamentalism Happenings

  • Dan Burrell gave a list of the Top 10 Fundamentalist Stories of 2006 over at Sharper Iron. It is a good read for sure, and you might want to check out his picks for the top 10 stories in Evangelicalism too. From his list of Fundamentalist stories, two in particular grabbed my attention:
    • The first is of more examples of strange doctrine coming from First Baptist of Hammond, IN. In fact, it seems more like blasphemy than just “strange”, as Jack Schaap in a book on marriage claims that the believer has “spiritual sex” with Christ through communion. Just to be clear, Dan provides solid documentation for these claims.
    • Then, Dan highlights the move among fundamentalists to work closely with the Southern Baptist Convention. His own church hosted the first meeting of the International Baptist Network, last year, which saw representatives from independent groups as well as the SBC meeting together. He also mentions a couple churches which have officially joined their local Southern Baptist organizations, while keeping ties with independents as well. One of those churches happens to be one I have visited before: Decatur Baptist Church in Decatur, AL. I, for one, think such moves toward fellowship between independents and the SBC is a great thing. Imagine many of the different varieties of Baptist working together to advance the cause of Christ! Hey, this might be more than just a dream.

Calvinist-Arminian Debates in Perspective

  • Apparently, the Pyromaniacs has been involved in a disagreement involving Calvinism, lately. It involves an evangelistic video and some Calvinist criticisms of it. Of course I’m sure the whole Calvinist-Arminian debate has entered into the fray, too. To be honest, I haven’t read the debate enough to take sides, but I wanted to point out a great post that Dan Phillips gave in the midst of the debate. He quotes an exchange between the Calvinist Charles Simeon and the Arminian John Wesley. That exchange is well worth a brief read, as it puts the whole Calvinist-Arminian debate in its proper perspective.

Movies and More

  • If you have been following Sharper Iron’s posts on whether movies are an acceptable medium for Christians or not, you’ll already have seen this. But the rest of you may be interested. Kevin Bauder, whose opinion is always worth reading, is giving a series of posts on the nature of theater or film and its use among Christians. The latest post again stresses that for 1900 years the church largely rejected the medium, and so we would do well to learn why. I don’t disagree that it would be important to know why, and so I am looking forward to future installments of the series. But I tend to agree more with Chuck Hervas, whose recent reply to Bauder’s third article was posted on Sharper Iron’s front page.
  • My friend John Chitty, is also a movie enthusiast, and he directs our attention to the upcoming movie on William Wilberforce’s life. He also points out where to get a free pdf file of John Newton’s Olney Hymns.

Anyone Seen the Big Cheese?

  • Tom Pryde of NeoFundamentalist has a great post entitled “Fire the Big Cheese“. That post details how some leaders, fundamentalist or otherwise, abuse their leadership and are like a big stinking hunk of limberger cheese. (Okay the nasal slam was my innovation.) He offers some good advice in both spotting and dealing with such individuals.

Destructive Theology

  • William Dudding of The Reforming Baptist has a stinging post entitled deductive theology. He does an excellent job of showing how one’s theology influences their philosophy which then affects their methodology and ultimately the end result. He is right on in describing this connection. Unfortunatley, however, he is just as right in describing a typical scenario in many IFB or IFBx churches. And it all starts with man-centered theology. You have to read his post, but let me quote a few sentences to convince you to go over and read it.

    • The philosophy behind the music is that they don’t want to be like the world, so they adopt a style of music that isn’t popular anymore, they are against immorality, so they put lot’s of restrictions on people to keep them from getting close to being immoral…however, the weak ones can’t follow the rules and they fall and ruin their lives; people drop off the bandwagon, so they preach faithfulness and put guilt on people for missing a service. New people seem to come and go like a revolving door because they push a hard soul winning and bus ministry agenda that keeps the numbers up, yet the majority of them don’t stick around for any substantial length of time. Why does this church think this way and do these things?

Answering KJV Only Accusations

  • I hope to post more on the KJV issue in months to come, and I hope to do more work on my KJV Only Debate Resource Center. But I recently read three great articles on the topic from Fred Butler at Hip and Thigh. Fred has an 11 part series dealing with the primary arguments for KJV Onlyism, as well as several other good articles on the subject. You can read all his stuff on the KJV issue here. The articles I want to point you to, however, are from his answering a list of 33 questions from a KJV Onlyist: questions that modern Bible version (MBV) people are supposedly afraid to answer. In all reality the questions are more like baseless accusations than honest questions, yet Fred does a great job treating each one. He does so in three articles under the heading “Answers that KJV onlyists are afraid you will provide” [part 1, 2, and 3]. A sentence (from part 2) that highlights a point I have tried to make before myself, follows:

    • The Received Text was used, not because it was considered orthodox and the pure Word of God over other rival texts, but because it was the only one really accessible to the general public for use in translating.

Atonement Addendum: Grudem’s Clarifications and Cautions

~ Bob Hayton ~ 3 Comments

We have recently been explaining (and debating) the Reformed doctrine of particular redemption, also known as definite atonement or more popularly, limited atonement. And while my post on Calvinism and evangelism follows on the heels of that post, it really was in the works before that whole debate started. But since we are talking about Calvinism in general, and limited atonement in particular (no pun intended), I felt we would do well to heed some clarification and caution from Wayne Grudem on this subject.

If you are unfamiliar with Wayne Grudem, he is worth getting to know. He is a very influential conservative scholar, of a breed which is sadly becoming all to increasingly rare these days! He takes firm positions on hotly debated topics: he defends God’s sovereignty against open theism, and is a prime mover in the defense of complementarian views against the egalitarian or feminist position [this is the debate over women pastors and male headship in marriage]. He also has criticized some of the more liberal translations regarding their gender neutrality, being also a principle promoter of the English Standard Version. You can learn more about him here.

Get this book!!!But perhaps his greatest contribution has been his wonderful Systematic Theology. The book is certainly technical enough to require theologians to interact with its views, yet it is designed for the average church goer, too. Grudem firmly believes that it is the call of every church member to study theology. Proper doctrine is not only for theological professionals to be concerned about. And the book does wonders for making the study of systematic theology accessible to everybody. Each chapter ends with “Questions for Personal Application” and includes a helpful index so one can find sections which cover the same material in the other major Protestant and Catholic systematic theologies. Each chapter also includes a hymn, because Grudem believes theology should move our hearts. In fact the book does just that. Doctrine is not merely analyzed in a test tube, so to speak. Application and personal involvement with the truth presented is made throughout.

Another helpful quality of Grudem’s book is its fairness to opposing views. Grudem is Reformed, but he doesn’t anathematize every other view. He quotes from first hand sources and does his best to present the chief arguments of his opponents, rather than creating a bunch of straw men. He is also careful to tread lightly at times. Rather than making bold assertions, he leans toward one view or another, while honestly acknowledging that a particular topic is open to alternative understandings.

It is just this aspect of the book which really helps us with our current discussion. Pages 601-603 provide “points of clarification and caution regarding [limited atonement]”. And from these I want to stress two points, which are pertinent for us in the discussion that is still hanging in the air concerning this doctrine.

First, we need to be careful with how we phrase things. Many a Calvinist, myself included, is comfortable with the phrase “Christ died for his people only”. But by this I actually mean (according to Grudem) “Christ died to actually pay for all the sins of his people only”. The former phrase is often interpreted or understood by non-Reformed people to be saying “Christ died so that he could make the gospel available only to a chosen few”. And since this is not the case, and we don’t want to communicate that idea, we Calvinists should opt for the more precise phrase, rather than the simpler expression.

Similarly, we should not get bent out of shape over the phrase “Christ died for all people”, because that phrase is true if it means “Christ died to make salvation available to all people” or “Christ died to bring the free offer of the gospel to all people”. Grudem claims that Scripture itself uses such language (the first phrase) in places like John 6:51, 1 Tim. 2:6, and 1 Jn. 2:2. And often when a Calvinist is speaking pastorally, he may use the former phrase rather than the latter one. Grudem goes on to deal with the objection that some Reformed people have to the indiscriminate use of the former phrase, and it is worth the read, but we will move on here.

Secondly, Grudem stresses that both sides of the limited atonement debate agree that people will not be saved without actually believing in Christ. And both sides “want to avoid implying that there might be some people who come to Christ for salvation but are turned away because Christ did not die for them.” Both sides agree the offer of the gospel is a genuine bonafide offer: all who come/believe will be saved. Therefore, we should not make too much out of this whole debate. Grudem says,

…Scripture itself never singles this out as a doctrine of major importance, nor does it once make it the subject of any explicit theological discussion….In fact, this is really a question that probes into the inner counsels of the Trinity and does so in an area in which there is very little direct scriptural testimony—a fact which should cause us to be cautious….

That is all I have from Grudem for you, but you would do well to read those pages for yourself. Since I believe that reading them might help you to convince you to buy the book yourself, let me show you a way to view those pages online. This may not work for you, but it did for me. First, go here (Google Booksearch). Second, search [in the search box on the right of the display] for the following three phrases. They will each bring up links to view the pages in question (601, 602, and 603). However, they will only let you see one page at a time. Here are the phrases (be sure to put them in quotation marks when you search): “rightly object to the way in which some advocates of particular” “unbelievers simply do not reason that way” and “ultimate cause of the atonement is found in the love”. One more note: if you click on the picture above, you will be able to order the book.

Before I go, let me recommend a fascinating interview of Wayne Grudem by Christian blogger Adrian Warnock. Here is the summary post providing links to all 9 parts and more regarding the interview.

The points gleaned from Grudem borrow heavily from pgs. 601-603 of Systematic Theology. Anything within quotes in that section is a verbatim quote from these pages.