Someone sent me a spicy take on Baptists and Christian Nationalists that recently appeared on social media. Apparently, it’s received not a small amount of attention, at least in our neck of the woods. Here’s the quip:
“Post mill and Christendom will not work with Baptist ecclesiology. Because in their ecclesiology you cannot have Christianity with a mixed community of regenerate and unregenerate. Not in the home, not in the church, not in society.”
At the outset, the low-blows and strawmen from those of the pedobaptist stripe have become a little tiresome. A few years ago, some ding-dong online suggested Baptists are the reason for trannies. I hear stuff like that from time to time, and it gets quite old. In centuries-gone-by, Presbyterians accused Baptists of being parochial schismatics, but if these types of lame-brain digs aren’t sectarian, I don’t know what is. In the course of my ministry, I’ve tried to take it easy on the baby-baptizers. And when I have interacted with their sensical but ill-founded theology, I’ve done so in a way that attempts to at least be honest and logical. A few scallywags of that tribe refuse to rejoin in kind.
All my griping about cliquish dimwitted zealotry aside, I do want to interact with this latest buffoonish afront that landed on my desk, only because it’s a teachable moment for all who care to read this. The statement in question is summarized in this syllogism:
Baptist ecclesiology only permits regenerate church membership.
Christendom allows for unregenerate national citizenship.
Therefore, Baptists cannot believe in Christendom.
The first premise is true, and so is the second premise. But the conclusion is a little dumb, to say the least. If we change the first premise to “Baptist ecclesiology only permits regenerate national citizenship,” the syllogism would make sense. For example:
Baptist ecclesiology only permits regenerate church membership national citizenship.
Christendom allows for unregenerate national citizenship.
Therefore, Baptists cannot believe in Christendom.
This would be absurd because Baptist ecclesiology says nothing about national citizenship. By nature, ecclesiology speaks to church membership, not national citizenship. If we change the second premise to, “Christendom demands unregenerate church membership,” the syllogism would also make sense. For example:
Baptist ecclesiology only permits regenerate church membership.
Christendom allows for demands unregenerate national citizenship church membership.
Therefore, Baptists cannot believe in Christendom.
Who precisely is advocating for that? In the silly little post in question, there is a failure to distinguish categories. It is a categorical error. Church membership and national citizenship are not the same thing, even as the new covenant, church covenants, and national covenants are not the same thing.
As for church membership, Baptists certainly do believe in regenerate church membership. We do our best – at least we are supposed to do our best – to only allow the regenerate into the membership of the church. By inference, the post indicates that Christendom is manifested when Christian laws are enforced and adjudicated by the state in a Christian culture. There’s a difference between believing all laws in Christendom should be Christian and all persons in Christendom will be Christian.
Notwithstanding the social media post’s obtuse logic, the claim itself is historically inaccurate. For example, the 1689 London Baptist Confession reads:
God, the supreme Lord and King of all the world, has ordained civil magistrates to be under him, over the people, for his own glory and the public good; and to this end has armed them with the power of the sword, for defence and encouragement of them that do good, and for the punishment of evil doers (24.1).
In other words, Baptists have believed that God stands over the state and tasks the state with punishing evildoers and protecting the good – the magistrate is to adjudicate and enforce Christian law.
John Bunyan, a Baptist who lived in the 17th c. and died just before the 1689 London Baptist Confession was written, distinguished between the body and spirit of antichrist. The spirit of antichrist is the power of Satan that animates antichrist, and the body of antichrist is those persons and institutions that are animated by the spirit of antichrist:
The body or flesh of Antichrist, is that heap of men, that assembly of the wicked, that synagogue of Satan that is acted and governed by that spirit.1
Now the body of Antichrist, is that church or synagogue in which the spirit of Antichrist dwells, or unto which the spirit of Antichrist is become a soul and life.2
He believed that God would appoint kings to destroy antichrist with physical violence:
I then take it, That the destruction of her flesh shall come by the sword, as managed in the hands of kings, who are God’s ministers for the punishment of evil deeds, and the praise of them that do well.3
He argued that those Christian kings would mercilessly wield the sword to execute justice within their realms:
Kings, I say, must be the men that must down with Antichrist, and they shall down with her in God’s time.4
I believe that by magistrates and powers we shall be delivered and kept from Antichrist…5
Now these kings whose hearts God shall set to destroy Antichrist, shall do it without those inward reluctancies that will accompany inferior men: they shall be stript of all pity and compassion.6
Similarly, 18th c. Baptist pastor, John Gill, said in his commentary on Daniel, that God, to destroy false religion, will raise up Christian princes, “into whose hearts God will put it to hate the whore, eat her flesh, and burn her with fire; so that there shall be an utter end of antichrist.” He went on: “The kingdoms of this world will become Christ’s, and Christian princes will be kings of them everywhere; and not only the royal power and authority will be vested in them, but all grandeur and state belonging to them will be theirs.”7 He defined the role of kings as the adjudicators and enforcers of the 10 Commandments, wielding the sword to punish violators:
Kings are the guardians of the laws of God and man; and Christian kings have a peculiar concern with the law of the two tables, that they are observed and the violaters of them punished; as sins against the first table, idolatry, worshipping of more gods than one, and of graven images, blaspheming the name of God, perjury, and false swearing, and profanation of the day of worship…8
The 1689 London Baptist Confession, John Bunyan, and John Gill all support the idea of a political order consciously governed under God’s Law. Not only is the social media post illogical, but it is also historically inaccurate. I expect more from my pedobaptist brothers. They are welcome to debate us on the merits of our arguments in good faith, but the doltish pea-brained libel needs to stop.
Footnotes
- John Bunyan, Of Antichrist and His Ruin, in The Works of John Bunyan, ed. by George Offor, vol. 2 (The Banner of Truth Trust: Carlisle, PA, 1991), p. 46.
- Ibid., 51.
- Ibid., 72.
- Ibid., 73.
- Ibid., 74.
- Ibid.
- John Gill, Exposition of The Old and New Testaments, vol. 6, (The Baptist Standard Bearer: Paris, Arkansas, 1989), p. 327.
- John Gill, A Complete Body of Doctrinal & Practical Divinity, (The Baptist Standard Bearer: Paris Arkansas, 2019, p. 986.
