Baptists and "Calvinism": discerning the shape of the question: Baptists and "Calvinism" is an important topic. Much is at stake, if for no other reason than it concerns yet another fault line through Christ's people, sadly divided in their endeavor to be faithful.

Yet, important questions have not received due attention in the current debate between those who would at least ideally locate Baptist identity in a large area of overlap between Baptists and "Calvinism" and those who would minimize the normativity of the undeniable overlap of the two categories. (1) Indeed, the terms of the debate thus far actually prevent important questions from being asked and important testimony from our Baptist heritage from being received. Yet, these questions may provide a sounder approach than either major option presently advocated.

Basic Observations on the Debate over "Calvinism" (2)

Significant agreement exists among the participants in this debate. First and most basically, both those who wish to locate Baptists in the orbit of "Calvinism" and those who would keep these two orbits largely distinct value personal, experiential regeneration and embrace Christ as Savior and Lord. Both further hold the tasks of missions and evangelism to be central. Both affirm that the Baptist past is important not only for understanding the Baptist present, but even for giving it shape. Both sides grant the connection of past and present in formulating identity.

Among those who favor a more "Calvinist" understanding of Baptist identity, Timothy George, writing in First Things, demonstrated how Baptists' various understandings of their history have influenced their sense of identity.(3) Tom Nettles, likewise, yoked concern for origins and present identity.(4) Among critics of close identification of Baptists with "Calvinism," Fisher Humphreys described contemporary Baptist identity in light of The Way We Were, and Walter Shurden stated in the context of another discussion that for Baptists "theological identity ... is inevitably related to historical origins and subsequent history." (5) Indeed, even dismissals of tradition as constitutive Baptist identity sometimes find ironic articulation in terms of "what Baptists have always believed." (6) In other words, tradition is important for Baptists on both sides of this issue. Granting this basic agreement, however, differing judgments of what Baptists are and should be arise from various readings of Baptist tradition.

Contributing to the divergences in interpretation of the Baptist past in this debate are certain complicating factors arising from the rhetoric employed in the debate itself. These make even more difficult the task of navigating the relation of Baptists to "Calvinism" through appeal to the Baptist past. Two chief factors are those of narrowness of focus and imprecision of terminology.

Both sides in the discussion acknowledge that the Baptist past shows both a dominant theme and considerable variety. For example, there is strong evidence of a predominantly Calvinistic orientation among our Baptist forebears. John Asplund's Annual Register of the Baptist Denomination (1790) showed that in the late eighteenth century, of thirty-five associations in the United States and frontier territories, seventeen formally subscribed to the Westminster Calvinism of the Philadelphia Confession, and nine more held to the "Calvinistic system" or "Calvinistic sentiment." By the same token, Asplund showed that while there was a dominant pattern of Baptist life and belief, there was variety. Of the nine other associations, three each embraced "General Provision," the "Bible alone," or did not adopt a confession because Calvinist and Arminian views existed together among the ministers. Significant among the latter group was the Sandy Creek Association. Of this association, Asplund reported it "Holds to no confession of faith, as the generality of them hold to general provision [i.e. an Arminian view of the atonement]." (7)

Rather than interrogating the dynamics of this reality for the sake of better understanding, however, both sides in the debate rest content with simply acknowledging it. One side downplays the dominant Westminster/Philadelphia Calvinism of the Baptists of the late eighteenth century. The other does not give this "Calvinism" sufficient attention as it moves to a nineteenth-century Princeton Calvinism as its chief frame for articulating issues. This latter "Calvinism" itself took a more Zwinglian turn due to the debate between theologians of Princeton and Mercersburg seminaries. (8) There are significant differences between Westminster/Philadelphia Calvinism and the Princeton variety of roughly five decades later, a matter that has not been given adequate attention.

Another complicating factor is the lack of precise definitions, a difficulty primarily with those who argue against "Calvinism" as the proper lens through which to understand Baptists. An example of the lack of precision in scholarly works is J. Terry Young's comments in his review of Fisher Humphreys' and Paul Robertson's God So Loved the World: Traditional Baptists and Calvinism: "The Calvinism most often encountered among Southern Baptists today is hyper-Calvinism, the more rigid form that is based upon the Canons of the Synod of Dort.... " Since God is love, Young continued, this sort of Calvinism "fails to say clearly and unequivocally that God loves the whole world." (9) These statements are not entirely faithful to what the authors of the book contend, (10) and the statements are inaccurate in that while the "Canons of Dort" do indeed manifest what we might call a "scholastic" or "orthodox Calvinism," they bear but the faintest resemblance to hyper-Calvinism, a phenomenon that arose roughly a century later in England, among Independents and Baptists. Recent study indicates that, contrary to the widely-held understanding, hyper-Calvinism was never dominant among Baptists in England, but was a phenomenon more confined to the precincts of London. (11) Hyper-Calvinism was characterized by, among other things, "no offers of grace" preaching, the lack of evangelism, and antinomianism, which is not an accurate depiction of even the "orthodox Calvinism" of Dort. Articles 2 and 3 of the Canons of Dort read in part:

    But this is how God showed his love: he sent his only begotten Son    into the world, so that whoever believes in him should not perish    but have eternal life. In order that people may be brought to faith,    God mercifully sends proclaimers of this very joyful message to the    people he wishes and at the time he wishes. By this ministry people    are called …