by R. Lucas Stamps
* Editor’s Note: This post is an excerpt from “Baptists, Classic Christology, and the Christian Tradition” in Baptists and the Christian Tradition: Toward an Evangelical Baptist Catholicity.
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Over the last couple of centuries, Baptists have sometimes been drawn to the notion of a creedless Christianity: “No creed but the Bible” or “No creed but Christ.”[1] But, as we have seen, from the beginning it was not so. The earliest Baptists were as committed as any other Protestant denomination to the Reformation principle of sola Scriptura: the Bible alone is the supreme and final court of appeals for all matters of faith and practice. Councils, theologians, and church leaders can err in their theological judgments, but the Bible and the Bible alone is the only inerrant and infallible written revelation from God. But this commitment to sola Scriptura did not mean for the Reformers nor for the earliest Baptists that traditional interpretations of Scripture should be jettisoned. The consensus of historic Christian interpretation concerning the cardinal doctrines of the faith—the Trinity and the incarnation—possesses a kind of derivative authority, under the authority of the Scriptures to the degree it conforms to them.[2] So, the earliest Baptists, while seeking a more thorough reformation concerning the doctrine of the church, were not seeking an overthrow of the church’s creedal foundations. When an unhealthy version of biblicism—an “allergy” to postbiblical doctrinal defenses of what the Scriptures teach—crept into the Baptist movement, the churches were left open to heterodoxy, as the rise of Unitarianism among the General Baptists attests.
Theologians and church leaders from a variety of ecclesiastical traditions have begun to rediscover the important role that the church’s traditional doctrines can play in renewing the faith for the twenty-first century.[3] This emphasis on “retrieval for the sake of renewal” signals an important development in the contemporary church—a development that, if we may be so bold, might represent a new work of the Spirit of God among the people of God.[4] Despite their perceived or real legacy of creedless Christianity, some Baptists have been full participants in this renewal, and we can pray that many more would join its ranks. In this concluding section, I wish to suggest a few ways in which a rediscovery of the classical understanding of Christ can help to renew the faith and practice of contemporary Baptist churches.
First, in terms of Baptist theology, the contemporary articulation of the whole fabric of Christian belief would be strengthened by a thorough engagement with the church’s reflection on the mystery at the heart of the faith: the incarnation of the Son of God for the salvation of the world. For too long, Baptist theology has had an impoverished understanding of and engagement with the Christian tradition. Our engagement with the language, literature, and history of the biblical text has been second to none in evangelicalism. But without the categories provided by the history of interpretation and the history of doctrine, we have sometimes left ourselves open to idiosyncratic ways of synthesizing the biblical teaching.[5] Baptist churches should catechize their members in the basic tenets of the orthodox faith, perhaps through sermon series, baptismal preparation, Sunday School classes, and small group Bible studies.
Baptist colleges and seminaries would do well to expose their students not only to the Reformers and our Baptist forebears but also to the patristic and medieval divines who articulated the foundational truths of God’s triune being and the incarnation of the Son of God. Furthermore, renewed attention to the classical doctrine of the incarnation will cast light on the entire range of theological loci: theology proper, humanity and sin, atonement and salvation, church and last things. The whole of human history—indeed, the whole of created reality—finds it scope and key in the mystery of the Word made flesh. The doctrine of salvation is especially implicated in a proper understanding of classic Christology. Salvation belongs to the Lord; so, only God can save. But only one who is truly man—one who has assumed all that it means to be human, body and soul, mind and will—can repair the breach caused by human rebellion. A diminished God or divided Christ would be of no use for this task; only one who is true God and true man, without confusion or division, can be the Savior of the world.
Second, Baptist worship would be enriched by a renewal of classic Christology. The traditional patterns and elements of historic Christian worship are designed explicitly to tell the story of the gospel, centered on the person and work of Jesus Christ. Baptist worship has been heavily influenced by what historians of Christian worship have called “frontier liturgy,” the worship structure that emerged from nineteenth-century revivalism: a service of songs, followed by an evangelistic sermon and invitation.[6] There is much to appreciate in this frontier liturgy, chiefly its focus on proclaiming the gospel and calling for a response to its saving promises.
But this structure would be strengthened and deepened by incorporating within it the historic patterns of Christian liturgy: a call to worship from God’s Word, private and corporate confessions of sin, an assurance of pardon grounded in Christ’s person and work, sermons that weave together more canonical patterns of scriptural interpretation, weekly observance of the Lord’s Supper, public confession of the faith once delivered to the saints, benedictions pronounced over God’s people, and the commissioning of the church to go out into the world as salt and light. Especially fruitful would be public confession of the faith in the form of ecumenical creeds, which dramatically retell the story of the gospel—the incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and return of Christ—and the triune God who enacts it.[7]
Finally, Baptist mission would be strengthened by a renewed attention to the doctrines of classical Christology. While missionary zeal is not exclusive to Baptists, it has been a distinctive emphasis throughout most of our four-hundred-year history. The modern missions movement was sparked by a Particular Baptist association in eighteenth-century London, with William Carey its principle champion and first missionary.[8] The first American missionary during the modern missions movement, Adoniram Judson, was persuaded of Baptist ecclesiology on his voyage to Burma and remained a powerful advocate for missions among Baptists until his death.[9] Even today, missions and evangelism remain the lifeblood of Baptist spirituality, with Southern Baptists boasting one of the largest missionary forces in the world through their International Mission Board.
But as Baptists interface with the religions and philosophies of both the Western world and the majority world, what is the content of the gospel message we proclaim? Certainly that Jesus died and rose again for the salvation of the world. But who is this Jesus we proclaim? Once again, a mere man could not save. One who is merely God could not suffer and die. It is precisely the two-nature doctrine of Chalcedon that distinguishes the Christian message from its rivals, even those who espouse some form of monotheism (like contemporary Judaism and Islam) or those who espouse a false version of the gospel events (like Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons).
So, to the degree that Baptists care about the renewal of our theology, worship, and mission, we should care about the doctrinal truths codified in the classical understanding of the person of Christ. As the fathers of the church demonstrated and the earliest Baptists affirmed, these truths are not some alien imposition on the biblical text; instead, they are better understood as Spirit-illumined truths that enable the church to account for all the Scriptures say about the person of Christ and to defend this teaching against heresy. These doctrines are not theological trivia nor the exclusive preserve of church historians. Rather, they are the heritage and stewardship of all the people of God, including the people called Baptists.
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[1] Consider, for example, the opinion of W. B. Johnson, the first president of the Southern Baptist Convention: “The value of the Christocratic form of government consists in this, that each acting in reference to Christ alone, all will be conformed to Christ, and thus conformed to each other. And this is the manner by which uniformity is to be secured and preserved, and not by confederations of churches, confessions of faith, or written codes of formularies framed by man, as bonds of union for the churches of Christ.” William B. Johnson, The Gospel Developed through the Government and Order of the Churches of Christ (Richmond, VA: H. K. Ellyson, 1846), reprinted in Polity: Biblical Arguments on How to Conduct Church Life, ed. Mark Dever (Washington, DC: Nine Marks Ministries, 2001), 234.
[2] Reformation historian Heiko Oberman draws a distinction between what he calls “Tradition I” and “Tradition II.” According to the former, tradition is seen as an authoritative exegetical guide to Scripture. According to the latter, tradition is seen as a second source of revelation alongside Scripture. The Reformers, and many of the earliest Baptists, would have happily accepted Tradition I while rejecting decisively Tradition II. See Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation, 51-65.
[3] Allen and Swain, Reformed Catholicity, 1–15.
[4] Among Baptists, no contemporary writer has been more adamant in emphasizing this theme than Timothy George. See, for example, his introduction in George, Evangelicals and Nicene Faith.
[5] The problems associated with Trinitarian subordinationism and kenotic Christology immediately come to mind.
[6] James F. White, A Brief History of Christian Worship (Nashville: Abingdon, 1993), 159–61.
[7] For an attempt to integrate historic patterns of worship into the frontier liturgy, see R. Lucas Stamps and Matthew Y. Emerson, “Liturgy for Low-Church Baptists,” Criswell Theological Review 14, no. 2 (Spring 2017): 71–88.
[8] Timothy George, Faithful Witness: The Life and Mission of William Carey (Birmingham, AL: New Hope, 1991).
[9] Jason G. Duesing, ed., Adoniram Judson: A Bicentennial Appreciation of the Pioneer American Missionary (Nashville: B&H, 2012).