Uh no. If Baptists want to become Reformed, great! Adding predestination to a Baptist reading of redemptive history, Baptist polity, theology, piety, & practice does not make one Reformed. How dare I say such a thing? 1. Words mean things. 1/x
https://twitter.com/mbyerly608/status/1405012569568460801
2/x 2. The word Reformed meant something before American Baptists (of whatever sort) discovered it. It signified a way of reading redemptive history (e.g., one cov of grace, multiple administrations and the theology, piety, & practice confessed by the Reformed churches).
3. The Reformed have been confessing this reading of redemptive history, theology, piety, & practice since the early 1520s. We’re still confessing it.
4. If you haven’t read and seriously considered the theology, piety, & practice of the Heidelberg Catechism (1563),
4. If you haven’t read and seriously considered the theology, piety, & practice of the Heidelberg Catechism (1563),
5/x cont. the Belgic Confession (1561), the Canons of Dort (1619), and the Westminster Standards (1640s) (not to mention the 1st Helvetic, the 2nd Helvetic, the Genevan Catechisms, the Anglican articles, the French Confession (1559), The Scots Confession (1560) etc)
6. cont. then you are just making up things as you go along. This is also true for the Baptist tradition(s). There are historic Baptist confessions which, though *formally* similar to the Westminster Standards, differ from them in *essential* ways.
7. No, just because there are (more or less) 60 million Baptists in N. America they don’t get to re-define the word “Reformed.”
8. Yes, it’s true that words change their meaning but it’s not true that because Baptists have taken to calling themselves “Reformed” that therefore the meaning of the word has been fundamentally changed.
8. The P&R churches are relatively tiny but we’re still here and we’re still confessing the same faith we’ve always confessed.
9. We can tell the confessions still mean something (and that the word Baptist still means something: let a Baptist minister try to enter a confessional P&R denom w/o changing his views. He will not sustain his interview w/presbytery or classis.
10. Let a P&R minister try to enter the ministry of a Baptist church w/o changing his mind re baptism. Would they have him? Not likely.
11. Will Baptists stand for P&R people calling themselves Baptist (because we do baptize hitherto unbaptized converts)? No. If “Baptist” still means something then why doesn’t “Reformed” still mean something?
There are a million places for Baptist and Baptistic evangelicals to be beside the SBC.
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