A Theological Anthropology for Baptist Political Witness
by R. Lucas Stamps
Introduction
The danger of an essay like this is that the qualifier, “for Baptist political witness,” can tend to exert too much of a constraining influence over the more fundamental intellectual exercise of developing a truly theological anthropology. Many theologians have rightly discerned that one of the principle needs of our own day is to explicate and defend a biblically and theologically grounded understanding of the human person over against the many confusions and distortions of our late modern era. The threats to such an undertaking are legion: the empty promises of the sexual revolution, materialistic ideologies of the left and right, and the latent relativism that informs so much of our public discourse, just to name a few of the more pernicious dangers. But if we were to let any of these concerns set the agenda for a distinctively Christian understanding of humanity, then we would risk limiting and pigeonholing the robust and wide-ranging vision of the human person that the biblical revelation presents to us. For instance, to frame our need for anthropological clarity only in terms of the undoubtedly pressing issues of homosexuality and gender ideology might cause us to neglect certain logs in our own eye not only with regard to the broader array of sexual sins but also with regard to, for example, avarice and acquisitiveness that lurk in modern economies, which can be more subtle but still dehumanizing.
To further limit our inquiry along denominational and political lines can risk a kind of sectarianism that might also disrupt our more basic theological commitments. Our primary task as Christian theologians is not to demonstrate the relevance of our own position against its rivals but to remain faithful to the biblical witness and the wisdom of the great tradition of which we are a part. Still, framing the question in these terms can open up space for pursuing our primary task in such a way that it speaks to the needs of our own churches in our own cultural contexts. In other words, it prevents us from pursuing an abstract and detached understanding of man that elides the more concrete situation in which we find ourselves. Thus, this essay suggests some anthropological parameters for a Baptist engagement with the political order. It begins with some observations of a more catholic[1] nature, that is, with those components of a theological anthropology that all Christians share in common, especially the imago Dei, the reality of human agency and freedom, the consequences of the fall, and the Christological shape of humanity’s purpose and destiny. It then moves on to those components of a theological anthropology that can be considered distinctively (though perhaps not exclusively) Baptist: the notion of soul competency, the relationship between the individual and the community, and the abiding importance of religious liberty. Along the way we will suggest some specific applications of this Christian and Baptist teaching on the nature of humanity.
Components of a Christian Theological Anthropology
The Imago Dei
Any discussion of a Christian theological anthropology must begin with the fundamental notion of the imago Dei, the image of God in man. If the central place of this doctrine remains uncontested in Christian theology, there appears to be no consensus as to its basic meaning. Some have suggested more substantive understandings of the image, locating it in some part of humanity’s make-up, with rationality and volition among the more likely candidates.[2] Others have suggested a relational understanding of the image, finding its core in humanity’s openness to the other, especially to God himself but also to other humans in mutually reciprocal relationships of love.[3] Still others opt for a functional understanding of the image, seeing its primary orientation toward the tasks that the Creator has assigned to humanity: to subdue the earth, to be fruitful and multiply, to obey the divine command—in short, to act as God’s representatives or vice-regents over the rest of the created order.[4] Finally, some have proposed a more Christological understanding of the image, which understands humanity according to its prototype, Jesus Christ himself, who though not yet incarnate at the creation’s origin must be seen to have a kind of primacy in the eternal decree of God.[5]
We might wonder whether or not we must choose among these options. Surely a full understanding of human identity must account for all of these factors: the ways in which God has constituted human nature, the relationships in which we are embedded, the tasks to which we are called, and the ultimate telos in Christ for which we are destined. But do any of these elements of human identity have pride of place in the biblical and theological category of the imago Dei itself? Seen against the backdrop of Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) literature, the Pentateuchal category of the image of God can be seen to service the royal function to which humanity is called.[6] In other ANE cultures, the image of the gods was granted to kings, according to which they were given their divine right to rule. In the Genesis account, subversively, the image is given to all humanity—“male and female he created them.”[7] Thus, all humanity has been given the divine prerogative and responsibility to subdue the earth. But even within this functional matrix, a deposit of the image is given to humanity—he “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life”—which, to my mind, suggests that the image has a fundamentally substantive core, with the relational and functional elements flowing from it.[8] And, of course, any Christian account of the image must always prioritize the primacy of Christ as the true image of God—not only as the eternally begotten Image of the unbegotten Father, but also as the Last Adam, the true human divine-image-bearer.
In any event, Christian theologians and ethicists have often and rightly noted the manifold implications of this doctrine for social and political issues. The universality of the image means that all humans, regardless of their stage of development, their utility to society, their immigration status, or their race, ethnicity, or gender, possess inherent dignity and worth. Policies that protect life from conception to natural death are, for the Christian, ultimately grounded in the imago Dei and in the God who has given to humanity this supreme dignity. Likewise, the quest for racial justice and reconciliation is grounded in this universality of God’s image in man. It is no exaggeration to suggest that all Christian ethical concerns ultimately implicate this most fundamental anthropological category.[9]
Body and Soul
Another aspect of a Christian theological anthropology concerns the constitution of human persons. Are humans fundamentally material beings, immaterial beings, or some combination of the two? It seems particularly fashionable today for theologians to cater to the findings of neurobiology by developing a purely material view of the human person. Hence, the emergence of so-called non-reductive physicalist accounts of human composition.[10] According to this perspective, humans are essentially physical beings, but this physicalism does not entail a loss of meaning, freedom, and responsibility. But in this approach, there is no room left for a purely immaterial soul that constitutes a substance or a form distinct from the body. So the question of “reduction” remains, it seems to me.
On the other end of the spectrum, certain forms of anthropological dualism would seem to make the body superfluous to human personhood. In Cartesian dualism, for example, the person just is the soul, with the body relegated to the status of a tool or instrument of the soul, or at best a non-essential part of human nature.[11] In a popular expression, you do not have a soul; you are a soul, who has a body.[12] But this position, too, falls short of the biblical understanding of human composition. Instead, the most promising anthropologies for Christian theology fall under the category of “holistic dualism,” a range of positions that see the human person as neither reducible to the soul nor the body but as the compound of the two.[13]
Accounting for both body and soul as integral parts of the human person has significant implications for Christian engagement with the political order. Christian witness in the public square will include both evangelism, seeking the conversion of the individual soul, as well as social action, which seeks to alleviate physical suffering and to advance social structures that advance humanity’s physical well-being and flourishing.[14]
Freedom and Responsibility
Another undeniably important but no less contentious component of theological anthropology concerns the nature of human freedom and responsibility. Some understand human freedom in libertarian terms, according to which the human is free when she has the power of contrary choice, the freedom to choose other than what she in fact chooses. Others argue for a more compatibilist understanding of freedom, according to which a human agent is free when she chooses according to her desires, a position that seeks compatibility with some notion of divine determinism.[15] But whether conceived of in more libertarian or more compatibilist terms, human freedom remains an indispensable aspect of our status as God’s image-bearers. Though vitiated by the fall, human freedom and agency remain. We are neither gods nor automatons; we are limited by our natures and the purposes of God, but we are moral agents, whose choices are uncoerced and whose decisions have real causal power. This truth about humanity means, among other things, that the exploited and oppressed are never wholly powerless. Structural and systemic evils may severely limit the possibilities for economic and social development, but the best solutions to these problems will engage the agency and dignity of the oppressed, rather than treating them as objects of charity alone.
Sin and Evil
The biblical teaching on the fall of humanity in Adam also has socio-political implications. Adam’s fateful decision to deny his creatureliness and to presume an illicit godlikeness plunged the human race into an “estate of sin and misery,” as one confessional symbol has put it.[16] Conceptions of the Christian doctrine of original sin are varied—Augustinian realism (according to which all humanity was, in a sense, actually present in Adam when he sinned), federal headship (according to which Adam was reckoned by God to be humanity’s covenantal representative), and mediate imputation (according to which the guilt of sin is passed down by means of inherited corruption) are just a few of the theories of original sin on offer in Western Christianity.[17] But regardless of its mechanism, the orthodox position has always maintained that Adam’s posterity (exempting Christ himself) are not born into a morally neutral state but are by some means credited with his original sin and inherit his vitiated moral nature. This reality renders all forms of political utopianism foolhardy. “There will never cease to be poor in the land,” is not a license for political quietism or the blithe acceptance of the status quo—far from it! It is instead a call for the perpetual pursuit of justice and mercy. But this biblical teaching also serves to temper any ideological pretensions to bring about heaven on earth. Only the final in-breaking of the kingdom of Christ will decisively eradicate society’s ills. In the meantime, Christians can seek to accomplish a “proximate justice,” a category emphasized by Reinhold Niebuhr, building on St. Augustine: we seek to pursue the common good as far as it may be found.
Ecce Homo: Christ as the True Human
When Pilate presented Jesus for crucifixion, he infamously declared, “Behold the man” (Ecce Homo, in the Latin rendering). Christian interpreters have often seen something of an unintended and ironic truth in his words: in Christ, and especially in his ensuing Passion and Resurrection, is true humanity to be found.[18] So the central component of any Christian understanding of theological anthropology is Christ himself, the Last Adam, the true image-bearer of God.[19] No discussion of the purpose and destiny of humanity would be complete without this Christological orientation. Humanity can only be understood rightly when seen in the light of Christ. Indeed, redemption is often cast by the apostle Paul in terms of the renewal of the image of God in man by virtue of his union with the true image, Jesus Christ. We put off the old Adam and put on the New Adam, which is being renewed in knowledge, righteousness and holiness (Eph 2:24; Col 3:10). This Christological understanding of man’s redemption is not merely an individualistic affair. It also has corporate implications.[20] Jew and Gentile, barbarian and Scythian, are united into one new man in Jesus Christ.[21] Christians engaged in socio-political issues can never be content, therefore, to pursue a short-sighted humanitarianism nor a truncated evangelism. We must seek, in obedience to Christ, the good of the whole man—body and soul—and the whole fabric of his social relationships. This should not be misconstrued as a revival of the old Social Gospel with its efforts to “Christianize the social order,” its tendency to reject Christian orthodoxy, and its demoting of eternal realities.[22] As we will see, a Baptist social vision precludes any attempts to confuse the church and the state. But neither should we feel any embarrassment about proclaiming the corporate and indeed cosmic implications of the kingdom of Christ, inaugurated at his first advent and only consummated at his second.
Baptist Contributions to Theological Anthropology
But are there any distinctively Baptist contributions to the Christian understanding of humanity? In what follows, I do not wish to suggest that these distinctives are the exclusive preserve of the Baptist movement. In light of the near universal embrace of religious freedom, famously (if controversially) defended at the Second Vatican Council, we might even say (with tongue planted firmly in check) that we are all Baptists now! But these themes do function as a coherent set, which characterize the Baptist movement at its best.
Soul Competency
This phrase, “soul competency,” identified with perhaps the most consequential Southern Baptist theologian, E. Y. Mullins, is not without its detractors both within and without the Baptist movement.[23] It is true that the notion has often fallen prey (arguably beginning with Mullins himself) to a kind of individualistic, autonomous interpretation of the isolated man, cut off from ecclesial and confessional constraints. But at its best, this idea simply consolidates the fundamental Baptist insight that each human being stands before God as a free and responsible creature. No one can believe on your behalf. There is no notion of proxy faith in the Baptist vision. Each man or woman, boy or girl, stands before God as a glorious but fallen creation, in need of personal conversion to Christ. This insight stands behind and underneath all of the other Baptist distinctives: regenerate church membership, believers-only baptism, congregational polity, the priesthood of all believers, and religious liberty.[24]
The idea of the responsible individual has massive implications for socio-political engagement, many of which await discussion in the following two sections. But for now we can note that the Baptist vision for the individual means that each human being has dignity as an end in himself or herself. Any ideology that conceives of humanity as a pure collective—be it utilitarianism, Marxism, or even certain expressions of capitalism—erodes the fundamental dignity of the individual. The principle of soul competency has implications for all sorts of issues—from embryo-destroying research to economic exploitation, from gender-altering experimentation on children to human trafficking.
The Individual and the Community
Critics of the Baptist vision can be forgiven for often detecting an overemphasis on the individual to the exclusion of the community. Liberal Baptists, for whom “freedom” seems to be the only Baptist watchword, have done us no favors in this regard. But even more conservative Baptists, who have championed a “no creed but the Bible” approach to the Christian faith, have also fallen prey to the tendency to see the Baptist vision less as a renewal movement within the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church and more as a sectarian group made up of isolated individuals reduced to a mere voluntarism.[25] There is, to be sure, a healthy kind of individualism that marks the Baptist movement, as Steven Holmes has pointed out.[26] This proper emphasis on the individual has been spelled out already in the section above on soul competency. Jesus possesses a unique and immediate lordship over the individual conscience. But the Baptist movement at its best has always balanced this stress upon the individual with more communal emphases. The primacy of the local church, with its power of the keys, is no less a Baptist distinctive than individual freedom and responsibility. The local church alone has the authority under Christ to accept individuals into its membership and to exercise church discipline on them even to the point of excommunication.[27] And even though Baptists have rejected any kind of institutional, supra-ecclesial connectionalism, they have been, at their best, committed to meaningful associational bonds, complete with their own confessional boundaries and prerogatives to disfellowship apostate congregations. In addition to these ecclesial realities, Baptists have also emphasized the legitimacy of other human spheres, including the family and the state. In contradistinction to the continental Anabaptists, Baptists have always made space for the citizens of the kingdom to participate legitimately in civic life, including the service of the magistrate and the swearing of civic oaths.[28] So the Baptist vision, again at its best, does not untether the individual from the collective, but seeks a proper balance between them.
This too has socio-political implications. Latter-day American evangelicals, including many Baptists, have sometimes confused the American ideal of the rugged individual for their own rightful stress on the individual’s responsibility before Go. But this need not be the case, if we properly understand the balance between the individual and the community. Baptists should have no hesitation to highlight, for example, systemic racism or structural economic injustice, since our own ecclesiological and social vision accounts for the reality of the community. Baptists engaged in the political order should, therefore, seek policies that account not only for individual responsibility but also for our obligations to one another and to the common good. I would not venture to demand that this balance commits us to any particular policy proposal on, say, social welfare or tax policy. But I would suggest that neither does the Baptist vision commit us to some kind of extreme libertarianism, nor does it preclude a rightful emphasis on our communal responsibilities.
Religious Liberty
Perhaps the crown jewel of among the Baptist distinctives, at least as it concerns the political order, is our stress upon religious liberty—not only for ourselves but for all.[29] Forged in a context of religious persecution, this Baptist principle remains one of our lasting contributions to the Christian church, even if, as we have noted, other traditions have also found their way to affirming it. The Christian ideal is a free church in a free state, as the Baptist Faith and Message puts it. This teaching is neither about mere self-preservation nor is it merely an ad hoc political arrangement. Instead it is grounded in the view of humanity that this essay has sought to explicate. Because Christian faith cannot be coerced and because membership in the New Covenant people of Christ requires freely chosen belief, no attempts at state-sponsored favoritism of Christianity should be considered legitimate. As the early Baptist Thomas Helwys put it, “Let them be heretics, Jews, Turks, or whatsoever, it does not pertain to the earthly power punish them in the least measure.”[30]
A corollary of this principle is the much misunderstood and much maligned notion of the separation of church and state. At its best, this Baptist distinctive does not demand the separation of church and society, as if religion were to play no part in buttressing the social order, but properly the separation of church and state. Holmes summarizes the onetime-Baptist Roger Williams’ teaching on this point: “The magistrate…could police the second table [of the law], but never the first.”[31] Furthermore, the separation is as much about guarding the integrity of the church as it is about preserving the prerogatives of the state. When the church gets too tangled up with the state, then eventually the state’s clutches will tighten.
Taken together, these principles necessitate, in my opinion, that a great degree of freedom be afforded to Christians to disagree about certain policy matters. Precious few political matters admit of only one Christian position, with the issues of life and marriage chief among them. Other matters, such as economics, immigration policy, and foreign affairs, must be reasoned out according to Christian principles and prudential judgment. The church’s mission is not to become a public policy think-tank but to make disciples of Jesus Christ among all nations. But in that mission they are also tasked with shaping Christian consciences and imaginations with all that the Savior has taught us.
Conclusion
Developing a biblically faithful anthropology is fundamentally a theological task, not a political one. But as we have seen, the Christian teaching on the image of God in man, man as a physical and spiritual being, the reality of human agency, the effects of the fall, and the Christological destiny of humanity all impinge upon political matters. Further, the Baptist teaching on soul competency, the individual’s relationship to the community, and religious liberty for all provide us with some distinctively Baptist parameters for engaging the political order. Ultimately, however, we must concede that the kingdom of Christ will not advance by dint of political effort. In this time between the times, the church of Jesus Christ bears witness to that coming kingdom most fundamentally within our own polis of the church, where the good news is proclaimed, the Lord’s ordinances and discipline are carefully observed, and the widow and orphan are welcomed and nourished no less than the rich and powerful. Our political engagement outside the walls of the church remains an important aspect of our Christian discipleship, perhaps especially in a democratic order, and it must be guided by principles taken and heeded from the biblical revelation.
Notes
[1] By “catholic,” I simply mean the consensus of the whole church of Jesus Christ across space and time and denomination. It is not intended as a reference to the Roman Catholic Church.
[2] For example, Augustine explains the image in terms of man’s soul “by virtue of which he might surpass in reason and intelligence all the creatures of the earth, air and sea, which do not have souls of this kind.” See Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans, ed. R. W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 534. See also Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Encyclopedia Britainnica, 1952), 93.9. Aquinas quotes John of Damascus, who states that the image implies “an intelligent being, endowed with free-will and self-movement.”
[3] Karl Barth’s understanding of the image is too rich to reduce to one motif, but he highlights the relational character of the image by grounding it the plurality inherent in the Godhead and in the status of humanity as male and female. See, for example, Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics: Study Edition, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 3.1: 182-205.
[4] D. J. A. Clines, “The Image of God in Man,” Tyndale Bulletin 19 (1968): 53-103.
[5] Oliver Crisp, The Word Enfleshed: Exploring the Person and Work of Christ (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016), 51-70. See also Marc Cortez, Christological Anthropology in Historical Perspective: Ancient and Contemporary Approaches to Theological Anthropology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016).
[6] See Clines, “The Image of God in Man.”
[7] Especially pressing in our own day are issues related to gender and sexuality. Christians face major headwinds in defending the traditional biblical teaching on marriage as a one-flesh union between one man and one woman for life, with all other sexual expressions being illicit. Newer challenges related to the very idea of the creational gender binary—male and female—require new defenses of this basic Christian teaching. The biblical perspective is clear: God created humanity in two genders, male and female, with equal worth and dignity but with distinct roles and responsibilities. And he created sexuality to be expressed only in the context of the one-flesh union of marriage: one man and one woman in a whole-person union of body and soul, oriented toward mutual self-giving and reproduction. It must be noted, however, that while marriage is normative for the natural purposes of propagating and enculturating the human community, it is not ultimate. In the New Covenant, chaste singleness, exemplified in the True Man, Jesus Christ, has a kind of normativity that anticipates the ultimate destiny to which redeemed humanity is called, when “they will neither marry nor be given in marriage.” In many cases, our churches must do a much better job of highlighting the virtue and dignity of singleness as a high calling for the sake of the kingdom. None of this erases the abiding responsibilities of marriage and family life for the Christian community, nor does it minimize the deep typological significance of the marriage bond as a testament to the Christ-Church union. Both chaste marriage and chaste singleness serve together as dual-witnesses to the wisdom and beauty of the Christian worldview. Threats to this biblical vision of gender and sexuality can be found not only in the assaults volleyed from the sexual revolution (with the LGBTQ+ agenda the most recent avatar), but also in various distortions in which the church itself has been complicit: fornication, adultery, pornography, no-fault divorce, domestic abuse, and the tendency to decouple reproduction from the marital union. So, again, one of the pressing needs in our own day is a rediscovery of the truth and beauty of the biblical teaching on gender and sexuality.
[8] Peter J. Gentry and Stephen J. Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012), 191-208.
[9] On the ethical implications of the image of God, see Joseph Ratzinger, ‘In The Beginning’: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 45. Ratzinger writes, “Human life stands under God’s special protection, because each human being, however wretched or exalted he or she may be, however sick or suffering, however good-for-nothing or important, whether born or unborn, whether incurably ill or radiant with health—each one bears God’s breath in himself or herself, each one is God’s image. This is the deepest reason for the inviolability of human dignity, and upon it is founded ultimately every civilization.”
[10] See, for example, Nancey Murphy, Bodies and Souls or Spirited Bodies? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
[11] For a defense of Cartesian dualism, see Richard Swinburne, The Evolution of the Soul, rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
[12] This saying is often, but probably erroneously, attributed to C. S. Lewis. On the origins of the saying, see http://mereorthodoxy.com/you-dont-have-a-soul-cs-lewis-never-said-it/, accessed September 28, 2018.
[13] Though it has not been without its critics, John Cooper’s biblical and philosophical defense of holistic dualism remains persuasive, in my view. See John W. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989). See also Cooper’s more recent defense in John W. Cooper, “The Current Body-Soul Debate: A Case for Dualistic Holism,” SBJT 13, no. 2 (2009): 32-50.
[14] Baptists, and evangelicals more broadly, can sometimes open themselves to the accusation of a kind of quasi-gnostic unconcern for physical and social flourishing. As the old cliché runs, we can become so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good. But Baptists at their best have avoided the false dichotomy of body and soul, of evangelism and social action. See, for example, the Baptist Faith and Message (2000), Article XV:
All Christians are under obligation to seek to make the will of Christ supreme in our own lives and in human society. Means and methods used for the improvement of society and the establishment of righteousness among men can be truly and permanently helpful only when they are rooted in the regeneration of the individual by the saving grace of God in Jesus Christ. In the spirit of Christ, Christians should oppose racism, every form of greed, selfishness, and vice, and all forms of sexual immorality, including adultery, homosexuality, and pornography. We should work to provide for the orphaned, the needy, the abused, the aged, the helpless, and the sick. We should speak on behalf of the unborn and contend for the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death. Every Christian should seek to bring industry, government, and society as a whole under the sway of the principles of righteousness, truth, and brotherly love. In order to promote these ends Christians should be ready to work with all men of good will in any good cause, always being careful to act in the spirit of love without compromising their loyalty to Christ and His truth.
[15] For an introduction to this debate within evangelicalism, see David Bassinger and Randall Bassinger, eds., Predestination and Free Will: Four Views (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1986). See also Bruce A. Ware, God’s Greater Glory: The Exalted God of Scripture and the Christian Faith (Wheaton: Crossway, 2004), 61-95. For an introduction to the philosophical debate over free will, see John Martin Fischer, Robert Kane, Derk Pereboom, and Manuel Vargas, Four Views on Free Will (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007).
[16] Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question 17.
[17] For a survey and evaluation of these historical options, see Anthony A. Hoekema, Created in God’s Image (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 133-67. For an exegetical defense of the federal headship view, see John Murray, The Imputation of Adam’s Sin (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1959).
[18] Joseph Ratzinger has written movingly on this theme of Christ as True Man. See Ratzinger, ‘In the Beginning’, 57. On Pilate’s proclamation, see Joseph Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, Part 2: Holy Week—From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2011), 199-200.
[19] Hoekema, Created in God’s Image, 73-75.
[20] On the corporate and cosmic dimensions of evangelical soteriology, see Russell D. Moore, The Kingdom of Christ: The New Evangelical Perspective (Wheaton: Crossway, 2004).
[21] Jarvis Williams, One New Man: The Cross and Racial Reconciliation in Pauline Theology (Nashville: B&H, 2010).
[22] Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianizing the Social Order (New York: Macmillan, 1913).
[23] For Mullins own expression of this theme, see Edgar Y. Mullins, Axioms of Religion: A New Interpretation of the Baptist Faith (Philadelphia: Griffith and Rowland, 1908).
[24] On Baptist distinctives, see R. Stanton Norman, The Baptist Way: Distinctives of a Baptist Church (Nashville: B&H, 2005).
[25] In recent years, some Baptists have sought to reverse the individualizing trend in Baptist theology and to reposition the Baptist vision as a “catholic” renewal movement. See especially Steven Harmon, Towards Baptist Catholicity: Essays on Tradition and the Baptist Vision (Milton Keyes: Paternoster, 2006); and Curtis W. Freeman, Contesting Catholicity: Theology for Other Baptists (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2014). While Harmon and Freeman approach these issues from a more “moderate” or “post-liberal” orientation, the Center for Baptist Renewal has brought together a group of more conservative Baptist pastors and scholars to accomplish a similar end, but based on upon somewhat different premises.
[26] Stephen R. Holmes, Baptist Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2012), 95, 101.
[27] For a historical study of Baptist church discipline in the American South, see Gregory A. Wills, Democratic Religion: Freedom, Authority, and Church Discipline in the Baptist South, 1785-1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
[28] See, for example, the rejection of the label “Anabaptist” by the Particular Baptists’ Second London Confession of Faith. Also note well the confession’s articles on oaths and the civil magistrate (Articles 23 and 24, respectively).
[29] For a helpful collection of essays on this theme, see Jason G. Duesing, Thomas White, and Malcom B. Yarnell III, eds., First Freedom: The Beginning and End of Religious Liberty, 2nd ed. (Nashville: B&H, 2016).
[30] Thomas Helwys, The Mistery of Iniquity. Cited in C. Douglas Weaver, In Search of the New Testament Church: The Baptist Story (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2008), 17.
[31] Holmes, Baptist Theology, 123.