Presbyterians and Baptists have a long history of working together. As is God’s way, any new endeavour must take the past into account but not be bound by it. This is a guest post by my friend Matt Carpenter.

The questions surrounding the origins and necessity of denominations have been discussed at great length and I don’t intend on bringing them up here. But it doesn’t mean we have a license to continue without giving it another thought. This isn’t another call for lip-quivering ecumenism. Fellow soldiers in God’s army can learn a lot from one another and the two groups I currently have in mind are Baptists and Presbyterians. Traditionally they have shared a lot in common.

In 1642, Oliver Cromwell led a group of mostly Puritans, Presbyterians, and Baptists against the army of King Charles I. Regardless of one’s opinion of this war, it’s not an exaggeration to say they banded together to gain religious freedom for many in England.

Two years later, Presbyterians drew up the Westminster Confession of Faith, a document they believed declared the doctrines of the Reformers, Church fathers, and apostles. In 1689, the Baptists of London drew up a document that declared their faith. With a few exceptions it was taken directly from the Westminster Confession. This was no accident, for they, “have no itch to clog religion with new words, but do readily acquiesce in that form of sound words which hath been, in consent with the Holy Scriptures, used by others before us; hereby declaring, before God, angels, and men, our hearty agreement with them in that wholesome Protestant doctrine which, with so clear evidence of Scriptures, they have asserted.” [1] In other words, they explicitly wanted to express their commonality with the Presbyterians (among others) in primary doctrinal truth.

A little over one-hundred years later, Presbyterians and Baptists in the North American colonies again united against the threat of King George III sending an Anglican Bishop to preside over the colonies. None other than John Adams called this the first spark in the American Revolution. [2] Most of the soldiers in the continental army were Presbyterians and Baptists. What is it that links these two groups together, and has done so for hundreds of years? [3]

The first common conviction is the sovereignty of God. As has already been noted, the London Confession reads almost exactly similar to the Westminster Confession when it speaks of God’s sovereignty in all of life, including salvation. In the 1830’s a segment of Baptists and Presbyterians stood against the forces of liberalism that wanted assert man’s free-will over the sovereignty of God.

Another link is the stance against revivalism during the Second Great Awakening. For the Presbyterians the split was among those who supported the “new measures” of Charles Finney (altar calls, anxious benches, etc.) and those who opposed the emotionalism fanned by some ministers. It resulted in the expulsion of 500 ministers and 550 churches. [4] There was also a split among the Baptists in 1832 who also registered their opposition to the “new measures” of revivalist preachers.

A third area of similarity is the belief in the regulative principle (only God’s word can declare what should go on in worship). Baptists like Charles Spurgeon and Benjamin Keach, along with Presbyterians R.L. Dabney and John Murray taught this. Although the principle is interpreted differently among many, it is still held in some form by conservatives of both denominations.

Although there are many other similarities that could be mentioned, a final common link is the emphasis of the local church. In both the Westminster and London Baptist Confessions, chapter 26, section 1 (referring to the church), says: “Saints by profession, are bound to maintain an holy fellowship and communion in the worship of God, and in performing such other spiritual services as tend to their mutual edification; …” (emphasis mine). The authors of these statements realized that this can be done only in the context of the local church.

In addition to these areas there are many more we could observe. But suffice to say, sovereign-grace Baptists and Presbyterians have more in common doctrinally than any other groups.

After understanding the historical similarities between Baptists and Presbyterians, we should also understand that there are things we can learn from one another. This requires us to forgo our denominational arrogance. Once we admit that others might see things that we miss, here are some things we can learn from one another.

The first area we can learn is in evangelism. Calvinistic Baptists were known at one time for their evangelistic zeal. They took the message to the frontier and evangelized Indians, white settlers, and anyone else who crossed their path. The Baptist preacher Isaac McCoy was called the apostle to the Indians. Presbyterians Marcus Whitman and Samuel Kirkland were also known for taking the gospel to the Great Plains.

For the church to grow we can’t just rely on other Christians leaving their churches and joining ours; we must be willing to proclaim the word of God to dry bones and tell them to live. We must believe, just like they did, that God will call His elect and they will believe when the gospel is preached.

We can also learn the importance of applying the Word of God to everything. One of the fallacies of modern thought is that the Bible is only useful in the religious sphere, that is to say, at church and in between your ears. But Jesus is Lord over everything, not just our souls. Because His lordship extends to all things our calling is to cast down every thought and stronghold that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. This is one place we as Baptists can learn from our Presbyterian brethren.

R.L. Dabney spoke of the necessity of understanding science from the perspective of Scripture. In his Systematic Theology he articulates why a literal reading of Genesis 1 is important, and he did it in the face of the growing popularity Darwinism. One quote from him should suffice. “The position to which they [Darwinists] consign God’s word is that of a handmaid, dependent for the validity of the construction to be put upon its words, on their (the scientists’) permission. Now this we boldly assert, is intrinsic rationalism… exalting the conclusions of the human understanding over the sure word of prophecy.” [5]

And who could overlook the ministries of men like Cornelius Van Til and Gordon Clark who used the sword of God’s Word to dispel humanistic philosophy. And when it comes to law, many are familiar with R.J. Rushdoony and the work he’s done with biblical law, but another man who believed in applying God’s law when possible might surprise you: the Baptist theologian John Gill. In his Body of Doctoral Divinity, Gill said:

“And they are, certainly, the best constituted and regulated governments that come nearest to the commonwealth of Israel, and the civil laws of it, which are of the kind last described… And whereas the commonwealth of Israel was governed by these laws for many hundreds of years, and needed no other in their civil polity, when, in such a course of time, every case that ordinarily happens, must arise, and be brought into a court of judicature; I cannot but be of opinion, that a digest of civil laws might be made out of the Bible, the law of the Lord that is perfect, either as lying in express words in it, or to be deduced by the analogy of things and cases, and by just consequence, as would be sufficient for the government of any nation.”

Suffice to say, these men believed in applying God’s word to everything. If we don’t give the church and those outside the church a vision for life under the Lordship of Christ, they will construct their own vision with whatever materials the world makes available to them.

Another lesson we can learn from our brothers in the past is the need for the church to not forsake its calling to the world. Early Baptists did a great job critiquing the world’s attempts to usurp the roles of the church. [6] But you can’t beat something with nothing. We should know what role the church should play in society, but that’s not enough.

The best way to protect the roles of the church is to step up and begin ministry. Do you visit the orphans and widows, or leave it to the government? Does the local church create tracts and literature or do we leave it to the para-church ministries? These are small steps but we must begin somewhere. Charles Spurgeon operated orphanages, shelters, and food kitchens. When Thomas Chalmers was pastoring in Scotland, the number of poor dramatically decreased because of the local ministries developed. The modern church has surrendered her calling to the state and secular groups. We can’t despair of the position we’re in; we must start wherever we are and be faithful right here.

Last but not least I hope we can learn of the importance of the unity of believers. In England, sovereign grace Baptists were known for being much more open in fellowship than the General Baptists. [7] Charles Hodge and other Presbyterians wrote articles that called for greater fellowship with the saints.

In America, this was one area in which all have struggled. We have long memories and if “your people” did something to “my people” we won’t easily forget it. No one is immune to the disease of disharmony among saints. As I said earlier, those who hold to the Westminster and London Confessions have more in common with one another than they do with some in their own denomination.

Do we really believe iron sharpens iron? Then why do we only listen to those who are shaped in a similar way to ourselves? Baptists have weaknesses; Presbyterians have weaknesses and neither will gain strength without changing our spiritual exercise. This means talking, praying, listening to, and fellowshipping with those outside our local church or denomination. You can say, “I love them.” But how do you practice it? Do we foster relationships with churches which are different from us?

There are two different beliefs Christians hold about the world. One says we should remove ourselves from others and remain as pure as possible while we wait for Jesus to come. This view naturally lends itself to divisions among brethren. The other view says that we are called to manifest the reign of Christ in the world and live as spiritual warriors. This view requires us to fight alongside those who serve the same Lord but differ with us on some matters.

God has called us to grow up into a new man. We can’t return to the “good old days”, whatever those were; we must go on to maturity and this requires us to fight next to those who proclaim the same gospel. It’s time to go to war together again, but this time not with carnal weapons. Our enemy is spiritual and we must fight him with God’s weapons in the power of the Holy Spirit. Victory will not be granted to Baptists or Presbyterians, Methodists or Pentecostals. It will only be granted to the body of Christ, the same body which He will present as a glorious kingdom to His Father on the last day.

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[1] Introduction to the London Confession of Faith, 1689
[2] Religion and the American presidency: George Washington to George W. Bush, pg. 7, by Gastón Espinosa
[3] In referring to Presbyterians and Baptists, I’m speaking of Presbyterians who held to the Westminster standards and the Baptists who held to the London Confession of 1689, not just anyone who calls himself by one of those two names.
[4] Crossed Fingers, p. 119.
[5] Dangerous Pseudoscience, The Christian Observer.
[6] The Black Rock Address, 1832.
[7] A History of the Baptists, Robert Torbert.

“Screw the truth into men’s minds.” – Richard Baxter

Doug Wilson, (in an interview a while back concerning Collision, I think), spoke about “copiousness.” It is the Christian’s practice of picking up striking thoughts and illustrations from reading, and from life, for future use. He advocates keeping a Commonplace book to jot things down.

“Keep a commonplace book. Write down any notable phrases that occur to you, or that you have come across. If it is one that you have found in another writer, and it is striking, then quote it, as the fellow said, or modify it to make it yours. If Chandler said that a guy had a cleft chin you could hide a marble in, that should come in useful sometime. If Wodehouse said somebody had an accent you could turn handsprings on, then he might have been talking about Jennifer Nettles of Sugarland. Tinker with stuff. Get your fingerprints on it.” [1]

He describes an incident that makes this book (or blog or mental practice) sound more like keeping caches of ammunition near at hand.

“When you collect phrases, points, metaphors, and whatnot in this way, you are, as Cicero used to put it, loaded for bear. By linking “loaded for bear” up with Cicero, incidentally, I am providing another example of the previous point. But this last point is an important part of what the ancient rhetoricians called copiousness.

One time G.K. Chesterton, the rolypologist, was patted on the stomach by his adversary, George Bernard Shaw, a beanpole of an infidel, and was asked what they were going to name the baby. Chesterton replied immediately that if it was a boy, John, if a girl, then Mary. But if it turned out to only be gas, they were going to name it George Bernard Shaw. Now we hear that story and marvel at his amazing quickness. And it may well have been such, a prodigy of the moment. But I also wouldn’t be a bit surprised to find out that Chesterton had that particular pistol loaded beforehand, and concealed on his person. When copiousness is active, you not only know how to respond in the moment, but you can also see the moment coming, and prepare for it beforehand.

Your commonplace book is just a staging area. You are collecting things in order use them, to get them into your mind and heart, and thence into your writing.” [2]

The writer’s life is a scavenger’s life. This should go also for pastors, teachers, dads and mums, and in fact any Christian: all our ministry is didactic and apologetic, discipleship and witness.

But then, isn’t this how God has always worked? What amazes me is our failure to recognize this practice in the wisdom literature and the prophets. The guns were loaded, the pumps were primed, well before they fired and gushed. All the writers had been young Timothys waiting for Paul to join the dots with the bloody stylus of the Spirit.

Jordan says Ecclesiastes is a meditation on the Feast of Tabernacles, ruminating on texts from Deuteronomy. [3] We won’t believe that without a footnote. How obtuse.

What about Isaiah’s reference to the wolf and lamb lying down together? The Restoration Covenant was a new ark, and the Gentiles submitted to Mordecai. [4] Peter’s trance predicted exactly the same thing: a peaceful, floating Covenant zoo resting on the mountain of God. And the exiles crossing the river dryshod? It was also a new conquest of the Land, as we see in Esther. That’s all Isaiah means, and the structure of the passage proves it.

Or Hebrews’ reference to Jeremiah’s New Covenant with Israel and Judah? Fulfilled in the Restoration. [5] It is simply a literary allusion to a similar process in rejoining the two sticks of Jew and Gentile through another fiery furnace.

Biblical copiousness is one thing we love about Spurgeon. The Bible was his muse. The biblical texts are high walls but they are not lonely, cold, disjointed bricks. Spurgeon preached from the fiery turrets of inspired literature with apparent ease. Yet uninspired, banal-retentive modern boffins do dog paddle in a moat of footnotes and call it scholarship. They classify everything with abstract nouns, squabble and nitpick over their own definitions and disappear in an inky cloud of superior irrelevance. To these illiterati, the “apostolic hermeneutic” is a marvel and a mystery, an impenetrable keep, when it is simply biblical copiousness. Is it any wonder they can make no sense of the details of the Revelation? Its cinematic Covenantal ironies are lost on them. Jesus and His prophets are far cleverer — and funnier — than Chesterton and Wodehouse. But we don’t get the jokes. [6]

Jesus created a world where everything is related Covenantally; every physical object is also mirror and metaphor and lyric and rant; every Covenant-historical event is a self-referential innovation. He is the Master of Allusion, and we, as we read the Bible, are to be His commonplace books.

“…always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.”
(1 Peter 3:15)

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[1] Doug Wilson, Seven Basic & Brief Pointers for Writers.
[2] Doug Wilson, Uncommon Commonplaces.
[3] See How To Read The Bible.
[4] See The Wolf and the Lamb.
[5] See Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog.
[6] See Hermeneutics of Humour and Menu for the Dirty Birds.

I’m sure I’ve seen the same look in Doug Wilson’s eyes.

The Bible and only the Bible is the ultimate and infallible spiritual authority in the lives of believers. We have fought a series of skirmishes over the infallibility of Scripture.

But, who today believes as Calvin did? Who today treats the Bible as Calvin did? Who today thinks that the Bible opened in the pulpit is a lit stick of dynamite, one that mere mortals are ordained to just throw out into the world? How many preachers have sermons on file that they would not dare to preach without purchasing some extra life insurance first?

More preachers ought to ascend into the pulpit with the look that Wylie Coyote had on his face when he was just handed the anvil.

Spurgeon used to walk up the stairs to his pulpit, and every step he would say “I believe in the Holy Spirit”, “I believe in the Holy Spirit”…Now why was this? Is this because Spurgeon had butterflies? Why is Saint Paul after many years in ministry asking believers of his day to pray for boldness so that he could preach the Word? Why his he praying for boldness? It is not because Paul struggled with stage fright. That’s not why. He knew what happened when he preached the Word.

There was an Anglican cleric who said famously, “you know wherever the Apostle Paul went, there was either a revival or a riot. Everywhere I go they serve tea.”

-Douglas Wilson, from his talk, The Sacred Script in the Theater of God, given at the 2009 Desiring God National Conference. Thanks to Passion For Preaching blog.

“I think relevance in preaching hangs very little on watching movies, and I think that much exposure to sensuality, banality, and God-absent entertainment does more to deaden our capacities for joy in Jesus than it does to make us spiritually powerful in the lives of the living dead. Sources of spiritual power—which are what we desperately need—are not in the cinema. You will not want your biographer to write: Prick him and he bleeds movies.” [1]

I agree fully that we should be reviewing and assessing popular culture, and using elements of it that are familiar to people to reach them with the gospel. Jesus apparently refers to Prometheus in his comment to Saul about kicking against the goads! See here.

But, I can only think of a handful of preachers, let alone Christians, who, when pricked, bleed Bible. Charles Spurgeon and James Jordan come to mind. All the others are from earlier history.

Peter Leithart says we desperately need to “speak Bible.” We need to read and think Bible, and see the world—and popular culture—with Bible eyes first.

Otherwise, our efforts at relevance make us a white cat in a snow storm.

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[1]  John Piper, Why I Don’t Have a Television and Rarely Go to Movies.

Question: If your conversation were a blog, what would your tag cloud contain?

“And you teachers, go on teaching the young the ways of God. In these days the State is giving them secular instruction all the day long, six days in the week; and religious teaching is greatly needed to balance it, or we shall soon become a nation of infidels.”

– C. H. Spurgeon (1834-1892)

“He is great upon the ten toes of the beast, the four faces of the cherubim, the mystical meaning of badgers’ skins, and the typical bearings of the staves of the ark, and the windows of Solomon’s temple: but the sins of business men, the temptations of the times, and the needs of the age, he scarcely ever touches upon. Such preaching reminds me of a lion engaged in mouse-hunting, or a man-of-war cruising after a lost water-butt.”*

That’s a fair comment if study of symbols becomes an end in itself, but they were intended to convey crucial information. Surely the symbolic passages have more authority than our own anecdotes when trying to communicate abstract truth? There is nothing in Revelation that isn’t also elsewhere in the New Testament. It was not intended to be an isolated book, and the better it is understood, the more powerfully it can be incorporated into our teaching and preaching.

*Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 76.

I’ve appreciated reading the sermons of 19th-century Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon over the years, and have quoted him on my blog a number of times (not as much as the Pyromaniacs, but still a bit).

So when I came down with the flu and found myself in bed for three days straight, I thought it would be encouraging to pick up Arnold Dallimore’s short, well-researched biography of the man himself. Sick Calvinists of the world, unite. Spurgeon, so it happens, was a lot sicker than me for most of his life. He was seriously and often crippingly and painfully ill, both mentally (with depression) and physically, from his mid-30s until his death from illnesses at age 57. The same went for his wife Susannah who, because of chronic illness, was more often than not unable to attend the meetings where he preached.

If you haven’t ever read any Spurgeon, do yourself a favour and pick up a book of his sermons where you can, or click through on some of the links in the first paragraph of this post to get just a small taste for his straight-talking, gospel-centred style. Of his Calvinism, Dallimore quotes him (p. 67 of my 1991 Banner of Truth edition) saying

We only use the term ‘Calvinism’ for shortness. That doctrine we call ‘Calvinism’ did not spring from Calvin; we believe that it sprang from the great founder of all truth.

Spurgeon never received any formal theological training, although he’d begun reading Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress and Foxe’s Book of Martyrs from the age of six, and progressed on to later Puritan writers such as John Owen and Richard Sibbes by the time he was 10.

Here are some other facts and figures I picked up on the way:

• His father and his father’s father were ministers, but he himself was converted through a poorly preached sermon by a layman in another church at the age of 15. Spurgeon at the time said,

Now it is well that preachers be instructed, but this man was really stupid. He was obliged to stick to his text, for the simple reason that he had little else to say. The text was ‘Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.’

There was, I thought, a glimmer of hope for me in that text.

It was enough, it turns out, for Spurgeon to put his trust in Jesus.

• He became pastor of Waterbeach Baptist church at age 17.
• He next became pastor at the London church (which became the Metropolitan Tabernacle) from age 19 until his death at age 57. By age 20-21, he was preaching regularly to 2000 people (before microphones and the electric light had been invented).
• He married Susannah at age 21, and had twin sons who later followed him into ministry.
• When asked for the secret of his ‘ success’, he replied “My people pray for me” (p. 49). He not only said it, but appeared to believe it.
• He was known in London for his pastoral visits to the houses of people dying during the cholera epidemic of the 1850s (cholera being, at the time, untreatable, and of unknown cause).
• He had a weekly time set aside to meet individually with people who wanted to become church members because they had become Christians. In this way, he came to know at least 6000 church members by name, together with knowing how they had come to receive Jesus as Lord and Saviour.
• Nevertheless, he was bitterly opposed by many newspaper editors, both secular and religious. His wife kept a scrapbook of such opposition, and filled a huge volume with clippings, and produced a framed wall text quoting Matthew 5:11-12.
• He preached at Crystal Palace at a service of National Humiliation over the Indian Mutiny of 1857. The size of the crowd, counted by turnstile, was 23,654.
• He began and ran a pastor’s college offering a two year course. (For a sample of what he taught them, see Lectures to my Students .)
• By 1866, his trainees had begun 18 new churches in London alone.
• His largest work was his seven-volume commentary on the Psalms, The Treasury of David. It sold 148,000 copies during Spurgeon’s lifetime.
• He began a door-to-door book-and-tract-sellers (colporteurs) organisation to sell Bibles, as well as books, magazines and tracts produced by him. In the year 1878 alone, 94 colporteurs made 926,290 home visits. Their aim was not merely to sell books, but to talk about spiritual questions with the people they met.
• When the Metropolitan Tabernacle was under repair in 1867, the church hired the Agricultural Hall in another part of London for regular meetings. 20,000 turned up to hear him preach on a regular basis.
• Most weeks, and as just a sample of some of his regular duties, Spurgeon wrote, delivered and published a weekly sermon; looked after an orphanage, a pastor’s college and an almshouse; read and responded personally to 500 letters; and preached up to 10 times in churches that he had started.
• Susannah Spurgeon became permanently semi-invalid after a serious illness. Although not able to attend church frequently, she found that she was able to begin and maintain a book fund to buy and supply free books for poor pastors, including books from Spurgeon and several Puritan writers. She spoke of sending books to missionaries in “Patna, Bengal, Ceylon, Transvaal, Samoa, China, Oregon, Jamaica, Kir Moab, India, Trinidad, Equatorial Africa, Russia, Natal, Canada, the Congo, Buenos Aires, Cayman, Damascus, Madrid, Lagos and Timbuctoo”.
• The Metropolitan Tabernacle was a place of constant activity, open from 7 in the morning until 11 at night seven days a week, hosting spiritually focused or welfare programmes run by people who lived and worked in the area.
• The busyness of the building is not surprising, since Spurgeon began and maintained 65 different institutions, ranging from welfare organizations through to mission organizations, preacher training colleges, and organizations for the distribution of literature. As well as a monthly magazine and many tracts, Spurgeon wrote 140 books.
• For his work on the book Commenting and Commentaries, he read 3-4000 volumes and chose 1437 of them to express an opinion on.
• From 1870, Spurgeon began the practice of, once every three months, asking all Metropolitan Tabernacle members to stay away from church the following Sunday evening in order to allow unconverted people to attend. The members co-operated, yet the Tabernacle was invariably fuller on those Sundays.
• In 1884, at Spurgeon’s Jubilee celebration, Deacon Olney of the Metropolitan Tabernacle claimed that on Sunday evenings, there were 1000 members of the Tabernacle regularly involved in conducting meetings outside the Tabernacle.

I could go on.

I choose not to.

Despite what may appear, the book is not a hagiography, and records with disappointment Spurgeon’s moderate drinking, smoking and use of a church fete to raise money for the completion (debt free) of the Metropolitan Tabernacle.

I have to trust to God’s providence that this was the right book for me to read while I was lying sick in bed over the last four days or so. But let me say that Spurgeon’s attitude to his own labours do not fit easily with our recommendations in Going the Distance, which we put out for the help of those in long-term ministry.

In contrast, Spurgeon wrote in 1876:

If I have any message to give from my own bed of sickness it would be this—if you do not wish to be full of regrets when you are obliged to lie still, work while you can. If you desire to make a sick bed as soft as it can be, do not stuff it with the mournful reflection that you wasted time while you were in health and strength. People said to me years ago, “You will break your constitution down with preaching ten times a week,” and the like. Well, if I have done so, I am glad of it. I would do the same again. If I had fifty constitutions I would rejoice to break them down in the service of the Lord Jesus Christ. You young men that are strong, overcome the wicked one and fight for the Lord while you can. You will never regret having done all that lies in you for our blessed Lord and Master. Crowd as much as you can into every day, and postpone no work till to-morrow. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.” (Ecc 9:10).

(From For the Sick and Afflicted.)

My uncomfortable feeling is that Spurgeon’s advice to the sick minister is rather closer to that of the Apostle Paul than the advice that I would offer. What do others think?