A Brief Critique of “The Trail of Blood” by J. M. Carroll

Kevin Bauder has an excellent chapter on Landmarkism in his new Baptist Distinctives and New Testament Church Order,available from your friends at Regular Baptist Press.

And yes, Myron Houghton’s Dallas dissertation is excellent: The Place of Baptism in the Theology of James Robinson Graves (1971).

When I was a junior at BJU in 1980, having made the decision based on personal study that I should leave the Church of the Nazarene because I could no longer affirm that it was possible to lose your salvation, the pastor of the IFB church I was attending gave me a copy of The Trail of Blood to read. Even as an uninformed kid, it was obvious to me that this was bunk history. It actually caused a bit of a mental pause in my progression from Nazarene to Baptist — did I really want to align myself with a group that would accept and even tout such stuff? Ultimately, I had to go with the doctrine I was seeing in the Bible, while hoping that not all Baptists would be as blind or agenda-driven in their history. Though I continued to attend that church until graduation (the pastor was an old friend of my fiance’s), I tried to be careful about the churches my wife and I attended after graduating and moving on. In the main, I think we succeeded; at least no one in our subsequent churches ever recommended The Trail of Blood.

[KevinM]

Kevin Bauder has an excellent chapter on Landmarkism in his new Baptist Distinctives and New Testament Church Order,available from your friends at Regular Baptist Press.

Thank you, Fred Moritz, for linking us to the MBBC Journal article, which was a very useful analysis of the errors of Landmarkism.

Having sat under Dr. Weeks (who Dr. M cited in his second to last paragraph), I’d say there is a “black hole” somewhere in the English Channel that swallowed up any extent evidence of any direct ties between the British Isles and the Continent. As for your second question, I have no idea in the post Cedarholm era.

On a side note, Dr. Moritz cited James M. Graves. One of Graves’ colleagues was James M. Pendleton. Though a Kentuckian, Pendleton was a Unionist and and abolitionist. He moved North in 1862 and later was on the faculty of Crozer Theological Seminary.

[Joel Tetreau]

Fred,

Fantastic work on Landmark-ism. I’d like permission to copy the article and include that in a class I’m teaching here at SVBC in the summer.

Is it right that MBBC and Seminary’s view of Baptist History is a kind of mix between Anabaptist Kinship and English Separatist view? Is there a diversity there on the question of Baptist heritage with the faculty?

Just curious,

Straight Ahead!

jt

Joel T asked:

Is it right that MBBC and Seminary’s view of Baptist History is a kind of mix between Anabaptist Kinship and English Separatist view? Is there a diversity there on the question of Baptist heritage with the faculty?

I’ll email the Maranatha Seminary Dean and ask. I know too little about Baptist history at this point to comment. I’ll let you folks know.

It’s a little split at MBBC…

The seminary as whole is more in line with a blended view of English Separatism with a limited spiritual kinship.

David Saxon, the resident church historian is a strong proponent of the English Separatist position. Oats and Moritz probably are the most sympathetic to the spiritual kinship position in the seminary, though neither would be as meticulously dogmatic on it as Weeks was. Oats and Moritz give more credence to the development of Baptist thought from Anabaptist roots and they recognize some incipient Baptistic-icism in early groups.

I could look at my class notes to confirm….but speculation from imperfect recollection feels more appropriate in this situation.

I provided Rob Fall’s and Joel T’s comments to Dr. Larry Oats at Maranatha. Here is his response:

These are accurate statements. We believe that there have always been churches, since the first in Jerusalem, that have held to the truth of Scripture; these are our spiritual “kin.”

We realize that no one used the term “Baptist” until after the Reformation, so I usually speak of a prereformation biblical movement, the radical reformers in the reformation, and the modern Baptist movement. To argue that there were no “baptistic” churches before the Reformation would argue one of two points - either 1) there were no biblical churches between the rise of Catholicism and the Reformation or if there were then 2) Baptists today are not biblical.

Maranatha has always rejected the Landmark position (Dr. Moritz had an article on that in a recent Maranatha Baptist Theological Journal). While we believe that Christ’s declaration in Matt 16 promised that true churches would always be present, we do not believe that anyone can trace a line of churches directly descending from Jerusalem.

If anyone has more questions, you can just call up the Seminary office and ask.

Sometimes, it’s a matter of siblings. Other times, the kinship is a matter of cousinship (first second, third, fourth, ect.). And sometimes you need a DNA test to see if there is a relationship.

In Dr. Beale’s Baptist History class at BJU, I still remember him telling us that he once investigated The Trail of Blood in his research. He could not find a single original document cited in the book. He made clear to us that there was no basis for many of the claims made in it, and like this critique, pointed out that Baptists today would have some severe problems with many of the groups he claims for ancestry.

A previous pastor of mine would often correct people discussing church history by saying, “But Baptists aren’t Protestants.” A lot of confusion usually ensued. He attributed this teaching to his time at MBBC in the 70’s. In this view, lending credence to the Protestants means: 1) Since they were “protesting” Catholicism, God’s truth was effectively lost in the dark ages, and 2) The Protestants didn’t get everything right, so therefore we can’t claim them as spiritual forbears (Calvin and Luther with sacraments, etc.)

It’s odd that these people are willing to embrace outright heretics in their ancient spiritual lineage, but Calvin and Luther must be avoided at all costs.