Theology Thursday - Where Do Baptists Come From?

In 1867, Pastor R.J.W. Buckland delivered a conference lecture on Baptist history, which was later re-produced in the famous Madison Avenue Lectures (1867). Buckland later became a Professor at Rochester Theological Seminary and died a relatively young man, aged 48, in 1877. One contemporary obituary damned him with rather faint praise when it remarked he was “by no means a brilliant orator,” then hastened to add he was a beloved and admired member of the faculty.

In this short excerpt from his lecture,¹ Buckland presents a successionist (or Old Landmark) view of Baptist origins.

Have Baptists then a history?

I answer—if the Faith once delivered to the saints has a perpetuity and a history, so that the gates of hell, however they have seemed to prevail, yet have not prevailed against it—then Baptists, who make that Faith their law, have a history.

If a people holding from age to age these fundamental doctrines—that the Bible is the supreme law of Christians; that personal faith in Christ gives salvation; that baptism in water is the covenant of a believer with his Saviour; while infant baptism, and all other commandments of men, are not to rule Christ’s followers; if such a people are Baptists, then Baptists have a history.

If the principle of Vincentius - quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus - is correct, and that doctrine which has been held always, everywhere, and by all, is vindicated as truth in history, then are the principles of Baptists the great principles of history. For all acknowledge that this maxim is not to be taken of the whole body of belief, but of that which is fundamental; not of the prevalent, but of the underlying, the unchanging, and unchangeable.

And a personal faith in the Lord Jesus gives salvation—all ages of church history being the judges. The baptism of a believer in water is obedience to Christ’s law; the gathering of baptized believers together in church relations, to be ruled by the word of God, and to maintain Christ’s ordinances, is his command—all ages of church history being the judges. A people holding such principles, so far from being unhistorical, must be recognized as resting on the fundamental principles of historic truth.

Oftentimes they have been a remnant, but so was God’s Israel of old. Oftentimes they have been left alone in the earth, while the dominant and the prevalent faith of the world was all against them, but so were God’s churches in the days of Elijah.

Oftentimes they have been a hidden people; but so was God’s church when driven in prophetic vision into the wilderness. And so they have a history, the word of God being judge.

It is the history of the Church of God, in the light of those great principles which were made essential to it in the New Testament, its charter and constitution.

It is the history of the church as Jesus Christ organized and completed it, and gave it, by his Holy Spirit, an undying vitality, and an incorruptible character, to leaven and change all ages, but not to be changed by them.

It is the history of the New Testament faith, and life, and law, and power; and of those who maintained these; embracing the perversion of these, and the consequences of such perversion; the perpetuation of these, and the Divine might which perpetuated them; the triumph of these, and of the people who triumphed through them.

The New Testament law gives us the constitution of the church complete and perfect, and the New Testament prophecies give us the outline of its entire career. From that divine foundation we cannot turn aside. If we should, we must accept the authority of a traditional faith, and a worldly development; and we should find ourselves resting on the grand principle of the papal church, while all its errors would follow in logical order; or, rebelling against papal authority without the word of God to guide us, we must yield to the spirit of a worldly philosophy, and be led into the waste of scepticism, rationalism, and moral death.

Between these two issues choice must be made. Adopting God’s word for our law, we have the Baptist Church and its history. Adopting the authority of human tradition, we have the Church of Rome and its history, with its inevitable reaction from absolutism into rationalism.

No other alternative is left us.

To God’s word then we turn, and learn the founding and organizing of that body of Christ, whose history through the ages is to be the fullness of him who filleth all in all. The New Testament gives us the church complete. The stone cut out of the mountain without hands, needs no modern workman’s tool to add an after-finish of higher beauty.

The New Covenant, written in the hearts of a people who are each personally taught of God, and have each a living faith, and who, from the least of them to the greatest, all know the Lord, has been once divinely sealed, and no man need amend or improve it. Surely it is enough to make this our model, and live and walk and act in Christ’s church, as he himself lived and taught with his apostles. If not, who will show us a more excellent way?

The first or formative period of Church History is that of the Apostolic Church.

In this, Christ is the central figure, its head and life and light. In his advent, the fullness of time was come, and the kingdom of heaven set up. By him, the nucleus of the church was gathered and fed and taught its laws and ordinances were given it by himself. By his atoning blood, he cemented its structure, and fixed its foundations deep on the everlasting love and purpose of God.

The spiritual power which should be its means of growth was imparted to it by him; and all its order and symmetry were unfolded by inspired apostles, guided by the Holy Spirit, so that when the labors of the apostles were ended, Christ’s church was complete in every essential requirement for all time. Then he sealed up its divine charter, never to be added to nor taken from, and sent it forth upon its earthly mission. And no age nor exigency has shown the need of a new feature in its constitution, or shape, or spirit, which the church had not when the volume of inspiration closed.

Thus the history of the Apostolic Church is, in no true sense, rudimentary or incomplete, and after ages have added literally nothing to the church, except that, by its own inherent living, power, and growth, it spreads more and more widely to fill the world.

This apostolic period shows us, in the life and labors of Christ and his apostles, the source and organic development of the church: in their teachings and writings, its inner life, and the development of its doctrine; while lastly, in their prophecies, we have given to us the errors and corruptions which should assail it, and an outline of those mighty events which were to mark its progress through time, and a glimpse of the glories to which it should at last arrive.

Was the Apostolic Church Baptist?

I reply that as regards modern names, sects, and divisions, there were none. Christ’s seamless mantle had not yet been rent in twain. But the reality of a perfect Baptist church was there; and ever since have our churches made it their pattern, and their first obligation is to conform to this God-given ensample.