Independent Fundamentalist Baptist Successionists
or
How to Make Your Own Jesus
The main problem that I find with Fundamentalism is this: For as much as they claim to believe only in the clearly apparent and essential fundamentals, they tend to spend an inordinate amount of time enveloped in conspiracies.
In fact, they base the entire historicity of their church and its doctrinal stance on conspiracy. They believe that they are not only the true church, but that their church was underground and hidden up until the Reformation, when they finally thought it was safe to come out. They believe that the Catholic Church persecuted the “true” believers to such an extent that the Romanist’s even burned the Fundamentalist’s ancient documents along with its members; thus leaving no trace of their existence. They believe that the Catholic Church decided what would and what wouldn’t make the history books. This, of course, is folly.
Many believers in Baptist Successionism (the belief that Baptist churches can trace their roots back to the time of the Apostles) will go to enormous lengths and stretches of the imagination to prove that their doctrines and practices were present in the early church. This is what is known as the “Trail of Blood” theory. Not only is it completely unhistorical, it makes you question the intellectual credibility of the person proposing the view. Any honest study of both Christian and secular history will find the roots of modern Baptist Churches no earlier than the sixteenth century.
Not only does the Catholic Church dispute the Trail of Blood Theory; every single protestant denomination besides the Baptists denies it as well. In fact, most Baptists dispute it. W. Morgan Patterson, Associate Professor of Church History at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, says that “the proponents of this view have been preachers first, and historians second”.
The Trail of Blood was written in 1931 by J.M. Carroll and published by a Baptist congregation in Lexington, Kentucky. Who would have thought that 1,900 years and thousands of miles from the time and events of the New Testament, the truth would finally come out? This alone makes the scenario unlikely. The 56-page booklet goes to incredible lengths to deny the historicity and establishment of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, all the while rewriting and reinventing history to try and prove an apostolic version of modern Baptist beliefs.
Could there have been “Bible Only-Christians” in the time of the Apostles? The answer is an emphatic “no”. There wasn’t even a bible (New Testament) for them to rely on! Yet Mr. Carroll proposes just that, claiming that the true church was founded on the doctrines of Scripture; and Scripture only.
He claims that the believer’s private interpretation of the bible is the sole authority for every Christian. Then he espouses his own personal, infallible interpretation of the Scriptures, claiming to teach exactly what the original Christian communities taught. The same communities that did not even posses a bible, and even if they had one the literacy rate was almost nonexistent! On page 8 of the booklet, Carroll claims that by using the bible alone he came to the revelation that the church should be “a government of the people, by the people, and for the people”; which, strangely enough, did not come from the bible, but from President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address!
The complete lack of Baptist Church history prior to the Reformation is blamed on the lie that the Catholic Church, which undeniably was present in the Apostolic age, destroyed all documentation while in the process of seeking down and killing the “true” believers. I can show you many faithful and honest Christians of that age who were martyred for their faith, and every single one of them were Catholics who held to the Catholic Church’s teachings.
Carroll claims that the modern Baptist churches can trace their lineage back through many ancient heretical sects who held beliefs that he consider to be “Baptistic”. He sites such sects as the Albigenses, Paulicans, Henricians, and several others as being ancient Baptists. Did he not realize the heresies that each of these sects taught? Do modern Baptists really wish to be linked to these Heretics? Some of these groups taught that Jesus was an angel with a fake body because all flesh was intrinsically evil and that the resurrection was only allegorical. Others taught that the New Testament God was a different God from that of the Old Testament because the new God was good and the Old Testament God was evil. They all denied the deity of Christ because God could not assume human (evil) form. If the Baptist faith truly wishes to be linked with such dualism and Gnosticism it’s fine by me. Another group with which Baptist Successionists love to claim historical ties to are the Waldenses. However the Wadenses taught the perpetual virginity of Mary, infant baptism, sacraments, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and many other specifically Catholic beliefs. By claiming historical ties with any of the above heresies that Baptist Successionist is clearly grasping at straws.
James McGoldrick, a Baptist Professor of History at Cedarville College wrote the following in a book entitled “Baptist Successionism: A Crucial Question in Baptist History”. “Perhaps no other major body of professing Christians has had as much difficulty in discerning it’s historical roots as have the Baptists. A survey of conflicting opinions might lead a perspective observer to conclude that Baptists suffer from an identity crisis. Many Baptists object vehemently and argue that their history can be traced across the centuries to New Testament times. Some Baptists deny categorically that they are Protestants and that the history of their churches is related to the success of the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. Those who reject the Protestant character and Reformation origins of the Baptists usually maintain a view of church history sometimes called ‘Baptist Successionism’… enhanced enormously by a booklet entitled The Trail of Blood.”
McGoldrick was once a proponent of the Baptist Successionism view, however, in the same book he writes, “Extensive graduate study and independent investigation of church history has, however, convinced [me] that the view [I] once held so dear has not been, and cannot be, verified. On the contrary, surviving primary documents render the successionist view untenable. Although free church groups in ancient and medieval times sometimes promoted doctrines and practices agreeable to modern Baptists, when judged by standards now acknowledged as baptistic, not one of them merits recognition as a Baptist church. Baptists arose in the seventeenth century in Holland and England. They are Protestants, heirs of the Reformers.”
Another Professor of Church History, Leon McBeth, of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary writes in the Baptist Heritage, “Are Baptists Protestants? Whether one takes the shortcut answer, or goes into lengthy explanation, the answer is the same: Yes. Such important Reformation doctrines as justification by faith, the authority of Scripture, and the priesthood of believers show up primarily in Baptist theology. Further, the evidence shows that Baptists originated out of English Separatism, certainly a part of the Protestant Reformation. Even if one assumes Anabaptist influence, the Anabaptists themselves were a Reformation people. The tendency to deny that Baptists are Protestants grows out of a faulty view of history, namely that Baptist churches have existed in every century and thus antedate the Reformation.”
Is it any wonder that during my 25 years as a Baptist I never heard the first mention of the words “history” and “church” together? Of course not! The Baptist church and her peculiarly post-Reformation teachings are just that, post Reformation. Not only did they deny Catholicism, they also denied most of the teachings of Luther, Calvin, and the other reformers.
The Baptist church is a schism from a schism from a schism. Baptists are several times removed from the Reformation. Their founders could not find a Jesus to suit them, and so they created their own. Baptist history begins in the year 1608 with a man named John Smyth, a puritan exile from Christ’s College in Cambridge.
Now I pose a question: If the Baptist church was founded in 1608 by a man without any ties to the original Church, or the Apostles, is it even remotely possible that they teach sound doctrine? No, it isn’t. The Baptist church bases its doctrine on the bible alone, claiming to pay absolutely to mind whatsoever to the teachings of the original church, the creeds, the councils, or the Church Fathers. What’s more, they base their entire doctrine on their “personal” interpretation of the Holy Scripture. Is God leading Baptists to one view of Scripture and the other Protestants, who claim the bible as their sole authority, in another? Are Baptists right and every other Protestant church wrong? Someone must be right, someone must be wrong. The onus lies on the Baptists to prove their position. History, Sacred Tradition, the Early Church Fathers, the Councils, and over 2,000 years of Christianity prove that the Baptists teach manmade doctrines, and practice traditions of men, which the Scriptures clearly warn us about. Can they expect to teach in continuity with the original Apostles when they have no link with them? Can any Protestant denomination? If so, which one of the 33,000 plus denominations has it right?
It has been joked that Fundamentalists are “light on FUN, and heavy on MENTAL”, of course that is slander and only a joke, but this stereotype made its way into many peoples minds because of the negative implications of modern Fundamentalists. The problem that many have with Fundamentalists isn’t in what they affirm, it is in what they deny. Theirs is a Christianity stripped of its historical integrity, of its very roots, which is why it is slowly withering toward it’s death.
