Baptist Foundations: Church Government for an Anti-Institutional Age, ed. Mark Dever and Jonathan Leeman. Nashville: B&H, 2015. xxiv + 397 pp. $44.99.
The study of Baptist polity has been greatly enriched in the past fifteen years thanks to a series of publications from the folks at 9Marks under the capable leadership of Mark Dever, senior pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC. When Dever took the leadership at Capitol Hill, he encountered a church with a very weak ecclesiology and a bloated membership roll of inactive members. He led the congregation to regroup and renew its commitment to a membership covenant and subsequently purged the roll of inactive members via church discipline. His experience led to the inauguration of the 9Marks ministry and to the numerous publications about Baptist church life for which he has become known.
This current title continues that tradition with a detailed study of Baptist ecclesiology written from a Reformed point of view. The book consists of nineteen essays written by a strong lineup of eleven, mostly Southern Baptist authors, the lone exception being Canadian Baptist Kirk Wellum, principal of Toronto Baptist Seminary. The work covers the standard Baptist views on congregationalism, the ordinances,
membership and disciplines, elders and deacons, and interchurch relations. Those who have followed Dever’s ministry will recognize familiar themes within these pages. Much space is given to the elder-led model of Baptist churches as well as to church discipline, perhaps his two most notable emphases. Moreover, the book makes a strong argument for congregationalism within a Reformed framework, a position that many Reformed Christians find incongruous with Reformed theology. Some argue that one cannot be Reformed in soteriology unless one is also Reformed in ecclesiology—that is, unless one is also a Presbyterian.
Dever and his associates seek to disabuse the reader of this notion and actually argue that Baptist ecclesiology is a better outworking of a Reformed hermeneutic. This argument commences with an essay by Michael Haykin who provides the book with a historical introduction to congregationalism, demonstrating its Reformed French and English heritage. Then theologians Steve and Kirk Wellum make a case for congregationalism using strong covenant theology language. The church “is part of the one people of God, and one plan of redemption centered in Christ” (50); the church “is God’s new covenant community” (66). Again and again in the early part of the book the language of covenant theology undergirds the argument. In dealing with baptism, a critical component of the covenantal system via infant baptism that brings the child of a believer under covenant protection, Tom Schreiner insists that “the covenant sign should not be given to infants because it is limited to those who follow Jesus in faith and discipleship” (93). Because the “new covenant is not theocratic but spiritual,” he denies the connection between circumcision and baptism (101). Shawn Wright tackles the thorny problem for covenantal Baptists—the continuity of the one people of God across the covenants, “a foundational argument for paedobaptism” (115). His solution is to argue, contra Reformed paedo-baptists, “that the nature of the covenant community has changed with the inauguration of the new covenant” (119). “Baptism signifies that Jesus has inaugurated his kingdom in this world; the new covenant has dawned. For this reason, baptism has a corporate, churchly component. Those baptized are to be members of the body of Christ expressed in local churches” (121). Wright argues that baptism “is be performed under the authority of a local fellowship…and it should be required of all who seek membership in the church because of its connection to the gospel” (124), but oddly does not take up the discussion of so-called alien immersion, often a contested topic in Baptist life.
Schreiner and Wright end the heavy emphasis on covenantalism with discussions of the Lord’s Table that is “covenantal in character…. Jesus inaugurated the new covenant with the shedding of his blood” (134–35, cf. 160). Wright has a brief discussion on the recipients of communion that leaves the reader wondering if he personally holds to an open or close table. Additionally, following general ecclesiological practice, he makes the case that “only pastors” should administer the Supper (159).
The remainder of the book (chaps. 8–19) has a decidedly lessened covenantal emphasis, due partially to the fact that many of the topics discussed are hardly impacted one way or another by covenant theology. John Hammett offers a helpful treatment on church membership (chap. 8), and Tom White handles the subject of church discipline (chap. 10). Ben Merkle joins Dever in the section dealing with elders and deacons. Merkle treats the qualifications for elders but does not think abstinence from alcohol is required (261). He holds that the “husband of one wife” signifies a “monogamous relationship,” and does not see divorce as an absolute bar from pastoral ministry (267). Merkle also has a helpful chapter on the biblical role of elders in which he discusses their limited authority and the necessity of a plurality in every church regardless of size (285). This insistence of elder plurality in every church, regardless of size, leads Andrew Davis in his chapter on the “Practical Issues in Elder Ministry” to declare that “it is debatable whether the church (a new church plant) should even be constituted as a church before plurality is established” (293). Ben Merkle also writes the chapter on deacons and insists that deacons “are not the spiritual leaders in the church” (319): the deacons constitute a “lower office” in the church (321). Merkle seems ambivalent on the question of women deacons (318–19) though he sees this as a separate issue from the question of women as elders, which he rejects.
Jonathan Leeman concludes the book with a pair of essays that treat the implications of congregationalism and unity within the assembly and without (chap. 17). He begins with an interesting anecdote of a conversation between Mark Dever and John Piper that occurred about the time Piper attempted to lead his church, Bethlehem Baptist Church of Minneapolis, to widen its church doors to permit non-immersed believers to join as members (333). He uses additional covenantal language. He raises the question of how new covenant members get recognized publically. It is through the agency of the church that holds the keys of authority as bestowed by Christ (359–60).
In the final chapter, Leeman covers church connectivity and rejects the notion of conservative churches separating from liberal churches. “The New Testament never speaks of churches separating from one another at a denominational level or larger structural level…. The only discussion of separation in the New Testament occurs at the level of the sinning individual or the false teacher, which makes sense in a landscape of formally independent churches” (367–68).
This book is generally well-written, engaging, and offers some helpful discussion on important issues in Baptist ecclesiology. At times, however, the book either omits a significant conversation (e.g., alien immersion) or fails to clarify its case. The question of whose baptism a church will accept is a subject most every pastor will grapple with. Should a church accept only baptisms from churches of like faith? Or even only Baptist church baptisms? Or can a church accept any credo-immersion regardless of who performed it, even Campbellite baptism if it is credo-immersion? An example of a lack of clarity is Jonathan Leeman’s discussion of church separation. He concedes that the New
Testament “never speaks of churches separating from one another at a denominational level,” nor of churches forming anything like denominations. But he offers no prescriptive for a denominational church that has abandoned biblical orthodoxy. Is there ever a case for withdrawal of fellowship? He does recognize that churches should separate “from false confessions, false confessors, and false teachers.” But what about denominations so filled with error that hope of a recovery to orthodoxy is faint? Finally, those not inclined toward covenant theology may find the early discussions less than convincing in this matter, but the chapters still offer helpful things to ponder. Particularly helpful are the chapters related to church membership and discipline, especially in a day when churches hold diminished views on both subjects.
