“The Baptist faith stands squarely against the authoritarian individual, the authoritarian family, the authoritarian church, and the authoritarian state. This is because Baptist doctrine uniquely stands upon God’s authority in His Word over the individual, the family, the church and the state. Other ecclesiologies give too much authority to the individual (modern evangelicalism) or to the church (papacy) or to the family and state (classic Reformed and Lutheran paedobaptism).”
Dr. Rev. Tom Hicks
Baptist Pastor
Hicks would like to think that the “Baptist Faith” is the Nirvana locale of the Christian faith but the man is deluded.
1.) The Reformed Baptist Faith (Hicks subscribes to the London Baptist Confession) because it eliminates the inclusion of infants into the covenant of grace, and because it does not require Christian Magistrates ruling as Christian magistrates yields a Christianity that, despite Hicks assertion, is thoroughly atomistically individualistic. The Baptist faith, because of its individualism, always eats away and tears down the Institutional jurisdictions ordained and revealed by God in favor of the sovereign individual.
This atomistic individualism is most clearly seen in the forbidding of the children being marked with the sign and seal of the covenant of grace. Instead, the Baptist, in effect, tells the child is that God cannot claim them in Baptism until they first claim God upon coming to the years of discretion (whatever that age may be). This is a complete reversal of the idea of God over the individual and instead places the individual over God so that God has to wait on the individual before God can claim him or her. This is atomistic individualism at its zenith. So, Hicks claim to the contrary Baptists do not avoid the authoritarian individual but instead rabidly promote atomistic individualism.
2.) This Baptist emphasis on the authoritarian individual in turn means the breakdown and eclipse of the other jurisdictional realms appointed by God. Because the individual is atomistically sovereign in the Baptist faith Baptist thinking creates atomistically individualistic culture where the God ordained mediating Institutions (Church, Family, Civil Magistrates) are eclipsed in favor of the almighty individual. This atomization results in a blank slate culture eventually creating a societal vacuum that cannot be sustained over time. Eventually, since man is a social being, the atomistic individualism of the Baptist faith cannot survive with the result being that some corporate entity fills the vacuum and becomes the sole Jurisdictional realm against which all atomistic individuals will define themselves. In our lifetimes that sole jurisdictional realm that has arisen to define all is the tyrant State, and this is largely due to the majority Baptist Christianity that we currently have. Without competing the healthy God ordained Jurisdictional Institutions of Church, and Family, — ordained Jurisdictional Institutions that the atomistic Baptist faith always chips away at over time, the result is the rise of some single tyrant Institution which will insist that it plays the sole role of the other God ordained mediating Institutions. At that point, the Baptist sovereign atomistic individual culture will flip to become a consolidated borg culture.
3.) The idea that the Baptist faith is superior in standing upon God’s Word alone is ridiculous. If Baptists were standing upon God’s Word alone they wouldn’t think that they could find a non-contradictory way to combine Anabaptist ecclesiology with Reformed soteriology. This combination inserts synergism every time into Baptist theology, thus defying God’s Word revealing that the Reformed Baptist Faith is really inconsistent humanism where God waits upon man to make a decision for Him before He can make a claim on man.
