The Arminian, given his atomistic individualism, rejects the significance of his race and people, by claiming that God does not deal with nations. The Arminian rejects the significance of his family/recent ancestors, by claiming a non-existent libertarian free will and so he finds it comparatively easy to reject the covenantal nature of salvation in a Godly covenantal line. We see thus that the Arminian’s libertarian free will combined with his atomistic individualism works in him a heightened ability to just disregard the boundaries that God has set for man. He has become just an individual, floating in a sea of multi-colored individuals, with no past, no special connection to kin, with each individual serving as their own god/means of redemption. Because of this the Arminian is especially prone to being an Alienist.
This is doubly true for the Arminian Baptist, who, because of his Baptist teaching. This is a Baptist upbringing that denies continuity in the way that God has structured salvation by cutting the NT off from the OT. In the OT it is undeniable that God works salvation in covenantal lines. When God says,
Know therefore that the Lord thy God, He is God, the faithful God, who keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love Him and keep His commandments to a thousand generations…
Deuteronomy 7:9
And;
But from everlasting to everlasting the loving devotion of the LORD extends to those who fear Him, and His righteousness to their children’s children— / to those who keep His covenant and remember to obey His precepts.
Psalm 103:17-18
The Reformed believers has the expectation that God will be faithful to His promise to the God to us and to our seed. The Arminian Baptist on the other hand, as seen by their refusal to mark their children in Baptism with God’s mark of ownership, teaches their children, that the child must ask Jesus into their hearts, thus communicating that God does not work in covenantal/generational lines. By stripping the covenantal nature away from redemption what is communicated is that while the child may indeed belong to God as a result of their “sinner’s prayer,” he most certainly has not been irresistibly drawn by a God who works in family lines and keeps his covenant to a thousand generations. The covenantal continuity is gone. The sense that God works normatively (though not exclusively) in covenantal lines disappears.
As such the Arminian Baptist is more easily prone to Alienism. (Here the Reformed Baptist has major contradictions in their system since they also have aversion to covenantal continuity as seen in their agreement with Arminian Baptists to not baptize their children.) Alienism is that, until recently, that unspoken doctrine that teaches that there does not exist strong cords of attachments that bind the generations together by means of God’s covenantal faithfulness. Arminian Baptists especially, have trouble wrapping their heads around the Biblical doctrine of Kinism that is built upon the foundation of God’s covenantal/generational faithfulness. Alienism, consistent with the Arminian Baptist soil it grows out of, presupposes that God does not work in covenantal lines. It presuppose discontinuity between the Old and New Testament.
It is a devilish system that had the accelerant of Dispensationalism poured on it. Dispensationalism was an accelerant because Dispensationalism is a system of radical discontinuity. I suppose we ought to be thankful that the mainline Dispensationalists were able to beat back the Bullingerite Dispensationalists. Still, while the Dispensationalists infected all of the denominations in the 20th century the slice of Christendom most infected were the Arminian Baptists.
However, no one has yet plumbed the depth of the infection of Arminian Dispensationalism on the body of Christ. I submit the unwillingness of many of the “conservative” “Reformed” denominations to see what their forefathers saw in terms of the covenantal unity of a particular race, ethnic group, and family is the result of Arminianism via Dispensationalism infecting the Reformed world. The Reformed have, whether by the influence of the Dispensational influence, or rather by the influence of Marxist categories (which have also been stridently Alienist) has resolved to make war on their Father’s Kinism. This has been repeatedly seen in the past few years but now it will be put on parade in the RPCNA trial of Rev. Sam Ketchum. The Reformed, by their recent pronouncements on race, recent booklet written against Kinists, and their resolve to put Ketchum on trial have put their Arminian, Dispensational, and/or Marxist bona fides on display and demonstrated all the anti-Christianity that exists in their putative Christianity.
I mean, just look at all the quotes from the Reformed Fathers from Church history as chronicled in the 2nd edition of the anthology “Who Is My Neighbor.” Just look at all the quotes from the early Church forward on this matter in the commpendium, “A Survey of Racialism in the Christian Sacred Tradition,” by Alexander Storen.
Your analysis of Arminian Baptists and asking Jesus into your heart is spot on. It is all about the prayer/make a profession, nothing about covenant, and little about obedience post-prayer. It is interesting that you singled out the Baptists, as I was raised IFB. The Pentecostals are just as into Alienism and Arminianism as the IFB folks are, maybe more so, but then Pentecostals are so wacky in other areas that perhaps it is not appropriate to include them in a discussion of Christian sects.
Generally speaking, I don’t think that most (eternal security type) Baptists even realize that they are 4 point Arminians and that basically no one (Baptist or otherwise) before the year 1800 taught the rapture or dispensationalism. Calvin would look back and favorably quote Augustine or Chrysostom, but who does a Baptist look back to? Other that C.H. Spurgeon, basically just other Baptists who have lived since 1900. This personal and theological rootlessness is made manifest in Americans forgetting that they are Europeans and in Baptists (and evangelicals in general) forgetting that Christianity did not start with them and some vague thoughts about religious liberty a couple centuries ago.
Hello Joe,
You are correct that Pentecostals also have zero understanding of covenant. Indeed, their individualism in salvation may be the worse of the bunch.
“Dispensationalism is a system of radical discontinuity.”…. except when it comes to the Jews. For them, just one drop of blood and you are in the club. And by that, I mean you get into heaven.
It is common for hardened hypocrites to have some kind of major loophole in their sanctimonious system. That is the Pharisee way.