Can Baptists Be Truly Reformed?

As a Baptist who also happens to be a Calvinist, I often hear the question “can a Baptist really be Reformed?” thrown around a lot on the internet and in my own life. So I’m going to attempt to provide an answer to this question based on a little bit of history and a little bit of theology.

One way this question can be answered is through historiography. Southern Baptists today owe their roots to either the Anabaptists or English Separatists. If the former, then we really can’t call ourselves truly Reformed. Anabaptists had little or nothing to do with Calvin and the Reformed tradition. I, along with many other Baptist historians, am inclined to believe that while the Anabaptist tradition did leave its marks, Southern Baptist really owe their existence to English Separatists that adopted the practice of credobaptism. The English Separatists owe a great deal to Calvin and include amongst their number the great John Owen. Who would deny that Owen is truly Reformed? This being the case, I think there is a strong case to be made that a Baptist can be really Reformed.

Second, we can answer this question theologically. Many Baptists are Calvinists, but are those same Calvinists considered Reformed? The first thing to be determined is whether or not “Calvinist” and “Reformed” are synonymous terms. I am inclined to believe that they are not. One can be a Calvinist, but not Reformed. Why is this? Simply put, one can believe the five points and their soteriological implications without accepting covenant theology. As Van Til notes, “covenant theology is Reformed theology” (Intro to Systematic Theology, 2nd ed, pp.271). So the definition of Reformed must necessarily include Calvinism and covenant theology. I have in mind here the Amyraldian dispensationalist that accepts election but divides redemptive history into seven dispensations. While we could say that this person is a Calvinist, I do not think we could say that they are Reformed for lack of their emphasis on the covenants. However, I do believe that a Calvinist Baptist who thinks in covenantal terms can certainly be Reformed. At this point, the Presbyterian or Anglican might object that it is impossible for a Baptist to think in covenantal terms because we deny paedobaptism. This objection doesn’t fully understand the Baptist position. For Reformed Baptists, there is continuity and discontinuity in the covenants. The primary discontinuity is that the covenant community is made up of regenerate believers and not of the infants of believers (cf. Jeremiah 31). In this sense, credobaptism becomes the true sign of the new covenant. Reformed Baptists, then, do not discredit covenant theology but merely reinterpret the New Covenant along what we see as more consistent lines.

All of this is to say that I believe that Calvinist Baptists can lay a strong claim to not only being truly Reformed, but also of playing a large role in the history of the Reformed tradition. By my amateur estimate, there are actually as many if not more Calvinists in the SBC than in the PCA and the ARP combined. And granted, this is a silly and frivolous discussion that has no real bearing on true kingdom work. When we stand before Jesus at the end of time, we will not be asked whether or not we were Calvinist or truly Reformed; rather, we will be asked whether or not we are truly His. We would do well to remember that.