A Bombshell in the Baptistery

An Examination of the Influence of George Beasley-Murray on the Baptismal Writings of Select Southern Baptist and Baptist Union of Great Britain Scholars

Justin Nalls

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781532653100
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

Who should be baptized? Should a person who has not been baptized be allowed to become a member of a church? What happens when a person is baptized? There are a number of important questions about baptism that call for biblical and theological reflection on a more fundamental question--what is baptism? Perhaps no one in the twentieth century addressed that question more thoroughly than British New Testament scholar George Beasley-Murray. While touching on a range of issues related to baptism, this book explores the influence that Beasley-Murray's work has had on the debate about the meaning of baptism, and shows why his work was referred to as "a bombshell in the baptistery."

Part 1

George Beasley-Murray and Baptism

1

Antecedents of George Beasley-Murray’s Baptismal Theology

The focus of this book is the impact of George Beasley-Murray on the baptismal debate among Southern Baptist and BUGB Baptist scholars in the years following his publications on baptism. The debate, however, did not start with Beasley-Murray. This chapter will show how he fits into the ongoing debate and will show that Beasley-Murray’s understanding of baptism was shaped, in part, by other scholars. It will therefore make clear that not all of Beasley-Murray’s arguments were original, even among Baptists. Yet it is the contention of this book that, because he made them forcefully and prolifically, he is largely responsible for their influence.

This chapter comprises three main sections. The first provides an overview of the sacramental resurgence, a movement beginning in the 1920s in which a series of British Baptist scholars argued for a sacramental understanding of baptism. The second section argues that Beasley-Murray’s training as a New Testament scholar affected his methodology, which in turn affected his theology of baptism. The third section analyzes some of the scholars whose work on baptism Beasley-Murray has appropriated into his own.

The Sacramental Resurgence

The sacramental resurgence began in the 1920s. For the next four decades, a number of influential British Baptist scholars published works arguing for a sacramental understanding of baptism. Some critics believed that a sacramental view of baptism was foreign to Baptist life and that those pushing for it were doing something that had never been done among Baptists. For example, Baptist historian Robert Baker preached a sermon at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in the mid-1960s, claiming that the sacramental thought developing among British Baptists was an innovation.53 The truth is that sacramentalism has been part of Baptist life from the beginning. This is the thesis of Stanley Fowler’s book, More Than a Symbol, a thesis he successfully defends.54 He traces a line of sacramental thought from the seventeenth century that runs through the works of numerous Baptist leaders and confessions. Indeed, William Kiffin,55 Benjamin Keach,56 Andrew Fuller,57 Daniel Turner,58 and Robert Hall, Jr.59 all believed that the New Testament presents a sacramental understanding of baptism.

The sacramental thought in the twentieth century, then, was not an innovation. It was, however, a shift. Though a sacramental understanding of baptism had been present in Baptist thought for three hundred years, it had been a minority view. Fowler points out that prior to the twentieth century there was an anti-sacramental consensus.60 It is that consensus that Wheeler Robinson had in mind when he called for a “recovery of a lost sacramental emphasis.”61 Alec Gilmore also acknowledged that by holding to a sacramental view of baptism he was going against the majority of Baptists. He writes,

Since the authority of the scriptures and the New Testament in particular has always been one of the foundation stones of Baptist principles, and since in the providence of God new light and truth are continually breaking forth from His word, Baptists of all people must beware of ignoring the findings of modern biblical scholarship because those findings happen to conflict with present practices or with positions adopted by some of their earliest advocates.62

Gilmore goes on to claim, “Baptism is clearly more than Baptists have traditionally understood by it.”63 So even though some Baptists had held to a sacramental view in the past, their position had been the minority view among Baptists. Those involved in the resurgence were hoping to change that.

Wheeler Robinson

According to Fowler, H. Wheeler Robinson was at the forefront of the sacramental resurgence.64 Robinson, an Old Testament scholar who was Principal of Regent’s Park College65 and began publishing on the issue in the 1920s, affirmed in no uncertain terms a sacramental view of baptism....

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1: George Beasley-Murray and Baptism
• Part 2: George Beasley-Murray and Southern Baptists
• Part 3: George Beasley-Murray and BUGB Baptists
• Conclusion
• Bibliography