The Baptist Name
Why not drop the name "Baptist," and
take the name "Christian"? Baptists claim to be
Christians the followers of Christ and His teachings, in the
widest and deepest significance of the term. We are Christian
Baptists - Baptist Christians - the Baptist people and churches
of Christ; but for several reasons we cannot give up the name of
"Baptist."
1. It is the name of our prototype, John the
Baptist, and he was a Baptist, and so called by reason of the
ordinance he administered, which was "of heaven" and
"not of men" and himself "sent from God." Not
only so, but under God, he revealed the fundamental principles
and practices which now distinguish Baptists from all other
people; and we can no more give up the name than the principles
of our Baptist prototype.
2. The name "Baptist" (from the word
"baptism") is symbolic of the death, burial, and
resurrection ideal of salvation by grace (I Cor. 15:1-4). Jesus
died for our sins, was buried, and rose again for our
justification; and when He was baptized by John in Jordan (Matt.
3:15), He thus fulfilled "all
righteousness" in the symbolic representation of this great
threefold fact in the work of our redemption. Not only so; but
when we are baptized we symbolize, in Jesus Christ, our death to
sin, the burial of the old man from sight, and our resurrection
to newness of life (Rom. 6:3-5; Col. 2:12). The Baptists,
according to their name, are a death, burial, and resurrection
people, believing a death, burial, and resurrection gospel, and
practicing a death, burial, and resurrection baptism; and there
are no other people who can properly administer baptism in accord
with the death, burial, and resurrection significance of the
ordinance. It would be impossible, therefore, for us to
effectively sustain our historic and characteristic attitude
toward this gospel ideal and give up the name of
"Baptist."
3. It is impossible, now, for us to surrender
the name "Baptist," because that name properly
distinguishes us from those who call themselves and their
churches "Christian," and yet who preach and practice
unChristian errors and heresies, as Baptists see them - even some
who practice immersion as we do. The denial of the Holy Spirit in
conversion through repentance and faith; the claim that the
Spirit enters the penitent believer only in the water; baptismal
remission or regeneration; priestly mediation between the soul
and the Mediator; infant baptism; sprinkling and pouring for
baptism; transubstantiation; apostasy from grace; papal,
prelatical, and presbyterial forms of church government; union of
church and state; ministerial or magisterial interference with
conscience; Christian Science (so called); all forms of
rationalistic Christianity which excludes the Deity of Christ,
sin atonement, the final judgment and eternal hell - all this and
more is called "Christian"; and the only denomination
word which fully differentiates the religious world along all
these lines is "Baptist." The worst-abused word in
history is the word "Christian," none of so uncertain
sound; and while Baptists claim that sacred name, we should lose
our historic and characteristic identity as a people, and
sacrifice our specific mission for the truth of God and the good
of the world, if we gave up our symbolic name for that of
"Christian" alone.