Difference between baptists and anabaptists

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josiahrussell

josiahrussell

Puritan Board Freshman
I just don't see a difference between baptists and anabaptists. From what I have read the anabaptists were accused of baptising people twice because they didn't believe in infant baptism which is the same as regular baptists.
Leaving out reformed baptists, it appears the main difference today is that regular baptists are mostly light on theology, and anabaptists are incredibly zealous in how they live.

Can someone please fill me in on my error, I'm going in circles here.


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Historically speaking, Anabaptists were a diverse group. Some were peace-loving people who had a high view of the Bible. Others were basically the equivalent of today's Pentecostals: they claimed to have visions and dreams which either replaced or supplemented biblical revelation. Other Anabaptists were extreme political revolutionaries -- the Anabaptists who were besieged and eventually massacred in Munster in the 1530s were the classic example. Some Anabaptists, like Melchior Hoffmann and Menno Simons were heretics when it came to the doctrine of the incarnation of Christ. They held to a "heavenly-flesh Christology" which denied that Christ had his human nature from Mary. The only thing all these groups had in common was a rejection of infant baptism. The heirs of the Anabaptists today are also diverse: Mennonites/Amish, Hutterites, etc.
 
Would you say then that groups like the Mennonites were more in heterodoxy rather than heresy? In my uneducated opinion they seem to be on the same level as Lutherans to me


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josiahrussell said:
Would you say then that groups like the Mennonites were more in heterodoxy rather than heresy?
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If you refer to article 18 of the Belgic Confession, this is mainly responding to the above-mentioned heresy of Menno Simons and Melchior Hoffmann. I use the word "heresy" advisedly, in the sense of a grave error that endangers one's salvation. Back then, this was Mennonite theology. Today, there is only one small group of Mennonites that follows Simons in his heresy of Christ's incarnation. As for modern or historic Mennonites being on the same level as Lutherans, you might want to investigate the Mennonite doctrine of justification. That's pretty important for Lutherans (and us Reformed folk, too).
 
josiahrussell said:
I just don't see a difference between baptists and anabaptists. From what I have read the anabaptists were accused of baptising people twice because they didn't believe in infant baptism which is the same as regular baptists.
Leaving out reformed baptists, it appears the main difference today is that regular baptists are mostly light on theology, and anabaptists are incredibly zealous in how they live.

Can someone please fill me in on my error, I'm going in circles here.


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This is why so many SBC non-Calvies who call themselves "traditionalists" take their supposed roots back to the anabaptists whereas the more reformed baptists go back to the particular baptists of Engliand. That is an in house debate.

Funny enough, many PBs wrote what they did and published their confessions so they would stopped being accused or labeled as "anabaptists".
 
Timotheos said:
This is why so many SBC non-Calvies who call themselves "traditionalists" take their supposed roots back to the anabaptists whereas the more reformed baptists go back to the particular baptists of Engliand. That is an in house debate.
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Does SBC mean Southern Baptists? If so, for those of us who are not Southern Baptists, could you provide some names of these non-calvinist traditionalists? What is a traditionalist? And what exactly is the 'in house' debate? Is it a debate among Southern Baptists? Reformed Baptists? Or Baptists as a whole?
 
KMK said:
Does SBC mean Southern Baptists? If so, for those of us who are not Southern Baptists, could you provide some names of these non-calvinist traditionalists? What is a traditionalist? And what exactly is the 'in house' debate? Is it a debate among Southern Baptists? Reformed Baptists? Or Baptists as a whole?
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Yes, SBC=Southern Baptist Convention.

Southwestern Seminary profs (and a chapel speaker recently) and those part of the connect316 and the "A Statement of the Traditional Southern Baptist Understanding of God’s Plan of Salvation".

To define a "traditionalist" see the statement. This article will help too: https://theologicalmatters.com/2016/09/06/the-rise-of-soteriological-traditionalism/

The in house debate is not just SBC but all of baptists. There are a lot of views (some crazy) as to the foundations of baptists.
 
KMK said:
I have never heard of such a debate among Reformed Confessional Baptists.
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That's because you don't fellowship w/ not confessional baptists [I'm speaking in generalities]. I come from a indie/fundi baptist church and now pastor an SBC church while I'm confessionally a 1689er. I'm guessing there is not much debate in your baptist circles about Calvinism either. How I envy you.
 
josiahrussell said:
I just don't see a difference between baptists and anabaptists. From what I have read the anabaptists were accused of baptising people twice because they didn't believe in infant baptism which is the same as regular baptists.
Leaving out reformed baptists, it appears the main difference today is that regular baptists are mostly light on theology, and anabaptists are incredibly zealous in how they live.

Can someone please fill me in on my error, I'm going in circles here.


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Think that they were ones holding though to more of an Arminian theology regarding salvation proper.
 
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