The Baptist traditions as a group confess a more realized New Testament eschatology in distinction from the Reformed who have a more semi-realized or inaugurated eschatology. One of the great questions that separates the Reformed and the Baptists is the role of Abraham in redemptive history. 

I had intended to move on to consider the work of Nehemiah Coxe but life intervened. In the interim I was reminded of a document that I think might clarify some of the differences between what I am calling the PBs and the Reformed. If you are just joining the discussion you will want to start with part 1.

Abraham And Moses

There are several issues that separate the Baptists of all sorts from the Reformed theology, piety, and practice. They include biblical hermeneutics, i.e., how the two traditions read Scripture, covenant theology, i.e., how the various covenants of Scripture relate to one another, and eschatology. The Baptist traditions as a group confess a more realized New Testament eschatology in distinction from the Reformed who have a more semi-realized or inaugurated eschatology. One of the great questions that separates the Reformed and the Baptists is the role of Abraham in redemptive history. Under part 2 we had a lengthy discussion in the comments box about this very question. More than one person wrote to ask me why Reformed Christians place so much emphasis on Abraham? We do not. It only seems to Baptists as if he plays an outsized role because, in their systems, he is either identified with Moses or rolled up within the OT covenants as just one more example of the same phenomenon.

The relationship between the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants in particular has been a frequent topic on the HB. See these resources. In short, following the early Christian fathers (e.g., Barnabas, Justin, Irenaeus) and the mainstream of Western theology, the Reformed saw a distinction between Moses and Abraham. The latter’s role in redemptive history was more fundamental than that of the former. Both Abraham and Moses were typological of heaven and of the coming new covenant but Abraham’s relation to the covenant of grace was more fundamental. The Mosaic covenant had a twofold character: legal and gracious. It was both an administration of the covenant of grace and an administration of the typological, non-saving covenant of works. It was under Moses and not under Abraham that God made a national covenant. It was under Moses and not Abraham that God instituted a sacrificial system. It was under Moses and not Abraham that God instituted a state-church and a judicial laws. According to both Galatians chapters 3 and 4 Moses and Abraham are distinct in significant ways. For Baptists generally, however, the ways they are alike are sufficient to regard them as essentially the same thing. This is a great difference between the Reformed and the Baptists.

The Reformed place such emphasis on Abraham because the New Testament does. According to our Lord, he is the paradigm of New Covenant believers (John 8:56). According to Paul, in Romans 3 and 4, he is the paradigm of New Covenant believers. It is notable that Paul did not appeal to Moses but to Abraham as the father of all believers. Paul regularly juxtaposes Abraham and Moses just as he juxtaposed the Old Covenant with the New. According to Paul in 2 Corinthians 3, the Old Covenant is the Mosaic covenant, not the Abrahamic. Hebrews does precisely the same thing and for the same reasons as Paul: they read Jeremiah 31:31–33 the same way. They understood that Jeremiah was contrasting the Mosaic, Old Covenant with the New. He was not contrasting all the OT covenants with the New. On these themes see the larger essay on the New Covenant. See also the extensive curriculum linked at the end of the essay.

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