Does embracing retrievalism—as promoted in its most uncompromising form—sometimes destabilize Baptist and evangelical convictions? The answer, quite simply, is yes. This reality should sober us; it should provoke humility, repentance, and clear-eyed evaluation of retrievalism in Christ’s people. We are not playing with Monopoly money here; the well-being of souls, nothing less than their eternal destiny, rests upon such efforts.

Just last week, theologian Matthew Barrett announced that he is now an Anglican. Known as a Baptist, Barrett has embraced Anglican doctrine and ecclesiology. His departure from the Southern Baptist Convention is noteworthy, for Barrett became an outspoken proponent of a theological camp in recent years: “retrievalism.”

In the essay below, I will share a related—and noteworthy—matter. It is a previously-untold story (among Baptists and evangelicals, at least) of a young seminarian who attended the seminary at which Barrett taught, was introduced to the patristics in a theology class, and converted to Roman Catholicism. This story, I believe, directs us to ask thoughtful questions about the retrievalist paradigm.

Here is one we must ask: Does the retrievalist system lead some Baptist and evangelical students to leave the Baptist and evangelical movement? Few have posed such a query in recent days, even as retrievalism has been widely and enthusiastically promoted among Baptists and evangelicals. Yet this unique moment presses us to consider this question, and with urgency at that.

I should state several matters up front: 1) I want good for Matthew Barrett, and pray that for him, as well as for the student who converted to Roman Catholicism; 2) I have no quarrel with many godly administrators and faculty members at my previous seminary in Kansas City, a school for which I give thanks to God; 3) nor do I have any quarrel with Anglicanism or the ACNA, as I have personally benefited from the Anglican movement in many ways, learning much from over the years from figures like J. I. Packer, John Stott, J. C. Ryle, and many others; 4) as stated, my purpose in what follows is not to win a battle with any given person, but to think in public about matters of public teaching and public record.

What Is Retrievalism?

I now focus our attention on what is called “retrievalism.” In this system, one “retrieves” the wisdom of the Christian past by focusing on the hermeneutic and doctrine of past generations. This usually means an emphasis on the early church and the medieval church, which are seen as under-studied and under-appreciated in evangelical circles.

In reality, there is more going on in this conversation than it appears. The role of historical theology in doctrinal and spiritual formation is front and center in the retrievalist case. On this subject, there are at least four loosely-cohering positions that I see. Here they are:

Historical Theology is Unimportant: this would fit the No Creed But the Bible camp, though this group is very small in number these days. It emphasizes that the creeds and confessions are not a meaningful part of Christian formation; beyond this, church history itself is largely ignorable, outside of the few figures or churches that agree with one’s own doctrine.

Historical Theology is Important and Valuable: those of this camp highly value the church’s views and wisdom. In the seminary classroom and church teaching contexts, they honor the insights of creeds and confessions, giving formational pride of place to the conciliar parameters of the four ecumenical councils in particular. They read theologians across denominations and the ages, finding meaningful unity with all who love the Word and gospel.

But they do not view the church’s creeds and confessions as inerrant, they have occasional points of difference with certain formulations in historical theology, and they emphasize the necessity of biblical sufficiency in theological method. Historical theology is thus a valuable doctrine-framer, conversational partner, and witness. In spiritual life and doctrinal formation, however, historical theology is a servant (an extremely valuable one), but never our master.

Historical Theology is Very Important and Decisive: Adherents profess their love of major creeds and confessions, viewing them as guardrails in framing doctrine—a secondary authority, yes, but a trustworthy one. Where the councils of history have spoken, the church’s theology is largely settled. Disagreement with key confessional documents is possible, but closely guarded.

The aforementioned confessional documents are very closely aligned with the group’s identity, and the group’s identity is often described in terms of the confession it holds. In more recent years, the fourth group—sketched below—has exerted a good bit of influence on this third group, urging it to embrace the retrievalist vision of the dogmatic synthesis between the early and medieval church. It is not immediately clear how this trend will play out.

Historical Theology is Determinative in Doctrinal Formation: this is the retrievalist position. Not every adherent holds it in the same way or to the same degree of intensity, of course; some are more charitable than others. Nonetheless, the strong edge of this Protestant camp argues that the ecumenical councils and creeds are definitive beyond a shadow of a doubt.

This is a strikingly similar vision of the creeds and councils to the Catholic position. For the strongest edge of Protestant retrievalists, no deviations from creedal formulations are allowable. If a council or creed has spoken to issues like the will of God, or the descent of Christ into hell—issues that require a great deal of interpretive care—the position is settled.

Some retrievalists—though not all—go further, in fact. They claim that creedal documents should be treated as inerrant. This is an error, and a consequential one; while many documents are error-proof, inerrancy depends on ontology. Scripture is the only God-breathed book or document per 2 Timothy 3:16, and so the autographs of Scripture alone are inerrant.

So too is there a glorious synthesis between the early and medieval church. This synthesis includes the creeds and the theological insights of Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas. Aquinas is viewed by many retrievalists as the doctrinal formulator par excellence. In his writings, the harvest of theology proper (and other doctrinal loci) over the centuries reaches its zenith.

Over the last few years, it has been strange to see the leading theologian of the Catholic tradition be touted as the greatest theologian of the Protestant tradition. Aquinas thought well about a number of ethical areas and can be read with profit in some respects. But Aquinas should be handled with great care, for as I have written elsewhere, he is the key standardizer of the sacramental theology of Catholicism, a system of soteriology in irreconcilable conflict with biblical justification and biblical sanctification as recovered by the Reformers.

The Debate over Retrievalism Is a Debate over Method

As I am at pains to say, the conversation over retrievalism is not simply a conversation over doctrine. It is first and foremost a conversation over method. We see the importance of method in Barrett’s Substack essay. In it, Barrett cites distaste for Southern Baptist politics, a newfound love of Anglican liturgy, and enjoyment of the warm fellowship of his local Anglican Church as key factors in his conversion. Yet it is his rationale for embracing paedobaptism that most caught my eye:

After noticing it could not account for the whole canon, I also had to ask myself, “Was the entire church wrong to baptize the children of believers for a millennium and a half? Was believer’s baptism taught by the apostles only to disappear under the supervision of the greatest theologians of the church, and then reappear for the first time in sixteenth century?” For someone serious about catholicity, that pill was too big to swallow.

Tucked into a single paragraph about baptism, this is an extremely important statement. This is, in a nutshell, a key Catholic argument against Protestantism. It is not a small or glancing charge. Before the ink dried on Luther’s famous theses, Calvin’s Institutes, and Zwingli’s own theses, Catholic theologians had mounted their most significant accusation against the Reformers: their doctrine was novel.

We should not discount the weight of this approach to doctrine. The Catholic Church wielded this weapon of accusation against the Reformational recovery of the authority of Scripture and the legal and God-enacted nature of justification by faith alone. The church had a consensus forged over 1,500 years or so; how could any lone individual break with such iron-strong unity of thought?

In Barrett’s essay, we see this most Catholic of arguments appear—strangely—once more. In truth, the Reformers were right to break with Rome in numerous respects. They rejected medieval soteriology, medieval bibliology, and different elements of medieval ecclesiology (to say nothing of numerous other areas). But the fundamental break came before these developments. The Reformers broke with Rome over method.

It was not enough to have a historical consensus, and police it. The Reformers recognized that Rome was not authoritative over the mind and the conscience. The Word of Christ alone was authoritative over the mind and the conscience. This did not mean that historical consensus was of no account for the Reformers; it did mean that historical theology was not on par with Scripture in doctrinal formation. From this hermeneutical and methodological conviction came the movement we call Protestantism.

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