Nettles said Southern Baptists have come full circle in their renewed interest in Calvinist views, also known as Reformed Theology or the Doctrines of Grace. When Southern Baptists formed in 1845 for cooperative missions and then moved into theological education and publishing literature, he said, the first thing they did was to solidify their understanding of salvation through “confessional Calvinism.”

A seminary professor denounced the marginalization of Calvinists in the Southern Baptist Convention at a breakfast gathering during the recent SBC annual meeting in New Orleans.

Tom Nettles, professor of historical theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, weighed in on controversy over a recent statement [Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.] claiming to represent “the beliefs of the majority of Southern Baptists, who are not Calvinists.” The document referred to a “long-standing arrangement” by which Calvinists and “traditional” Southern Baptists managed to work side-by-side in evangelism and missions.

“Well, what arrangement is this?” Nettles, author of books including By His Grace and For His Glory: A Historical, Theological, and Practical Study of the Doctrines of Grace in Baptist Life, asked in remarks now posted as online audio. “I don’t recall an arrangement by which a Calvinist could be tolerated as long as he did not seek to propagate his views.” [Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]

Nettles said recent criticism doesn’t stop with Calvinist thought but “seems nonplussed that the Calvinist would want his church to have an exclusively Calvinistic understanding of salvation.”

“Indeed, that a Calvinist would want all churches to have that same understanding seems to this emergent traditionalism to be shocking and the violation of some social arrangement that has normally governed the place of Calvinism in Southern Baptist life,” he said.

“Before, Calvinists were so rare and seemingly so odd that they provided comic relief to the more thoroughbred Southern Baptist,” Nettles said. “It was good to have them around, for some oddities in life provide amusement and a target for good-natured humor.”

“The traditionalist was just fine with the occasional presence of an inconsequential Calvinist,” he continued, “but these Calvinists have now become uppity and they dare to take their own views of truth with the seriousness with which convictions of truth should be taken. They think their view of the gospel should impact evangelism, missions, church discipline, preaching and theological education.”

“How dare they violate the arrangement?” he asked. “See how nasty and aggressive these Calvinists are. See how vile they act as they seek to drink from the same water fountain as the traditionalist, when they claim an equal right to argue their case, propagate their views, and are unembarrassed to accept all the common rights of what it means to be Southern Baptist.”

Read More [Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced in this article is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]