Debate with a Baptist

I recently debated a Baptist preacher in Baytown, Texas. One proposition dealt with whether it is possible for a Christian to sin and be eternally lost. The Baptists suppose such is impossible.

Never a Christian?

I anticipated the two basic ways in which Baptists usually respond to one's affirmative arguments when debating this subject. First, there is their classic denial that the "apostate" was never a true believer. Thus, any passage to which you may point showing a person fell away from God is always met with the Baptist counter that such was never really a Christian.

I proposed to beat my opponent to the punch by presenting an affirmative argument based upon Luke 8:13. Here, in the parable of the sower, Jesus is explaining the outcome of the seed that fell upon the rock which "as soon as it grew, it withered away, because it had no moisture" (v. 6). The explanation in verse 13 then reads as follows: "And those on the rock are they who, when they have heard, receive the Word with joy; and these have no root, who for a while believe and in time of temptation fall away."

In making the argument I especially emphasized that Jesus anticipates some who would "receive the word with joy." That is, they accepted the gospel by faithful obedience for it was these "who for a while believe." But cultivating no further conviction or steadfastness they "in time of temptation fall away."

The word believe in this passage is translated from a Greek word meaning "faith, trust, belief, the Christian faith" (AConcise Greek-English Dictionary of the New Testament, p. 143). Thus, one could not successfully deny that these had ever become Christians as they had received the Word by faith, though they eventually fell away.

I supported the argument by demonstrating that this is exactly the same term found in John 3:16,18,36 and 5:24, where the believer is said to have eternal life. This was especially effective seeing that these were the same passages my opponent had written into his proposition when affirming the night before that it is impossible for a believer to forfeit his relationship with God. One cannot help but be impressed with the consistency of God's Word at times like this.

Saved Without God's Fellowship?

I also anticipated my respondent would assign novel meanings to biblical words so as to avoid the inference that the defector was really "lost" or that he "perished." I kept the thought before me that "when men are permitted to redefine biblical words to fit their personal theological inclinations, the Holy Scriptures can be made to teach anything" (Wayne Jackson, Eternal Security: Fact or Fiction? p. 15).

My opponent did not disappoint me in this regard. He used Galatians 5:4 where Paul says, "Ye are severed from Christ, ye who would be justified by the law; ye are fallen away from grace." My Baptist opponent took the position that to fall away from God's grace is to simply to fall out of fellowship with God, but this does not mean one is in a lost condition. My opponent absurdly maintained this merely means they are "out of fellowship with the Lord" but still in a saved relationship with God. How in the name of common sense can one not be in fellowship with God but simultaneously be in a saved relationship with God as a Christian?

The New Testament teaches that both our initial conversion and continued faithfulness is spoken of as our being "called into the fellowship of his Son" and "our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. 1:9; 1 John 1:3). I suggest the only reason any man would be driven to postulate such a ridiculous position is that he loves Baptist doctrine more than the truth of God's Word.

In my friend's hurried use of Galatians 5:4 he overlooked that the verse also says of those who had fallen from grace "ye are severed from Christ." The King James rendering of this is "Christ is become of no effect unto you." The lexical evidence is conclusive at this point. The term translated "severed" is from a verb that means "to terminate all intercourse with" (Joseph Henry Thayer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, p. 336). The verse has its own built in, inspired commentary. To fall away from God's grace is to remove oneself "from him that called you in the grace of Christ" (1:6) and thus "to terminate all intercourse with" the Savior.

Sam Morris

The Baptist position that one may fall out of fellowship with God and yet remain in a saved relationship with God was popularized some years ago in an infamous tract by Baptist preacher, Sam Morris, entitled Do A Christian's Sins Damn His Soul?

The tract asserts that any sin a Christian may commit "from idolatry to murder will not make his soul in any more danger." Rather, such immorality merely effects his "fellowship with God." Read Morris on this point:

We take the position that a Christian's sins do not damn his soul. The way a Christian lives, what he says, his character, his conduct, or his attitude toward other people have nothing whatever to do with the salvation of his soul.... No. I do not mean to say anything of the sort: it does make a big difference how he lives but that difference relates to his fellowship with God... Those sins won't damn his soul, but they will damn his fellowship with God and Christ.

The grossest sins a Christian may commit from idolatry to murder, whether it involves the way one lives, what he says, his character, conduct, or attitude, "has nothing whatever to do with the salvation of his soul." The only "difference," Mr. Morris tells us, "relates to his fellowship with God."

I hammered away with the Morris' tract in my debate. I carefully noted in my opponent's replies that he never once denied Morris actually said these things or that these statements correctly represent Baptist doctrine. His only retort was a half-hearted accusation that I had lifted the quotes out of context so as to make them sound as "grotesque" as possible. But my response then and now is that there is no context where such statements could be placed to make them harmonize with divine truth.

J. E. Cobb

I noted that, according to Dr. J. E. Cobb's Baptist Church Manual, the Baptist denomination was bound by their own creeds to utilize the disciplinary procedure of disfellowship upon unruly members. The Baptist are to turn such offenders "over to Satan" (p. 160) that commit such sins as "incest," "drunkenness, fornication, heresy, adultery, thievery, immorality, and ungodliness" (pp. 146-158). But, amazingly, according to Baptist Cobb, one's relationship with God, even though withdrawn from for the grossest of sins just listed, is not effected in the least: "When a church withdraws from a member, it does not mean that the individual is not a saved person" (p. 161).

Just how a person can be guilty of such sin as "fornication," be turned "over to Satan" by the disciplinary procedure of disfellowship, and yet remain a "saved person" staggers the imagination. Although Baptists speak loud and long that their doctrine of impossibility of apostasy does not encourage licentious living, the statements from their creeds teach otherwise. Any doctrine which permits ungodly living on the part of God's children, without any threat of jeopardizing one's relationship with the Savior, is a delusive offer to humankind for a free ticket to "continue in sin, that grace may abound." It is a perversion of the worst sort.