Your friend’s desire to look into history to substantiate the truth of his faith is commendable. However, he has probably not read a single primary historical source to substantiate this claim of "Baptist successionism." Instead, he has probably gotten a hold of the booklet Trail of Blood by J.M. Carroll, which puts forth the ideas he passed on to you.
Let’s examine his claims about the sects that he mentions. He claims descent from the Anabaptists, Montanists, and Novations, but was their theology of a Baptist slant?
The Anabaptists baptized babies, and so can in no way be considered the spiritual ancestors to the present-day Baptists. Novations taught that those who had fallen from the faith should never be allowed to repent and return to the fold, since God cannot forgive their sin. The same council that defined the divinity of Christ (Nicea in A.D. 325) condemned the Novations. Montanists were a movement centering around the false prophet Montanus, who taught that the heavenly Jerusalem would soon descend upon his home town, the Phrygian village of Pepuza, and that, to prepare for the imminent coming of Christ, one must practice severe asceticism.
For a person to reject the Baptist successionist view is actually a compliment to the Baptists. In fact, years after having written Trail of Blood, Carroll wrote of himself,
Extensive graduate study and independent investigation of church history has, however, convinced [the author] that the view he once held so dear has not been, and cannot be, verified. On the contrary, surviving primary documents render the successionist view untenable. . . . Although free church groups in ancient and medieval times sometimes promoted doctrines and practices agreeable to modern Baptists, when judged by standards now acknowledged as baptistic, not one of them merits recognition as a Baptist church. Baptists arose in the 17th century in Holland and England. They are Protestants, heirs of the reformers. (Baptist Successionism: A Crucial Question in Baptist History [1994], 1–2)
Baptist professor and historian James Edward McGoldrick adds, "Perhaps no other body of professing Christians has had as much difficulty in discerning its historical roots as have the Baptists. A survey of conflicting opinions might lead a perceptive observer to conclude that Baptists suffer from an identity crisis" (Baptist Successionism, 1).
Encourage your friend to continue studying the history of Christianity by giving him the writings of the Church Fathers. As Newman said in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, "To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant."
Retrieved from:
http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/were-the-baptists-part-of-the-protestant-reformation-or-does-their-history-go-back-toLinkback:
https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=61656.0
Topic: Were the Baptists part of the Protestant Reformation ? (Read 584 times)