“What makes a Baptist Church…Baptist?” These beliefs have historically identified baptists and distinguished them from other denominations:
- Bible as the only rule for faith and practice
- Regenerate and immersed church membership
- Autonomy of the local church
- Priesthood of the believer
- Soul liberty
- Immersion and the Lord’s supper are the only two ordinances
- Separation, both ecclesiastical and ethical
There is a logical development of these principles which distinguish Baptists churches from others. Since the NT is the rule of faith for the church, and the church is a voluntary association of those who have been born again and biblically baptized, it follows that there can be no outside authority to compel a local congregation to believe or act in any certain way. And as this is true not only of churches but of the individuals who make them up, we find that every believer stands as a priest before God, able to offer up spiritual service for himself and answerable directly to our great high priest, the Lord Jesus Christ.
But what about those who are outside of Christ and his church? They do not have a high priest who intercedes for them, because they are still in their sins and condemned. We believe that the principles so far explained have broader implications than just the organized church and their members. This is what Baptists have called the principle of individual soul liberty.
In 2 Corinthians 5, the apostle Paul spoke at some length about his own gospel ministry and what motivated him to preach Christ to the lost. He said that he looked forward to having a heavenly body to replace his earthly body which was susceptible to death. And he knew that every believer would one day be made to stand before Christ’s judgment seat and answer for what he has done in this body. “Therefore,” Paul says in v.11, “knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men.”
Why does he say “persuade” and not “compel”? Why not use any and every means at his disposal to make men followers of Jesus? Simply put, it is impossible to compel anyone to believe against his will. This is why in Acts 17 we find Paul going to the synagogue in Thessalonica and “reason[ing] with them from the Scriptures, explaining and giving evidence that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, ‘This Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you is the Christ.’” And what was the result of his reasoning? Verse 4 says that “some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas.”
All through the book of Acts we see similar examples of biblical reasoning and persuasion. This is how men and women become Christians, according to Romans 10:14-15, by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus in whom they have believed after hearing the gospel preached by a man or woman sent by God. There is no coercion, only persuasion to believe.
We are free only to obey Scripture, never to disregard it.
This is true not just of the gospel itself but of every religious doctrine. No one can be compelled to believe or practice his faith according to the dictates of another. Attempts to do so always result in violent persecution of the dissenters. We can see this in the earliest days of the church, when Peter and the rest of the apostles were mistreated by the Jewish authorities and told not to preach that Jesus was the Messiah any longer. Their response was plain: “We must obey God rather than men,” (Acts 5:29) and after they were beaten for their religious convictions, “they went on their way from the presence of the Council, rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name” (v.41).
Even among Christian brothers there must be a respect of the individual liberty of each other. When Paul was dealing with disputed matters in the local church in Romans 14, he did not appeal to any authority outside of Scripture, not even to those whom God has appointed to lead the congregation. Instead, he said in v.5, “Each person must be fully convinced in his own mind.” This requires that every individual be allowed to study for himself and develop his own convictions based on God’s word.
There are some limitations to this idea of soul liberty, however, as it is applied to Christians. First, we are free only to obey Scripture, never to disregard it. Thomas Armitage explains that, “God allows every man to interpret the Bible for himself, in order that he may discover its facts and truths, and then honestly follow them in obedience.” We are free from human interference, but we are still subject to the judgment of God.
Second, we cannot violate the soul liberty of another person. We do not have the right to demand that others accept our own interpretation of Scripture. Again, persuasion is key here. We may engage in dialogue and debate in order to convince others that our understanding is correct, but that is as far as we may go. When it comes to false teachers, we cannot prevent them from believing or teaching their errant doctrines, but must engage their interpretations of Scripture and convince those tempted to follow them that they are indeed false.
Third, the individual’s right to his own convictions cannot violate the principle of local church autonomy. A person may disagree with the rest of the body, but he cannot superimpose his will on the congregation. If attempts to lovingly persuade others to his position fall short, then he must submit to the will of the church or find a body to which he can submit in good conscience.
Armitage sums up well the Baptist position of soul liberty when he states:
Baptists hold that God has given every person the right to interpret the Scriptures for himself….We may regret that all men are not Christians, and wish that they were, and we may wish that they held Christian principles as we hold them, but we have no right to enforce our doctrines by law, and others have no right to force their doctrines upon us by human statute. We hold that if a man chooses to be a Mohammedan, a Jew, a Pagan, a Roman Catholic, a Protestant, or an Infidel, he has a right to be that, so far as the civil law is concerned. Therefore, all persecution for the maintenance of this or that religion is radically wrong.