Nelson Price and Fisher Humphreys Proved to be Erroneous - I

This is a delayed follow-up to a post on Nelson Price's ignorance of historic Baptist teaching. We give Dr. Price's words, then our response.

"The Way We Were is a well researched work by Dr. Fisher Humphreys on trends in Southern Baptist theology through the years. This is a review of the portion of the book dealing with “Calvinistic Belief,” a current hot topic among Southern Baptists."

Our comment: If what Dr. Price has given is representative, this book is not as well researched as it ought to be. In fact, Fisher Humphreys is a raving free-willer who ought not to have been published by anyone. Historians MUST be held to a high level of research and accuracy.
There are, broadly speaking, three streams of belief on Baptist origins. The first is the Landmarkist or Baptist Successionist view. This is as superstitious as the Roman Catholic idea of Apostolic succession, and just as impossible to prove. Second is the 'Anabaptist origin' theory, which gives prominence to the role of the European Anabaptists. This is preferred by free-will and General Baptists because the Anabaptists shared their emphasis on a free will theology, also by some liberals, as many of the Anabaptists were what William Huntington calls 'erroneous men. The third view, while recognising that the Bristish General Baptist movement was shaped by the Anabaptists, sees the Particular Baptists (historically the largest Baptist grouping) as emerging from the English Puritan and Separatist tradition. English General Baptists quickly became heretical, and had little if any impact on the early American Baptists.

"He dates the initial encounter between the emerging Baptists movement and the synod of Dort in the Netherlands (1618-1619) and the five articles crafted there. From the beginning the Baptist made it clear they opposed the confessions adopted there by the Dutch church."

Our comment: Note the confusion here of the Dutch Anabaptists with the Baptists, despite the undeniable fact that the Southern Baptists come from an English Particular Baptist background. The Anabaptists were free-willers almost to a man, and many of them opposed Justification by faith. Most ironically, these free-willers consistently opposed the teaching of final perseverence, recognising that if a free-will decision makes men Christians, men can also make themselves unbelievers again by their free-will. The five articles of the Synod of Dort (in passing we wonder if Dr. Price or Fisher umphreys have ever READ the Canons and Decrees of Dort) were in response to the five Remonstrant articles, commonly called the five points of Arminianism. We could easily prove Dr. Price to be an Arminian, but we are content to call him a free-willer, since he dislikes the term Arminian.

God willing, we shall continue to refute Dr. Price's erroneous representation of history next time.