Southern Baptist (Calvinist)

Grace sits at the monergist edge, monergism being the view that God alone brings a person to believe, and it has a document behind it older than the argument. The Abstract of Principles of 1858 defines election as “God’s eternal choice of some persons unto everlasting life”, and every professor at Southern Seminary has taught in accordance with it since.

Everything else is plain Baptist, and three readings sit at the very edge. Authority is Scripture alone: no creed, no bishop and no convention binds a congregation. The Supper is “a symbolic act of obedience” remembering the Redeemer’s death, baptism is the immersion of a believer, and the order of service belongs to the church itself.

On Israel and the church the map names no position, and that is the convention’s doing. The Baptist Faith and Message says Jesus will return personally and visibly and that the dead will be raised and judged, then stops. It says nothing about a millennium or a rapture, so Calvinist Southern Baptists scatter right across that range.

The gifts reading leans cessationist without reaching the pole, which is honest: no Southern Baptist confession says the gifts have ended. The practice is simply cautious, and the case in this stream is argued from the sufficiency of Scripture rather than from a rule.

The recovery has been as much about how a church is run as about election. Founders Ministries, and later Mark Dever’s 9Marks, pressed for membership that means something, church discipline that is actually used, and preaching that works through a book of the Bible rather than around a theme. That is usually the first thing a visitor notices, long before anybody mentions Calvin.