merefaith: two friends on pilgrimage

Thomas Grantham's name keeps popping up in more places these days. When I first encountered him in the Baptist Roots volume for Curtis Freeman's course on The Free Church he appeared to me an intriguing but obscure figure. That didn't keep me from writing a paper last semester on his doctrine of confirmation, but all my copies of his writings were scanned internet versions of old folios that are probably shelved in a rare books room in some place like Cambridge. Unfortunately that site, a really fine Free Will Baptist collection of early materials, has apparently been erased. Nevertheless, Dr. Freeman has let me know that a couple of dissertations on Grantham are in the works. Meanwhile, Nathan Finn at Southeastern Baptist Seminary has just recently praised Grantham on his blog – and it's always quite a feat for a Calvinist to honor someone who is not!

By accident I also stumbled onto a new book in the Divinity School's library early last week. From Biblical Criticism to Biblical Faith: Essays in Honor of Lee Martin McDonald features a chapter by William Brackney entitled “Thomas Grantham, Systematic Theology, and the Baptist Tradition.” Here Brackney summarizes Grantham's magnum opus, Christianismus Primitivus, and argues its importance as the first effort at a systematic theology in the Baptist tradition. Grantham lacked the methodological sophistication and structural integrity of modern systematics, yet his contextual and detailed writing set the bar high for a persecuted minority group. He set in place certain “genetic” traits that recur through Baptist history – biblicist theological inquiry, the centrality of the doctrine of the church, and the theme of religious liberty. Meanwhile, Grantham stands apart even today for some “unusual” ideas which defy typical conceptions of the Baptist character – he quoted extensively from the Church Fathers, declared the importance of assent to the Apostles' and Nicene creeds, considered the apocryphal books useful for edification, promoted a connectional ecclesial framework over against the independence of the local church, and even voiced what I would call an “evangelical” sacramentality. As striking as all this may appear to many, a good question worth asking would be, “How much influence did Grantham's writings actually exercise over 17^th century General Baptists?”

Grantham was a man of his context and therefore has some drawbacks as well. He was as virulently anti-Catholic as any Protestant of his era, quite contentious, and his trinitarian convictions are questionable. His biblicism resulted in flat, literalizing interpretations of Scripture. Yet Grantham was also pastoral and gracious. He was certainly shaped by his dedication to small, isolated congregations in Lincolnshire and by repeated imprisonment. Grantham was on one occasion falsely accused by a Church of England rector for sheep stealing. The rector recanted but was himself convicted, and Grantham subsequently paid his court costs and kept him from jail. Another priest who debated Grantham on baptism later asked to be buried beside him in the parish church. These stories remind us of the value of theology made real – in other words, that Grantham lived what he also meant to write.

Labels: Baptists

Posted by Chris Schelin on Monday, September 24, 2007 at Monday, September 24, 2007 | Permalink