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Well, Michael, there's a difference between being a member of a church and not agreeing completely with the stated theological perspective, and teaching on behalf of the denomination's churches in one of its seminaries. A church's theological perspective is much more detailed, and more flexible. The seminary's commitment to a statement of faith is built around principles that its supporting constituents have determined are essential and relatively non-negotiable. In a church, or should I say in a Baptist church, the membership is the highest level of authority. The seminary's curriculum and objectives are aimed at a specific student outcome.

You're critical of some of the wording in the BFM 2000 because you think the SBC is too dogmatic, but a couple of secondary, or tertiary doctrinal points determines your ability to support a missions agency or a seminary through a local church?

Oh, yeah, it's part of the Baptist heritage, but OSAS is overwhelmingly the preference of all but a small segment of the Baptist family, and has been since shortly after Helwys' day. It hasn't had the effect that OSAS has had in denominational formation, and would not be considered as a Baptist distinctive, or a traditional Baptist view. It's like speaking in tongues. Some Baptists believe in it, but it's not a Baptist distinctive.

Sandy (and everybody else for that matter), it might be a good idea (in another thread, probably, to be erected for the purpose) to list what you/we each think of as Baptist distinctives, and what we think of as Baptist universals (if any). I had never thought of OSAS as a Baptist distinctive (even though obviously lots of Baptists believe it and lots of Baptist churches treat it as fundamental), but then I learned my , and none of the initials is an O or an E:
B - ible-believing
A - utonomy of the local congregation
P - riesthood of the believer
T - wo ordinances
I - ndividual soul liberty
S - aved, baptized church membership
T - wo offices
S - eparation of church and state
Note that if the convention is more central to your thinking than the congregation, you can simply change A to "Associational principle" and still remain Baptist. Likewise, if you want to have foot-washing, or elders, it's easy to change the T's to "Three..." and still be BAPTISTS. And if you want the baptismal mode to have constitutional authority, change the first S to "Submerged, regenerate church membership"...

Hauro,

I'm not going to try to list Baptist distinctives as an outsider. But many American Baptists do not believe in OSAS. In this part of the country Northern Baptists and Free Will Baptists merged after the turn of the 20th century. There is very much a Free Will Baptist theology here.

The first time I explained Calvinism, predestinated, and OSAS to a large Wednesday night study group at FBC Des Moines they had a hard time believing that anyone actually believed any of that. They were incredulous. Some of them had never heard of idea of OSAS.

Yeah, perhaps another thread to list historic or traditional Baptist doctrines, essential, secondary and tertiary if someone wants to go down the list that far, would be a good idea, since it would be buried in this one at this point.