Jesus promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against His church. Baptists have long believed that His churches, assemblies of saved and baptized believers, have never ceased from the earth since He founded them.
“And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”MATTHEW 16:18 · KJV
The church began with Jesus Himself, when He called out His disciples and gathered them around Him. At Pentecost He empowered that church with the Holy Spirit for its mission.
Paul gives glory to God in the church throughout all ages (Ephesians 3:21), and Christ commissioned His churches to make disciples, baptize them, and teach them, promising to be with them always, even to the end of the world (Matthew 28:19–20). A commission to the end of the age requires churches in every age to carry it out.
“Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.”
“Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”
Distinct from Rome
The Roman Catholic Church claims to be that church. But the institution developed gradually, through bishops ruling over many congregations, baptism treated as regeneration, infant baptism, partnership with the empire, and finally the papacy. Christ's churches were never the same body as that institution, and they did not need it to exist. Rome calls itself the oldest church, but it is not. The oldest church is the one Jesus Himself started, which continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine after Pentecost (Acts 2:41–42). The free churches were part of that church. Rome's hierarchy and papacy came centuries later.
The Free Churches
In every age, churches stood apart from the state church. Their enemies gave them many names, and above all they called them Anabaptists, rebaptizers, because they baptized believers who had been sprinkled as infants. Theologica calls them the free churches.
They were free of the state, and they would not let a hierarchy of bishops rule Christ's churches. Not every group got church government right, but again and again they returned to the New Testament pattern: congregations under Christ, choosing their own pastors and deacons.
- Novatianists (from 251) separated from the bishops' party and rebaptized those who joined them (more).
- Donatists (from 311) refused to join the state-favored party in North Africa and were persecuted by it, though they kept bishops and sacramental errors of their own (more).
- Petrobrusians (12th century) taught believer's baptism in southern France (more).
- Waldenses (from the 1170s) preached Scripture under centuries of persecution (more).
- Anabaptists (1525) baptized believers in Zurich and were persecuted by Catholics and Protestants alike (more).
- English and American Baptist churches enter the documentary record in the early 1600s.
Most records of these churches were written by those who persecuted them. They refused to join the state church, but separatists were not perfect, and not every group that stood apart from Rome held sound doctrine. The line is sometimes muddy. Our conviction rests on Christ's promise, and His promises do not fail.
Perpetuity, Not Succession
Perpetuity is not Landmarkism. From the 1850s, the Landmark movement taught chain-link succession: an unbroken line of true churches and valid baptisms that must be traced back to Christ. Some added Baptist Briderism, the teaching that only members of Baptist churches make up the bride of Christ. Theologica holds both to be errors.
- Christ promised continuance, not a pedigree. He guaranteed that His churches would endure (Matthew 16:18), not that a chain of administrators could be traced.
- Succession is Rome's argument. Making a baptism's validity depend on an unbroken line of baptizers repeats the error of apostolic succession. A church is a true church because it holds the New Testament faith and order, not because of its ancestry.
- The bride is not a denomination. Scripture does not limit the bride of Christ to the members of one kind of church.
Why It Matters
Baptists are not Protestants who left Rome or reformed it; they continue what the New Testament churches were. That conviction shapes how Theologica reads the councils, the creeds, and the Reformation: we affirm what any of them got right because Scripture teaches it, while Christ's churches remain the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15).
Lessons on this topic are in preparation. See the rise of the Catholic Church on the timeline.