I agree with Josh. When I was a baptistic I didn't like the term Reformed Baptist either because I knew what Reformed meant, that it meant more than just the doctrines of grace. Although I suspect Dr. Clark won't like it, I'm leaning toward the term Calvinistic Baptist as perhaps being better than a Baptist calling himself a Calvinist, which I see as essentially being a synonym for Reformed. As someone said here a while back, when he was a child in a Baptist church, he asked his pastor if they were Calvinists. The pastor replied "We are Calvinistic, but we are not Calvinists." I assume the pastor meant that we believe the doctrines of grace but that we obviously don't accept the whole package.

I don't suppose we're going to be rid of the term Reformed Baptist any time soon since it's been in use for 30-40 years. It generally means (but not always) that someone is a 1689er. (As we have seen, many who call themselves Reformed Baptists don't seem to have read the 1689 just as many who fancy themselves Reformed Presbyterians haven't read the Westminster Standards.) But Dr. Clark is absolutely correct that the term Reformed has been defined down so far that for most it only means someone who holds to the 5 points. Hence the recent book "Young, Restless and Reformed" which seems to focus on Baptists and judging from the related article in CT doesn't seem to focus on confessionalism at all. There are people who are calling themselves "Reformed" today who are not only not paedobaptists but who are charismatic, who hold to the normative principle of worship, who are antisabbatarian, who are all for supposed "pictures of Christ," etc. But there are many in NAPARC churches who would view a call for Sabbath observance and a prohibition of pictures of Christ as legalistic since these truths often are not emphasized there either. And I'll also concede that on some of these issues, especially pertaining to worship, some "Reformed Baptists" may be more Reformed than some Presbyterians.

__________________
Chris
OPC member
Now attending Grace Community Baptist Church
Mandeville, LA

"Faith alone saves, but it is a faith that works." - S. Lewis Johnson