Before beginning, it is important to note that there are many Bible-believing Southern Baptists who affirm that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. Among them however, many disagree on the role of the free will in regard to salvation. Some suggest God elects those He saves in such a way that He Himself ensures those whom He chooses will indeed respond to the gospel through the God-given gifts of repentance and faith. Others hold that these gifts of grace are gifts to all people in such a way that all can respond via their freewill choice to the gospel so as to receive salvation. In this article, the connection between the historical Half-Way Covenant and the second aforementioned view will be explored.
The Half-Way Covenant was essentially a compromise by the early Puritans in Massachusetts who saw their numbers dwindling in the second and third generations. Up until this solution was offered, church membership required evidence of conversion for those who had been baptized as babies by converted parents. In the younger generation, many remained unconverted and apart from the influence of the church. In order to be more evangelistic, the church decided to allow for a half-way membership whereby those who had been baptized as infants could in turn baptize their children even though they remained unconverted.
By the time of Jonathan Edwards, these unconverted members were even being allowed to participate in the Lord’s Supper in the hope that it would serve as a tool for evangelism. Perplexed by the growing lack of church discipline as the unconverted increasingly filled the ranks of those identifying with the Church, Edwards took his stand and began to refuse participation in the Lord’s Supper to these unconverted individuals. As this refusal affected their church standing and general social respectability, dispute quickly broke out and his dismissal was in short order.
During his time, Edwards was appalled by the growing secularization of the church in a time where expediency, albeit for the purposes of evangelism, had taken the place of the biblical demands of obedience. With a church filled with the lost, the light of those who were God’s truly redeemed had been made dim due to the overwhelming amount of half-hearted followership, which allowed for ritualistic obedience but made no room for the obedience exemplified in the Savior.
To become members and thereby be representatives of Christ within the community-at-large, these unsaved persons needed only to have been baptized as children. From then on and irrespective of how they operated in public, they were allowed and even encouraged to make a decision to come to church and receive communion. This system for enrolling members, unfortunately, has some similarities with the process used today by many Southern Baptist Churches (among others).
Unlike the early Puritans of Edwards early ministry years, Southern Baptists typically demand that all members offer a profession of faith and receive baptism by immersion. This, in and of itself, is most certainly in line with Scripture. Even so, it is clear from Scripture that neither of these acts (or decisions) by default ensure that the new member has indeed been converted as the example of Simon the Magician makes abundantly clear (Acts 8:13, 21-23).
Unfortunately, many Baptists place too much certainty in a new convert’s decision to believe and receive baptism without ever questioning the sureness of it. This problem has only accelerated as society has become increasingly fragmented whereby one’s relationships are limited to one’s associations with others outside the community in which they inhabit (e.g., many people do not even know their neighbors). When people do come to church, they are increasingly choosing to attend sporadically and only allow enough time for a fairly impersonal hour of worship. At a given church, they are more likely to be entertained while receiving an uplifting, feel-good, felt-needs message where the Bible is rarely mentioned except for proof-texting and true biblical exegesis that teaches sound theology is totally absent.
Like the church under the Half-Way Covenant, church members are becoming increasingly worldly even while many do not recognize this on a personal level since they have limited fellowship with each other. While some are truly converted and evidence of this in the quality of their lives, many simply hold to their initial confession as it is their only evidence and only means of assurance given their worldliness. In this context, ministers who dare to challenge the sanctity of their free-will decision can surely expect a backlash. Such a stand undermines the only real hope that these worldly self-professing believers have. Like Edwards, anyone who demands outward signs of holiness from those who consider themselves converted (despite evidence of Christlikeness) and attacks their freewill orthodoxy which proclaims salvation to any and all who simply make a decision even while no evidence of salvation is ever witnessed in their lives, will find themselves at best uncomfortable with the menacing eyes of those whose comfort has been challenged and at worst forced to look for new gathering who in the end may not be unlike the one from which they just parted.