Journal: Eikon
Volume: EIKON 06:1 (Spring 2024)
Article: Salters’ Hall Redux: Southern Baptists And The Law Amendment
Author: Jonathan E. Swan

Eikon 6.1 (Spring 2024) p. 7

Salters’ Hall Redux: Southern Baptists And The Law Amendment

Jonathan E. Swan

Jonathan E. Swan is Executive Editor of Eikon

Eikon 6.1 (Spring 2024) p. 8

The church faces new challenges in every generation.1 In the eighteenth century, for example, the English-speaking church faced intense theological attacks on the doctrine of the Trinity. Today, doctrinal challenges revolve mainly around the ethics of human sexuality. Where Enlightenment rationalism and liberal toleration seized the eighteenth-century imagination, postmodern relativism and self-expressionism reign supreme today.

Salters’ Hall Fallout

During the seventeenth century, various forms of anti-Trinitarianism became endemic in England, such that Socinianism, Arianism, and other forms of Unitarianism remained constant temptations for the church well into the eighteenth century. The results were disastrous. Among the Dissenting2 denominations, Presbyterians and General Baptists were the hardest hit by these waves of heterodoxy. The Church of England also struggled to maintain Trinitarian orthodoxy within its ranks. By contrast, however, Particular Baptists and Independents largely stood their ground, although even the most conservative congregations saw some fall away.

During the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a key factor of ecclesial decline was not merely a denial of the Trinity, but an aversion to confessionalism. Emblematic of this aversion was a series of meetings at Salters’ Hall in London in 1719, where Dissenting pastors were called on to give advice to Presbyterians in Exeter who had become suspicious that some of their pastors no longer adhered to the doctrine of the Trinity.3

While the initial cause of the meeting pertained to the doctrine of the Trinity, the point of controversy at Salters’ Hall ultimately came down to the issue of subscription — what we now refer to as confessionalism. The Subscribers, as they became known, contended that in order to uphold the biblical doctrine of the Trinity, pastors should be held accountable by subscribing to a statement of faith. The Non-Subscribers, however, insisted that Scripture should be the only test of orthodoxy, and that it was, moreover, unscriptural to hold fellow believers to manmade doctrinal statements.

When the question came to a vote at Salters’ Hall, the Non-Subscribers carried a 57–53 majority over the Subscribers. The outcome of this vote led to a split within the assembly, with each party sending its own letter of advice to the Presbyt...