Truth Unites - A Case for Open Membership in Baptist Churches

Episode Date: August 23, 2022

Here I offer five appeals toward a case for open membership among Baptist churches.   Links referenced in the videos:  My first video theological triage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2Dy85m9rUU  My dialogue with Jonathan Leeman: https://mereorthodoxy.com/baptism-church-membership/  Joe Rigney's article: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/do-infant-baptisms-count  Luke Stamp's article: https://jbtsonline.org/a-response-to-peter-j-leithart-by-r-lucas-stamps/ Truth Unites is a mixture of apologetics and theology, with an irenic focus. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://gavinortlund.com/

Should a Baptist church welcome Pytobaptist Christians into church membership and into the benefits thereof, such as participation in the Lord's Supper? In this video, I'm going to offer five considerations that incline me to think we should say yes to that. Now, I'm doing a series of videos on theological triage. I had an opening one just about the whole idea of triage and the values of that. So I'll link to that in the video description. I've done one already on Calvinism. I'm going to do the next one on eschatology or last things. That video will be about what we should divide about, what we shouldn't divide over with

regard to the end times and that kind of stuff. This video is on baptism, and I'm going to make a case for open membership. That means a church could practice credobaptism while still. That is, you only baptize those who make a credible profession of faith in Christ, and yet receive into membership some Pytobaptists. and I'll link to a couple of things in this. I had a dialogue with Jonathan Lehman several years back on this question. He's a great articulate person on the other side. I'll link to our dialogues. I'll just link to one, and you can see all the others after that one. Joe Rigney also addressed this recently with a great

article. I'll link to that. And then Luke Stamps had an interchange with Peter Lightheart. And I think Luke gives a good case for the other side on this question, so I'll link to his side as well. Let me say at the beginning that I think this is a tricky question. I've still, I've stared at this a long time and I've gotten to a point where I would say and I've kind of, you know, over the years I can kind of try to look at it from different angles. But I believe there should be room for grace. I don't think we should have exasperation with those who are on a different side of this because it's very tricky. We're trying to set the dials right here. It's very nuanced.

We're trying to figure out the degree of error of a certain practice and then the implications from that. That's what triage is. And so let's have some patience in the conversation. The main goal of this video is not to offer a final word that settles everything. It's more to make a contribution and hopefully advance the conversation. Hopefully, if nothing else, just advance understanding about and advance clarity in the midst of the dialogue. Now, one final comment before we dive in and I give the five appeals, and that's the majority of viewers of my channel are probably non-Protestants. at least going by the comments.

The majority of comments tend to come from non-protestants. Maybe it's close to 50-50 or 60-40 in favor of non-Protestants. And I love that. I learned so much from that. It's enriching to me. I'm honored to have viewers from other traditions. I think it's great that we're talking. But this is more of an intrabaptist kind of issue.

And so I'm realizing people will be kind of listening in. And hopefully it will be helpful, you know, just to understand the things that Baptists are talking about. I know some people might have a tri-a-partist. triumphalist kind of posture about it, like, ah, these Baptists, you know, they disagree so much, and this is exactly why you need to join the one true church and this kind of mentality. So I'll just make one comment along the way here for why I think the non-Protestant traditions and even the other Protestant traditions aren't really removed from the ambiguities in this intra-Baptist kind of dialogue. So let's dive in. The five considerations.

for why open membership is a Christ honoring view that should be carefully considered, and I believe is commendable and should be what we should practice. A practical consideration, then an ecclesial one, a logical one, a historical one, and a definitional one. And at the end, I'll lay out a constructive proposal, maybe a way to move forward. So first, the practical consideration, before we get into all the different categories and nuances here, Let me share the on the ground kinds of scenarios that generate the anguish and pain that lead to this question. So if you imagine you have a godly Lutheran, take someone like Richard Wormbrand, someone like that, one of my personal heroes, or a godly Anglican, someone like John Stott, another personal hero of mine, C.S. Lewis, someone like this.

Or a godly Presbyterian, Samuel Rutherford. My middle name is Rutherford. I was named after him. He's another hero of mine, or John Wesley, someone like this. These are Christians that if they were to attend my church, number one, I would be happy for them to preach. I would be happy for them to fill the pulpit. And I would be deeply honored to be worshipping alongside them. If I was in the pew and Richard Wormbrand is right down, you know, I'm thinking like, wow, I'm honored to be worshiping.

with this wonderful Christian who's a way godlier Christian than I am. And if you look up Richard Wormand and learn about his life, and there's a sense of pain and anguish at the thought that this person could come to my church, preach at my church, but not even receive the Lord's Supper at my church, let alone administrate it, not even receive it. And this pain and anguish is ratcheted up when you're considering geographical regions that don't have another gospel-believing church. so that this person is then put in the position of not having the Lord's Supper at all or membership in the local church at all.

And the just originating question. I know this is not settling anything just yet. This is just the springboard. The originating question here is just, is this really what Christ would want us to do? Is this pleasing to Christ? Is this consistent with this prayer in John 17? Or is this an aspect of our heritage that maybe we want to give another look at, especially in light of the turbulence of our world right now?

So before getting into anything, that's just the initial appeal to say, this is where we're coming from. This is the kind of on-the-ground reality because, you know, those are four Christians I've mentioned, Wormbrand and Stott and so forth that aren't alive today. I don't want to embarrass someone out there by mention, but I know many godly Pytobaptists that I'd put in that same rank. There's so many people like that. Okay. So that's what generates the question. That kind of cracks it open.

That leads to the second consideration, which is an ecclesial consideration, having to do with the church. And this is really the heart of the matter. And the question is, what is the purpose of church membership? And relatedly, what's the purpose of the Lord's Supper? And I would basically say, to condense down, I'm going to try to be succinct in this video, present some of the fruit of my thinking, but not all of the nuances. And you can read the articles. But the purpose of the Lord's Supper, in part, is a celebration of unity in the gospel.

That's why Paul's making much of the imagery of that there's one low. And related to that, the purpose of church membership, in part, is an expression of unity in the gospel. Part of the reason we have church membership is to distinguish as best we can Christians from the world. We're demarcating those who have a credible profession of faith in Christ from those who do not. So church membership in the Lord's Supper are not an expression of unity about baptismal conviction. they are expressions of unity in the gospel. The purpose is not to distinguish the Baptists from the non-Baptists, but the Christians from the world as best we can.

And that's why we have church membership in part. And so there seems to be this massive inconsistency that arises in saying, I'm trying not to overstate this because I know these conversations are delicate. So forget I said massive. There seems to be a real inconsistency in saying, on the one hand, to this person, you are my brother in Christ or my sister in Christ in the gospel, but at the same time then saying we cannot express that

in these most basic foundational ways of membership and the Lord's Supper. And the question here is not whether our baptismal differences are going to be a source of disagreement and division. They are. The question is whether church membership is the level at which the division should happen, given the purpose of what church membership is. because to exclude someone from membership in the church is a very serious act. And that is why we shouldn't envision this conversation as a matter of strictness versus leniency.

Like the open membership view is more lenient and accommodating, and the closed membership view is more strict and rigorous. The question is where we are strict and where we are lenient. Are we strict with respect to baptism, or are we strict with respect to baptism? or are we strict with respect to unity? There are these two values here that we're trying to negotiate. If we're Baptists, we believe in certain convictions about what baptism is, but then we also have an obligation to think about unity,

and we're trying to negotiate these two values. And the value of unity is something we really need to wrestle with. This is what motivated the position of John Bunyan, the author of Pilgrim's Progress and a wonderful Baptist Christian and minister, in his 1673 book, Differences about Water Baptism, No Bar to Communion. He's responding to the charge that his position, which was to open up membership in the Lord's Supper to Pytobaptists, indulges the sins of the unbaptized. And he responded saying, we indulge them not, but being commanded to bear with the infirmities

of each other, suffer it. It being indeed in our eyes such, but in their eyes, they say, say a duty, till God shall otherwise persuade them. If you be without infirmity, do you first throw a stone at them? They keep their faith in that to themselves, and trouble not their brethren therewith. We believe that God hath received them. They do not want to us to a proof of their sonship with God, or not lack. Neither hath he made water a wall of division between us, and therefore we do receive them. Now there's old-fashioned language there, but can you feel the value driving his position,

which is the value that leads me to my conviction about this matter, and that is we have an obligation to all of the sheep of Christ. We are in them and they are in us. We are spiritually united to them in Jesus Christ. We share the same Holy Spirit. We confess the same gospel. We are brothers and sisters in Christ. Jesus has prayed for us to have unity in John 17.

And so as important as our differences are here, why not hammer them out and wrangle through them in the context of church membership as we do on many other matters? That leads to the third appeal, which is a logical appeal, and that's if you would bar someone who was baptized as an infant from becoming a member, would you excommunicate them if they were discovered to have been baptized as a member? an infant. If pito-baptism stops them at the front door of local church membership, why shouldn't it kick them out the back door? In other words, say you arrive at a local church as a pastor or you come on the elder board, and a year into your service, you discover there's someone who's a member of the church who was baptized when they were 15 months old, let's say. And they are convinced in their conscience that that suffices, and that's a legitimate baptism, and they cannot in good conscience be, quote-unquote, rebaptized. So then the question is, does that

become a matter of church discipline. And if not, why not? And that's one way of helping us see how serious an action it is to bar someone from membership in the local church. The front door and the back door should seem to be consistent because they're both doing the same thing. You're keeping you in the house or outside of the house, or in this case, the church. That leads to a fourth consideration. This will be just a little longer and I'll try to go fast. And that's Cretobaptists must take to heart that our position is a minority one within the historic Christian church. And therefore, the position that Pytobaptism excludes one from membership in the local church raises a concern of a sectarian posture

toward the broader church that doesn't really sufficiently honor Catholicity or the wholeness of the church. So from Augustine to the Reformation, Pytobaptism comes to predominate. Now we can leave a little wiggle room there. Some argue that it's, you know, Augustine's influence is so huge, but some will argue that it takes a little bit of time to fully spread. And, you know, I've talked about this in other videos, maybe in Ireland, for example, or certain regions. Cretobaptism is still practiced for some period of time. Okay, but eventually, you know, if it's 800 years, if it's a millennium, something like that. Pytobaptism comes to predominate, okay? That means that if Pytobaptism doesn't count as baptism, baptism vanished for a millennium. For half of her

existence, roughly, the Christian Church simply lacked the sacrament of initiation. Somehow there's the church there, but there's no public mark of entry whatsoever, because baptism just is no more for that period of time. And for those Baptists who think that baptismal regeneration is a first-rank issue that leads to a denial of the gospel, which is something I also here. That means that the gospel went away for a millennium or something close to that. You know, the church itself is fundamentally either non-existent or I suppose people would have to say that just, you know, there's first-ranked heresy in some way like for a millennium, something like that. And even with Luther, it doesn't come back because Luther also believes in baptism of

regeneration. What I'm trying to get into here is church history and a humble posture, not an uncritical posture, but just basic Christian love and humility toward the rest of the church in other places but also at other times should really weigh upon us with respect to this concern of Catholicity. And that's why some of us want to say that there can be an error in the church without it having to necessarily mean that the sacrament ceased existing, that it wasn't even baptism at all. In my writings, I've talked about this as an accidental error versus an essential error. saying you could have an accidental error where it's baptism, but it's, you know, use your adjectives. It's an irregular or improper expression of baptism, but it's still a valid baptism.

And, you know, the metaphor I use for this is imagine people start playing baseball for seven innings versus nine innings. You could either say you're playing baseball wrong. That's an accidental error. Or you could say you've ceased playing baseball. That's an essential error. And a lot of us want to say we want to hold Decretae baptism, but not. necessarily say where Pytobaptism comes to predominate, the sacrament just ceases to exist

wholesale. And we have categories like that. I mean, a lot of Baptists will speak of Pytobaptist churches as irregular but valid churches. And so the proposal here is simply to see the same category as working for an individual Christian. Now, again, I want to emphasize that this is tricky, because defining where you cross over from an accidental error to an essential error is a really tricky. It's a judgment call, and I'm open-minded about this. I kind of go back and forth on the terms here and how to exactly understand this. My heart is set and my conscience is set on the broad idea that I'm not going to excommunicate Richard Wormbrand. But the details of the understanding of that, you know, that's tricky.

And I'm trying to offer this in a non-triamfulist spirit here. There could be other ways to go about this. In his article, Luke Stamps talks about a baptism of desire. Okay, maybe that's another way we can try to maintain this value. Maybe there's other ways beyond that. And at the end of this video, I'll give my own proposal. But at the very least, we need a lot of carefulness here. I see a lot of modern evangelicals just sort of assume, of course, you know,

especially Baptist types, just assume, of course a pital baptism just isn't baptism at all. And honestly, I think a lot of modern, instincts about this are more Donatist than Catholic. They're more Donatists than representative of historic Christianity. Donatism was a sect in the early church that held that the validity of sacraments was dependent in various respects on the character of the minister performing them, among other things. And the church has opposed that way of thinking. And we just need to, you know, it's helpful to learn some of the history. At the Council of Aral in 314, the church adopted the position that those returning to the church from a heresy should only be rebaptized.

I'm putting that in quotes because it's not technically strictly re-baptism. It's the first valid baptism. If they are coming from a non-Trinitarian sect, and this is the position reaffirmed at the Council of Nicaea, the first ecumenical council, and subsequent councils as well. So they're saying a novacianist or a Donatist doesn't get re-baptized. but say a strict Aryan would. Now just think about that. A Donatist doesn't get baptized afresh when they come from Donatism.

That's the position of the early church. Then you look at the reformers, Francis Turriton, John Calvin, people like this. They drew from that to argue against whom they called the catapaptists of their own day. And they're basically saying that Roman Catholic baptisms are still baptisms. Calvin has passages where he talks about, you know, even if it swarms with errors, it's still a sacrament. You can't say it's not baptism. And he has a section on the institutes in this. He's saying that baptism does not depend upon the merit of him who administers it.

And he's using the metaphor of a letter carried by a bad messenger. And he says, provided the handwriting and seal are sufficiently recognized, it makes difference, no difference, who or what sort the carrier is. In like manner, it ought to be enough for us to recognize the hand and seal of the Lord in his sacraments. whatever carrier may bring them. This argument neatly refutes the error of the Donatists who measure the force and value of the sacrament by the worth of the minister. Such today are the Cata Baptists or Anabaptists

who deny that we have been duly baptized and because we were baptized by impious and idolatrous men under the papal government. So he's saying Roman Catholic baptisms are still baptisms and that's a historic, respectable Protestant view advocated more recently by people like Charles Hodge. And I'll come back to Hodge in a moment. So I'm just, I'm not, I understand Calvin's position right there isn't directly applicable to all the conversations we're having today.

But can you see how his instincts are different, you know? Whereas today people just get baptized over and over sometimes. If it's like, well, I didn't really mean it or I had a new experience or something. And we really need to check our instincts and see, wait a second, is this how Christians have generally thought? So that's just, that's not a decisive argument, but that's an appeal I would like to introduce and, extend further into the discussion. Now, quick parenthetical comment before we get to the last point here. Some of the non-Baptists watching on, say Lutherans or high church Anglicans, and then the non-Protestant traditions are going to say at this point, and I've had enough of these conversations, I feel like I

should speak to this as well, that this historical appeal that Gavin is making right now is why you shouldn't be a Baptist, you know? And so I want to speak to that because I believe that actually the historical record is messy. And, you know, all of us, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, not wise to use the historical record on baptism in this triumphalist way because it is messy and all of us depart from it here or there or most almost all of us. I don't know too many people who go the full way and it will reduce the triumphalism of those appeals against us if we recognize there's aspects of this heritage that we inherit that all of us kind of have to wrestle with and say wow that's what they thought you know. For the reformed Pytobaptist tradition often people will say you know ah the baptists

they depart from what everybody did before the Reformation. But you have to realize, while reformed Pytopaptism goes with the majority historical view on the question of the proper subjects of baptism, it departs from the majority historical view on the question of the proper meaning of baptism. And this is why Zwingli, when he's advocating for Pytobaptism says everybody, or just about everybody was wrong on baptism after the apostles. reformed part of baptism is also a huge departure because of questions of baptism or regeneration, which is extremely common view prior to the Reformation.

Though I've argued not universal, but it's very kind. And it comes to predominate certainly after Augustine, but really it's very common throughout the church fathers. There are wrinkles there. It is a little tricky, especially early on. Now our Catholic and Orthodox and Lutheran and so forth, friends are going to say, exactly. That's why both the reformed Pyrgynobaptists and the Baptists are just way off, and they've just completely gone off the rails and departed from the historic Christian church. But the fact is that even here, there's a lot of complexities and there's ways these traditions generally depart as well.

And so this appeal is inconsistent where people are saying you have to go with the tradition, but then they're saying you have to go with the tradition except on this point. And an example that I've pointed to in other contexts is views of the name. necessity of baptism and how that is applied. One example being unbaptized babies who die, and I'm aware of counter proposals, but I've read some of these books, and I'm just persuaded that after Augustine, the view that unbaptized infants who die are damned to hell, that really does become dominant. I mean, you know, you can find strictures to it with the idea of limbo, but from Augustine through Gregory, through Anselm, and just throughout Gregory the Great,

throughout the medieval era, that's the idea. Nobody's saying that I've not found one person for a millennium who thinks an unbaptized baby who dies can get the beatific vision, not one for a thousand years. And so this will reduce the triumphalism against us if we can recognize. Actually, the historical record is kind of complicated and messy. And if people say, ah, but before Augustine there was diversity on that, well, I'd say the same thing for Credo baptism. Before Augustine, there's tons of diversity. In fact, the fourth century is kind of the heyday of delaying baptism. Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, Rufinus, Basel, Gregory Vnazianzis, John Chrysostum, several other of these prominent fourth-century Christians are all baptized as adults, despite being born

and with Christian parents. Several of them are dedicated as infants. People, you know, and people say, oh, that's just so that they could have their sins forgiven at the end of their life or something like that. But no, like Gregory's proposal, this is why I say it's so messy, was that we should baptize three-year-olds. That's Gregory of Nessianzus. And his rationale is so they can take in something of the mystery. So, you know, you can't study. And if I, I've referenced Everett Ferguson and David Wright to top scholars on baptism in the patristic era, both of them. Ferguson is a Churches of Christ. He's Cretto Baptist. David Wright is in the Church of Scotland, which is reform. and he, I think, favors dual practice.

Both of them are saying, yeah, the case for Credo baptism is not bad from the patristic era. Because you've got these two, anyway, I didn't want to go on too long here. I've talked about that more elsewhere. The point is, enough with the triumphalism is the point. The tradition is really messy. All right. Fifth and final point for my proposal is a terminological point. I just want to address this.

Some people say open membership is not even a Baptist view. People say, I've had people say this to me. You can believe that if you want, but you're not a Baptist. And I have two concerns about that. One is I just don't think it's accurate, and I want to raise a concern that in the way we set the parameters of the Baptist tradition, this is privileging the British American tradition. If you look global, I mean, even within that tradition,

you've got people like John Bunyan and others who are exceptions. So it's just not true that there's one Baptist view. But globally, if you look elsewhere, you find a spectrum of views particularly. And in my article, I draw attention to people. like Thorwald Lorenzen, who taught for 20 years in Zurich, and Torsten Bergston, who was a Swedish Baptist theologian, and many others like this, you can find to have a more open posture on these questions, and you can say they're wrong, but they're Baptists, you know? And I just don't think it's accurate to say that, like, this isn't a Baptist view. I think the better criticism would be to say

it's the wrong Baptist view or something like that. The second concern I have is that, again, there's this worry of not seeing the complexity of tradition, it's also the historic Baptist practice by and large to require immersion. For example, Second London Baptist Confession of 1689 says, immersion, the dipping of the person in water is necessary for the due administration of this ordinance. So the concern is here, again, if you're going to appeal to the historical view, be consistent with the question of mode, as well as with the question of classifying infant baptism. Similarly, the historic Baptist view is to practice not just closed membership, but closed communion. In the 2000 Baptist faith and message, statement of faith for the Southern Baptist

Convention, it says, being a church ordinance, it is prerequisite to the privileges of church membership and to the Lord's Supper. But a lot of churches don't practice close communion, but do practice closed membership. So then you say, well, are they still Baptist churches? So my point here is just that this appeal of kind of what truly counts as Baptist should be consistent and not just singling out this one issue. Okay, here is my proposal. And by the way, if you're still watching, and see, the problem with them making a video like this is I'm going to offend every side. I'm going to offend the Baptists, mostly. I'm going to offend the Reformed Pidal Baptists and the non-Protestants and the Lutherans and so forth. So if anybody out there agrees with me,

I know there are. Give the video a like. I'd appreciate the support and leave it in a comment too. Here's a proposal, which I submit with fear and trembling, not with a sense that I've got this exactly right, but this is my best effort to follow the Lord and follow my conscience. What are the parameters then? We certainly recognize there are some practices that are not only improper or irregular,

but they're also invalid. And we've got biblical precedent for that. Acts 19 1 through 7, Paul baptizes, re-baptizes the Ephesian Christians because they knew only the baptism of John. So John's baptism didn't count as Christian baptism. Okay, so that's one example. Are there other examples? Where should we draw that cutoff line? Well, here's my proposal.

It's my best effort, and it's just simply channeling Charles Hodge, who addressed this. He had three criteria for what actually counts. Not the only things you should do, but the minimal core you have to have for it to count as baptism. Number one, you need water. Number two, you need the Trinity, and number three, you need the intent of obedience. So it has to be done with water, has to be done in the name of the father of the Son and the Holy Spirit, it has to be done with the intent of obedience, ostensible, professed design to comply with the command of Christ. This is the language for that third one there. So number two, so number one would rule out the Albigensians who baptized with rose petals,

occasionally. Criterion two there, the Trinity would rule out, for example, a Mormon baptism. It wouldn't necessarily rule out someone who baptized in Jesus' name if their theology is Trinitarian. So it's not necessarily about the wording in the moment. That's where we might differ from some others. And number three would rule out, for example, mass colonial baptisms done purely for political purposes. So that's all outside the boundaries. Now, Now, here's where this gets tricky. With Pytobaptism, it comes down to criterion three there is, do we have an intent of obedience? Well, we have it from some, but we don't have it from the person in question.

And that's where this gets so tricky. And my proposal is that on practices where baptismal meaning is significantly marred or irregular, such that it's close to the boundary, it's kind of how I feel. You know, I've read a lot of these other Baptist theologians who are kind of saying, like we're not exactly sure how to classify Pytobaptism from a Baptist, a Cretobaptist perspective. And I understand that. It's tricky to know exactly what do you call this thing, you know, because we would say that this is pretty far from what baptism should be. It's different from how baptism should function from a Cretobaptist perspective.

So hopefully a Pytobaptist watching this could say, you know, not just feel offended, that I would call it Mard or irregular, but say, you know, if you think this is what baptism should be, I could see how this practice would be pretty deviant from that. So I don't follow Carl Bart's view on this, who says, you know, it's not done in obedience, but it's still valid, and therefore just do not be rebaptized. I would say that Pita Baptism is sufficiently kind of irregular, to use that word, that it is permissible and even desirable to encourage one who has received it to receive a proper baptism. Now, someone will say, oh, then you're encouraging baptism twice, but you have to understand from a credo-baptist perspective, pithobaptism is like way out to the side here.

It's like on the edge of that. Is that valid but improper or is it, you know, just over the edge into invalid and improper? You know, it's tough to say. However, if a person who was baptized as an infant feels in their conscience that they would be sinning by being baptized. because that baptism was valid, then we should make provision for them as legitimate members of the Christian Church. Okay, that's my proposal here. In other words, encourage the proper expression of baptism from a Creti Baptist perspective,

but it is not strictly required for the purpose of church membership per se. And we could call, you know, you could find another way to do this maybe with the terminology, you know, whether you call it irregular but valid, or you could just come up. with another way, there could be other mechanisms for maintaining Catholicity here. But what we're not doing is saying, sorry Richard Wormbrand, sorry Samuel Rutherford, sorry John Stott, you just don't get to be a part of the church and you can't have the Lord's supper unless you just happen to find another church that will let you in. Because that seems to me to not be what Christ would want us to do.

So there it is. That's my proposal. again, I know that this will step on toes in multiple directions, but that's honestly where my conscience persuades me to feel and think after much wrestling with this. So I submit this, hoping it furthers a dialogue that is charitable and constructive, and we can keep working about on this right now more than ever, maybe. The prayer of John 17 is important to remember. And we need to, you know, final thought is, even if you disagree with me on this and you're a strict Cretobaptist, at least can you feel the struggle of it. At least can you see the value of it of these are Christians. We want to have unity with these other Christians. So I offer that as my contribution to this discussion and hope

the conversation continues. All right, thanks for watching everybody. Let me know what you think in the comments.