*Editor’s Note: The views expressed in this series are not intended as an official statement of CBTS or a uniform position of its faculty. This material is offered in the spirit of faith seeking understanding and to encourage further theological reflection. To read more installments in this series, click here: 1, 2, 3.
As noted in our previous post, Cyprian can be attributed with the theology behind the phrase: “outside the church there is no salvation.” Admittedly, he had a very strong conception of the church’s visible unity– one to which Reformed Baptists cannot subscribe. He saw the bishop as essential to the church’s character as the church– a sine qua non. Gregg Allison is justified in saying that “According to Cyprian’s concept of the church, the office of bishop is foundational to the very existence of the church.”[1] In his On The Unity of The Church Cyprian claims that, “The episcopate is one, each part of which is held by each one for the whole. The Church also is one, which is spread abroad far and wide into a multitude by an increase of fruitfulness.”[2] It is to the visible church, under the leadership of validly ordained bishops, that a man must belong. Otherwise, says Cyprian, he cannot be saved.
Whoever is separated from the Church and is joined to an adulteress, is separated from the promises of the Church; nor can he who forsakes the Church of Christ attain to the rewards of Christ. He is a stranger; he is profane; he is an enemy. He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother. If any one could escape who was outside the ark of Noah, then he also may escape who shall be outside of the Church.[3]
Louis Berkhof explains that Cyprian,
regarded the bishops, chosen by the Lord Himself, as the real successors of the apostles, and maintained on the basis of Matt. 16:18, that the Church was founded on the bishops. The bishop was regarded as the absolute lord of the Church. It was up to him to decide who could belong to the Church and who might be restored to its fellowship. He conducted the worship of the Church as a priest of God, and in that capacity offered sacrifices. Cyprian was the first one to teach an actual priesthood of the clergy in virtue of their sacrificial work. According to him the bishops constituted a college, called the episcopate, and as such represented the unity of the Church. He based the unity of the Church on the unity of the bishops.[4]
Reformed Baptists reject not merely the authority, but the very existence of such an episcopate which exercises quasi-apostolic authority over various churches. Since the close of the apostolic age, only the ordinary offices of elder and deacon[5] remain in Christ’s church on earth. These offices are local. Their jurisdiction is not universal, or even regional. Sam Waldron observes of the seven churches in Asia Minor to whom the Apostle John writes that, “each church is held solely responsible for its own members and their discipline. Christ never asserts, assumes, or implies, that the other churches may exercise church discipline by intervening in another church’s affairs.”[6]
Indeed, it is the Baptist adherence to local church autonomy which leads the subscribers of Second London to part ways from their Presbyterian brethren as well. For while neither group believes in a divinely mandated college of bishops as the source of unity, Presbyterians do believe that the visible church finds expression, not only through local assemblies, but also regional presbyteries and synods. So says The Westminster Confession, that:
It belongs to synods and councils, ministerially to determine controversies of faith, and cases of conscience; to set down rules and directions for the better ordering of the public worship of God, and government of his Church; to receive complaints in cases of maladministration, and authoritatively to determine the same; which decrees and determinations, if consonant to the Word of God, are to be received with reverence and submission; not only for their agreement with the Word, but also for the power whereby they are made, as being an ordinance of God appointed thereunto in His Word. (WCF 31.2)
In fact, the Particular Baptist belief that each local congregation has all that it needs for worship and discipline may be why they followed The Savoy Declaration in omitting the assertion that outside the church there is no salvation– because they denied that there is a visible government of the catholic church. As James Renihan notes,
WCF embarks on a description of the “catholic or universal” visible church which includes believers and their children followed by a subsequent paragraph…asserting that this “catholic visible” church has received the deposit of the ministry and its gifts as well as the presence of the Spirit of God. This is the national church and is rejected in the congregational system of Savoy and 2LCF.[7]
For congregationalists, affirmation of the visible church possessing such a synodal unity is unthinkable.[8]
According to The Second London Confession,
The catholic or universal Church, which (with respect to the internal work of the Spirit, and truth of grace) may be called invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one, under Christ the head thereof; and is the spouse, the body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all. (2LCF 26.1)
This invisible church is not made visible in this age through an episcopate or presbyterial synods. Rather, it is made visible by visible saints, organized according to the mind of Christ in local congregations. Tom Hicks says,
For now, the universal church is invisible because it has no outward or visible structure, though God’s true people, who are part of the church universal, make themselves known by their holy speech and conduct….Individual local churches are the only divinely authorized institutional expressions of the universal church. A local church is a covenanted assembly of credibly professing believers. In order for a local church to exist, its people must have mutually agreed to believe and obey the Word of God together.[9]
This is why the Particular Baptist Benjamin Keach could say in his The Glory of A True Church that, “if there be any such thing (as schism) in the world, it is of particular societies.”[10] According to Baptist ecclesiology, the only way that someone could rightly be called “schismatic” is for disturbing the peace and order of the local church to which he belongs.
According to Matthew 18:15-20, the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, which were promised to the church in Matthew 16:19, are held by each local assembly. Each assembly is therefore called to exercise those keys through discipline. “And if (the sinner) refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 18:17b–18). That such authoritative censures and excommunication can even serve an individual’s salvation is easily demonstrated from 1 Corinthians 5. There Paul says, in regard to a member who was committing incest that “When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 5:4–5). But the local church not only exercises these keys for the purposes of corrective discipline, but also for the purpose of what has been called formative discipline. In other words, the local church has been given the ministry of the Word and the ordinances as well.
In our final post, we will consider in what sense the ministry of the church can be properly understood as “salvific.”
About the Author
Quinn Privette is one of the pastors of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in West Jefferson, NC. He has been married to his faithful wife, Rose, since 2022, and they are blessed with one daughter.
Stay in touch with CBTSeminary
For more information about CBTS, go to CBTSeminary.org
Consider giving to CBTSeminary to help us train the next generation of gospel ministers.
Apply to CBTS today to be sharpened for a lifetime of faithful ministry.
Follow CBTS on our socials: X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube
Sign up for our newsletter and receive monthly updates related to the Seminary.
[1] Gregg R. Allison, Historical Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 593.
[2] Cyprian of Carthage, “On the Unity of the Church,” in Fathers of the Third Century: Hippolytus, Cyprian, Novatian, Appendix, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, trans. Robert Ernest Wallis, vol. 5, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1886), 423.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Louis Berkhof, The History of Christian Doctrines (Grand Rapids, MI: WM. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1949), 234.
[5] See Acts 14:23, Philippians 1:1 & 1 Timothy 3:1-13.
[6] Sam Waldron, “Chapter 26 Of the Church,” in A New Exposition of the Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689, ed. Rob Ventura (Geanies House, Fearn, Ross-shire, IV20 1TW, Scotland, Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications Ltd., 2022), 457.
[7] James. M. Renihan, To the Judicious and Impartial Reader: A Contextual Historical Exposition of the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (Cape Coral, FL: Founder Press, 2022), 480.
[8] This is not, however, an argument against the formal associations which the Confession endorses in 26.14 & 15. Baptist associations do not exercise church power.
[9] Tom Hicks What is A Reformed Baptist? An Overview of Doctrinal Distinctives (Cape Coral, FL: Founders Press, 2024), 193-194.
[10] Benjamin Keach, The Glory of A True Church, accessed March 12, 2026, https://www.chapellibrary.org/read/goat.
This blog post is authored by a student of Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary.
