One of the tenets of Hardshellism and Hyper Calvinism is to deny that union with Christ is by faith, affirming rather that union with Christ, vital union, occurs prior to faith. This is because they teach that sinners are regenerated or born again before they believe or have faith. It is in this regeneration before faith that a sinner is vitally joined to Christ, and this being so there is a denial that union with Christ is by faith.
In writing my present series on "Prevenient Grace" I went looking at the Autobiography of Elder Wilson Thompson (1788-1866), published in 1866 (which can be read here), a founder of the sect that calls itself "Primitive" or "Old School" (aka "Hardshell") Baptists, because I recalled something I remember reading in that autobiography that I thought I would cite in that series. While doing that I came across the following words of Thompson (emphasis mine):
"He (Wilson's father) said no more, and the conversation turned on certain subjects of Scripture, for my mind was working hard on the doctrine of the union of Christ and his people before faith. The preaching I had heard was, that God's people became united to Christ by a living faith; but I saw things differently, for I conceived that such an union was indispensable to the legal imputation of our sins to Christ, and of His righteousness to us, and that, too, before faith could act upon, or lay hold of, that mystical union, or draw any comfort from it. This was the sense in which I understood the doctrine, and I was laboring hard to discover the true principles upon which it was based, as revealed in the Scriptures of truth, and by the Spirit in the hearts of God's people. This subject engrossed most of our conversation, as I found father also was much exercised on the same point. The evening meetings were continued, from time to time — sometimes nearly every night in the week, and they were attended with great interest." (pg. 161-162)
Thompson later in his autobiography also wrote:
"If He were not man He could not have died for my sins. Nay, if He were not a holy, sinless, and undefiled man in Himself, standing in an indissoluble, legal, vital union to His body, the Church, our sins could not in justice or in law have been laid on Him, nor the righteousness of Him imputed to us." (pg. 364)
First, notice that Thompson confesses that the Baptists, in the early days of his ministry, taught that people become "united to Christ by a living faith." Second, notice that Thompson disagrees with this historic Baptist teaching, and affirms that living union with Christ is effected before and without faith.
Most Baptists would agree that there was some kind of union with Christ before faith, yea even from past eternity. Those Baptists of the Calvinist tradition would agree that in eternity past, in the covenantal agreement between the Father and Son, that there was a representative union created between Christ and those chosen to salvation, these being the ones the Father "gave" to Christ. Also, all Baptists, whether of the Calvinist tradition or not, believe that a union with man occurred when the Son of God became a man via his incarnation and that without this union of the divine Son of God with humanity there would be no salvation.
The Two Seed Primitive Baptists, as I have shown in my ongoing series "Two Seed Baptist Ideology," of which Elder Thompson was in agreement, believed in what was called "eternal vital union," which involved the idea that the elect existed from eternity and were "in Christ" and had a union of life with Christ from eternity. Had he simply believed in an eternal representative union by election and the gifting of the Father of the elect to Christ, or simply believed that a union with the elect or race of men was created when Christ became a man, he would have remained orthodox in his views. But, when he denied that vital union with Christ was effected in time by faith and taught that vital union existed from eternity between the elect (body of Christ) and Christ he embraced what is clearly heterodox and a heresy of the worst sort.
Thompson says that the Baptists of his day, even among those who would later join the "anti-mission movement," all believed that a vital (living) union with Christ was brought about by faith. If it is brought about by faith, then regeneration or new birth could not occur before faith, for in that case regeneration did not create such a union.
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