Does the Theology Compass Test Actually Know What a Reformed Baptist Believes?
Jacob Winograd, host of the Biblical Anarchy Podcast, takes the Theocompass.com theology compass test live — answering 30 questions on the Trinity, Scripture, baptism, eschatology, and Christian ethics. The test scores him 67% Presbyterian Church in America. The problem: he’s a Reformed Baptist who rejects infant baptism. This episode reveals what the theology compass test gets right, where its categories break down, and what a libertarian, amillennial, partial preterist Reformed Baptist actually believes.
The theology compass test promises to identify not just what you believe, but how you believe it. That’s a more interesting claim than your average online quiz. So what happens when a Reformed Baptist with libertarian, amillennial, and partial preterist commitments actually sits down and takes it? The results are revealing — and not just about the test.
What follows is a breakdown of the major theological positions the test surfaces, where Jacob lands, and why the theology compass test is ultimately more useful as a conversation starter than a theological verdict.
What the Theology Compass Test Actually Measures
The Test Goes Beyond Simple Belief Categories
Most theology quizzes ask what you believe. The theology compass test adds two dimensions: certainty (how confident are you?) and tolerance (how valid are other positions?). This is a meaningful improvement. Knowing that someone holds a position with certainty and considers it a core dogma tells you something very different than knowing they lean a certain direction but hold it loosely. That distinction shapes how someone does church, engages disagreement, and reads their tradition.
The Test Conflates Separate Theological Questions
The quiz is not without real problems. The question on divine revelation mixes two distinct debates — whether the canon is closed and whether the gifts of the Spirit continue — into a single question. These are not the same issue. You can hold that divine revelation ceased with the apostolic age while remaining a full continuationist on spiritual gifts. Forcing those into one answer produces noise, not signal. A theology compass test that bundles adjacent debates produces a result that reflects the test’s categories more than the test-taker’s actual theology.
Scripture as Primary, Not Sole — and Why That Matters
On the question of authority, Jacob selects “Scripture as primary, informed by history and reason” rather than “Scripture as the sole infallible rule.” That’s a meaningful distinction within the Reformed world. Sola Scriptura does not mean nuda scriptura — the Reformers read the church fathers, engaged councils, and treated tradition as a normed norm. Treating church history and reason as genuine (if subordinate) authorities is not a compromise of the Reformed position — tradition informs interpretation, it just doesn’t override Scripture. That is the Reformed position, properly understood.
Biblical Inspiration: Superintended, Not Dictated
The theology compass test asks whether the Bible’s words were dictated directly by God or superintended through human authors. The answer matters because it determines how you read the text. Words superintended by God through human beings allows for authorial voice, literary style, and historical particularity — Paul sounds like Paul, not like Moses — while still affirming that the final product carries divine authority. Mechanical dictation flattens all of that and produces exegetical problems. The Reformed doctrine of inspiration has always emphasized organic inspiration for exactly this reason.
Trinitarianism Is Non-Negotiable
One God existing as three distinct co-equal persons is the only answer that reflects the Nicene settlement, and Jacob marks it as a core dogma with zero tolerance for alternatives. That’s the right call. Modalism, tritheism, and subordinationism are not alternative Christian positions — they’re the heresies the early councils specifically condemned. If there’s anything a theology compass test should register as a hard boundary, it’s here.
Where the Theology Compass Test Gets It Wrong
Why the PCA Result Is Close but Wrong
The theology compass test placed Jacob at 67.73% Presbyterian Church in America, with the Southern Baptist Convention coming in second at 62%. The result tracks — until you hit the sacraments. The defining issue that separates Reformed Baptists from Presbyterians is not soteriology, not ecclesiology in the broad sense, not even eschatology. It’s the covenant sign. Presbyterians apply the covenant sign to covenant households, including infants. Baptists require credible profession of faith first. That single disagreement produces two distinct traditions within the same confessional Reformed framework, and a theology compass test that places a Reformed Baptist at PCA #1 is not wrong about the theology — it’s missing the ecclesiological weight of baptism.
Infant Baptism and the Limits of the Test
The Reformed Baptist tradition does not exist because its adherents are less Reformed than Presbyterians. It exists because they read the covenant differently. The 1689 London Baptist Confession is a Reformed confession. The soteriological commitments — total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, perseverance of the saints — are shared. What differs is the application of the covenant and its sign. The theology compass test apparently doesn’t weight this distinction heavily enough to separate the two traditions in its scoring.
The Egalitarian Score Doesn’t Fit Either
The test placed Jacob on the egalitarian side of the church governance spectrum, which he pushed back on — noting that while he doesn’t love labels, something like complementarian would be closer to his actual position. The egalitarian/hierarchical axis the test uses is too blunt. Complementarianism is neither flat egalitarianism nor rigid hierarchicalism. A theology compass test that can’t locate complementarianism accurately on this axis is working with an underdeveloped category.
Other Theological Positions the Theology Compass Test Surfaces
Amillennialism and Partial Preterism
Jacob identifies as amillennial and partial preterist. Both positions read the prophetic texts of Scripture as substantially fulfilled in the first-century events surrounding the destruction of Jerusalem and the establishment of Christ’s kingdom. The rapture is not coming. The millennium is not a future earthly reign. These are not fringe positions — they represent the dominant view of the Reformed and patristic traditions — but they’re underrepresented in American evangelical conversation, which skews heavily dispensational.
Christian Ethics and the Warfare Question
When the test asks whether Christian participation in warfare is permissible, Jacob chooses “permissible only under strict conditions of justice” but notes he leans close to absolute refusal. That’s a meaningful position — strong just war skepticism stopping just short of full pacifism. The ethics of violence, state coercion, and military service aren’t peripheral concerns for a Christian libertarian. They’re where Reformed theology and political philosophy press hardest against each other.
The Christian Life as Countercultural Witness
The final question asks how the Christian life is best understood. Jacob chooses “embodying the peaceful, countercultural reign of God on earth” — not because the other options (grace, evangelism, personal relationship with Christ) are wrong, but because this frame is the most underemphasized. His reasoning: when you’re genuinely embodying the peaceful, countercultural reign of God, the rest follows. Evangelism, discipleship, and grace all flow from that posture. The kingdom of God is not a future political program. It is a present reality the church is called to embody now.
Origins and Honest Uncertainty
On the origin of the universe, Jacob selects apathetic silence — not because he doesn’t care about truth, but because he genuinely hasn’t resolved the question and doesn’t think it’s theologically decisive for his core commitments. That kind of intellectual honesty is worth noting. Confessional Reformed theology has room for disagreement on the age of the earth and the mechanism of creation. Treating young-earth creationism as a test of orthodoxy is a category error, and the willingness to say “I don’t know” on a genuinely contested question is more theologically responsible than forcing a confident answer.
Conclusion: Theology Compass Test — Useful Tool, Imperfect Mirror
The theology compass test is worth taking. It surfaces questions that most Christians never sit down and think through carefully, and its certainty/tolerance framework adds real depth to the standard multiple-choice format. For someone with a developed theological identity, it’s a useful diagnostic — not because it tells you who you are, but because it shows you where the standard categories fit and where they don’t.
For a Reformed Baptist with libertarian, amillennial, and partial preterist commitments, the result is instructive precisely in its failure. A 67% Presbyterian score, a misread on complementarianism, and a conflated cessationism question aren’t bugs — they’re a window into how poorly the standard evangelical taxonomy maps onto a more carefully worked-out theological position. The traditions we inherit are real, but they’re also messy. The theology compass test reflects that messiness back at us.
Take the test. Then argue with the results.
Ressources supplémentaires
Podcast sur l'anarchie biblique
Lectures externes
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