Baptism

A few more pieces of my response to my Presbytery regarding baptism.

A. The intentions and assumptions of my work on baptism.

First and foremost, I have wanted to understand the biblical teaching concerning baptism. Under the inspiration of the Spirit, the biblical writers wrote of baptism’s effects and benefits with an ease that does not come naturally to Reformed and evangelical theologians. Would any Reformed theologian say what Peter says in 1 Peter 3? I started out with the aim of formulating an understanding of baptism that would allow me to say, with Peter’s offhand confidence, “baptism now saves you” (1 Peter 3:21).

Second, the biblical teaching concerning baptism challenges a number of characteristic modern assumptions about human existence. Modern philosophy has often treated individual human beings as isolated monads of humanity, unaffected by the persons and events outside of us. [1] Such an assumption makes it virtually impossible to grasp what either the Bible or theologians of the past have said about the efficacy of sacraments: How can a little water applied to my body have any effect on my soul? I address this inner/outer problem more fully in a separate section below.

Third, paedobaptist theology has often operated with implicitly Baptist assumptions. Though we baptize babies, our theology of baptism often implicitly assumes that the subject of baptism is an adult convert. [2] For instance, paedobaptists say that faith is necessary for baptism to have its gracious effect, but this leaves us open to the charge that we are inconsistent in baptizing babies, whose faith or lack of it no one can know. The almost inevitable result is that the effect of infant baptism is minimized. I agree that faith is necessary if baptism is going to be a means of grace unto final salvation, but I have tried to think about what this means for a baptized infant . [3] My question has been: What benefit, if any, do those baptized in infancy enjoy before they come to an “age of discretion” and make their own personal profession of faith?

Fourth, sacramental theology must be purged of mechanistic models and metaphors. Aquinas says that sacraments are like tools in the hand of God. That captures an important reality of the sacraments, one which is important to the Reformed position: Sacraments have no more power in themselves than a hammer does; baptism does what work it does because God wields this tool. Yet, this analogy fails to capture the personal communion that is at the heart of Christian faith and practice. In place of mechanistic categories, I have tried to think through issues of sacramental efficacy in personalist categories. [4]

Finally, my dissertation attempted to work through questions of baptismal efficacy using the model of the ordination rite of priests (Exodus 29; Leviticus 8-9). Baptism, I argued, is efficacious in the way that the ordination rite is efficacious. That is still my position. This analogy opens up a way of thinking about baptismal efficacy that avoids two extremes: It avoids the view that baptism has little or no effect, and it avoids the view that baptism invariably and permanently confers grace. Aaron received a set of gifts in his ordination – the gift of ministry in the Lord’s house, the gift of access to Yahweh, the gift of a standing within the community of Israel. But those gifts could be forfeited, as they clearly were in the case of Nadab and Abihu (Leviticus 10). Like ordination, baptism confers benefits – “graces” in the original sense – and these are truly conferred by baptism. Baptism marks the baptized with God’s favor and grants favors, but baptism does not guarantee that the baptized will remain in God’s favor forever.

Union with the Visible church.

My basic affirmation about baptismal efficacy is the affirmation of the Confession itself: “Baptism is a sacrament of the New Testament, ordained by Jesus Christ . . . for the solemn admission of the party baptized into the visible Church ” (28.1). I also agree with the Confession’s description of the “visible church,” though I believe it has limitations: “The visible Church, which is also catholic or universal under the Gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their children: and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation” (25.2). When we put these statements together, we conclude that a baptized becomes a subject of the kingdom of Christ, a member of God’s household and family, and is put on the way of salvation. Since a baptized infant becomes a member of God’s household, he is a child of God. That is saying quite a lot.

But the Confession does not say everything that the New Testament says. The Confessional statements on the church are limited by the Assembly’s failure (refusal?) to apply the biblical language of “body” and “bride” to the visible church. The contrast of WCF 25.1 and 2 is notable. The invisible church is described with language of intimacy. Christ is the “Head” of the invisible church, which is His body and spouse, “the fullness of Him that fills all in all.” The visible church is described in less intimate, and more “institutional” or “political” terms as the “kingdom of Christ” and “God’s family.” In the New Testament, by contrast, Paul describes the visible church as body and bride (Romans 12; 1 Corinthians 12; Ephesians 4-5). The visible, institutional community with its diversity of gifts, its officers and rites, is the body of Christ.

The PCA’s Book of Church Order is closer to the New Testament usage. In several places, it acknowledges that the visible church is the body of Christ. In a section on the “visible church defined,” we read: “This visible unity of the body of Christ , though obscured, is not destroyed by its division into different denominations of professing Christians; but all of these which maintain the Word and Sacraments in their fundamental integrity are to be recognized as true branches of the Church of Jesus Christ” (2-2).

BOCO 47-7 speaks of the public worship of the body of Christ: “Public worship differs from private worship in that in public worship God is served by His saints unitedly as His covenant people, the Body of Christ.” The prayer for the dedication of a church building (Appendix F) includes thanksgiving for membership in the church, apparently the visible church: “Your great goodness in granting to us, through Your particular grace, membership in the Church Universal, the mystical Body of Christ.”

So, the crux of my view of baptismal efficacy depends on a position very much within the bounds of our Confessional Standards, that is, that baptism admits the baptized into the visible chur
ch, the body of Christ.

[1] I have explored this in my dissertation, The Priesthood of the Plebs (Wipf & Stock), and more directly in “Modernity and the ‘Merely Social,’” Pro Ecclesia .

[2] I have explored this tension in early Christian baptismal liturgies in “Infant Baptism: A Tragi-Comedy,” in Gregg Strawbridge, The Case for Infant Baptism .

[3] One option is to stress the reality of infant faith, as Rich Lusk has done in Paedofaith . While I believe infants do believe, and agree that our default assumption is that our children are believers, my own work on baptism has not depended on the notion of infant faith.

[4] In this, I am following some of the implications of John Frame’s notion that God is “Absolute Person,” and the corresponding notion that reality is pervasively personal.