Thoughts on Baptism

Clearing the Ground

Circumcision in the Old Testament clearly indicated covenant interest and involvement; the covenant and the sign are identified in Genesis 17:13. The uncircumcised child was regarded as having forfeited covenant blessing (Genesis 17:14). The sign of the covenant was to be given to the children of the slaves in Abraham's home (Genesis 17:27) and also to strangers who wished to participate in the passover (Exodus 12:48). In Joshua 5 we find an urgency given to the circumcising of the Israelite males born in the wilderness, by way of covenant renewal.

Lest any should think that circumcision itself was a guarantee of blessing, God made it clear that the true circumcision was of the heart (Deuteronomy 10:16; Joshua 4:4; cf. Romans 2:28-29), and that without repentance and faith, circumcision was no ground of absolution from sin, and no escape from the wrath and judgement of God (Jeremiah 9:9).

Given the identification of circumcision and baptism (as in Colossians 2:11-12), it is reasonable to assume that in the New Testament the same basic principles apply. Certainly they are not revoked, either by apostolic precept or practice. That is to say, we find adult baptism in the New Testament administered where there is clear covenant interest expressed by personal faith, and the case of the Ethiopian eunuch demonstrates that the absence of such faith might hinder an adult being baptised (Acts 8:36). Nevertheless, it is also the case in the New Testament, as in the Old, that covenant interest is domesticated: Paul baptised the household of Stephanas (1 Corinthians 1:16), and had little interest in keeping a baptismal register! Similarly, when Lydia believed, her household was baptised (Acts 16:15), and the same was true in the case of the Philippian jailor (Acts 16:33). Some may argue that each member of the household may have been baptised by personal profession; that is not told us. Against the Old Testament background, the absence of such information is significant, for it demonstrates the generosity with which God intended the sign of the covenant to be administered.

The New Testament, however, views the Lord's supper differently. There is common ground, to be sure: both sacraments are signs of covenant grace and of covenant privilege. And to go further: the uncircumcised male could not eat of the passover. There is order here: circumcision, then passover eating.

The differences are equally significant. Baptism, like circumcision, is initiatory, and represents what is initiatory in the Christian life. The Lord's Supper is repeated, and represents what is ongoing in the Christian life. "Baptism signifies and seals what lies at the basis and inception of a state of salvation..the Lord's Supper, on the other hand, signifies something that is consequent upon the state of salvation" (John Murray Christian Baptism, pp. 74-75). The Lord's Supper is hedged around by the strongest of qualifications in a way that Baptism is not. 1 Corinthians 11:29 makes it clear that God's judgement rests upon those who eat the bread and drink the wine without a mandate to do so. But no such anathema rests on those who are baptised unfittingly. There is a condition of repentance in the case of adults seeking the sacramental signs. But no such condition attaches to the baptism of children.

Even the most stringent antipaedobaptists recognise the important status of children brought up in the church, providing services of dedication for them, and urging the development of Sabbath Schools, and the proper training of children. God, however, has provided an opportunity to mark such children out, to give them a covenant badge to wear, a spiritual engagement ring, which signifies that they are to be brought up for Christ, with the prospect that the engagement will issue in marriage. Antipaedobaptists, as Dabney says, seek the blessing for their children, but refuse the sign. This is the most severely restrictive position of all, requiring the fulfillment of covenant promise before granting the sign of that promise; a bit like putting all the road signs to London in London, and showing them to travellers only once they had arrived.

One further note. Infant baptism accords not only with the teaching of the Old Testament regarding circumcision, but also with the spiritual baptisms of the New Testament. Pentecost was the spiritual baptism of an infant New Testament church. Baptism with the Holy Spirit is to be distinguished, but not separated from, regeneration, and is applied to spiritual infants. The New Testament knows nothing of Christians who were not baptised with the Spirit from the moment they were regenerated. The covenant sign of baptism, therefore, by every Scriptural analogy, is to be extended to all infants reared within the visible church.

Whose infants?

It is at this point, however, that current controversy surfaces. Whose children have a covenant promise?

One thing is abundantly clear in Scripture. Federal holiness requires more than birth into a believing family. It is impossible to divorce circumcision in the Old Testament from the stringent requirements of religious training in home and church. Deuteronomy 6:6ff required of the Israelites to teach the words of the covenant to their children, as they had been taught by their own fathers. On this premise, Moses exhorted the Israelites in Deuteronomy 10 to keep the commandments and walk in all the ways of God, since God had taken a delight in their fathers, to choose their seed after them. "Circumcise your hearts", therefore, he urges those who had received the sign of the covenantal promise (Deuteronomy 10:15-16).

The same is true in the New Testament. The family is a place of education, nurture and training in the ways of the Lord. All children, not just those of communicant members, are to be brought up in the "fear and admonition of the Lord" (Ephesians 6:4). Such children are exposed to the Gospel, hear the Gospel and are exhorted to follow after the ways of God. The promise of the covenant, therefore, is, as Peter could express to the 'ordinary hearers' of the Gospel on the day of Pentecost, "to you and to your children...as many as the Lord your God will call" (Acts 2:39). The principle of Scripture is that as many as have the promise are warranted the sign, and all those who bring up their children in this way, exposed to such evangelical influences, are placing their infants in the way of covenant promise. It seems a travesty to keep the sign of that covenant from them.

Even adults who are unwilling to profess that Christ is their personal Saviour, and who by virtue of their own baptism are "ordinary hearers" of the Gospel and non-communicant members of the church, are able to exert such influences for good upon their children (perhaps more so, in some cases, than many church members). Professing, as part of the visible church, the confession of the church, and promising, by God's help to raise up their children in the gospel, they have God's covenant promise, and their children ought to be given God's covenant sign. At the very least , the covenant sign of baptism is to be given to the children of professing members of the church; but there seems to be no prima facie reason from Scripture why it ought not also to be extended to all children who are presented to the Lord with the pledge that they will be brought up in the ways of God.

One hesitates to say it, but surely A.A. Hodge and W. Cunningham were wrong on this point. On what Scriptural basis are Sessions warranted to punish parents who do not appear to believe by keeping the sign of God's gracious covenant from their children? Especially when the explicit scriptural principle was that the son would not bear the sin of his father (Ezekiel 18:20). If the biblical principle was that the sons should not be put to death for the fathers (Deuteronomy 24:16), it hardly seems logical that we should refuse to mark some sons out by way of punishing their fathers for not, in our view, having yet exercised personal faith.

Even John Murray concedes this when he says that "..the sign is properly dispensed in many cases where the recipients do not possess and may never possess the inward grace signifed. It may be said that such are only in external covenant relationship. But it may not be said that baptism is simply the sign and seal of such external relationship" (Infant Baptism , p.53). It was for this reason that the Reformers were willing to acknowledge the validity of Roman Catholic baptism. Calvin maintains that "Offspring descended from holy and pious ancestors belong to the body of the church, though their fathers and grandfathers may have been apostates...God's promise comprehends not only the offspring of every believer in the first line of descent, but extends to thousands of generations" (Calvin's Wisdom, p.16); which makes the position of so-called Reformed Baptists anomalous, to say the least, and a refusal to baptise the children of our adherents quite at variance with the Reformed view of baptism. Baptism remains the sign of covenant blessing and promise, in whatever circumstance and way it is administered. The sacraments, as the Confession puts it, always put a visible difference between those who belong to the church and those who belong to the world.

There is clearly no place in the Bible for indiscriminate baptism, either of adults or of children. But at the same time, a severely restrictive outlook and application of baptism hardly accords with the tenor of Gospel generosity.

Practice and Practice

The creeds and Practice of our church lay down the normative principles for administering baptism. The Practice requires a confession of faith, a consistent life-style and a knowledge of biblical truth as necessary. But it also goes on to talk of exhorting applicants, it being emphasised that a faithful minister "will leave nothing unsaid which may help the anxious and sincere, or may strike the conscience of the careless or the self-righteous" (Chapter 1, Part 2, Section 10). Parents who are prepared publicly to avow their acceptance of and adherence to the confessional position of the church, whose life and walk bring no shame on themselves, their home, or the church of which they are a part, and who are competent in the instruction of their children as to the doctrines of Scripture, would appear to meet the criteria required. They are willingly subjecting themselves and their homes to the disciplines of Christ's church, meted out through wise and prayerful exhortation on the part of its officers.

The Catechisms, Larger and Shorter, forbid the indiscriminate baptism of any outwith the visible church. No-one would take issue with this position. It would be quite wrong to begin baptising in any community those adults who did not profess faith in Christ, or their children. But on the basis of such a profession, infants are to receive the sign of the covenant, and regarded as part of the church, as Larger Catechism 165 makes clear. The children then of such baptised members of the church are themselves to be regarded as belonging within the visible church community; ordinary hearers, who are mandated then to bring up their own children for the Lord. The Catechisms do not advance any argument against the baptism of their children.

Nor does the Confession of Faith. There the statement is made that "Not only those that do actually profess faith in and obedience unto Christ, but also the infants of one or both believing parents are to be baptized" (Conf. 28.4). No-one would dispute this affirmation. But when it states at section 7 that baptism is to be administered only once, it assumes that such a person belongs to the visible church and has an interest in the covenant. The wording of the Confession, therefore, is foundational, but by no means restrictive. The right use of baptism leads to grace offered, exhibited and conferred through the Gospel; not in the sense of regenerating at the point of baptism, but in the sense that the baptised infant will, by exposure to Gospel truth and by response to Gospel demands, have privileges other children do not have. And if he, in turn, provides these same privileges for his children, as continuing members of the visible church, there is no reason why the sign should be denied to them.

This has been the normative Free Church interpretation of baptism. An undated Free Church publication on baptism from earlier this century entitled "What mean ye by this service: The Sacrament of Baptism" asks: "But who are members of the Church? Surely those who were themselves baptised (either in infancy, or in later years upon a profession of faith) and who have not by word or conduct repudiated the membership then signified". This assumes a dual standard of membership (described by Murray as 'confederate' and communicant') quite consistent with the teaching of the Scriptures regarding the visible church, and with the teaching of the Scriptures regarding infant baptism. Indeed, the moment one allows for the baptism of an unregenerate infant, quite irrespective of the spiritual standing of his or her parents, one has immediately set up a duality of membership within the visible church.

Practical Issues

Baptism is, admittedly, a difficult issue to resolve, and the practice of the church is currently polarised between a restrictive view, which validates only one profession of faith; and a more liberal view, which recognises an asymmetry between the two Sacraments. The former has the effect of seeking to make the visible church virtually indentifiable with the invisible, in a way that is not warranted in Scripture. It runs the risk of denying the sign of the covenant from those who may well be members of that invisible church but who have neither the assurance nor the courage to profess that fact. It also runs the risk of diluting communicant membership, by admitting to the Lord's Table only for the sake of granting baptism for children, as has happened in other denominations.

The latter, more liberal view, has to admit going beyond the strictures of the church's Confessional position, although not in a manner inconsistent with it. It, however, runs the risk of indiscriminate baptism that is subject to no discipline and no censure at all. Couples can assume that they will be granted baptism with impunity, whatever their lifestyle; this impression is to be avoided at all costs. On the other hand, this more liberal view of baptism applies practically the principle of "the extension of grace and the expansion of privilege revealed in the New Testament" (Infant Baptism, p.73). For, as the theologian J. Barton Payne points out in his Theology of the Older Testament, the great theological problem of the antipaedobaptists is to account "for the presence of a more extensive grace in the preparatory Old Testament than in the ultimate New Testament" (p.393).

What is the church to do? First, there must be respect for differing viewpoints. Kirk-Sessions ought to have the right of interpreting the Practice and the subordinate standards in a way that will satisfy them. At the same time, both Sessions and individuals must realise that there is scope for different viewpoints, based on different interpretations of the Sacrament.

Second, Sessions must have a policy. Consistency within the practice of a congregation is more important than uniformity within a denomination. It may not matter locally to a couple that two Kirk-Sessions of the Church disagree in their policy and in their practice, but it will matter much to them if their own Kirk-Session is inconsistent.

Third, there is a clear need for instruction of all our parents in the rearing of their children. We may not be exemplary ourselves, but we are called, with regard to the light we have, to make known to couples the seriousness of baptismal vows and of the fulfilling of them. They must be taught, both by pulpit teaching and by personal contact, that their child is not a Christian merely because he or she has been baptised, but will be regarded by God as in a special place of covenant responsibility by virtue of that very fact: "he is under a more than natural obligation to honour Him" (What mean ye by this service? p.13). It is impossible to preach within a congregation that some children are not eligible for baptism, but that all children under the Gospel are to come to Christ. That seems the most glaring inconsistency of all. Every child regularly exposed to Gospel preaching is in the way of Gospel blessing. To claim that we can identify truly covenant children out of such a mixed multitude of little ones is an Arminianism that refuses to leave the discrimination with God. It means that in some congregations the day of judgement has already come.

Go, said Christ, teach, baptise, teach. The great commission does not envisage unbaptised learners; there is no case in Scripture of a person growing up within the church (even within the New Testament church) without the mark of the covenant upon him. For in every case, infant baptism is to be viewed "as introducing infants to a visible state of discipleship" (P. Edwards Candid Reasons for Renouncing the Principles of Antipaedobaptism (1876), p.149). Nor is there a case, as Bannerman reminds us, "of adults who for years had been Christians before they received the ordinance" (The Church of Christ , Vol. 2, p.92). The Scriptural analogy is - sign of promise, first, and realisation of promise following. So, for this reason, Peter can say to the Jews, who killed the Prince of Life: "Repent, and be converted....you are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant....." (Acts 3:19, 25).

Fourth, we must all realise that there is an elementariness about the doctrine of baptism that requires us to move on to other things. Hebrews 6:1-2 includes baptism with repentance and faith, resurrection and judgement, as foundational issues from which we must work and 'go on to perfection'. It is quite wrong to get bogged down in such preliminaries, and to refuse to have fellowship with those whose outlook on baptism is quite different to ours. Baptism ought never to have become the fearful pit and miry clay which it is for too many people. It is the sign of promise, the sign that some children currently in Sabbath Schools, in day schools, in nurseries, in maternity wards, in wombs, and in parents' dreams will be God's witnesses to a coming generation. They will not all be the children of communicant members. Only God knows. The one thing He has given us with certainty is the promise that "A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation. They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this" (Psalm 22:30-31).

So, says Calvin, "if we would not maliciously obscure the kindness of God, let us present to Him our infants, to whom he has assigned a place among his friends and family, that is, the members of the Church" (Institutes 4.16.32).

© Iain D. Campbell 2001