Recently, OHS Scott Clark posted about the Promise of Baptism.  While his distinctions between sign and signified, between baptism and union, are true and helpful, I am reminded how much more helpful Kline’s insights into baptism have been for me.  (You can hear Kline speak about Baptism in lectures 8 and 9 via this link.)

Most people get too wrapped up in Baptism’s signification of washing.  Gone, Kline laments, is the primary symbolism of baptism as judgment; of death-ordeal by water. Perhaps this is because, culturally speaking, the sea is no longer seen widely as a capricious force of destruction and danger.  But consider how the Egyptians were baptised in the Red Sea.  Or how all but 8 were baptised in the Flood.  Or how the prototypical covenant sign of circumcision was literally a “cutting off”.

The concept of judgment also neatly explains the reason why the sinless Christ had to submit to John’s baptism “of repentance”.  All prophets were covenant lawyers, and John, the greatest prophet of the Old Covenant, was God’s process server, delivering the final summons before the judgment which was at hand.  Those with ears to hear John’s message responded in repentance, except that Jesus had nothing to repent of.  Instead, by submitting to the judging waters of baptism, he signified and sealed his coming submission to God’s judgment on our behalf.

And so, returning to the point at hand, what does all this have to do with infant baptism?  When a baby is baptised (assuming, ordinarily, that the baby does not have faith), the parents are affirming that it is a child of wrath, subject to the curse of a holy God.  Newborns are not as innocent as we would all like to suppose, but (as the WHI crew so charmingly puts it) vipers in diapers.  It is not until God’s effectual call regenerates and brings faith that the subjects of baptism are united with Christ in his resurrection (WCF 28.6: “The efficacy of Baptism is not tied to that moment of time wherein it is administered”); in the meantime, they are united with Christ only in his death — “dead in their trespasses”.

In terms of this gap, Clark states “That delay doesn’t change the meaning of my baptism.”  I (and I think Kline) would disagree.  When the Holy Spirit delivers the gift of faith, the signified which is promised by the sign of baptism changes from threat to blessing.  The subject of baptism moves from being cut off by his outward circumcision, to membership in true Israel, by virtue of circumcision of the heart. Formerly covered by the waters of judgment, he is now covered by Christ, who submitted to the same waters of judgment for us.  Previously united with Christ only in his death, now united with Christ also in his resurrection.  When a believer looks back at his infant baptism, he may see a promise fulfilled, but also he should be able to say “Whew!  Through grace alone I survived the death-ordeal of baptism by water!” (Conversely, when the apostate looks back to his baptism, instead of taking assurance from a promise, he should recognize that, apart from faith in Christ, he is still subject to the wrath and curse of God due to sin, and he will not survive the death-ordeal.)

It was for this reason that Kline admitted he has a problem with the form of baptism in the OPC BOCO , in which parents are asked to affirm that, by baptism, the child is “holy in Christ”.  ” ‘Holy’ yes, but not ‘holy in Christ‘ “, says Kline. “Holy” only in the “institutional sense” that children of believers have a right to membership in the set-apart covenant community.

So next time you witness a baptism, think on the water-ordeal that the infant has just embarked on.  Perhaps it will help you take more seriously your responsibility to assist the parents in evangelizing that “viper in diapers”.  (And perhaps it will also give you a good reply to that visiting baptist who complains that infant baptism is equivalent to an assumption of infant salvation!)

There is plenty of brouhaha over Mark Dever’s recent 9Marks posting. First a Bird named Mike takes up fish not exactly in the spirit of Icthus. He complains that credo-baptist Dever shouldn’t speak so terribly about paedobaptists like us. Then Dever huddles. In the course of self-defense he rushes to make sure everyone knows that he knows that paedobaptists are smart, useful, handsome, and believing. Well thanks. Then Scott Clark points out that Dever’s hard credo-words about baptism are actually quite welcome to paedo’s the likes of him. Clark wonders what is actually more offensive, Dever’s original message that paedobaptists paedobaptism is sinful or the low sacramentalism which is so ubiquitous.

I am not given much to the so-called “culture of offense.” Everybody is always “offended” about this or that. But the right answer to Clark’s question has got to be that low sacramental views are indeed quite frustrating. They are for me. I’ve never known what to make of the modern creature known as the Baptist who wants to be considered “Reformed,” nor the Reformed penchant for making him feel welcome by lending out the term “Reformed” without so much as any sort of collateral. One answer may be the shared low sacramentalism. After all, western Christianity has known of three major schools: Romanism, Protestantism and Radicalism. The Baptist wants nothing to do with Romanism, a lot of Protestantism but also a healthy helping of Radicalism. Likely, the historical Protestant and Radical wouldn’t really know what to do with this fellow, much the way Gomarus and Arminius wouldn’t know what to do with he who calls himself a “3 or 4 point Calvinist or Calminian.”  But we have made relative peace with him, because we have accepted the notion that there are Romanists and then there is everyone else–if one is not Catholic he must be Protestant. Radical theology and practice should be allowed to be appended to Reformed systematics. The upshot is that the magazine of a confessional Presbyterian denomination (ByFaith, PCA) employs something like Baptist Dever’s “Nine Marks of a Healthy Church” over against the conventional three marks laid out by the confessional standards. Yes, low views of the sacraments are indeed very frustrating.

Ironically, the effort to make sure everyone knows the other guy is counted amongst the brethren smacks a bit of nurturing the low views. After all, who said that the other guy wasn’t a valued member of the broader community? All either side of the baptism divide are saying is that one view is wrong and another is right, one comports with Reformed Protestantism and one has much more of a home in Anabaptism. Nobody said anything about the other guy worthy of personal disparagement. And, I can’t be sure, but does the rush to stroke imply that we should all learn to get along and let this quibble over the sacraments go the way of unspoken, albeit staunchly held, differences? One test might be to ask if such warm fraternal words are extended the Roman Catholic even as we tear apart his Romanism. In other words, why is the Roman Catholic a “Roman Catholic” and the Baptist a “brother”?

Nevertheless, while I think Clark makes a good point about not being offended but in fact encouraged by Dever’s high views, I still fidget in my seat a bit when I read Dever’s original post, but not for the same reasons Mike Bird does.

Consider that in his list of taboos he simply cannot endure “racism” immediately precedes paedobaptism. This is odd. One hears this sort of thing in the wider world all the time: “mean people suck.” I agree, but what is a mean person? What is racism? And what exactly does Dever mean that he cannot abide racism? Are there people who actually say that they think racism is a good idea? What a sufficiently vague notion to reject. One might as well say he cannot tolerate rudeness, or bad decision making, or, um, laziness, yeah laziness. And since sinners are such highly compromised creatures perhaps Dever is saying he cannot abide the likes of me? After all, I consider myself racist, can be rude, make at least two bad decisions every day and have always had trouble with what I consider laziness. And what about sexism? If racism can make the list as repugnant does sexism mean that is one he can live with?

Whatever troubles attend heroically listing racism as icky, right on the heels of racism is paedobaptism. That’s curious. Maybe this is at least some of what gets peoples’ goats. Again, I’m not much for whininess and pleading offense. But it might be that ranking paedobaptism with such proximity to racism is not exactly the height of wisdom. I’m as opposed to credo-baptism as he is paedobaptism. But I hope I‘d never make the careless mistake of ever implying that such a misguided theology as credo-baptism was indistinguishable from that culturally induced phantom called “racism.” If nothing else, it tends to really irritate people.

For those of you who have never heard of the Restoration Movement, Check Out This Page for a minute or two. You could also call it the “No Creed but Christ” movement.

But the Restoration Movement does have a written list of core beliefs (but no creeds). These beliefs, they believe, come straight out of the Bible (unlike creeds). Also, the affiliated churches within the movement write up their own beliefs:

“Many, if not most, RM congregations have a written “Statement of Beliefs.” Such a statement is for information only, and is not a standard to which one must agree in order to have fellowship.”

There is a list of “main practices” on the page I linked above, here’s one of them:

C. Believer’s baptism by immersion. Only those who choose to be baptised are baptised (we do not baptise infants or children who are too young to understand the decision). We baptise by full immersion in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

I have never seen ‘baptise’ spelled like that.

Moving on. This will be the source statement for my imagined conversation at a RM church *Satire Alert!*:

Guy with newborn baby: “Hello pastor, I would like to get my newborn son baptized soon.”

RM Pastor: “But we don’t baptise babies here.”

Guy: “Why not?”

RMP: “Didn’t you read the practices page on the website? We only baptise believers.”

Guy: “I did read that, but I also read that the statement is for ‘information only’ and was not binding. I believe that the children of believers are members of the covenant and should be baptized. So, when can we baptize Guy Jr.?”

RMP: “You can’t. And we won’t baptise him because the Bible doesn’t teach infant baptism.”

Guy: “But I believe it does. I also read in our statement of beliefs that we allow diversity here around issues ‘not explicitly described in the Bible.’ So even though we don’t find an example of an infant ‘being sprinkled’ ‘explicitly described’ in the New Testament, the teaching and command to have the sign of baptism administered to our covenant children is clearly there. If you have a moment I can show you, for starters, how baptism has replaced circumcu…”

RMP: “…I’m not interested in your proofs! This church doesn’t believe in sprinkling babies and we don’t practice it. So good day.”

Guy: “But you’re denying my son the sign of the covenant and are not letting my family practice our beliefs…”

RMP: “…I said good day!”

***

-A little too much? Probably. But that was fun for me.

Would you prefer creeds (and confessions) or chaos?

Good day!

Speaking of baptism and my sunday school class (and since Rick asked for a post on Baptism), my GCP curriculum on elements of worship had us talking this week about baptism. The curriculum mainly focused on the Philippian jailer, but I had the kids read also

• Eph 5:25-26: to show that baptism symbolizes cleansing
• Col 2:12: to show that baptism symbolizes burial and resurrection
• 1 Cor 10:1-2: to show that baptism symbolizes the same thing as passing through the Red Sea
• 1 Pet 3:20-21: to show that baptism symbolizes the same thing as the flood

In my preparations, I was thinking that if we really want for baptism to symbolize the same thing as the flood and the exodus, and burial and resurrection, immersion would be a more effective symbol than sprinkling.

WCF 28.3 says “Dipping of the person into the water is not necessary; but Baptism is rightly administered by pouring, or sprinkling water upon the person.” I don’t understand how the scripture proofs demonstrate that, and it seems they stop short of actually forbidding immersion. If the divines wanted “rightly administered” to mean “sprinkling is a mandated element” rather than “sprinkling is an acceptable circumstance, which we recommend”, then it seems to me they would have said something stronger than “not necessary” for immersion, like “wrong”. Or they could have just left out the first sentence, and said “Baptism is only rightly administered…”.

I don’t find any mention of immersion in the three forms; the language of BCF 34 doesn’t seem to be aware that there could even be a question: “when [water] is poured on us…when [water] is sprinkled”.

Thoughts?