Reformed Paedobaptism — who to study

Over the last few months, I’ve been reading through several defenses of infant baptism from Reformed systematicians. Prior to this, I have already read the best of the credobaptist defenses: Beasley-Murray’s Baptism in the New Testament, Paul Jewett’s Infant Baptism and the Covenant of Grace, and Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics IV.4. I have also read some of the most relevant sections from Everett Ferguson’s recent release, Baptism in the Early Church. These cannot all be labeled “Baptist,” strictly speaking, since Barth held that infant baptism was not wholly defective and should be recognized as a valid baptism. Thus, Barth did not receive baptism as an adult, even after his strong advocacy for the elimination of infant baptism in the church. And, Everett Ferguson is a member of the Churches of Christ, a restorationist denomination, which rejects infant baptism but accepts some form of baptism’s sacramental efficacy and requirement for salvation (a.k.a. baptismal regeneration or “regeneration in baptism” as Ferguson prefers). Barth’s rejection of “rebaptism” and Ferguson’s sacramentalism would put them outside of the dominant Baptist tradition. So, “credobaptist” is a more appropriate term.

So, I am coming at the Reformed paedobaptist defenses with all of these credobaptist arguments in mind, and it has allowed me to better discern the good from the bad. The doctrine of baptism is a far more difficult topic than many realize. It requires a comprehensive knowledge of the major dogmatic systems and the ability to keep all of the contingencies at the fore of the mind. A good systematician will move with ease among the contingencies and make all of the consequences apparent. Of course, formal precision is not the only necessary feature; the material content — a knowledge of both testaments — is fundamental.

Herman Bavinck’s treatment of baptism, including a fairly extensive defense of infant baptism, is the epitome of what I was looking for in my study of Reformed paedobaptist doctrine. It combines a profound dogmatic-historical knowledge — the major systems (Thomist, Lutheran, Reformed, and credobaptist) and the history (biblical and patristic) — with the necessary systematic skills. Bavinck’s fourth volume of his Reformed Dogmatics contains the best presentation of paedobaptism that I’ve studied. I also benefited from Calvin’s presentation in his Institutes and Shedd’s arguments in his Dogmatic Theology. The least helpful defenses of paedobaptism were Charles Hodge’s and Robert Reymond’s, in their respective systematic theologies. I actually read these first, which did not endear me at all to the Reformed capacity to offer a persuasive defense of infant baptism. With Hodge and Reymond, there is an overestimation of the historical-exegetical grounds, which are easily dismantled by Beasley-Murray and Ferguson. With Bavinck and Shedd, however, there is a greater infusion of dogmatic material, exegetically-derived of course, but without the naive historical claims of Hodge and Reymond or a facile collapsing of the NT into the OT.

I know I haven’t presented any of the arguments, one way or the other, which is not my intention in this post and which would require a book in-itself to do justice. I just wanted to point others to some of the material that I have most benefited from in my recent studies. But, I will make the following observation/conclusion:

As compelling as the credobaptist arguments are, it is extremely difficult to regard infant baptism as wholly defective and invalid. There will invariably be an asymmetry between infant and believer’s baptism, but the former still retains, if “in reserve,” what the latter manifests. Thus, a believer should not regard his infant baptism as meaningless and should regard the need for “rebaptism” as unnecessary. Otherwise, we may be impugning the agency of a God who governed the church for several centuries with prescriptive paedobaptism.

The persistence of paedobaptism according to Karl Barth

Halden has recently questioned, rightly so, the typical “voluntarism” charges against credobaptists (here and here) — voluntarism understood, of course, as a very bad thing. It just so happens that I was recently reading Barth’s critique of infant baptism in his commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism. Here’s an excerpt:

“The real reason for the persistent adherence to infant baptism is quite simply the fact that without it the church would suddenly be in a remarkably embarrassing position. Every individual would then have to decide whether he wanted to be a Christian. But how many Christians would there be in that case? The whole concept of a national church (or national religion) would be shaken. That must not happen; and so one proposes argument upon argument for infant baptism and yet cannot speak convincingly because fundamentally he has a bad conscience. The introduction of adult baptism in itself would of course not reform the church which needs reforming. The adherence to infant baptism is only one — a very important one — of many symptoms that the church is not alive and bold, that it is afraid to walk on the water like Peter to meet the Lord, that it therefore does not seek a sure foundation but only deceptive props.”

“Die christliche Lehre nach dem Heidelberger Katechismus,” Lectures given at the University of Bonn, Summer Semester, 1947.

The Heidelberg Catechism for Today, trans. Shirley Guthrie (John Knox Press, 1964), p. 104.

Paedobaptism and Salvation

John the Baptist, detail of Grünewald's Isenheim altarpiece

Well, I’ve been sidetracked from the baptism issue by reading some Edward John Carnell, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite philosophers. Anyway, continuing…

I think it would be helpful to think through a possible defense of paedobaptism from Reformed perspective. I think the Reformed line is particularly interesting because of its relative novelty in the Christian tradition and its unique systematic-exegetical base. The Catholic line is pretty straightforward. Two beliefs form the foundation of the Catholic argument:

1. Baptism has an intrinsic efficacy for salvation. This, of course, is not to say that it operates apart from the merit of Christ or the agency of the Holy Spirit, but it is to say that the application of baptism, apart from a positive rejection of Christ, regenerates. Baptism effects the new creation of the moral self — release from bondage to sin/Devil and the sure promise of resurrection to eternal life with God. All that Christ received from the Father is the inheritance of the baptized.

2. Infants are subject to sin and the Devil. All humans are born “in Adam,” and thus subject to the curse of sin — condemnation and eternal death.

If you combine these two points, the need to baptize infants is sure to be accepted, and so it was. Everett Ferguson believes that the early Church only began to baptize infants in emergency situations (sickness and imminent death), and with high infant mortality rates, it just became normative to baptize infants in certain parts of the Church. Clerics had to account for this, many questioning or rejecting prescriptive paedobaptism, but not questioning its efficacy. Even Tertullian, who questioned paedobaptism, still believed it effected what it signified — salvation. It would not be until the 5th-6th centuries that baptismal liturgies reflected normative paedobaptism. Augustine’s formulation of Original Sin guaranteed the practice for the Western Church.

With the radical re-thinking of the doctrine of justification during the Reformation, baptism also had to be rethought. The Reformed had a harder time with the Catholic baptismal theology than the Lutherans. The Lutherans, to be sure, re-framed baptism within sola fide, many even supposing an infused faith into the infant, but the Reformed re-framed baptism within the doctrine of God, his election and covenant(s). Baptism, for the Reformed, thus acquires an objectivity not found in the Lutheran or Catholic schemes; it locates the baptized infant in the covenant of God, with promises conditioned on faith, but does not at the moment of baptism surely effect the salvation. In other words, baptism does not guarantee the chosen remnant within the broader covenantal community. If baptism did, then every baptized infant in the Reformed scheme is surely elect and surely saved for all time. The doctrine of perseverance of the saints is critical for understanding the Reformed apprehensiveness toward the Catholic and Lutheran baptismal theologies.

This difficulty is accounted for by many Reformed theologians through a strengthened view of covenantal graces. The infant brought into covenant with God receives the blessings (temporal, if not eternal) of the elect and can, in one sense, be called “saved.” They are brought from paganism and into the (visible) Church. The infants who are not elect, and who fall away, can thus fit nicely into the description of the apostate in Hebrews 6. They are “enlightened” and “made holy” in the covenantal sense, but not in the sense acquired by “effectual grace” (in the technical Reformed sense), received only by the elect.

This high view of covenantal grace is, in my view, the way Reformed theology should go about the issue. Indeed, I don’t see any other way without compromising fundamental Reformed commitments to Election and Eternal Security. Whether this best accords with scripture is another issue, but it at least gives baptism some sacramental efficacy (grace received) assumed in the early Church, if in a rather different way.

Covenantal Baptism and the Problem of History

Last week, I finally received Everett Ferguson’s Baptism in the Early Church. I’ve been selectively reading portions throughout the work. In recent weeks, I’ve been especially interested in researching the Reformed arguments for infant baptism, and I’ve been studying the major critics of the Reformed arguments, namely G. R. Beasley-Murray and Paul Jewett. So, with this in mind, I’ve found Ferguson’s work highly interesting.

Ferguson doesn’t much deal with the Reformed arguments for a parallel between circumcision and baptism, supported by a strong continuity in the covenant(s) of grace. He doesn’t much deal with it because the apostles and the early church didn’t work with this framework in their understanding of baptism. If anything is clear from Ferguson’s reasearch, this is it: baptism parallels “spiritual circumcision” by Christ and the Spirit, not the circumcision of the old covenant. John the Baptist’s understanding of baptism was “for the forgiveness of sins,” which was then taken by Paul and put in a Christological framework of death and resurrection. The early Church then developed their baptismal beliefs along these lines of “regeneration in baptism” (Ferguson’s preferred phrase, instead of “baptismal regeneration”). There is no indication that infant baptism was practiced by the apostles (actually, there is some negative evidence, such as Paul’s presups in why “the children” in 1 Cor. 7:14 are “holy”), but once the church in the 3rd, and especially 4th and 5th, century started to develop a theology of original sin, the benefits of baptism were deemed appropriate for infants — once again, not because they, the infants, were in covenant with God, but because they needed redemption.

Thus, the early church could say, without equivocation, that the baptized infant was saved and heaven-bound. Once normative baptismal practice was removed from its sole context of the believer’s repentance and faith and expanded to infants, baptismal’s efficacy in-itself was highlighted and integrated into the theologies of the church fathers. Invariably, the problem of sin and apostacy had to be dealt with, with (eventually) an understanding of penance as a “second plank after shipwreck” of salvation/baptism. All of which, I would contend, inevitably lead toward the Reformation.

Those are some of my thoughts for now. I’ll have more in the future.