On Becoming un-Baptist Part 2: Baptism
I
my previous post, I offered a quick sketch of how I conceptually left Baptist
polity behind. I was okay with bishops
and councils because I could find such in the texts of the New Testament. Yet I remained a Baptist because I affirmed
believer’s baptism. At least, until the
day when that crumbled as well. Believe
what you will about how a body of Christians should lead and govern themselves,
as long as you hold firmly to believer’s baptism (and are not a Pentecostal)
you will remain in baptistic circles.
At
the end of my Ph.D. at a Baptist seminary I found my understanding of baptism
shifting. What initially gave me some
pause was the fact that there was not a controversy about infant baptism in the
early Church. Anytime something new
arose in the early Church, there was a controversy and someone was writing
against whatever the new thing may be (Gnosticism, modalism, etc…)
The
only early Christian to write against infant baptism was Tertullian (early
200’s).[1] The problem is that Tertullian did not argue
for believer’s baptism, but a baptism after one had proven themself to be a
steadfast Christian for many years. He
was against infant baptism (which he did not treat as a recently arrived
practice) because he thought that there was no forgiveness for sin after
baptism. Therefore one should only be
baptized after proving capable of living a Christian life without sin.
Needless
to say, Tertullian was a lone voice on this point of baptism. His contemporary Hippolytus, Bishop of Rome,
wrote, “You are to baptize the little ones first. All those who are able to speak for
themselves should speak. With regards to
those who cannot speak for themselves their parents or someone who belongs to
their family should speak.”[2] Here is a clear example of infant baptism
being practiced and having a pattern for practice around the year 200. Fast forward to the year 253 when Cyprian of
Carthage, writing on behalf of a council, affirmed that infants could be
baptized before they were eight days old.[3]
These
points amongst many others were in the back of my mind, but did not, in and of
themselves, alter my beliefs. I was
still operating under the principle that the Bible and not tradition ought to
determine my beliefs.[4] The problem was the Bible. I had texts that did not quite fit my
theology of baptism. My theology was
telling me that I had to understand any passage, in which “baptism” is said to
do something, as a non-physical/spiritual baptism. Since baptism is an act of
Christian obedience, any passage that states otherwise must be using the term
“baptism” as a metaphor. But I started
to develop the sneaking suspicion that my interpretation could be amiss.
As
I reflected more and more, I came to the realization that spiritualizing
baptism into a metaphor was not necessitated by the context of the passage but
by my theological predispositions. I did
not have a truly good reason to say that 1st Peter 3:20–21 was
talking about a non-physical baptism: “they formerly did not obey, when God's
patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which
a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves
you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good
conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” The lack of a good reason for my
interpretation was troubling to me. In
fact, this practice ran counter to what I had been (rightly in my opinion)
taught to do when I interpreted Scripture.
When
I began to read the “baptism” as referring to baptism, my theology of baptism
began to change. I remember articulating
in one Ph.D. seminar that I understood baptism to have replaced circumcision as
the mark of the covenant. This was based
upon my reading of Colossians chapter 2.[5]
I still held that faith was how one entered into the new covenant
community.
Once
I started down this path, I encountered the idea that baptism is the moment
when one is joined to Christ: “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ
have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27).[6] Likewise baptism is the means by which we enter
into the Church: “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body- Jews or
Greeks, slaves or free” (1 Corinthians
12:13). This means that baptism is not
an act that we do solely out of obedience to God, but rather it is something
that God does to us.
At this point, suddenly 1st Peter 3:21
made sense to me: “Baptism,
which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the
body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of
Jesus Christ.” If baptism unites a
person to Christ and to His body (the Church), then it is not wrong to say that
baptism saves.[7] Once I reached this point, I had clearly
moved into the pale thin land on the periphery of Baptist life. I was moving into uncharted theological
territory with great uncertainty.
[2] On the Apostolic Tradition 21.4.
[3] Cyprian of Carthage
Epistle 58.
For another view on the same subject see: Thomas
Schreiner and Shawn Wright, Believer’s
Baptism. I have read this book. While
disagree with the conclusions and many points used to arrive at those
conclusions, I think it is the best representation and defense of believer’s
baptism in publication.
[4] At the present, I
would argue that the Bible still ought to determine my beliefs. Where I have changed, is that I now hold that
the Bible is only rightly interpreted when read through Tradition. Practically speaking, everyone interprets the
Bible through a tradition.
[5] Colossians 2:11-13 1“In him also you were circumcised
with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by
the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which
you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who
raised him from the dead. And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the
uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven
us all our trespasses.” All quotations
taken from the ESV.
[6] See also Romans
6:3-5: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into
Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism
into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory
of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a
death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like
his.”
[7] Admittedly, this
does start to shift one’s paradigm (from a baptist’s perspective) of how
salvation works.
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