From the very beginnings of the Christian religion the followers of Jesus Christ have been baptized in his name. Throughout church history a few marginal movements have denied the propriety and significance of water baptism by their exclusive emphasis on the Holy Spirit’s baptism of believers. But the mainstream of Christianity has stressed both the indispensability of Spirit baptism and the importance of water baptism.
The debate in mainstream Christianity over baptism has concerned not the propriety of the baptismal act itself but rather the issues of candidate and mode. The question of mode is at stake in the debate over the practice or non-practice of immersion. The question of candidate is at stake in the dispute between those denominations that baptize infants and those that baptize believers only.
In this issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY two respected churchmen present differing views on the subject of infant baptism. Dr. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, an Anglican, writes in support of infant baptism; Dr. G. R. Beasley-Murray, a Baptist, in opposition.—ED.
To appreciate the Reformed understanding of the baptism of infants, certain clarifications are essential. First, the Reformers did not casually maintain the existing practice; they devoted a great deal of serious exegetical and dogmatic work to the question. Secondly, they made a decisive break with the medieval understanding (e.g., on absolute necessity or automatic operation), even though they continued to baptize infants. Thirdly, they did not group this with things indifferent on which the criterion could be tradition or utility. They accepted infant baptism only because they believed it to be scriptural. Fourthly, they did not see a necessary alternative between infant baptism and baptism on personal confession. The latter is still the rule in missionary and evangelistic situations, and infant baptism itself must be within the context of a confession of the parents. Fifthly, they could not accept the term “believer’s baptism” as the correct alternative, partly because infants are not precluded from being believers, and partly because all confessors are not necessarily believers. The discussion narrows itself down finally to whether personal confession alone gives a valid title to baptism, or whether the confession of parents may also confer such a title.
The first and basic reason why the Reformed churches believe that the confession of parents may also give a valid title is that they see a final unity between the old and new covenants in spite of all differences of administration. To work out the details of this fully would require much more space than that now available. In brief, however, the presence of children in the New Testament Church (Ephesians, I John) takes on a new significance against the background of the fact that “little ones” are also numbered among the covenant people of the Old Testament. If the covenant is essentially the same, the children of believing Christians, by right of their descent, belong to the covenant community from the very first, and are entitled to its sign.
It is not denied that there are changes in the administration of the covenant. Thus the ceremonial observances have dropped away with their fulfillment in Christ. The provisional signs of the Old Testament have lost their significance (the blood) with the once-for-all shedding of Christ’s blood, and have been replaced by backward-looking signs (Zwingli, Melanchthon). The people of God is no longer identified so narrowly with a single nation. The salvation which is “of the Jews” is a salvation for all men. The “as many as the Lord our God shall call” are added to “you and your children.” The nation Israel yields before the Kingdom of God.
It is denied, however, that these changes in administration involve a change in the covenant itself, as though there were a transition from the covenant of Law to that of Gospel. Paul makes it clear that there is no salvation by legal observance. But the same Paul makes it clear that the true difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament is that between promise and fulfillment. The Gospel fulfills the covenant promise given to Abraham before Sinai. The Law is a kind of teleological interlude. It serves the one covenant that is given to Abraham and that is fulfilled in the promised seed, Jesus Christ. Abraham is the father of the promised Saviour after the flesh and also the father of all believers after the spirit. The newness is not that of something completely different. Like the new commandment that is also the old commandment, the new covenant is the fulfillment of the old. This unity of the covenant, which is an intrinsic unity of theme rather than an imposed unity of understanding, rescues us from the hermeneutic of dichotomy and confusion that will finally disrupt the Scriptures and involve a serious depreciation of the Old Testament. In relation to baptism it has three important implications. It throws light on the true nature of the covenant people in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. It also enables us to understand the true purpose of the covenant signs. Finally, it drives us back to the grounding of the covenant people in the triune Lord of the covenant and his redemptive work.
Nature Of The Church
The unity of the covenant carries with it a unity of the covenant people. To be sure, there has been a broadening out with the ministry of the Gospel. But Ephesians 2 is a reminder of the unity. The defection of Israel has brought certain further changes. But Romans 9–11 is a warning against spiritualizing disjunction on this basis. The New Testament Church still stands in relation to the Old Testament Church. Though there have been changes in administration, there is no change in essential nature. To understand the New Testament people of God, we must set it in the light of the Old Testament people, and vice versa.
Two points stand out in this regard. The first is that as the people of God in the world, the covenant people has both an external form and an inward reality. This is not the antithesis between the Old Testament people and the New Testament people. It is the antithesis between the natural or external form and the spiritual or internal life. An excellent illustration is found in the time of Elijah when the prophet and the 7,000 are the true Israel within the nominal. The remnant of Isaiah brings the same thought into focus. Jeremiah expresses it already in terms of the new covenant and inward circumcision, and Paul finally brings out the contrast between the Israel after the flesh and the Israel of faith.
It should be noted, however, that as the distinction is seen already in the Old Testament, it does not disappear in the New Testament, as though all Christians now constituted the new and pure Israel of faith. There is still the outward church of confession and the inward church of true faith. Wheat and tares grow together to the harvest. Good fish and bad fish are taken in the net. Simon Magus will make a temporary confession of faith qualifying him for baptism. The Corinthian community is hardly a pure church of the saints; the very principles of morality and the basic doctrines of the faith were both denied in it. Warnings against false brethren, wolves, and self-seeking impostors have to be uttered even in New Testament days. It is part of the whole position of the Church as God’s people in the present world that it should take both an external and an internal form, and that these should not be wholly coincident.
But the covenant people of the Old Testament also includes the children of existing covenant members in terms of its external constitution. There are good reasons why this should be so, as Paul tells us in Romans 3:1–3. Children born within the covenant do in fact have by right certain solid advantages that do not accrue to others. Above all, the word that is constitutive of the covenant is part of their heritage. So is the context of the covenant people itself. So is the profession that is its charter. These advantages do not cease with the change from the old form of the covenant to the new. The children of professing Christians are also born with parallel advantages that one dare not underestimate. They have the prayers of the congregation, the benefits of Christian instruction, the fellowship of the Christian Church from the very earliest days, the written Word as a primary textbook, and the opportunity of growing up from the very first in the context of the Gospel. God has not abrogated the divinely given institution, the family. He has taken it as a powerful instrument for the propagation of the Gospel. The family is caught up in the divine operation, not only in Israel, but also in the New Testament and Christian history. By virtue of Christian descent, the children of Christians are born into the external context of the covenant people. In terms of the historical entity, they belong already and from the very first to the congregation.
Whether or not they belong to the inward reality of the Church is another question both in the Old Testament form of the covenant people and in the New Testament form. One cannot rule out the fact that they do, just as one cannot overeasily assume it. The same problem arises, however, in respect of all professed members. The very nature of the Church forbids a simple equation of the external form and the internal reality. The same duality allows that, in the new covenant people as in the old, the children of confessors as well as confessors themselves may be accepted as part of the external constitution of the Church.
Purpose Of The Sacraments
The unity of the covenant carries with it also a unity of the covenant signs. Here again, there has been an obvious change in administration. The Passover has given place to the Lord’s Supper, and circumcision to baptism. But the final purpose of the signs remains the same. They are not just observances to be practiced in token of obedience. They are certainly more than the outward attestation of inward experiences. They are also more than simple commemorative actions reminding us of God’s action in the past. Their purpose is that of signs and seals annexed to the covenant itself and applied to members of the covenant people. This purpose is served both by the signs of the Old Testament and by those of the New Testament.
Thus Paul himself tells us that circumcision was given to Abraham as a seal of the righteousness of the faith that he had being yet uncircumcised. The sign could not precede the covenant, nor the first entry by faith into its blessings. But circumcision could then be administered at once to those who through the faith of Abraham were also brought into at least an external relation to the covenant and its blessings. Circumcision did not confer inward faith. Nor was it coterminous with inward membership of the people of God. But it was an external sign and seal of the covenant and a token of covenant membership, which at the same time might also correspond to the inward reality of spiritual circumcision in believers who shared the true and inward faith of Abraham.
The function of baptism seems to be exactly parallel to that of circumcision even though the outward form and symbolism have changed. Baptism now speaks much more profoundly of the covenant fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Christ. It also brings out more vividly the nature of faith as a dying and rising again to and with Christ. But it is still a sign and seal of the same covenant. Indeed, Paul makes this very point in Romans 4, where the one faith of both circumcised and uncircumcised is that which circumcision signifies, and also in Colossians 2:11, 12, where the inward reality of circumcision is obviously the same as the inward reality of baptism. Like circumcision, baptism does not confer faith. The external ceremony is the sign of external membership of the covenant people. There is an inward reality that may be present in either infants or adults according to the gracious operation of God. But no human action can accomplish an exact equation of the external sign and the inward reality. The sign is for those who belong externally to the covenant people, i.e., for those who make profession of faith or who, like Isaac, are the children of such professors.
Work Of The Triune Lord
Finally, the unity of the covenant testifies to the unity of the triune Lord of the covenant and his work. The covenant is, of course, two-sided. But the two sides are not equally balanced. God himself is the Lord of the covenant. He is its basis. His is the work that establishes it. Indeed, its fulfillment is possible only as he carries it through on the human side as well as the divine. The one covenant speaks to us of the one work of the one God which alone constitutes the one people of God and of which alone the sacraments are ultimately the signs and seals.
This is the elective work of God the Father, the substitutionary work of God the Son, and the regenerative work of God the Holy Spirit. The election speaks to us of the initiation, the substitution of the objective fulfillment, and the regeneration of the subjective realization. The covenant itself is the outworking of this sovereign operation of God, the covenant people is constituted by it, and the covenant signs bear witness to it. Without this work, there is no covenant, no people, no sign. Here is the inward reality of which the external form is only the accompaniment. Here is the essence of the true people of God in, with, and under the external phenomena of Israel and the Church. Here is the thing signified (res significata) to which we are pointed by the sign (res significans).
What is the bearing of this on baptism, and specifically on infant baptism? The ramifications are wide and varied, but a brief list may be given of some of the more important. In the first place, the work of God always precedes the response of man. The Word must always precede faith, and where the Word is already present, the sign of the covenant may also precede. For Word and sign both speak of the divine work. Secondly, it is good that in the Church there should be an objective witness to the objective given-ness of the saving work of Christ, to the fact that atonement was made for us even before we could ever repent or believe. Thirdly, the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit in effectual calling to true repentance and faith is also to be maintained. No one either can or should say either that the Holy Spirit necessarily works in this man who makes profession, or that he cannot work already in this infant who is baptized. The operation of the Spirit, as the Westminster Catechism justly observes, cannot be made dependent on temporal considerations. Fourthly, the range of what is signified in baptism—from election in eternity to consummation in glory—needs to be kept before us, lest we be tempted to exhaust its meaning by too narrow a linking with a single moment, e.g., conversion. Finally, the sign, too, must constantly refer us to the ultimate ground of assurance, not in anything that we do, but in the elective will of the Father fulfilled in the substitutionary work of the Son and applied by the sovereign operation of the Spirit.
Now no one would wish to deny that baptism on confession of faith has also profound theological significance. It is equally plain, however, that the baptism of infants, administered with proper discipline and in the proper context of the ministry of the Word, is specifically calculated, as circumcision was, to keep before God’s people these fundamental and conclusive truths. For this reason the Reformed churches think it good that infant baptism be retained also as essential to a truly biblical and meaningful administration.
T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.
