Doctrine of the Church (Part 7): Believer’s Baptism

February 10, 2021

Believer’s Baptism

We’ve been talking about the practice of pedobaptism. Today we are going to talk about an alternative view – believer’s baptism. But before we do, I just wanted to share with the class members a heart-warming testimonial that came in this week that I found particularly meaningful. This is from a fellow named Isaiah. He says,

Hello Dr. Craig and Reasonable Faith Ministry team! I really just want to say a heartfelt thankyou for all the ways in which you have contributed to my confidence in the truth of my Christian confession, my understanding of Christian doctrine and God, and my personal relationship with Christ, and the other persons of our wonderful triune God! I responded to his gracious call and surrendered my life as a 20 year old, while on a short term missions trip during a gap-semester. The most significant factors in my journey of sanctification have been reading the Word, prayer and engaging in fellowship with other believers, even those who I’ve never met in your Defenders classes. How your work has helped to make me unashamed of the work of our Saviour and Lord Jesus! I have listened to the last one and a half defenders series over the last year, and really appreciate that class! Overall, you have helped to ignite a passion for biblical theology and apologetics, and a keen interest in philosophy. I would also say that you have strongly influenced my decision to go into “full-time Christian service,”; as a pastor-teacher-theologian-musician of some sort! May the Lord bless you and keep you, your family, and your ministry Dr. Craig! Sincerely, Isaiah

What an encouragement to hear of how the Defenders class is touching people's lives in a very personal and significant way!

Today we want to talk about the subject of believer’s baptism. Notice that I did not say “adult baptism.” The alternative to pedobaptism is not adult baptism. It is believer's baptism. That is to say, only someone who has consciously exercised faith in Christ is a legitimate candidate for baptism.

Again, several arguments can be offered on behalf of this view.

1. Confession and faith are essential to salvation and baptism. They are essential components of salvation and therefore of baptism. In Acts 2:38, we have the pattern for Christian baptism described in Peter’s Pentecostal sermon:

And Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins [. . .]”

So the pattern here is to repent and be baptised. That act of repentance is an act of confession followed by faith in Christ. So this is something that an infant simply cannot do. An infant cannot exercise confession and faith and therefore isn’t a legitimate candidate for baptism.

1 Peter 3:21 (a verse that we previously read) says,

Baptism [. . . ] now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Here baptism is seen as an appeal of the person to God for a clear conscience. Therefore this is something that requires a conscious decision in order to make such an appeal to God – a decision that cannot be exercised by an infant.

2. What about the argument based on household salvation? Certainly in the Jewish context and in the Old Testament you have the idea of the solidarity of the family as a unit. But notice that even in the Old Testament the law of individual retribution still stands. As both Jeremiah and Ezekiel emphasize, each person is responsible for his own sin. Ezekiel will say,

Why do you quote this proverb that the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge? The soul that sins shall die. (Ezekiel 18:2-4)

Each person is individually responsible before God, and therefore it isn’t true that one’s being a member of a household overrides your individual responsibility. Each person is responsible before God to respond in repentance and faith.

When you look at the New Testament it is clear that Christ’s message did divide families. They were not always unified. For example, in 1 Corinthians 7:12-16, Paul gives instructions for Christians who are married to unbelievers and how they should handle this situation whether the unbelieving partner wants to live with the Christian or whether that unbeliever wants to separate. He says in verse 14 that the unbelieving spouse is consecrated through the believing spouse, “otherwise, your children would be unclean, but as it is they are holy.” So the Christian message is one that did divide families. It is not true that simply because of the decision of the head of a household everyone was treated as a Christian.

The bottom line is that there is no baptism of infants recorded anywhere in the New Testament. The defense of household salvation and infant baptism is based upon an argument from silence. There is no suggestion anywhere in the New Testament that little infants were taken out of their cradles and brought to be baptized. So the defender of believer’s baptism would say that the argument from household salvation doesn’t really go through. Indeed, infant baptism doesn’t meet the prerequisites for legitimate baptism.

3. What about Jesus and the children and his blessing them? In the first place, it is not clear that these are infants. Rather these seem to be little children who are exhibiting love and faith in Jesus and who believe in him. The lesson that Jesus wants to teach here about the little children is that this is the same way in which we need to come to Christ. We need to come to him in love and faith and with the same sort of childlike trust that a little child has in his or her parents. We should also be childlike in our faith and trust in Jesus.

In any case, even if people were bringing little infants to Jesus to lay his hands upon them and to bless or pray for them, prayer and blessing just is not the same as baptism. There’s no suggestion that these little children should be baptized. On the contrary, as I’ve said, repentance and faith are prerequisites for Christian baptism.

4. What about the argument based upon circumcision? It is important here to understand that the way in which one enters the covenant as we’ve seen is by faith. It is not as though some act like circumcision or baptism makes you a member of the covenant. You enter the covenant by faith and, as we saw when we looked at the New Perspective on Paul, the way you stay in the covenant is by faith. There isn’t some sort of means by which you enter and stay in the covenant apart from faith. The fact that circumcision and baptism were not seen as parallel is shown by the fact that in Palestine they were both practiced. Jewish children who were children of believing families that were part of the Jesus movement (that is, part of the church) were still circumcised. It is not as though baptism replaced circumcision in the New Testament church. For Jewish believers in Jesus, both circumcision and baptism were practiced. So there is no reason to think that infant baptism began to take the place of circumcision among Jewish believers.

Indeed, when you look at Colossians 2:11, what corresponds to circumcision is not baptism. Paul writes,

In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of flesh in the circumcision of Christ; and you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God [. . .].

What corresponds to circumcision is Christ’s death on the cross. When it talks about “putting off the body of flesh in the circumcision of Christ” it is talking about Christ’s death. It is his atoning death on the cross that is a spiritual circumcision that puts away the body of death. Then we are united with Christ in his death and resurrection in baptism. There is no suggestion in Collosians 2:11-12 that infant baptism should somehow replace circumcision of infants as a sign of the new covenant.

So it would seem on the basis of these arguments that the practice in the New Testament is believer’s baptism. As was alluded to a moment ago, these believers might be children. There might be youngsters who have come to consciously place their faith in Christ and believe and so who would be legitimate candidates for baptism. But what would not be acceptable would be the baptism of little infants who have no conscious volition or faith in Christ.

Finally, I’d like to say a word in conclusion about the combination of sacramentalism with infant baptism. I’ve argued against a sacramentalist view of baptism, and I also think that the case for pedobaptism is very weak. The argument for confession and faith as essential to baptism seem to me to be powerful. Nevertheless I could see where one might have one or the other practiced without great injury to the church. If you had a sacramentalist view of baptism (like G. R. Beasley-Murray) but you reject pedobaptism, while that might be mistaken, nevertheless it wouldn’t be injurious to the church because once people exercised faith in Christ and submitted themselves as candidates for believer’s baptism they can be baptised and they might believe that at the moment of their water baptism they were also baptised in the Holy Spirit and became regenerate believers. That might not be right but it wouldn’t do any great harm.

Similarly, if you have a non-sacramentalist view of baptism and you view baptism as a sort of sign or external seal of the covenant, then even if you were baptizing infants you would not be regarding their baptism as the moment at which they received justifying grace and were saved. So they would still need, when they grow up, to exercise repentance and faith and receive justifying grace and become regenerate Christians. So even if pedobaptism were practiced, on a non-sacramentalist view it wouldn’t be a terrible injury to the church.

But it seems to me that what is truly disastrous for the church is to combine sacramentalism with pedobaptism because then what you have is people falsely thinking that in virtue of being baptized as an infant they are therefore regenerate Christians who are recipients of God’s justifying and saving grace. This leads to a church that is filled with non-Christians who have never themselves actually exercised saving faith in Christ but are simply trusting in a ritual which has been done to them unwittingly as tiny infants. So while sacramentalism or pedobaptism might be practiced independently of each other without great harm to the church, it seems to me that when they are combined then the results really are disastrous for the health of the church because it will basically lead to a church that is filled with unregenerate people falsely thinking that they are in fact regenerate and justified Christians.

Next time we’ll turn from a discussion of baptism to a discussion of that second sacramental ordinance, the Lord’s Supper.[1]

 

[1]Total Running Time: 16:49 (Copyright © 2021 William Lane Craig)