Baptism in Reformation Anglicanism - a sketch

As in so many things, with baptism the Reformers could agree on what they denied but found more difficulty in agreeing on what they would affirm. There were of course the so-called ‘anabaptists’ of the radical wing of the reformation who insisted on ‘believer’s baptism’ as against the practice of baptizing infants. Cranmer included in his liturgy a service for the baptism ‘of those who are of riper years’ alongside the service for the baptism of infants, but with the expectation that the baptism of infants would be the norm. But what did it mean, and did baptism of infants signal that they were regenerate? Does it work in some automatic sense, ex opere operato? 

At the time of the New Testament, the Greek word ‘baptizo’ had both a religious and a mundane sense. The word could simply indicate washing or immersing or soaking in water – something you might do to your hands, or to the cups and plates. But the ritual of water baptism had a long history in Judaism prior to the birth of Christianity. There were ritual washings mentioned in the Old Testament code as acts of purification. Any reader of the New Testament would of course be aware of the proto-Christian baptismal ministry of John ‘the baptizer’. John was not practicing something unfamiliar to the Jews, but a practice that had become common as a rite of entry into the community of God’s people – one that signified repentance and purification. The relationship of this ritual to circumcision is unclear – why was it practiced when circumcision already existed as a rite of entry and a mark of membership? 

But John’s ministry was radical because he was suggesting that even Jews who were already Jews needed to ‘repent and be baptized’. What’s more, he foreshadowed one who would come after him who would administer a baptism with ‘the Holy Spirit and fire’ (Luke 3:16). Here something crucial is being said about Christian baptism: that it is an immersion not in the first place in water but in the Holy Spirit. The external washing of water baptism serves to point to the inner transformation of baptism in the fiery Spirit of God. Jesus also makes a shocking metaphorical use of the idea of baptism in his words to his James and John in Mark 10:38: "Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?" The picture of baptism he is here evoking is something like drowning. His ‘baptism’ is his atoning death. This strange, metaphorical use of the word to refer to Jesus’ death is picked up by Paul in Romans 6: ‘We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.’

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus’ final words to his disciples are

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Did he have in mind a water ceremony here? Which baptism is he talking about – the Holy Spirit baptism, or an immersion of the body in water? At one level, the behaviour of the early church tells the story: in answer to this command, they immediately continued to symbolize the baptism of the Holy Spirit by the rite of water baptism. The direct result of the preaching of the gospel by Peter at Pentecost was that ‘Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day’ (Acts 2:41). Peter had called them to ‘repent and be baptized’. The Ethiopian eunuch asked to be baptized in water when he heard the gospel explained to him by Philip. In Acts 10, Peter encounters a group of Gentiles who evidently have experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and immediately exclaims: ‘Can anyone keep these people from being baptized with water?’ (Acts 10:47). This verse is particularly interesting because of the way in which the baptism by water follows the Spirit baptism. Water does not serve as the instrument of the Spirit in a direct way, but as a recognition of the Spirit’s work.

While the Jewish ceremony of water baptism had been adapted as a way of speaking about the death of Christ, Christians would not do away with the ceremony of baptism with water. It would become a symbol of baptism with Holy Spirit. A later development, first expressed in the second century by Justin Martyr and others, was the idea that the water baptism was in fact the same thing as baptism in the Holy Spirit. The sign had in fact become the thing which it symbolized. As we have just seen, the New Testament does not teach this at all. As Pascoe and Howe write: ‘…the typical pattern was that people came to faith and were then baptized in water as a public demonstration of their faith’.[1]

But if faith precedes baptism, why then has the church practiced the baptism of infants since the earliest times? In a number of places in the book of Acts, Luke makes reference to the fact that a believer along with his or her household would be saved. Lydia (in Acts 16:15), the Philippian gaoler (Acts 16:31-33) and Crispus (Acts 18:8) were all baptized together with the members of their households. It is a reasonable inference that these included children along with the members of the other generations usually found living together in a Greco-Roman household. In its Jewish mode, baptism was customarily administered to children;[2] so it would make sense if it was also administered to the children of Christian parents. Furthermore, the practice of circumcision, though not a complete parallel to that of baptism, was administered to baby boys.

There was no sense in which circumcision was held to work automatically – as if, by itself, the seal of circumcision was sufficient to make one a Jew. It was a symbol of reality into which a person would grow, or else the symbol would be rendered empty. But what was declared by the inclusion of children in the sign of baptism was the inclusion of children in the promises and saving purposes of God in Jesus Christ. And naturally, it meant that the child was to be brought up in the faith, just as Israelite children were to be. Of course, an Israelite child could grow up waywardly and in no sense accept the promise of which circumcision was a sign. Likewise, Christian baptism is not a guarantee that the child will be saved. As Cranmer himself said ‘…in baptism those that come feignedly and those that come unfeignedly both be washed with sacramental water, but both be not washed with the Holy Ghost.’[3]

This leads us to somewhat of a thorny issue in Anglican theology and history – the problem of baptismal regeneration. There is no question but that the Baptismal Service has a form of wording that seems to state quite baldly that baptism works in an automatic sense. The minister declares: ‘Seeing now that this child is regenerate…’. ‘Regeneration’ is simply the term for new birth, which is that decisive event that the Holy Spirit works in a person that brings them conclusively into the Kingdom of God. It is, that is to say, Holy Spirit baptism.

In the nineteenth century, this phrase in the Prayer Book was the centre of the famous ‘Gorham Case’. In 1847, a country parson named George Gorham was recommended for the parish of Brampford Speke in Devon. The Bishop of Exeter, Bishop Phillpotts, examined Gorham and declared that his views on baptism were at odds with the doctrine of the Church of England. Gorham held the position that a child’s baptism was a statement of regeneration conditional on their acceptance of the promises later in life. Refused his post by the Bishop, Gorham took the matter through to the (secular) Privy Council and narrowly won.

The Articles are quite explicitly against the idea that Baptism works in an automatic way to regenerate the infant. Despite the stringent efforts of the Tractarians since the middle of the nineteenth century, it is impossible to read the Prayer Book as expressing unambiguously the view that by dint of the sacrament of Baptism the child receives regeneration, since it was not Cranmer’s personal view, nor was it the view expressed in the other formularies. Therefore, the intention of the author of the BCP cannot have been to express the theology he elsewhere expressly repudiated.

How then should this declaration be read? We could simply acknowledge an inconsistency – a slip of the pen, or an editorial lapse. But that seems unlikely. The best attempt to synthesize the statements of the prayer book and the formularies is that of Bishop J.C. Ryle, in his book Knots Untied.[4] This was fairly the knottiest of those knots. Ryle’s view is that the declaration of regeneration is ‘hypothetical’ on the basis of a ‘charitable supposition’. That is to say, the child is not automatically considered ‘regenerate’, and may indeed turn out not to be; but he or she is presumed so until otherwise. Ryle points to other parts of the BCP, including the funeral service, in which the same sense of a charitable supposition is accepted. Here also, then, the declaration that the child is regenerate is not, in fact, a denial that a worthy reception of the sacrament is essential to it. It is however a statement that such a worthy reception is to be prayed for and expected in the normal course of events. Baptism is in this way an anticipation of what God may do in a person’s life.When it is understood in the light of the central Reformation conviction about the gospel of free grace in Jesus Christ alone that is received by faith, baptism is a most apt and edifying practice. It is rightly described as ‘effective’ when a person takes hold of the promises of God declared and demonstrated

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[1] John W. Howe and Samuel C. Pascoe, Our Anglican Heritage : Can an Ancient Church Be a Church of the Future?, 2nd ed. (Eugene, Or.: Cascade Books, 2010), loc 1472.

[2] See the Talmud

[3] Cranmer, TheTrue and Catholic Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper p. 221.

[4] Ryle wrote: ‘I cannot see that I ought to hold doctrines which make the Prayer-book clash and jar with the Articles and Homilies’ John Charles Ryle, Knots Untied, 10th ed. (Lond.: Chas J. Thynne, 1898), p. 158.