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
[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
[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.
