The title, “Believer’s Baptism,” gives cause for alarm. This means the book intends not to articulate a general teaching of “baptism,” but refers instead to a subtype of baptism called “Believer’s Baptism,” a baptism within the larger genera of baptism that is the “sign of the New Covenant in Christ.” The implication in the nomenclature is that there is not “one Baptism” as the apostle would have it, but rather a variety of baptisms, hierarchically ordered within the text (“sacerdotal/sacramental”, “covenantal,” etc) in terms of superiority (hierarchical in at least a hierarchy of two classes, the lone true baptism, over against the many false ones identified within the ranks of the Christian church.) This means that fundamental to the editors’ doctrine of baptism is schism, a rending of the unity of the Church.
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And one might say this reading reads too much, is too quick to judge, but the foreword by Timothy George (a man commendable to the Church in many ways) opens by telling the story of how the doctrine of baptism (“believer’s baptism”) emerges historically from sectarian impulse within a preexisting (sectarian) ecclesiology. Fundamental to the doctrine of “believer’s baptism” as George tells the story is just this impulse, the impulse of denying the apostolic validity of one’s own ecclesia and its rites and seeking instead for oneself the more pure church – not the church that one is received into, but the church that one chooses for himself.
By this account, the doctrine of “believer’s baptism” is the doctrine of adolescence – an episode we all undergo, where we reject what is given as errant, and seek out instead truth grasped by our own hands. Much more, what is uniquely cherished in the doctrine of “believer’s baptism” is the very fact that this baptism is our own, and no one else’s. This criteria is in fact the key for gauging the validity of every other baptism. The measure to which we can identify a baptism as “authentic” (cf. “auto-”) is precisely the measure in which we can speak of it as being in proper relation to the “self.” It is unsurprising, by this metric, that many “believer’s baptisms” take place in the late teen years, in line with normal psychological development of self-differentiation and heightened consciousness regarding the need for “authenticity” and “finding oneself.” And were one to believe in the normative character of “believer’s baptism,” it would only be natural for them reject baptisms administered to candidates of any different psychological state – definitionally, baptism that is not explicitly tied to the explicit process of “identity formation” could not meaningfully be called a baptism. A baptism not administered in crisis is not baptism. George directly ties this “new” (his words) belief regarding baptism to the heart of baptist missionary impulse. If even the Christians have not been authentically baptized, how much more the whole world?
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In the introduction, Schreiner/Wright continue this location of “believer’s baptism” in the context of polemics and dissension. Citing another author, they identify their cause as an attempt to rescue “evangelicalism” from loss of its foundation. Evangelicalism, under Schreiner/Wright’s definition, is fundamentally rooted in the principal of “believer’s baptism.” Further, believer’s baptism is the foundation of the Gospel because it is the intentional preservation of the relation between objective history and subjective response. That is, “believer’s baptism” is again explained as the enshrinement of the integrity of the self, of a knowledge of God that can locate itself in an individuated psychological response. “The objective work of God in Christ secures a believing response” (p. 2). Believer’s Baptism is then administered to those that prove to the believing community that such a response has been elicited in them. The knowing self which now knows itself in relation to God and thus not merely in relation to any other being or person (and is thus now “authentic”) is now a viable candidate for baptism – but only viable as a consideration. Schreiner/Wright add that it remains for them to demonstrate such evidence of faith. The criteria, then, is not merely authenticity, but (ap)proved authenticity. That authenticity is subject to the judgment of those already within the community. Thus, subjection to judgment by others is fundamental to the “evangelical” church, the church founded on “believer’s baptism.” Again, lest this seem too harsh an extension of the authors’ modest claims, note that they immediately follow this comment by lamenting that those who have been permitted into the fellowship of the church, whose faith has not been adequately evidenced, disrupt the pure witness of the gospel. Purity of the church, as it is engaged by Schreiner/Wright, is obtained by perpetual scrutiny of each self to the subjective scrutiny of the community. The church is made pure by ensuring that only the pure are welcomed. Unsurprisingly, George, in the Foreword, laments there that judgmentalism seems to come with unnatural frequency in baptist circles. But is not such scrutiny of sincerity fundamental to the programme?
Schreiner/Wright explain that the purpose of the book was written specifically to address a cluster of arguments that exist among “Reformed paedobaptists.” This makes sense of the general thrust of the text and the structural nature of “believer’s baptism,” so far self-described as targeting a group of baptisms within a larger group of errant baptisms that are, as yet, still not appropriately pure applications of “authentic baptism.” The continuity is both assuring in its consistency and disconcerting in its application.
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Köstenberger’s contribution is in many ways consistent with his work elsewhere (cf. his commentary on John and his collaboration with Scott Swain on the Trinity). He proves an able guide in accumulating and collating biblical-historical data. His opening discussion of the Jewish custom of proselyte baptism proves a meaningful comment on the historical matter of how we are to understand the baptism of John in distinction from Christian Baptism as we find it in the early church. And his survey of the intertextual threads that Gospel accounts of baptism hold together from the disparate Old Testament texts is not just helpful and enlightening, but essential for a robustly biblical theology of baptism. Such a trajectory for Schreiner/Wright’s text, which could be supplemented with an “…and that’s why theologically it makes the most sense to not baptize children,” would have made the work a more positive contribution.
His comment that John’s baptism is similar in theological resonance to the washings common among groups like the Qumran community is telling. While he notes that such washings were repeated in Qumran, but not in John’s (do we know that?), the fact that they both represent a departure from the larger (mainline) community create a meaningful analog to the sense of baptist theology. Baptist theology, at its best, represents a prophetic movement and call towards repentance and even intensified commitment. It is, in many ways, post-Reformation monasticism. “Believer’s baptism” could be a meaningful concept of “radical obedience” if it articulated its vision in such a way that did not disown the already believing community. Indeed, some monasteries literally describe the tonsure as the bestowal of a “second baptism.” The monks are the first anabaptists. It is likely, though, that since Schreiner/Wright and George do not primarily locate their heritage among the German/Swiss Anabaptists, but locate it instead among the dissenters within English Calvinism, such paradigms are lost on them.
As in his other work, Köstenberger accumulates lists of Scriptural examples much in the way that one accumulates and aggregates a collection of sea shells from the coastline, each piece contributing its own characteristic parts of a larger mosaic argument. In a mosaic, while similar pieces are correlated with like pieces to form figures in the larger picture, each piece maintains its particular identity and distinction, buffered by the grout. The artist is free to assemble and organize hundreds of discrete units according to their vision and whim. So for example his method of discussing baptism in a Gospel text involves an index of every account of the “bapt-” family and analyzing each particle sequentially. Typically, a list is composed. The list of the “bapt-”s in one Gospel is compared to the list of “bapt-”s in another. But there is little synthesis. Instead you get comparisons like (p. 29):
On the one hand, Luke does not include the account (quite extensive especially in Mark) of John’s beheading or the identification of the Baptist with Elijah (Mark 9:13/Matt 7:13)… On the other hand, Luke has an equivalent statement to Mark 10:38-39 speaking of Jesus’ future “baptism” (Luke 12:50).
(Note that Jesus’ future baptism receives scare quotes.)
Rather than say, something like “Luke’s treatment of baptism calls us to give special attention to the poor,” the take away from Köstenberger’s analysis is that Luke’s treatment of baptism contains (or does not contain) these phrases and Mark’s does not. This is not a summary of treatment. It is an accountant’s record on the ledger.
This rigorous hermeneutic that reads a text as if it is the sum of many discrete literary atoms is remarkably consistent with the hermeneutic of “believer’s baptism.” The Church (in this view) is the sum of all authentic believers, and baptism in this context is the record of each member’s authenticity. The idea of an organic institution that can meaningfully exist apart from any one of its participants is properly synthetic – but synthesis is categorically excluded by Köstenberger’s method. And synthetic reading is fundamental to the argument of the book’s foil, Reformed paedobaptists.
This categorical block renders someone operating within Köstenberger’s framework unable to intuit the sense of his (seemingly randomly chosen) opponent, Daniel Doriani. While I’m unfamiliar with the work in question that Köstenberger engages regarding Matthew 28, parts of his engagement range from contradictory to absurd. Just to offer two striking examples, he writes in reference to verse 19, “‘All the nations’ includes Israel.” (p. 23) Is it true that there is a version of the modern nation-state today called Israel? Sure. Is it true that Israel, in the first century might have classified itself as a ‘nation’? Fine, though ‘nation’ means something different here. Does it logically follow that Israel is a ‘nation’ and the Great Commission is to “all the nations,” therefore the Great Commission has Israel in view in referencing ‘the nations’? I mean, of course, it’s true in a syllogistic sense. But the canonical sense of the phrase has always been a reference to “the nations” (goyim) beyond the borders of Israel (there are likely hundreds of examples). Yet canonically synthesized phrasing is foreclosed by Köstenberger’s methodology, so this leads him to say things that neither fit what might normally be understood as a “plain reading” nor even meaningfully further his argument.
Even more perplexing is his claim that the grammatical structure of the Commission tells us that baptism and teaching are the specific “manner in which disciples are to be made,” but then on the next page takes issue with Doriani’s claim that “baptism is a valuable means for discipling children.” He even writes:
To present baptism as a “valuable means for discipling children” also runs counter to the Matthew “Great Commission” passage, where baptism is presented as a corollary of Christian discipleship, not a teaching tool for children in hindsight looking back at their baptism as infants.
In one moment, Köstenberger says that the Commission views baptism and teaching as the means of making disciples, then, within a page or two, he is concerned that his opponent would argue that baptism is a means for making disciples. Syllogistically, it would follow that Köstenberger takes issue with the Great Commission. Canonically, though, we know that that is nonsense.
This problem of inability to forge theological concepts and apply them meaningfully across the canon is likely why he opaquely reads the itinerary of “bapt-”s as an unveiling, not of a coherent multi-layered idea, but instead as three distinct, remotely-related referents: baptism with water such as we find with John and Jesus, Jesus’ baptism with the Spirit, and baptism of the cross. The first datum refers to the crassness of physical water and ritual, the second refers to the authentic, subjective encounter with God, and the third, the Cross, is relegated in Köstenberger’s framework to metaphor (!). And never the trine shall meet.
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One gets the impression that Robert Stein has read my comments above and seeks to answer them at every point by swinging the trajectory of the book in a wholly opposite direction. His chapter is refreshingly exceptional, and I was so impressed at the character of his exegesis that I sought out his credentials to see if there was a correlation. Indeed, he was the lone Princeton grad (though Princeton is known more for the contributions of its scholars in systematics and philosophical theology), having studied as well at Rutgers and Tübingen, among other schools. Unsurprisingly, he had an impressive publishing record to boot.
Where Köstenberger and others would seek to read the biblical writers reductively, Stein’s reading was integrative. This is already hinted at in that he did not seek to write on baptism in Acts, but instead in “Luke-Acts,” taking seriously that a fair reading of the content of Acts takes place canonically. It is not just a scavenger hunt for all the “bapt-”s in the book of Acts, but instead a tracing of the way and manner that Luke speaks of baptism throughout his work, noting clusters of themes that accumulate and heighten the meaning of the word as he goes. As a trademark of mature exegesis, Stein even notes the places where his coherent and thick reading becomes problematic and even difficult to reconcile with itself. (I have in mind his interaction with the Samaritan narrative and the way it deviates from the pattern he notes elsewhere.) He doesn’t explain it away with a wave of the hand and an ad hoc justification, but instead leaves the reader to sit with it in tension.
His reading of Lukan baptism as something that holds in normative relation repentance, faith, forgiveness of sins, and the rite itself (and even the sometimes differentiated “baptism of the Holy Spirit”) importantly clarifies that the chronological window of these matters is not everywhere clear. That they are held in relation is clear. That the relation can meaningfully be spoken of as having clear distinct moments that can exist apart from the others is frustrated by Luke’s account. He gives the helpful analogy of the ambiguities inherent in reducing a marriage to its distinct parts (vows, rings, pronouncement, licensure, or consummation). To speak of marriage is to speak of each of its parts simultaneously, and to identify one of the parts as the essential part raises serious questions about the integrity of every other part.
As the chapter draws to its end, one finds that something like an actual sense of what a baptism is begins to emerge. This is the result of constructive exegetical work rather than shallow polemics. Of course, Stein is still baptist and his reading of Luke ultimately aligns with baptist expectations and assumptions. His interaction with Lukan household baptisms is almost an appendix to the piece. This is a missed opportunity. If throughout the chapters of Acts there is repeated reference to households being baptized, why not integrate that into the cluster of associations that Luke seems to be building around the topic? The sentence “Their infants were baptized with them” nowhere shows up in the text. Very well. But who cares? Biblical theology does not seek to integrate what isn’t in the text, but rather what is – especially what is presented repeatedly. A baptist discussion of baptism would be far more persuasive if the household passages were not treated as problems to be solved, but instead as something that is organically tied into their larger vision of “what baptism is.”
Of course, it seems they don’t – which is a real problem for the baptist position.
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Schreiner’s chapter surprised me. When not engaged in polemics against the “Reformed paedobaptists,” his honest engagement with a variety of epistolary texts on baptism was in some ways an “unorthodox” reading in baptist circles. Among such achievements is his claim that baptism is “central” to the life of the believer – a striking claim because it presupposes that saying as much is not a contradiction to the claim that faith is central to the life of the believer. Likewise, Schreiner chooses to bring in categories of baptismal texts that don’t (!) employ a “bapt-” root and unflinchingly asserts that these texts, too, speak of baptism. This willingness to make intellectually sane concessions is foreign to my experience of most baptist engagement with the actual words of Scripture and, really, a breath of fresh air. And it brings Schreiner much closer to saying actually orthodox things about baptism like, “In baptism we become part of Christ and become heirs to eschatological promises made to Abraham” (p. 89) and:
“Paul does not drive a wedge between Spirit baptism and water baptism, as if the former is what really matters and the latter is superfluous. Such a viewpoint may suffer from reading the text through modern experiences in which water baptism often occurs significantly before or after conversion… Those who see a reference only to Spirit baptism and exclude water baptism put asunder what God meant to be joined together.” (p. 75)
Such comments are often employed as a critique of the baptist position, but Schreiner seems to find these things inarguable. In doing so, of course, he undercuts much of what is assumed to be in contradistinction between baptists and others.
This is not to say that he is not a baptist. Neither is it to say that his readings do not falter from time to time. For example, in an effort to preemptively disarm the “Reformed paedobaptists,” he creates a theological category that was new to me, but that he believed was essential to rightly comprehending Pauline thought, “spiritual circumcision.” While the ideas of “a circumcision of the heart” and “a circumcision made without hands” have their own biblical-theological pedigree, Schreiner sort of dejudaizes the concept by implying that the Pauline parallel (in Colossians 2:12) is not between baptism and circumcision, but between baptism and the realities of the interior self. Whereas above Schreiner notes that water baptism and Spirit baptism should not have a wedge between them, apparently such a wedge between circumcisions are appropriately Pauline. There are better ways to read such a text that don’t even force one to the automatic conclusion of infant baptism. But in Schreiner’s zeal to engage a sticking point between baptists and presbyterians, he loses the opportunity to read Paul’s engagement with circumcision elsewhere (Galatians) in a way that actually does throw a wrench in typical presbyterian hermeneutics.
The truth is, Schreiner’s reading is correct in that he sees that Paul’s comment in Colossians is not a mere parallelization of baptism and circumcision. He is correct that it is not the case that baptism is just the new version of circumcision. But the differences do not extinguish the similarities. In Paul’s comparison of baptism to what Schreiner refers to as “spiritual circumcision,” he augments the significance of it. Whereas circumcision is a nick in the flesh, baptism cuts much deeper, swallowing one up in the divine life of Christ. In theological discourse regarding “sacramental efficacy,” this indicates that baptism has a greater spiritual “effect” (if such language is appropriate) than circumcision. The intention of Paul’s framing is not to cause us to see it in no ways comparable to circumcision, but instead to see it as something which, though analogous, in every way exceeds it. (The chalcedonian formula of the Incarnation is a helpful, if not essential, theological analog here.)
One of the more bizarre sections of the article is the section titled “Overestimating Baptism.” In this section he applies Paul’s complaint against sectarianism in Corinth to mean that Paul is eager to prove that “baptism must be subordinated to the gospel so that it does not sabotage the gospel.” Such an opposition between “baptism” and “the gospel” would render incoherent Paul’s language in Ephesians that Christ sanctifies the church “by cleansing it with the washing of the water by the word.” Indeed, baptism is the application of the Gospel to the body and soul.
Whereas Paul complains to the Corinthians that people are tearing apart the body by calling into question the integrity of baptisms administered by various emerging apostolates (that is, parties attributing their ecclesial heritage to Christ and his apostles), Paul (as Augustine will show us later against the Donatists) will argue that such a mindset does not “overemphasize” baptism so much as “underemphasize” it. While it is true that Paul speaks of “baptism” and “preaching the gospel” in distinction in chapter 1, when read in conjunction with the larger narrative of the Corinthian letter, that there is one body, many parts, his reference to baptism is not in reference to baptism as such, but to the misattribution of baptism to the party administering the baptism, rather than its apostolic origin in Christ himself. When I Corinthians 1 is read alongside I Corinthians 3, this is much clearer. Ironically, the baptist tendency to invalidate any baptism that is not qualified as a “believer’s baptism” bears eerie echoes of the pattern of behavior that the Apostle Paul seems to be attacking. Such a tendency seems to “overemphasize baptism” in such a way that prioritizes it over the apostolic preaching of the Gospel.
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Wellum’s essay is preceded by regular praise. The praise is merited. As the lengthy centerpiece of the book, clocking in at around seventy pages, it easily functions as its raison d’être. Scanning the remaining chapters, one feels as if every previous chapter had been building towards this and each subsequent chapter is inserted as random supplementary material. His piece is structured coherently, clearly, and compellingly. He presents the views of his opponents with charity and dignity, and fairly represents their arguments. This makes his critique of those arguments respectable and reasonable – it even goes a long way in asserting a constructive correction to (a certain brand of) paedobaptist theology.
It’s important to emphasize, though, the scope of his engagement. He is targeting a mode of covenant theology popularized in the mid to late twentieth century among evangelical presbyterians who run in the circle of a relatively insular publishing company, P&R, and authors of a similar cohort. This is not a criticism. Such members of the Church have a great many things in common with baptists, both in theological ethos and in a shared partnership against liberalism. Therefore, knowing the target audience of B&H Publishing (an imprint of LifeWay), the circles that most Southern Baptists run in will likely not go much more outside the fold than the PCA. This leaves the theological realm of the mainline (i.e. the Lutherans and the Anglicans) shrouded in a foggy mist of something like Catholicism mixed with Progressivism, haunted by a spooky complacency with the status quo. And hidden deep within that mist are primary sources and magisterial reformers. Such that, one finds plenty of interaction with John Murray and Louis Berkhof and their descendants (Robertson, Pratt, Wilson, etc), but not a single engagement with Calvin or Beza or Bavinck or Wittsius or Turretin – and that just regards the Continental Reformed. What is the cost? Not least, it eschews the scholastics in exchange for popular simplifications. To name one way in which that could be problematic, it omits the fundamental role of the pactum salutis in the more advanced (though not all) iterations of covenant theology, laying ontological foundation for the unified covenant structure that governs Reformed hermeneutics. An unknowing baptist will read Wellum’s essay and walk away believing that the bicovenantal structure of the paedobaptists has no metaphysical underpinning and is merely an arbitrary reduction of the covenants of Scripture. Though again, this is fine. One essay in one book needn’t prove all things to all people. But it’s important to remember that it would be just as foolish to believe that if one had read and comprehended his essay, they would have sufficiently engaged the broad practice of baptizing infants throughout Christendom, even its Protestant versions.
Narrowness notwithstanding, Wellum’s most persuasive point is that “covenant theology,” in its intention to account for the essential unity of the redemptive covenants in Scripture, overrides the particulars of the biblical narrative in order to present a smooth and simplistic account of grace. Once each postlapsarian covenant is re-read as a chronological progression of the single covenant of grace, the structural continuity of each subsequent covenant allows the dynamics of one covenant to be understood under the terms of basically any other. Thus, for the covenantal paedobaptist, the inclusion of children in the Abrahamic covenant implies the inclusion of children in every other covenant that follows. Wellum seeks to undermine this line of thought by indicating that covenant theology, while tidy, does not do fair business with the full revelation of Scripture, especially as it depicts the individual covenants themselves. He argues that there are important distinctives proper to each covenant that, if not appropriately attended to, undermine the integrity of the New Covenant itself, muting key distinctives that make it truly good news.
One way Wellum makes his case is by employing pretty typical rhetoric regarding biblical theology’s superiority to systematics in matters of biblical exegesis. This method dates the book significantly as 2006 was the height of the Federal Vision and New Perspective controversy, a movement largely driven by a desire to have systematics submit to redemptive-historical narrative. In the wake of its general condemnation in Reformed and Calvinistic contexts (though, admittedly, for reasons more suspicious of implications for the doctrine of justification, rather than for matters of hermeneutics generally considered), a separate movement was on the rise – perhaps diagonally in response to parallel trends in theological scholarship – ressourcement of patristic and medieval modes of reading. I have every reason to think that Wellum has benefitted from this shift in the past fifteen years and would soften the dramatic tension he places between the two disciplines. This of course would mean that the force of his claim is softened proportionally as well.
But still, his claim regarding the irreducible particularity of each covenant and the great care needed not to flatten out the biblical narrative in order make the larger canon more intelligible is a wise caution. More than a wise caution, it is perhaps inarguable that any account of the covenants that fail to distinguish between the structure and content of the covenant with Abraham and that of, say, the Mosaic Order, fail to read Scripture with adequate attention, because Scripture clearly seeks to separate the two in time and sequence, let alone in import and implication. The case that seems most important to get right is the New Covenant. Wellum’s point is well-made that many versions of covenant theology speak of the New Covenant as just more of the same, yet somehow slightly “better.” A covenant theology that does not present the New Covenant as both the central structure and telos of not only every other covenant, but as the climax of all created existence, fails to attend rightly to the topic at hand, Jesus Christ, the mystagogical end of creation. If Jesus is just a less bloody version of Moses, there’s not much of a point.
Of course, Wellum’s New Covenant is less Christocentrically-ordered and more, true to baptistic form, focused on the subjective experience of the those that come to participate in it. The defining feature of the New Covenant is that its membership is exclusively composed of (here it is again) the “spiritually circumcised.” Bracket for a moment that “spiritual” in NT usage corresponds not to subjectivity as such, or to interior conviction, but to the operation and relation of the Holy Spirit. Thus, to speak of a “spiritual” man is to speak of a man under the sway of the Holy Spirit. But to quote Wellum, “in doing theology, it is imperative that we approach the Bible in its own categories and structure.” (p. 125) And it just isn’t the case that the Bible uses such language in the way that Wellum does. His (and Schreiner’s) reference to something called “spiritual circumcision” is located later in his essay as something central to understanding the Church in distinction from Israel. I share Wellum’s concern to correct covenantal schemes that simply paint the Church as Israel 2.0 (or better, 1.5?), but reading “spiritual circumcision” as a structural principle of what it means to be the Church is unsound by Wellum’s own account because the phrase neither appears in Scripture, nor do the ideas of “Spirit” and “circumcision” coincide canonically to evoke an idea of the much simpler concept of sincerity, of really, truly, authentically “meaning it,” something which needs neither the Spirit nor circumcision in principle. The Spirit, in Pauline thought, is intimately tied to the Resurrection. How is this even adjacent to the question of the authentic membership in the Church?
Wellum’s misread is made more clear in the latter portions of his piece, where he becomes disproportionately fixated on the principle of covenant theologians that covenant members co-mingle as a “mixture” of those who are truly of the fold and those who are not. He takes great umbrage with this idea because he finds that, while it undoubtedly was the case for participants in the Abrahamic and Mosaic Covenant, he believes that the defining feature of the New Covenant community (following Jeremiah 31 in his reading) is its purity. (p.144) Note: not its “purity” in the sense that the Church has been purified by Christ’s blood, but purity in the sense of consistency. The Church’s membership is “purified” of outsiders and composed entirely of the faithful – unlike the co-mingling of infidels that took place in the the temple under the old fleshly order. The New Covenant is special because of its enhanced exclusivity. Put that in your redemptive-historical pipe and smoke it. The deviation of this reading from the expansive pattern and trajectory everywhere found in the New Testament is another departure from Wellum’s exhortation that our theology follow biblical pattern. It’s seems to follow neither warp nor woof when considered against Paul’s polemic against those Jews who resented the infiltration of the Church by the hellenists. Additionally, obsession over purity seems to be a reversion to the Old Covenant economy, not a liberation from it. In this way, the baptist’s making their contrived “spiritual circumcision” the criteria for membership in the Church seem to fall under Paul’s condemnation to the Galatians, that they still operate under the governance of the elements of this world.
One important topic that I thought would have been a helpful exploration in Wellum’s piece would be a greater distinction between the covenant of Abraham and the covenant of Moses. At times the piece navigates the duality between Abraham and Christ and the duality between Old and New, but in its treatment of circumcision, Wellum seems to conflate Abraham and Moses as what is wholly in view when identifying the distinctive character and structure of the New Covenant. This is problematic because, in the Pauline passages that he engages, Paul’s discourse regarding circumcision typically concern its bearing (or lack their of) on members of the Christian Church and their relationship to the Mosaic Law – not their relationship to Abraham. But Wellum’s discussion of circumcision focuses intently on its grammatical-historical significance for Abraham and his outline of how the New Covenant spiritualizes Abrahamic circumcision, but gives no account of how this correlates as a spiritualization of Moses. In the spirit of Wellum’s biblical-theological critique, it would seem that he has flattened out the covenants of Abraham and Moses in order to make his point about “spiritual circumcision.” But not only does Paul make important theological distinctions between these covenants (cf. Galatians), Reformed biblical theologian Meredith Kline and Michael Horton, whose work I know Wellum is duly familiar with, have been at great pains to draw out these distinctions as a way to preserve a healthy differentiation between Law and Gospel. But if the Abrahamic covenant corresponds to Gospel and the Mosaic to Law, does that not make the spiritualization of Abraham a spiritualization of Gospel? And does that not indicate that the New Covenant then, opposite Abraham, would be Law? But that can’t be right. Hence, there’s more work to do. However fine Wellum’s piece is, it still only serves as a healthy first step in a longer conversation. And as I mentioned, the piece is dated, and I have no doubt it has been supplemented with more robust treatment in subsequent work. (One hopes.)
To close with a practical concern, however much Wellum finds it theoretically the case that the Bible says that the New Covenant brings forth a pure church, where the whole assembly is composed of Spirit-filled, sincere Christians, do not the paedobaptists have the advantage of empirical reality: that, as far back as historical record goes, even the New Testament itself, the Church simply has always had a “mixture” of the faithful and the faithless? Would not it have to be the case that the plain meaning of Jeremiah, if its referent is in fact Christ’s Church (it is), instituted through his suffering and death (or “cross work” as Wellum curiously speaks of it), that the meaning either can’t be that the assembly of the New Covenant will only include faithful members or that Christ’s Church has actually failed to be preserved (against his promise otherwise)? Has the Word of God failed? Wellum (and baptists generally) comprehend this antinomy. The easy resolution is the spiritualization of the Church, such that, technically speaking, there is no historical entity that can actually be referred to as “the Church.” It is more of an heavenly ideal, to which any individuated local congregation can aspire to participate in, but without delusion. (p. 148) To be clear, Wellum (following D.A. Carson) is not spiritualizing the Church by suggesting the existence of a visible and invisible Church. That distinction, though of venerable pedigree, is itself from time to time accused of spiritualization. But Wellum (et al) actually take the spiritualization a step farther and indicate that the visible/invisible distinction is itself too fleshly to account for the reality the Scriptures speak of. Temporally speaking there is no “Church.” Such a distinction surely privileges baptist ecclesiology, a theologically-charged rejection of external authority, accountability, and structure. It’s no wonder that the idea that God would use the baseness of water sprinkled on a forehead to change an infant’s heart feels like such an affront to the Gospel. Everything implied by the idea undermines the whole baptist framework.
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I am at a disadvantage. When engaging questions such as, “What were the normative practices regarding baptism in the early church?” I am at the mercy of Wikipedia, Google, and anecdotal comments that I have to take as “probably true.” This raises my defenses with a piece like Steven McKinion’s. Placed within a book that is decidedly polemical in intent and speaking in regards to an area where most pastors’ knowledge is vague at best, I have no way of knowing whether McKinion is cherry-picking texts and references, no way of knowing what information he is leaving out, and so I am at the mercy of his honor and good faith as a professor of history. Having read through his chapter, I can comfortably say that I have many good reasons to find his presentation trustworthy and commendable.
I have frequently heard a story about infant baptism becoming a practice normalized in sync with the Constantinization of the Church, and thus derivative not of Scripture or even Apostolic practice, but of a corruption of the faith in accommodation to worldly powers and ethos. I am pleased to find that nothing McKinion noted indicates that such a mythology has any basis in fact. He begins by introducing a twentieth century work that (though I was previously unaware of it) seems to function as something of a normally-cited text in the debate over infant baptism, Joachim Jeremias’ “Infant Baptism in the First Four Centuries.” He then outlines (faithfully, from what I can tell) Jeremias’ argument for the normal practices of oikos baptism, while also introducing Jeremias’ distinction between “missionary baptism” and the baptism of believers’ children. Noteworthy in that discussion is that McKinion opens up frankly and without embarrassment that the baptism of children (though, he is clear, not infants) is unquestionably normal in the early church. Such an admission presents a challenge to some of the other authors in the text, or at least to the extent that patristic practice has any bearing at all on present day practice. Regardless, whether “children” should be baptized or merely adults is not really the province of this book.
However helpful McKinion’s introduction of Jeremias is, the main purpose of his interaction is to give his chapter focus. He comments that Jeremias’ description of New Testament practice is then read into and (in his view) over applied into his interpretation and reading of later practices in the apostolic and post-apostolic age. Thus, McKinion turns his attention to that evidence, examining the Didache, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Cyprian, Origen, Gregory of Nazianzus, Cyril of Jerusalem, Chrysostom, and (most importantly) Augustine. What’s important to note is that he does not turn to each of these authors in order to make the case that there was some sort of consensus among the fathers that infant baptism was problematic. Or even that it was ever always highly controverted. But (and this is what makes me judge his presentation trustworthy) McKinion presents these authors in a way that very much seems to undermine the Constantinian myth.
To be sure, McKinion does not walk away from the evidence concluding that infant baptism is a normal and unproblematic practice from the Patristic era. Rather, it is clear from the evidence that the practice did not have universal and unquestioned practice through every father, in every church, in every place. Additionally, it is clear that the understood significance and purpose of baptism is not uniform and without exception. McKinion has not allowed us that conclusion. Thus, he may (may!) be correct that Jeremias’ argument proves too much, suffering from a construct that he errantly pulls from evidence in the New Testament era, then projecting it onto his reading of the later centuries. But if so, Jeremias is not alone in forging theological constructs and projecting them onto the evidence.
What follows from the evidence is that the catholic doctrine and practice of baptism is a matter that proceeded from a conciliar reading of Scripture – just as with Christology, Trinitarianism, and the canon itself. This is neither an indictment of Nicene orthodoxy nor of the integrity of Scripture. It is historically plain that men of good faith – heroes of the faith – did not all articulate orthodox positions on certain matters. To observe that this disparity exists is to say little of what is normative by Nicene standards. In identifying a variety of viewpoints in the Fathers, some seemingly favorable to the baptist position, and even some measure of notable debate regarding infant baptism, one proves too much by moving from that pedestrian observation to the claim that infant baptism was not the normal practice of the early church.
And frankly, what emerges from the diverse sources that McKinion provides for us is an emerging clarity regarding the doctrine and practice appropriate to Christian baptism. If the resolution of the Donatist controversy teaches us anything, any doctrine of baptism that undermines the catholicity of the Church, and brings spiritual hardship on whole provinces by calling into question the validity of their trinitarian baptisms – such doctrine cannot be “normative” in any canonical sense of the word – indeed, heresy is marked not only by its factual error, but by its propensity toward schism. But hear what the Apostle Paul writes, that there is “one faith, one lord, one baptism…”
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It is criminal that the piece that sells the text is Wellum’s when high school teacher Jonathan Rainbow’s piece sits two chapters away from it, and at a fifth of the length. Where Wellum writes a focused, precise argument that engages a narrow strand of evangelicalism, Rainbow engages broad swaths of theological tradition in a way that compromises neither clarity nor care for attending to significant primary sources. In a remarkably concise tour de historical theology, Rainbow is able to take a topic which, on the face of it, seems particularly dull and needlessly obscure – a theological debate between the least of the Reformers (Zwingli) and his Anabaptist frenemy, Balthasar Hubmaier – and draw out of it a comprehensive outline and analysis of medieval, Lutheran, and Zwinglian baptismal theology, painted as the emerging context and foil for “magisterial” anabaptism. Most remarkably, not a one (save perhaps Zwingli) is presented with embarrassment, but instead each are presented beyond charitably – rather, sympathetically and compellingly as dialectitions on the path to the arrival of what Rainbow calls, “confessor baptism,” a doctrine he unflinchingly admits comes about 1500 years after the advent of Christ.
In reading his chapter, I had the flattering experience of feeling genuinely heard and understood. While I regretted that Hubmaier lacked a meaningful interlocutor in Anglican theology (Richard Hooker would like to have a word…) and would have enjoyed hearing Calvin’s distinct voice on the matter (instead of Zwingli – alas), rather than engaging in polemics against paedobaptists, one wonders with whom Rainbow takes greater umbrage, Zwinglians… or baptists. His sympathetic portrayal of medieval baptismal theology was as enlightening as it was fascinating (though I had specific questions about his direct and uncited explanation that “the treasury of merit” functions as its ad hoc justification). His framing of the issue as a matter of genuine desire to harmonize faith and baptism puts the finger on, what I believe is really the nub of the issue, and his refusal to let “modern baptists” off the hook, shamelessly critiquing their unjustified and radical disjunction between the two is not just en pointe – it is the only way to move the conversation forward. (Interestingly, more than one contributor to Schreiner/Wright’s volume falls in Rainbow’s sights. In fact, his specific intention to reorient baptists away from the English tradition into an Anabaptist theology is exactly something I have commented on above.)
One helpful component of his argument is that he engages the question of baptism and faith along the lines of the spiritual and the material (though he errantly describes Zwingli and the modern baptists as “platonic”). In his juxtaposition of Zwingli and Hubmaier, his criticism of (Zwinglian) paedobaptism is its definitive rupture between material and spiritual being. The (ana)baptists, whom Rainbow depicts as the party who hold the material and spiritual in close proximity, are the “sacramentalists” whereas the (Zwinglian-)Reformed are depicted as the secularized “baptism is merely a sign” party. (p. 206) I don’t, however, feel this argument takes him where he thinks it does. While the criticism is right in spirit, it overlooks the fact that it brings its advocate into view as well, failing to provide an explanation for how it evades itself. Grading Hubmaier’s “sacramentum fidei” as something that holds faith and baptism closer together (in degree) than Zwingli and the Reformed paedobaptists is unsatisfactory for this purpose. The question of the relation between the spiritual and material is not quantitative, but qualitative. (Such a qualitative distinction and relation is available in the Chalcedonian analogy I mentioned above.) That being the case, Rainbow’s “confessor baptism” is still in the throes of a metaphysical nominalism (well-documented by the RadOx et al) over which Lutheran(/Anglican) baptism or perhaps Calvinist(/Thomist) eucharistic cosmology (cf Rowan Williams’ “Christ the Heart of Creation”) dances freely and merrily.
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One of the downsides of being both an editor and a contributor is that it’s hard to do two jobs at once, especially jobs that, in some ways, function in opposition to one another. The editor is trying to compile, cut, and collate an assortment of content in strategic, intentional ways (if done well). The contributing author, on the other hand, has his own agenda, with his own piece, and his own specific idea of what is needful. He is the authentic author, the one for whom his work accurately portrays his heart, his passion. He does not rest till his pen has dried and his point is proved. The keen editor, however, has the responsibility to rein him in when the horse is dead and beaten. When one tries to wear both hats at once, one very likely (unless greatly skilled) submits a piece like Wright’s for publication.
The piece is titled, “Baptism and the Logic of Reformed Paedobaptists,” a title which itself could have been effectively trimmed a bit if a third party had reviewed and considered it – for the piece (though as we will see, even calling it a “piece” misnames it) is hardly about setting forth anything about Baptism (nor Logic proper – one searches in vain for a mention of modus ponens, or p’s and q’s), instead choosing to outline what other authors have stated and then aiming to poke and expose holes and vulnerabilities in their defenses in order to render their arguments innocuous to the good faith baptist – not that there’s anything wrong with that. However, Wright states his intentions are otherwise in his opening line:
Our task is to understand and examine the internal logic of the Reformed paedobaptist position.
Whereas “seeking understanding” is normally evidenced by exploratory or clarifying questions and investigation, and examination implies analysis and reflection, Wright’s piece employs neither. It would be more accurate to describe it as a presentation of the claims of three authors, Calvin, Murray, and Marcel (with whom I am unfamiliar), with a cycle of presentation and rebuttal repeated at every possible point. Obnoxiously, the article is organized under what Wright deems the five points of Reformed paedobaptism plus a sixth point involving the alleged renunciation of sola fide. For each of these six points, there are three sections, one for each author – which, if you do the math, is eighteen different sections, plus each point’s rebuttal, plus intro and conclusions – dragging out a tedious piece into fifty pages of basically restated points from elsewhere in the book – but without any discernible thesis beyond “paedobaptists are simply wrong at every point.” This style of writing (a screed?), aspiring to be a tour de force, is unpersuasive to those not already persuaded to its position – and risks shaming them into joining the other side.
None of what I’ve stated above invalidates any of the claims that Wright makes. But unlike Wright, I feel it would be inappropriate to rehash what was already discussed elsewhere. To his credit, he gives a pretty thorough account of Calvin from his Institutes and his Murray presentation feels true to the sources – though Marcel seemed a curious choice (I would have appreciated some explanation, even in a footnote). After working through his critique-cycle a few times, what slowly emerges is not that “Reformed paedobaptists” have been caught with their intellectual pants down, but that perhaps the locus of critique is not so much in the nitpicking about circumcision and households, so much as the baptist fixation on purging the doctrine of baptism of something the contributors frequently refer to as “ex opere operato.” The semantic range of the phrase seems to apply to any indication that the baptismal ritual in any way affects the state of the baptizand, especially if the effect is spiritual benefit. While Wright concludes that he has unmasked a tension in paedobaptist churches that call into question their evangelical bona fides, there is an alternative conclusion he does not mention. Whereas, he writes of Calvin, Murray, and Marcel, that “they are closer to Rome’s ex opere operato view of baptism’s efficacy than they are to the Protestant heritage,” (p. 252) does it not follow more logically that, since Calvin, Murray, and Marcel are good representations of the Protestant heritage, deviation from their own common position is a deviation from Protestantism? Whereas Wright believes he has unmasked the Reformed paedobaptists, does not this very reading actually unmask Wright and his party’s claim to represent the sola fide tradition faithfully? Perhaps it is, as they say, that the shoe is on the other foot.
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Duane Garrett’s chapter on Meredith Kline genuinely perplexed me. I am no stranger to the work of Meredith Kline, having done a directed study specifically surveying his major corpus. The intellectual debt that many of my own professors and theological influences owe to Kline is immense. He carries a weight in turn of the century (evangelical) Reformed theology not unlike the sway that Barth has on Princeton, such that his comments on Scripture are more presupposed and extended than considered under scrutiny. He has not been without his critics – and that for good reason – but I have never come across anything that would describe something he has written as “[having] little to commend it.” (p. 273)
Such treatment is particularly curious given how well Garrett seems to have read Kline himself. While the works engaged by Garrett represent for me the least interesting portions of the corpus (one wonders what Garrett thinks of “Images of the Spirit,” “Kingdom Prologue,” and “Har Magedon” – truly staples of what have become mainstream texts in contemporary biblical interpretation), the clarity with which he comprehends Kline’s claims are reinforced by the clear and helpful introduction he gives that seems to portray the work as having significant apologetic import, and having a good sense of the intellectual and academic context that gave rise and prominence to his work. Given the seriousness with which he seems to have investigated Kline, it is surprising how dismissive he is of almost every point.
While it seems unhelpful here to engage Garrett’s point by point dismissal of Kline’s application of Ancient Near Eastern studies to exegesis, I only state wonder: Why? I might see him going after Kline’s extension of interpretations of circumcision to baptism (as has been the tactic of most of the authors in this volume), but what does he gain in doing so? Does not Kline’s violent portrayal of circumcision heighten the discontinuity to which the authors of “Believer’s Baptism” hope to draw attention? Likewise, why so comprehensively contradict Kline’s arguments in such a way that portrays his corpus as basically useless? Does Garrett truly believe that the literary genre of the Suzerain-Vassal Treaty has no impact or provide no insight into the interpretation of any aspect of the biblical texts (at least of the Old Testament or at least of the Torah)? He devotes so much energy to highlighting his challenges to Kline’s thesis, that an uncareful reader will assume that Kline has been discredited – but to raise a question is not to answer it.
Perhaps even more confusing is the way that he portrays Kline as an advocate of mere equivocation of old and new covenants. This is remarkable since there is a significant debate within the Reformed tradition regarding whether and in what form the Mosaic Covenant can be comprehended as a covenant of grace. And it is the Kline-ians who take the position that the function of the Abrahamic and Mosaic Covenants within the Covenant of Grace are specifically different in form, the former being more transparently gracious and the latter functioning more specifically for enacting judgment in the famous matter of what is called “the republication of the covenant of works.” This discontinuity finds its origins in Meredith Kline and his descendants and the point of the contention is to preserve the gracious character of the New Covenant by ensuring that Reformed Theology does not devolve into seeing the New Covenant merely as a tired, if gentler reiteration of every other covenant. To go after Kline for the very thing of which he stands against is – again – perplexing. Perhaps there is an issue of an early Kline and later Kline and perhaps the theme of discontinuity is something that emerges from his later work and perhaps Garrett has never interacted with those texts – I’m unsure – but again, coming across his treatment of Kline is, well, weird.
To deal briefly, though, with his argument in general, I would say that Garrett’s problem with Kline stems not from his quibbles, but from an inability to imagine or inability to integrate multiple layers of meaning in, say, baptism. There are some real challenges to the claim that baptism is simply a water ordeal and that therefore the interpretive grid of water ordeals can cleanly be imposed on top of baptism to understand and explain it. But why suppose that favorably reading Kline’s work requires that? It is one thing to assume that baptism just is a water ordeal. It is another thing to consider the ways in which baptism draws upon elements of the water ordeal in order to form its meaning. While it’s true that there is one baptism, it’s also true that there’s more than one significance to the rite. Most of what Garrett writes treats these topics woodenly, as if there is a singular meaning of baptism (or circumcision) that exhausts any alternative meaning. This is unnecessary, unbiblical, and – again – perplexing.
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If you asked me which piece seemed to fit the least in the book, I would have readily let you know that Caneday’s piece on the Stone-Campbell Restoration movement seemed both a random and an obscure, if uninteresting, inclusion. This, in a large part, had to do with the fact that I had no idea what it was, nor any context to appreciate it – until a month ago. Last month I attended an academic lecture series on the doctrine of creation in the early church, led by theologian Paul Blowers, a notable Maximus the Confessor scholar. During that time, he made a passing comment that he was a member of a tradition that practiced baptism by immersion. And while I am aware that Orthodox churches practice immersion, and I had assumed that he was Orthodox, I went ahead and pulled up his bio and learned that he is a member of the Church of Christ and teaches at a Church of Christ school. Following the rabbit hole, I learned that the Church of Christ emerged from the Stone-Campbell movement. All this context significantly heightened my interest in Caneday, and, reading him, I was excited to find that Blowers’ own work was repeatedly cited throughout.
The piece seemingly has two aims, first to lay out a sympathetic portrayal of the Stone-Campbell movement as something to which Baptists need not be dismissive, and second to apply a key element of Restoration theology to remediating mainstream baptist articulations of the doctrine of baptism. While, doubtless, I am not the target audience of the piece (the target would seem to be those with views of some of the other contributors), I could see the piece as a meaningful point of conversation that I imagined taking place in a panel of the various authors of the book.
While I’m not sure Caneday would frame this the same way, the value of his piece is that he confronts irrational baptist engagement with highly relevant biblical texts. He detects a profound allergy to Roman expressions of “baptismal regeneration” that causes many baptists to force texts which seem sympathetic to the Roman expression to say almost the opposite of what a plain reading of those texts would normally generate. Thus, for texts that speak of “baptism for the remission of sins,” Caneday would have us read those texts honestly, that baptism is, in fact, for the remission of sins. He would contend that nothing about Baptist theology precludes such assertions so long as we understand and interpret them with nuanced senses of causation, and so he follows Campbell in applying more scholastic distinctions in the vein of Aristotle’s four causes, giving particular focus to “instrumental cause” as something usually ignored in interdenominational contention, conflated instead with the “efficient cause.”
The lesson is well-needed, and (frankly) even beyond Baptist circles. If I needed to critique his position, I would only press him to consider that he might explore how such nuance may vindicate the language of “baptismal regeneration” and even, were I given the time to sit with him and interact a bit more, may suggest that there is even a sense in which the expression “ex opere operato” can be vindicated as a sound explanation of the biblical text if appropriate qualifications and nuance of what is meant by “operato” are put in place in relation to the matrix of Aristotelian causation.
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Dever’s piece has all the “marks” (yes) of his larger project intended to rehabilitate baptist ecclesiology – his trademark association of baptist ecclesiology with high levels of commitment from members and (ideally) decentered leadership and polity directly shape (and are shaped by) his baptismal theology. Dever does not write as a scholar as much as a pastor and his interest in this piece is not to reexamine or consider any thesis in particular, but instead to draw out application from all the preceding authors’ contributions, in order to get to the nuts and bolts implications of a true “believer’s baptism” theology. This is helpful because it brings into pretty clear light some of the specific pastoral concerns that paedobaptists have with that theology.
From the opening of the book, attention was drawn to the fact that baptist theology creates a culture of “judgmentalism” (George’s words). Now Dever closes the book reinforcing and even “baptizing” mechanisms in the church that enable and encourage that tendency. Baptism “should protect the church from nominalism. Baptizing only those who profess to be converted – and give evidence of it – is a foundational matter for a congregation that would be healthy, sound, and growing.” (p. 330) Note two things: 1) Dever’s baptismal theology emerges from a pathos of purifying the church of inauthenticity and 2) baptism functions as a crown of passing through the judgment of the church. Where Meredith Kline would have baptism function as the very ordeal that subjects the baptizand to the ancient water ordeal, Dever sets it forth as the token bestowed on those who have already made it through the ordeal, having proved themselves faithful (to the congregation). This positions the lifelong ordeal of salvation in strange relief, where the judgment of “Well done thou good and faithful servant” comes not at the end of life, but in the middle. Baptism is for the one who has already finished the race – or at least the one who has made it so far along at this point, that it’s a pretty sure bet that they will so emerge. Indeed, this gamble is very much the way that Dever (and some of the other authors) speak of excommunication, as part of the pruning process that filters out those who the church mistakenly misjudged.
This emphasis on rigor and accountability for members to live up to the holy calling that their baptism places upon them is not misplaced – but it is misapplied. The outcome of Dever’s brand of baptist theology is that, while it seems to ensure the vitality and health of the Church, making it a place hospitable to the strong in faith, it does so in a way that truncates the Church from its roots, intentionally excluding – by design – the weak. Dever’s efforts to recall the church to “meaningful membership” are needed and right. But the baptismal form that drives and is driven by his model is functionally a theology of glory rather than a theology of the cross – and that to its shame.
Were that in itself not enough of an indictment, the inconsistencies of his model become transparent when Dever tightly (rightly) integrates baptism with church membership. He is convinced of two things: that church membership is meaningful and that children are not meaningful members of the church. Yet he fails to see the irony in holding them accountable to such as knowledge of the Apostles’ Creed and the Ten Commandments, while explicitly excluding them from the blessings of the promises embedded therein. They have all the weight of membership with none of the blessing of inclusion in it. Squaring that with Jesus’ “to these belong the kingdom of heaven,” is a challenge that I believe baptists fail to answer, placing them under Christ’s own judgment. Dever and others believe they escape this by drawing a distinction between church membership and membership in the kingdom of heaven, allowing that children very well may be a part of the latter while being rightly excluded from the former – but do they not see the very way in which they have undermined the exact mission of the 9 Marks organization to ensure that membership in the local church is “meaningful.” If membership in the church is not to be interpreted as membership in the kingdom of heaven, than what is its meaning to be?
One might easily push back that my critique over interprets Dever and does so uncharitably. Indeed, given Dever’s association with the Founder’s organization, and generally Calvinist inclinations in atonement theology, dismissing his framework as insufficiently cruciform may seem to flounder in the face of reality. But note that his comment on the need for evidencing one’s faith is extended into a seven page discourse on the discrimination necessary for clearing someone for baptism. Essential to Dever’s baptismal theology is the subjection of the baptismal aspirant to the scrutiny of the church community at every level. Every church ever makes judgments regarding whether or not someone should be baptized – that is inescapable and also not the issue. What is at stake in Dever’s theology is that the social logic of baptism is transformed from a rite of initiation into a mark of moral, intellectual, and spiritual accomplishment, undercutting any current of grace. Surely a Dever-ite would be alarmed to hear his own ecclesial renewal movement explained as basically Pelagian – but when baptist theology merges with a theology that makes ecclesial polity a meaningful and binding instrument of faith and holiness, one shouldn’t be to surprised to find Saint Augustine looking down his nose at you. Or to invoke a more biblical reference, the Galatian heresy was all about “meaningful membership” and heightening the requirements for initiation, ensuring that the church could only be composed of those of venerable pedigree (or more precisely, the appearance of pedigree, bearing in their circumcised body the marks of the people of the Law) – but against such Judaizing, Paul tells us that baptism into Christ vests us more gloriously than a nick in the flesh, giving us a pedigree from above, adorning us as not only sons of Abraham, but even more venerably as sons of God, granted inheritance by the Spirit, and nakedly acquiring such through the meagerness and humility of faith – a faith that Christ describes in his gospel as the property of children. It is then with remarkable irony that Dever cites and laments a trend that baptisms are skewing towards lower age groups in the past century.
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I have tried here to be measured in my interactions with the varied pieces in Schreiner and Wright’s volume. Where the book makes helpful contributions, I have tried to draw attention and take note. Additionally, it seemed unproductive to interact point by point with each text so I attempted to engage them more summarily and comprehensively rather than engage in tit for tat argumentation – yet I have been open about the places I found deficient, hopefully in an edifying manner, and hopefully without any air of defensiveness. I would like to engage (briefly) a couple issues that seemed to be recurring concerns and offer something of a rejoinder, or at least to offer a consideration that did not seem to be in view when some authors put forward their complaints.
Something I noted at multiple points throughout the reading was the naive way in which “Reformed paedobaptists” were criticized for their failure to highlight the discontinuities between the old covenant and the new covenant. While I noted above some sympathy with this critique, I still hesitate to share in it completely, not least because the way in which covenant theology was depicted, gave me the sense that the authors did not fully appreciate the theological underpinnings of traditional covenantal models. The baptists seemed to be operating on the assumption that the idea of a unitary covenant of grace that functions as an archetype for each biblical covenant was an idea imposed on the text in order to justify other theological convictions. Therefore, the line seemed to be: show disjunction in the covenants and thereby disrupt the justification in place for infant baptism. But this ignores at least two features of covenant theology.
First, the covenant of grace exists as a presupposition in order to highlight discontinuity between the covenant made with Adam and the covenant made with Christ. This theoretical mechanism enables them to ensure that no application of biblical law can be confused with the radical grace the gospel offers us in Christ. The intent of the system is to preserve proper distinction between gospel and law and thus is a classical reformation hermeneutic. Any critique of that mechanism (that wants to be taken seriously) must account for the way that an alternative proposal evades the confusion of law and grace. Nothing in Schreiner/Wright’s edition demonstrated either awareness or concern for preserving this ideal, and thus does raise real questions (alluded to above) about the Reformation credentials of “Believer’s Baptism.”
Secondly, the idea of a unitary covenant of grace is theologically valuable because it presupposes something true: a unity in God. While idiosyncratic quibbling about which covenant is which type of covenant and whether and when each covenant takes effect or is valid or what have you – while such discourse may call into question whether or not the concept of “covenant” is authentic to the biblical text and idiom, it’s worth noting that much of covenant theology can operate without that specific naming – for all the word “covenant” seeks to name is the manner in which man relates to God. That is to say the idea is no more artificial than the idea of “a personal relationship” with God – for a covenant is a relation between persons. Therefore, the theological and spiritual impulse that drives the idea of a unitary covenant of grace is really the conviction that God relates to men one way and not another. To suggest a diversity of ways in which God may relate to men is to suggest a diversity of manner and character in God – but the Scripture sayeth, “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one” and that God is the same “yesterday, today, and forever” and God is the one in whom “there is no variation.” The concept of a unified covenant of grace takes these Scriptures seriously. That such consideration seems not to register in Schreiner/Wright’s complaints gives me confidence that they have not fully considered what is at stake. It’s not that they are out of their depths, so much as that it seems they confuse tidal pools for the ocean itself.
There is more to say. I would like to explore the curious absence of “repentance” as a meaningful ongoing category in the spiritual life. Whereas the authors have been crystal clear that faith crystalizes, subsequently manifests itself in repentance, and then, upon such a state being verified, culminates in baptism, I find it a serious omission (or inconsistency?) that faith seems comprehended in binary (either present or not – and if so, for perpetuity), something equally discreet called “repentance” remains unaccounted in the same terms. Whereas one’s whole life can be spoken of as marked by significant variations in faith and repentance, baptist theology speaks of repentance as something fluid both before and after baptism, but faith is understood statically, as the precursor to an authentic baptism – that is, any faith that comes about after a baptism logically disqualifies the validity of that baptism, definitionally. The concern here is more than trying to catch baptists in a logical lasso. It’s that the theology of believer’s baptism creates significant difficulties in creating the moral and spiritual vocabulary necessary for navigating seasons of doubt, apostasy, and even making compelling sense of the call to ongoing obedience.
In narrating one’s life in relation to Christ, given certain structures and definitions put in place regarding faith, baptism, and obedience, the doctrine of believer’s baptism can yield confusion in how to account for oneself because, if a baptism can be discredited by the falsification of a faith that one once believed they had – and if a profession of faith can be falsified by a sinful life – then one is always in search for the time that they can truly believe, truly repent, and truly be baptized, bending the soul inward, on itself, opening darkened eyes into the abyss of one’s own authentic self. Christ, however, has not so damned us. If only we will look to him, he promises to lighten our eyes, drawing us out of ourselves, in ecstasy (cf. ek stasis). Through the gift of his Holy Spirit, he has dressed us, vested us in his righteousness, but also with eternal life. Through baptism, he has made us sons, fellow heirs, children of righteousness in his father’s house, people of such a kind that he finds us fitting members of his heavenly kingdom, such a kind that he would not bar us, but instead welcomes us in our humility, in our ignorance, and in our inarticulate incoherence. Even as the Son yet knew his heavenly Father in the Virgin womb of redemption, so did he bring forth himself to us in the very form of life to which every man is called – calling us to become like him, a child – that is, calling us into a life of faith.
It is noteworthy (and lamentable) that, according to the theology of “Believer’s Baptism,” excommunication is explained as a means of culling the unbelievers from the church. This undermines serious claims that the purpose of church discipline is discipleship – it is definitionally not intended for disciples. The uneven way in which faith is treated as a punctilliar state but repentance(/obedience) is treated ambiguously creates a moral/spiritual schizophrenia where believers lack the categories to interpret the faith of Peter as the rock on which the Church is built – for though Christ calls him a disciple and commends his confession of faith, by a Dever-style account, he could not meaningfully be called a disciple until, perhaps after the Resurrection or Pentecost. Such a reading contradicts the biblical witness and equips the church to heap millstones upon its neck as it cannot accommodate the very common phenomenon of lapse and repentance into the story of authentic discipleship. Children are foolish and err frequently. They are ignorant and frequently disobedient – yet Christ compels his disciples to admit such into his presence, naming them fellow heirs of the kingdom. Willful exclusion of them from membership in the kingdom on account of their folly is explicitly rebuked by Christ. Calling such members “nominal” as a slur overlooks the fact that all discipleship is defined by Christ as nominal, commissioning his apostles to go into the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the Trinitarian name. The Great Commission literally charges us to fill the world with nominal Christians. Indicting paedobaptists as corruptors of the Church who fill it with nominal Christians is an indictment of the Commission itself, and betrays a radical misunderstanding of grace. Fortunately, Christ welcomes those with profound misunderstandings of grace into his kingdom – the gift of God does not make theological precision a precondition for its bestowal, thus the paedobaptist even believes that God can save a baptist. As the authors of “Believer’s Baptism” make clear, it is not always certain that a baptist can believe the same about paedobaptists. (cf. Dever’s comment on the need for orthodox belief as a precondition for baptism and church membership, p. 336, and couple that with the repeated clarification throughout the book that only non-sacramental versions of paedobaptism will be engaged.)
It would be “bad faith” engagement with “Believer’s Baptism,” if I did not sympathize with the intellectual difficulty paedobaptism raises. In terms of apologetics, defense of the practice usually requires explaining only one thing: how can we speak intelligibly of “infantile faith”? The fact that Christ explicitly blesses this oxymoron notwithstanding, it is worth noting that the nature of this faith and its relation to baptism has not been universally or even uniformly explained by advocates of the baptism of children. Of course, such an explanation, while edifying, is not essential to knowing whether or not we ought to continue the practice. But theological reflection is not pastorally wasteful. As mentioned, subjecting the topic of faith itself to real scrutiny can be and is done to much profit. It is unfortunate that within the three hundred plus pages of “Believer’s Baptism,” while the topic of faith is vehemently employed to carve out and argue for a distinct theological formula for baptism, faith itself is relatively unexamined and unexplored. Rather, it is taken for granted that the meaning of such language as “belief” and “believer” is self-evident and plain. However, it does not take much pressure to expose the vulnerabilities of that language if we only attend to the variegation in the English terms faith, faithful, and “the” faith. Even attending to the variation in meanings packed into the first of that list (faith as disposition/virtue versus faith as intellectual assent) opens up the fact that there is not a univocal sense to the word and thus the waters muddy quickly in considering how such a thing is held in relation to baptism. In my own theological exploration, reflecting intentionally on the way that faith exists psychologically as part of an ego that does not authentically exist in isolation, but presupposes a community, has made most baptist appeals to the criterion of authenticity appear incoherent. The fact that these things appear unexamined in Schreiner/Wright’s volume (though admittedly they are gently alluded to in the introduction, p. 6, but never revisited, expanded upon, or applied) heighten the ways in which it is unpersuasive. Nonetheless, perhaps their shortsightedness is the expected outcome of simplistic engagement by their opponents. My own sense is that the target of the baptist critique should not be the baptism of children, but the failure of catechesis and meaningful discipleship of those children (and their parents!). In my own Anglican context, this is manifestly true. The purity of the Church has not been compromised by some mythical capitulation to Constantinianism – nothing in Scripture has ever indicated such a risk or cause. Instead the failures of the “mixed church” stem from a lack of theological, moral, and spiritual seriousness that are communicated through the negligence of its bishops and priests(/presbyters, if it helps). It is not a lack of a “regenerate membership,” but a lack of members discipled to know what manner of life befits the regenerate – and a lack of expectation that they then conform to that life. There is more work to be done.
tolle lege 
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