A few years ago I wrote that I was not really satisfied with anybody’s theology of baptism. The paedobaptists had a more cogent system, I thought—one that actually dealt with everybody in some orderly fashion, but was ultimately too inferential for me to jump on board. I left myself safely affirming the view most common among the people with whom I went to church. I was a fence-sitter, and changing views would have been expensive at the time, so I think I can be forgiven for not making a big change in theology. Besides, I’ve always thought that theological changes should be made slowly over time, like the way trees grow. Ever known anyone who was prone to grow theological weeds? It’s pretty bad for you.

It’s been three and a half years since I wrote that, and a few things have changed. Notably, I don’t go to a credobaptist church anymore: as of very recently, I am a member of the PCA. Now, far be it from me to suggest that I ought to change sacramentologies just because I’ve changed churches. Obviously the community in which I place myself has nothing to do with the truth or falsehood of any particular theological belief. What it does affect, though, is belief formation. If you’re a baptism fence-sitter hanging out with credobaptists, you’re much more likely to lean towards dunking teenagers and grown-ups. If instead you hang with paedobaptists, you’re more likely to want to sprinkle babies. To acknowledge that relationships and affections play a deep role in belief formation is to cede no ground to the postmodern epistemology. We might choose to lament that this is the case, wishing instead that everyone formed beliefs strictly on the basis of rational justification—and I would sympathize with such a lament—but in reality this is just not how people think. It is worth reminding ourselves that we are a lot more malleable than our best epistemologies might ask us to be, especially where the boundaries of knowledge get interesting and we have a hard time figuring out what is true. We would do well to remember this, and choose our company accordingly. Sometimes the beliefs in question are a lot more consequential than baptism.

But I didn’t decide to switch teams simply because I think Presbyterians are cool and like being in the majority in my local church. I actually did come up with a new way of looking at the arguments that I think adds something to the discussion. Before I explain it, let me give some background.

My problem had been that there is really a decent biblical argument to be made on both sides, as the baptism articles at Monergism.com can well attest. It never seemed to me that either side had a winning exegetical argument that could be made apart from significant theological assumptions. Baptists in particular like to deny this, usually thinking that they have the biblical upper hand, that they just Read The Bible without any prior assumptions about covenants or signs or families or individualism, and their valid credobaptistic conclusions just flow out the other end like so much purified baptismal water. I will not elaborate on this further, except to say that the conclusions we draw from the NT texts on baptism do depend rather sensitively on certain theological assumptions we bring to them, and none of these assumptions should assume a position of any particular privilege in advance of the discussion.

This seems an awkward position to be in with regard to such a fundamental doctrine of the faith. It poses no small apologetic burden for us to admit that Scripture is ultimately unclear on how we are to administer a sacrament that is agreed by all to be a key part of the life of the church. Maybe we could understand how we could end up arguing over lofty matters like the freedom of the will, but baptism? Can we look ourselves in the face and assert the perspicuity of Scripture while at the same time believing that the biblical evidence can go fundamentally different directions on this rather central little piece of theology? If a guy were honest, he might say no.

So how did we get here? Well, I have an idea.

In his book The Shape of Sola Scriptura, author Keith Mathison traces the development of the relationship between what we now call “Scripture” and “Tradition.” Mathison describes a continuum of possible Scripture/Tradition balances in which he locates contemporary Roman Catholics, contemporary evangelicals, and of course the Good and Right View which should be affirmed by all. He calls contemporary Rome “Tradition 2,” which elevates the authority of the church over, or at best alongside, Scripture. He calls the contemporary Evangelical view “Tradition 0,” which eliminates any authoritative interpretive tradition in favor of the authority of the individual reader. Tradition 1, which he commends to the reader as the best view to hold, strikes a more dynamic and, he argues, more ancient balance between the two.

Early in its life the church had access to very little NT Scripture, and instead functioned more or less under the direct authority of the Apostles. At this time, at least with regard to the direct teaching of the Gospel, there was no (or very little) “Scripture” to read, but only the oral message of the Apostolic kerygma. As the Apostles died and their inspired writings circulated, the church lost first-person access to the oral Apostolic teaching, but now had it in written form instead. Since the time of the Reformation we have painfully experienced a Church-rending dialectic between Scripture and Tradition, but early on there was no such tension. There was the orally transmitted kerygma as proclaimed by the Apostles, and there was the same thing written down in the growing collection of books believed to be Divine in origin. Mathison argues that this dynamic balance between Scripture and Tradition formed the hermeneutical context in which the church of the Fathers did its work, its leaders’ significant differences and broad diversity notwithstanding. Rather than pitting Scripture against Tradition, the “Tradition 1″ view would have us accept the ultimate authority of Scripture interpreted in light of the unbreakable tradition of the Apostolic kerygma. Rather than choosing Scripture or Tradition, this view would have us read Scripture within a lightweight but forceful Tradition.

How does this apply to baptism? Well, it can be argued fairly persuasively that infant baptism was the practice of the church starting somewhere between AD 200 and 250. Inferential arguments can be made from sources as much as a century earlier, but historical consensus does not firm up until the later date. After that there is no full-throated credobaptism in the church until the Radical Reformation in the early 1520s.¹ (Greg Johnson summarizes these arguments in his 1999 paper The Prevalence and Theology of Infant Baptism in the First Four Centuries, East and West. It is a tremendously helpful resource for understanding the basics of the historical argument. It is written with sympathy to paedobaptism.)¹ The credobaptist will of course seek to impugn these claims more and more strongly as the date gets earlier, and otherwise to argue that paedobaptism is a corrupt theological innovation when it finally does show up undeniably the sources, but the basic bookends of 200-250 and 1520 are in place without reasonable dispute.

It is the emergence (or re-emergence, if you please) of credobaptism in the hands of the Anabaptists that should first arouse our suspicions. Of course one need not be a radical Anabaptist to be a credobaptist—the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith is ample witness to this—but the “first” credobaptists inconveniently were Anabaptists. These were the innovators who first brought us Mathison’s “Tradition 0″ hermeneutic, in which all conceivable prior tradition or interpretive influence was shunned, often vigorously. To put it plainly: the first time credobaptism is positively known to thrive in church history, it does so in a hermeneutical context that is intentionally hostile to any kind of interpretive tradition—and one which will find few thoughtful sympathizers today.

Contrast this with the hermeneutic that Mathison argues was operative to some degree within the church of the Fathers. The Tradition 1 schema intentionally tries to harmonize its reading of Scripture with the unbroken (and early on in the Patristic period, orally transmitted) teaching of the Apostles. Now, the schema is not perfect for our purposes here: no advocate of Tradition 1 claims that the authoritative interpretive rule contains a commitment to paedobaptism, and neither do we claim that the rule was so expansive that it contained everything being taught by the Fathers at any time. It is a modest creedal standard by any measure. Still, the basic program of reading Scripture in the context of an unbroken tradition of some kind is instructive.

I began by claiming that the exegetical argument over baptism could reasonably be viewed as being at a standstill. I intend this as both a description of my own reasoning and as a conciliatory claim: it is not the case that either side in this debate has some slam-dunk Biblical argument to which the other side is just stubbornly and willfully blind. But if both positions actually do have decent Biblical arguments behind them, then we are obligated to look at the broader hermeneutical framework in which each position has thrived. If the Tradition 0 hermeneutic is to be rejected and Tradition 1 to be accepted in its place, then the historical argument in favor of paedobaptism gains quite a bit of currency. The recent history of credobaptism is obscured by the three centuries of good and decent Baptists behind us, but the observation nevertheless emerges that credobaptism only ever took root when planted in very suspicious hermeneutical soil indeed. While paedobaptism’s pedigree is hardly spotless—nothing Patristic is—it at least offers us the good chance of continuity with an unbroken Apostolic practice. Given a Biblical draw, the smart money is on baptizing babies.

These might be big “ifs,” and I doubt they’ll be persuasive to any committed credobaptists. However, if you’re an honest fence-sitter, I suspect you’ll feel the weight of the argument. And hanging out with Presbyterians won’t kill you either.

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Postscript: One might point out that it’s awfully convenient for me to come to this decision after all of my children have professed faith. After all, what does one really need to accommodate oneself to in this situation? Pouring instead of immersion? Big deal! I will admit that I’d make a pretty poor celebrity convert on this account (notwithstanding my lack of celebrity), but in my defense I will say this: the plan for the ceremony in which we are received into our congregation requires that Kari and I take the membership oath, then have our children baptized, then have them take the oath. If you think about it, you’ll see that this is not a credobaptistic formula.

Am I a prig? Sure. But you know, if symbolic meaning doesn’t apply in church, where does it apply?

Another postscript: Parts of this post would be ever so much more useful if I had footnoted them. Sadly, that would require much more time than I have for blog-grade essays, so please just take this pots for what it is worth. If there is a claim that bothers you, let me know, and I’ll get you a source for it.

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¹It is worth noting that there was a brief episode between about 330 AD and 365 AD in which infant baptisms—and, for that matter, convert baptisms—were often delayed until near the recipient’s death. This was due to a degenerate theology of baptism being embraced in some circles which held that sins committed after baptism might be harder to forgive than those committed beforehand. The practice was eventually abolished by fourth century thinkers who made appeals to the earlier practice of un-delayed infant baptism. This does not ultimately answer the question, but it is evidence that in the middle of the fourth century it was common to believe that infant baptism was the ancient and Apostolic practice.

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• Posted by Tim on Friday, November 24, 2006 at 12:05:17 pm PST
• Category: Theology
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