Nairobi Communique

Every Anglican should read the Nairobi Communique and Commitment that has just been produced by the second GAFCON.

Open Baptism and Evangelism

Following on from my last post, and tying in with some recent comments from the Church of England, I thought it would be worth saying something about the relationship between baptism and evangelism.

In some parts of the Anglican world, there is an 'open' baptism policy. That is, some church leaders are committed to the idea that the rite of baptism ought to be available to anyone who's interested in it, without qualification. For some, this is not just a passive position, but one that's quite actively and publicly promoted. The most notable recent advancement of the open baptism policy came from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who has given his thoughts as they've been prompted by today's baptism of Prince George. You can watch him on it here.

I think there are a couple of great things going on behind this policy. The first is that those who are pushing it understand that connecting over a baptism provides a great opportunity for talking about Jesus. No doubt this is what ++Justin is trying to do with his video for the royal baptism. And that's fantastic. The second thing in the open baptism policy is the desire to show that anyone can become a member of Jesus' church. By saying all can come for baptism, there's a good chance to reinforce that there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female when it comes to salvation. Anyone and everyone can become a member of the body of Christ. That is also an excellent thing to say. But good as it is to communicate these two things, the open baptism policy misses many other, most critical, things. It misses belief, faith, repentance, submission, commitment - it basically misses out on the idea that people actually need to lose their life to Jesus in order to gain it eternally through him. The open baptism policy says that just an interest in Jesus, or a generally positive disposition towards him, or the church, is enough.

To be fair, I'm sure that not all open baptisers want it to end there. Some may be universalists and think that all will be saved in the end and so don't see why baptism shouldn't be administered quite freely. But I suspect others don't think that at all - and I doubt that any of them are praying for a church full of nominal Christians. I imagine that for some, what they're really hoping is that the baptisee's positive experience of the church will make them want to keep coming back, and as they do, that they will become more and more convinced of the claims of Christ. Again, this is a very commendable intention, but the open baptism approach really means that baptism is being used as an evangelistic strategy, as a winsome missional tactic, not as the symbolic marker of the people of God.

The baptism-as-evangelism approach is very mixed up and just doesn't reflect the Bible's purpose for baptism in mission. In the New Testament, it seems quite clear that baptism is not part of an evangelistic strategy, but it's what is appropriate to mark someone's conversion to faith in Jesus. The idealised process would seem to be something like: A person becomes interested in Jesus > Christian believers tell them about Jesus > by God's grace they accept Jesus as Lord and Saviour > we mark their conversion by baptising them to symbolise their being washed clean of their sins and their rising to new life. Given this, if you baptise an inquirer who hasn't yet accepted Jesus, it's hard to understand what anyone thinks is going on. You might be communicating universalism. You might be communicating that Jesus is satisfied with a little bit of interest. You might be communicating that the church really is 'lovely', but that it doesn't have any firm convictions about what it means to be the set aside people of God. You might be communicating that the church will change its beliefs to cater for the preferences of punters that it desperately wants to become new members...

The real challenge in all this actually has to do with how we connect with, welcome, love and give real time to people who are inquiring. I think these things are what many open baptisers are wanting to do, and they are most excellent things to want to do. Surely though, we can do them without compromising the sacraments.

The Chink in the Credobaptist Armour

Mark Driscoll is the founding pastor and preacher of the huge and still growing Mars Hill Church in Seattle. He is famously strong willed, strong minded and strong worded, and he consequently tends to polarise a lot of believers - which is a bit of a shame because even if we're not convinced of everything he says (which I'm not), we should all still be able to appreciate his incredible gifts in church leadership and preaching, and his undivided passion for Jesus (which I do). Anyway, I don't want to get into any of that now, but I do want to think about baptism in light of something Driscoll posted online yesterday.

Driscoll is a committed credobaptist. He believes that infants should not be baptised, because baptism is the sign that's meant to accompany an individual's conscious profession of faith, something that infants are unable to make. Like many credobaptists, he tends to picture paedobaptists - those of us who will baptise babies - as being a superstitious and 'religious' bunch who trust in the rituals of church institutions for their salvation, instead of in Jesus Christ alone.

Now in preaching on the commandment against murder, Driscoll has taken a fresh look into some of the hard cases concerning the fate of the dead. In particular, he's asked the tough question of what happens to babies when they die. I found his post on this to be pastoral, biblical, balanced, and even genuinely touching. You can read it here. But what was also interesting about it was that he acknowledged the possibility that babies who die are redeemed members of the elect and that they therefore go to heaven. Driscoll rallies a number of theologians and Bible texts to support this view, and I think there are even more that could be added. It seems then that credo- and paedobaptists alike agree that infants can be saved. But then what does that mean for infant baptism? That is, if some infants can or may be saved, why should we withhold baptism from them.

I think at one level, this really drives us back to what we think baptism is all about. If we agree that baptism symbolises something rather than does something, then we need to ask exactly what it is that we think it symbolises. It seems to me that for credobaptists, it symbolises not just our salvation, but our choice or our profession and that is why the symbol is closely synchronised with the timing of that choice or profession. To some extent, they believe its emphasis is on our response to God. For paedobaptists, however, when babies are baptised, it represents God's covenant or election. That is, the emphasis is on his initiative. These are quite different views of baptism. Not completely at odds with each other, but with the focus in different places.

Of course the screaming hole in the paedobaptist argument is that it's impossible to know if God has or hasn't elected a baby. But what even Driscoll has said is that we must make proper room for the very real possibility that he has. And so again the question: If baptism doesn't do anything towards salvation, why withhold it from babies who may well be elect? Aside from coupling baptism with choice or profession, one of the strongest practical answers that credobaptists give to this is that infant baptism breeds nominalism. It makes people, families, denominations and even nations believe that they are all safe and Christian because they were baptised as babies, and this no doubt an incredibly dangerous thing. There is real wisdom in calling for only mature people to be baptised after they have freely professed their faith because that forces them to make a clear choice for Jesus and prevents nominals from thinking they're in the same boat. This perspective is so good that I nearly want to go for it. But then, I just don't believe baptism is so strongly anchored to choice or profession. I do believe it's also a sign of God's covenant and election. As such, I think baptism is appropriate for the babies of believers, who I think ought to be considered as though they are in the covenant family of God more than they are considered to be out of it.

One story and two practical, principled points might bring my position home.

The story is of a baby I baptised a number of years ago who was quite seriously mentally disabled. The parents were - and still are - passionate believers and actively involved in the life and mission of the church. They raise their children in line with their clear faith in Jesus. Now, I think it's a real possibility that this child may never be able to articulate that faith in Jesus and so I wonder if a credobaptist would ever allow them to be baptised or if they would instead say that the child could live their life within the fold of the church, but never be marked by its identifying symbol. I know this is an extreme case, but thinking about it helps us to clarify our beliefs about infant baptism.

The two practical and principled points.

First is that I don't think we should baptise the babies of unbelievers. That would be like giving communion to unbelievers. It seems to me that the church should be wide open to all people and should love all people and witness to all people, but it should still make the distinction between those who are in the family of faith and those who aren't, and it seems to me that the sacraments mark the lines in the sand. (For the same reason, I don't think unbelievers should be encouraged to take communion.) If churches were strict with this baptism policy - and given what the Book of Common Prayer says, Anglican churches should be - then I think the paedobaptist position becomes a lot more credible. If we're sloppy with this policy, paedobaptism - and baptism in general - becomes somewhat empty even of its own claims and breeds that unhealthy nominalism.

Secondly, I would more properly describe myself as a paedo- and credobaptist. That is, I have been blessed to be in churches where there has been an active mission to unbelieving adults and where some of those adults have come to faith. When this has happened, we've then had them publicly and joyfully profess their trust in Jesus as we've baptised them! These are actually some of my most precious memories of church. And here's the rub - I actually think this is what we see in New Testament. Credobaptists will often say that the only baptisms we see in the New Testament are of new converts, but that's precisely the point! They are converts. They were unbelievers who were outside the people of God and who were evangelised and converted by God's grace, so of course they should have been baptised at that point - that was the first time they knew the Lord. Theirs is quite a different experience to that of children raised in believing families. And of course the New Testament focusses on these conversion stories because it's a mission manifesto. While the Old Testament deals a lot with the internal life of the people of God, the New Testament shifts the focus onto the mission to unbelievers. This is why there is no place in the New Testament where we clearly see children of believers getting baptised. And for anyone who wants to run that fact as an argument against paedobaptism, the response is that neither do we find in the New Testament any examples of children of believers being held back from baptism so that they can save it for the time of their mature profession. This seems to be what credobaptists think should happen with the children of believers, but the Bible does not show that at all. Not once. In fact, the pattern of the Old Testament is that people who are born into the family of God must be regarded as 'in' until such time as they choose not to be. That's not to say they're saved by family or race, but they are to be counted 'in' by covenant grace.

This has been a long post and while I've been pleased to make the paedobaptist case, I do want to say as clearly as possible that I'm not anti-credobaptist. I know that denominations have split over this one, but for me, so long as there is common understanding that Jesus, and not the ritual, is the Saviour, then we can share good fellowship.

____


Just after posting this, I saw a tweet from the Church of England pointing to this page. There is some wriggle room in what it says, but in light of what I've written above, I have to say that I'm not comfortable with what its message seems to be. At very best, it's unhelpfully ambiguous.

** This post has been edited - nothing substantial, just a bit of tidying up.

Cool Furnishings at Holy Trinity Cambridge

Q: Why is this one of the most historically important cabinets for evangelical Anglicanism?

A: Because of this -

So, while I'll never be able to say that I've preached from Simeon's pulpit, I can at least say that I've left my wallet and keys on it while I was playing music with the Holy Trinity band.


Another cool, historical piece from HT is the communion cup.

Notice the date it was made? 1569!

I've just finished some work looking into what Anglicans believed about the Lord's Supper during the early Elizabethan years so it's pretty cool that my church has a chalice from those days.

Cambridge has been a great place to live, study and share fellowship for tons of reasons. These are just two of the minor notes that have added to it.

An Obvious Implication

After a conversation with a friend about all things Anglican the other day (well, some things Anglican), I made a connection that I hadn't made before - despite the fact that it's pretty obvious. So, forgive me if this something that everyone else realised ages ago... sometimes I'm a bit slow...

I realised that if an Anglican diocese chooses to ordain women into teaching and oversight and roles, then they can never again have bishops who are conservative on this issue (notwithstanding a synod- or province-level about face on the issue).

That is, as Anglicans worldwide battle over the question of whether the biblical prohibitions on women leading men in churches are culturally or circumstantially specific on the one hand, or universal on the other, they're actually deciding who they will allow into church leadership roles in more than one way. If a diocese comes down on the egalitarian side of the debate and chooses to welcome women into the priesthood, then they're also saying that they will no longer welcome any bishops who won't ordain women to that office.

Again, it's all kinda obvious, but I do wonder if every diocese that's gone down this path has consciously realised that in doing so they've ruled out many otherwise eligible candidates for future episcopal roles. I suppose that a gracious egalitarian archbishop who was genuinely committed to including and representing the breadth of views in their diocese could appoint a conservative suffragan / coadjutor bishop and give them a special dispensation to abstain from the ordinations of women to the priesthood. But really...

Anyways, as a conservative myself (though hopefully not a redneck conservative!), I've often felt that the fear-mongering among fellow conservatives on this issue has been a bit overplayed. But this simple connection has made me realise that the squeeze is on us perhaps a little more than I'd previously thought. At the moment, the egalitarian dioceses that I know best are still willing to ordain and welcome the ministry of people who are conservative on this issue, but now I guess it's those conservatives who will have a glass ceiling over their heads! Again, perhaps it's only my slowness that thinks the ceiling has the transparency of glass. At any rate, that's quite a turnaround.

Oh well, I guess we can at least relax happy in the knowledge that gospel ministry is about service and not about titles and power and institutional advancement. I'm pretty sure that Jesus isn't going to line us up by our worldly ranks on the last day!