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.

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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.