Why I am a Baptist (part 2 of 10)

The ordinance of baptism

This is often viewed as the preeminent defining characteristic of Baptist faith and witness. As the designation suggests, Baptists hold the teaching and practice of baptism as integral to the expression of their faith. This has been so since the beginnings of Baptist witness. Some even go to the extent of claiming - erroneously - that John the Baptist was the founder of the Baptist church tradition!

Prior to the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church practiced infant baptism as a sacrament leading to salvation. While returning to the doctrine of justification by faith and reaffirming the concept of 'scripture alone,' the Reformers of the sixteenth century retained the practice of infant baptism since they held that membership of a local church was on a covenantal basis. It's worth noting that, for example, Queensland's original Dinmore Baptist Church (constituted in 1895) performed infant baptism and admitted those so baptised into church membership in recognition of their covenant relationship with Christ.

Certain Protestant Christians reacted to the Reformation churches and emphasised the need for the separation of church and state, congregational autonomy (in place of episcopacy or presbyterial church government) and religious toleration (in the face of violent persecution of dissenters by the Established church and the state). These Christians were known as Separatists.

However, some Protestant Christians believed that even the Separatists were not doing justice to the principles rediscovered by the Reformers, and desired to carry the Reformation forward to what they saw as its logical conclusion. In addition to the basic Protestant doctrines of the Reformers, and the emphases of the Separatists, they highlighted the biblical teaching of believer's baptism and the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers.

In calling for (and practicing) believer's baptism, these Christians (called Baptists from the early seventeenth century) pointed out that Christian baptism was intended, from biblical times, to be performed for believers on the basis of their personal confession of Christ as Lord and Saviour.
The baptism of infants was therefore inappropriate since infants could not confess faith in Christ and were thus not regenerate at the moment of their baptism. Baptists also returned to the biblical practice of baptism by total immersion, although the first Baptists practiced baptism by affusion.

John Smyth is one of the first Protestants to argue that baptism should be applied to believers only, and that baptismal confession should form the basis of membership in the church [1]. Smyth believed that churches practising infant baptism as a sacrament were false churches, and sought to obey scriptural principles for baptism and church membership. Others followed and joined him, and believer's baptism soon came to be adjectival for seventeenth century Baptists.

This remains the case today: Baptists are primarily differentiated from other denominational traditions by their view and practice of believer's baptism. For example, in 1991 the Heritage Taskforce to the Annual Assembly of the Baptist Union of Victoria found that the most important aspect of being a Baptist in that state was the affirmation of believer's baptism. On the other hand, among Queensland Baptists, at least one church does not require believers to be baptised before becoming members, and other churches have recently discussed the issue at length.

Believer's baptism by immersion, however, is also practiced by many other faith communities (such as most Pentecostal and charismatic groups in Australia); and during the last quarter century both British and American Baptists have engaged in dialogue with Reformed and Anglican communions regarding the meaning of baptism and its relation to church membership, perhaps foreshadowing a rapprochement.

Ecumenical councils are likewise finding common ground with traditional Baptist beliefs. In 1982, a consultation of the World Council of Churches in Lima, Peru, concluded that "while the possibility that infant baptism was also practiced in the apostolic age cannot be excluded, baptism upon personal profession of faith is the most clearly attested pattern in the New Testament documents."

Believer's baptism, then, while a primary principle and practice of Baptists for almost 400 years, does not clearly distinguish Baptists from other Christian groups.

More in the next post....

[1] In an earlier version of this article I was criticised for erroneously crediting John Smyth as the first Protestant to practise believer's baptism. Others certainly preceded Smyth: Mennonites, for example, have observed that the the 1527 Schleitheim Articles teach emphatically against infant baptism. Smyth's conviction, in 1609, that baptism should be applied to believers only, and that this voluntary confession should form the basis of the church, was probably driven by a strong desire for a pure church - a desire shared by many others at the time. Perhaps, as Leon McBeth suggests, the language barrier prevented Smyth and his friends from knowing much about the Mennonites at that early time. Ironically, Smyth (who had baptised himself, probably by affusion) soon came to believe that baptism was invalid unless performed by someone who had been correctly baptised, and sought re-baptism. And after his death in 1612, the remnant of his followers were received into Mennonite fellowship and disappeared from history as a separate group. But by that time there were other groups of Christians that were identifiably "Baptist," notably those led by Thomas Helwys. See H. Leon McBeth, The Baptist Heritage (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1987), pp. 32-38.

Rod Benson is a NSW Baptist minister and ethicist. He attends Dural Baptist Church.