QQ94-95. What is baptism and to whom should it be administered?
A (94). Baptism is a Sacrament, wherein the washing with water, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, doth signify and seal our ingrafting into Christ, and partaking of the benefits of the covenant of grace, and our engagement to be the Lord’s.
A (95). Baptism is not to be administered to any that are out of the visible Church, till they profess their faith in Christ, and obedience to him; but the infants of such as are members of the visible Church are to be baptized.
We will follow a very simple outline: 1. The nature of baptism (from Q94), 2. the recipients of baptism (from Q95), and then 3. Answering difficult or practical questions that may be loose ends from both.
The Nature of Baptism
The Greek word for “I baptize” (bapto) has reference to dipping and much as to immersion. The LXX translates 2 Kings 5:14 as baptizo, where it says of Namaan that, “he went down and dipped (וַיִּטְבֹּ֤ל)1 himself seven times in the Jordan.” Contrary to the the surface Baptist argument that baptizo must mean “immerse” in all cases, the same word is used elsewhere,
“and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash (βαπτίσωνται). And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing (βαπτισμοὺς) of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches” (Mk. 7:4).
Then speaking of even the pure form of old covenant rites: “but [these] deal only with food and drink and various washings (βαπτισμοῖς), regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation” (Heb. 9:10).
The first thing question 94 does is to remind us that baptism is a SACRAMENT. So if what we saw last time is true, then baptism must meet all four of those elements: 1. instituted by Christ through the Scriptures; 2. a sign of the gospel; 3. performed until Christ returns; 4. for the whole church as a church. We can see that it does meet these. The Great Commission passage alone covers criteria 1, 3, and 4. The answer to question 94 essentially unpacks the way that it signifies the gospel.
So it speaks of the first things you encounter when you see baptism happening: WATER and the word-formula, IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND OF THE SON, AND OF THE HOLY GHOST. A very frequent question is this: Cannot other words be used in the name of who we baptize in? No. While the Scriptures do not explicitly forbid any other formula for baptism, nevertheless it is best to use the words of the institution passage in Matthew 28:19 of the three names of the Trinity.
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19).
The church has historically resolved to use that for the reason of this being the text where it is instituted by Christ Himself. As to those who point to the so-called “Jesus-only” instances in Acts, need to be read in the normal context of a narrative, as they are not meant to give us exhaustive information on proper baptism.
The rest of the answer to Question 94 begins to mark out—no pun intended—the difference between the traditional Christian view (and especially the Reformed covenantal view) on the one hand, versus the modern Baptist view. The church has always understood the primary rationale for sacraments in Scripture to be visible signs and seals, specifically of God’s work, visibly marking out the visible body. Anything concerning the response of man was always considered to be a secondary element. But this answer does take both of those into account. What does the sacrament of baptism do? It DOTH SIGNIFY AND SEAL OUR INGRAFTING INTO CHRIST.
Let’s take that first part first. Baptism marks one as belonging to the covenant community of God. This became the New Testament sign and seal of the covenant of grace, whereas circumcision functioned that way in the Old Testament. You still see discussion of circumcision in the New because this was, of course, the Jewish community, and the coming of Christ is what intitated the New Covenant phase of the Covenant of Grace. Part of the difficulty in coming to the issue of baptism without first having studied covenant theology is that these words may have meaning only within another system of interpreting the Bible, like Dispensationalism or other modern ideas where the New Covenant represents a radically different working of God altogether.
Secondly it adds that it signifies and seals our PARTAKING OF THE BENEFITS OF THE COVENANT OF GRACE. Of course the most immediate benefit of the covenant of grace is the forgiveness of sins.
As Calvin puts it,
“The first object, therefore, for which it is appointed by the Lord, is to be a sign and evidence of our purification, or (better to explain my meaning) it is a kind of sealed instrument by which he assures us that all our sins are so deleted, covered, and effaced, that they will never come into his sight, never be mentioned, never imputed.”2
That raises the first simple question: Does baptism remove sin? No—not the material waters in the sign. 1 Peter 3:21 speaks to this—in the words, “Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” Baptism is a sign of how Christ's blood washes away our sin, using water as a familiar piece of imagery.
Finally it also does point to the pledge on the part of the believer: AND OUR ENGAGEMENT TO BE THE LORD’S.
“We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4).
“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Gal. 3:27).
The Recipients of Baptism
The first thing to get out of the way is the appeal to texts showing new converts being baptized under the name “believer’s baptism.” For instance,
“And as they were going along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?” (Acts 8:36)
All parties agree that such new converts should be baptized. Simply returning to these texts when all else fails is no argument at all, since neither party disagrees with this idea. The controversy is whether, in addition to believer’s coming out of the world, the children of believers in the church should be included. It is a logical fallacy called begging the question being committed when one simply says, “But these were all new believers,” or “But these were all told to believe and be baptized.” Yes. We agree. That doesn’t address the question.
A very concise summary of the biblical case for infant baptism would include five main points, and then two additional points about the narratives that both sides tend to use, but which I think effectively cancel each other out in terms of real demonstration.
1. God commands the sign to the children of all Abraham’s descendants (Gen. 17:10; Rom. 4:11);
2. Paul tells us that those descendants are all of faith: Jew and Gentile (Rom. 2, 9, 10, Eph. 2:12, 1 Cor. 10, Gal. 3-4);
3. Baptism is now the initiatory sign of the covenant community (Col. 2:12-13);
4. Covenant of grace is not logically coextensive with covenant community (Heb. 10:29).
5. Children of the covenant are still included (Acts 2:38-39, Eph. 6:1, 1 Cor. 7:14).
6. Any baptized on account of the head’s conversion (Acts 10:48; 16:15, 33; 1 Cor. 1:16) eliminates the Baptist argument about faith as prerequisite.
7. Consistency about the narrative passages requires that one includes speaking in tongues, etc. in those prerequisites (Acts 10:44-46; ).
Let us take each of these in turn:
God commands the sign of his singular covenant to all Abraham’s generations or descendants: “This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised” (Gen. 17:10). Now we need to mention one more thing from the Romans 4:11 passage we looked at last time. We saw that cirucmcision was a sign and seal of the righteousness that Abraham had by faith. So it was not the faith which was the most immediate referent of the sign, but rather God’s own righteousness that was possessed by it. Just when the Baptist may want to look to this verse to make the point that Abraham’s faith is being highlighted here (as it surely is), how quickly we might gloss over the fact that right after Abraham, Isaac was circumscised as well, and so on with Jacob and the twelve sons, and all their generations as the command had told them. Now when were they all circumcised? Was it before they believed or after? For covenant children, it was well before they believed. Now a Baptist may want to say that this is the very thing that has changed. But one thing they cannot say is that this makes no sense. If it made sense to God to fix the sign, not to the timing of the faith, but to the substance of what the faith was in—if that made sense to God then, it cannot cease to make sense afterwards.
Paul tells us in some clear New Testament passages that those descendants are primarily the children of faith. First, hear Paul use the very imagery of circumcision to make the point: “For sno one is a Jew twho is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. 29 But a Jew is one uinwardly, and vcircumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter” (Rom. 2:28-29). Then, in the same context as the 4:11 passage we have read, he uses the expression “adherents of the law” synonymously with “circumcised”:
“For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void … That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all” (vv. 13-14, 16).
“For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but ‘Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.’ This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring” (9:6-8).
“you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree” (11:17).
“remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise” (Eph. 2:12)
Then in Galatians 3, Paul gets specific as to the nature of the gospel promise and how that relates to the inheritance Gentile believers have in common with Abraham.
“Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ’In you shall all the nations be blessed.’ So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith … For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (vv. 7-9, 27-29).
Baptism replaces circumcision as the sign of one’s initiation into the covenant community. Paul says, “In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead” (Col. 2:11-12).
If the question is why it replaces the old sign, it is what we saw last time about the nature of sacraments and the unity of their substance. In this passage, Paul is speaking primarily of the circumcision and baptism not performed by human hands—in other words, the sign of circumcision and the sign of baptism are signs of the same, singular work of Christ. We see hints of that in the Old Testament, where circumcision signifies not merely one’s inclusion in the covenant and the cutting off from those people for those unfaithful to it; but in addition, this old sign stood for regeneration. For example,
“Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn” (Deut. 10:16).
“And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live” (Deut. 30:6).
“Circumcise yourselves to the LORD; remove the foreskin of your hearts, O men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem” (Jer. 4:4).
Now in Titus 3, baptism also represents regeneration: “but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior” (vv. 5-6).
The covenant of grace is not logically coextensive with the covenant community. The first includes the invisible church in a special way; yet the second includes the visible church. Baptism is a visible sign, not invisible—a sanctifying distinction still made in the new covenant. We have already seen the point from Hebrews 10:29, and the same point comes up whenever there are any cases of apostasy in the New Testament, whether it be the Parables of the Sower and the Wheat and Tares in Matthew 13, or the case of those who “went out from among us” in 1 John 2:19. I will not labor the point here, since it has already been made. However, this is a difficult category for covenantal Baptists, who see the unity of the covenant, but revert back to a partially dispensationalist take on Jeremiah 31:31-34. If they admit that the covenant community in the New is as much of a mixed body as the covenant community in the Old, then the way is open for them to make a category shift and realizing that covenant signs are as visible as the visibility of that mixed body. That is the whole nature of signs, that they only function that way on the surface of visibility. There is a kind of over-realized eschatology read into the new covenant promise of Jeremiah 31 the moment that one reasons that the new covenant community is purely and simply “believers only.”
The New Testament treats the children of the covenant as still included. For instance, they are addressed in the assembly. It is generally understood by New Testamet scholars and commentators—or, really, any serious student of the Bible—that the letters of the New Testament were to be read to the assembly, and so were structured the way they were for that very reading. Yet in Ephesians 6:1, Paul begins the chapter with “Children,” do such and such. The Apostle could easily have instructed the parents to reiterate these things to their own children, but he does not. He treats them as members of the church.
“And Peter said to them, ‘Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself” (Acts 2:38-39).
“For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy” (1 Cor. 7:14).
Speaking of discontinuities between the Old and the New, one of them is that the New is said to include “better promises” (Heb. 8:6). Now would first century Jew have considered things to have gotten better if overnight, at without any explanation at all, the children were all excommunicated from the body? I would think not.
Now, as far as those narrative proof texts, my fellow Presbyterians should be cautioned as well as Baptists. I do not say that we cannot doctrine so easily from narrative texts. Of course we can. However, literary genre is always something to bear in mind in that interpretation. We must interpret narratives in light of their function in the narrative flow. It is often easier to cherry-pick here.
So, first, to the Presbyterian narrative texts. If any members of new covenant households—infants or otherwise—are baptized on account of the head’s conversion (Acts 10:48; 16:15, 33; 1 Cor. 1:16), the entire Baptist argument collapses. To repeat, the conclusion does not depend on an explicit reference to an infant in those narratives. The new covenant does not do away with the role of the head of home sanctifying everything in his sphere—most importantly, his loved ones—as Paul says, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word” (Eph. 5:25-26). While the waters of baptism represent that cleansing, baptism is one species of a more general category of ways that the head marks out all in his sphere as devoted to the Lord.
On the other side, since there is not one passage in Scripture (whether descriptive or prescriptive) indicating that faith must precede the sign, the Baptists must resort to narrative texts in the Gospels and Acts. For example,
“All the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to [John] and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins” (Mk. 1:5; cf. Mat. 3:6, 11; Lk. 3:3; Acts 13:24; 19:4).
“Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins” (Acts 2:38).
“Those who received his word were baptized” (Acts 2:41).
“When they believed Philip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. Even Simon himself believed, and after being baptized he continued with Philip” (Acts 8:12–13).
Of course this includes the household baptism passages, since it will be said that these show everyone in the same group believing. So in 18:8, it says, “Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in the Lord, together with his entire household. And many of the Corinthians hearing Paul believed and were baptized.” So the inclusion of the household here included belief. And then with the Philippian jailer (Acts 16:32), Paul first “spoke the word of the Lord . . . to all who were in [the jailer’s] house,” and then baptized them. This it is infered that all believed because all heard. And there you have it in those texts that require no inference—it turns out that they do!
Yet to be consistent, these same texts also include items such as speaking in tongues (Acts 10:46; 19:6). Expanding outward to all conversion texts, some say repent and be baptized but not believe (Acts 2:38), others believe and be baptized, but not repent (Acts 8:12), while the Acts 10 text about the household of Cornelius does not specify who believes, does not call them to belief or repentance, but says only that they heard the word and were baptized. At what point does the Baptist have to stop saying, “Well that’s implied” and “Well that’s obvious,” before he has to play by the same rules as the Presbyterian?
Of “those who believe” we are told without explicit qualification, “they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them” (Mk. 16:17). Even if one clears the hurdle of the end of Mark being included in the canon, the fact remains that one has to turn elsewhere to determined that these are the apostles being talked about here—the very interpretive principle that Baptist disallows in all of these texts. Where is one verse telling us which items to include, and which to exclude? We should not be surprised that the same London Baptist Confession (1689) that went a different way on baptism also amended the language in the doctrine of Scripture concerning “good and necessary consequence,” i.e. by logical inference.
More Difficult (or Practical) Questions
But why speak of efficacy in baptism at all if, for the infant, who must have faith later anyway, the blessings of Christ come later? First, because not all of those blessings do indeed wait for later; since it is a blessing to be nurtured in the covenant of grace—both by Christian parents and by the church at large. Secondly, because of the nature of the promise that comes through all of those other means, as Calvin again comments,
“Now our opponents ask us what faith came to us during some years after our baptism . . . . We therefore confess that for that time baptism benefited us not at all, inasmuch as the promise offered us in it—without which baptism is nothing—lay neglected . . . . But we believe that the promise itself did not vanish. Rather, we consider that God through baptism promises us forgiveness of sins, and he will doubtless fulfill his promise for all believers. This promise was offered to us in baptism; therefore, let us embrace it by faith. Indeed, on account of our unfaithfulness it lay long buried from us; now, therefore, let us receive it through faith.”3
One author calls this “latent efficacy.”4
But does this not open up the door to baptismal regeneration? Especially in present Reformed circles, it seems to many to legitimzing the Federal Vision and its view of baptism. And how do we respond to the Acts 2:38 objection? It says, “Repent and pbe baptized every one of you qin the name of Jesus Christ rfor the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive sthe gift of the Holy Spirit.” Besides, didn’t the earliest Christians believe this when they recited the Creed that spoke of “baptism for the remission of sins”? First, the call that Peter mentions in the Pentecost sermon works the same as in the Great Commission passage with disciples. It is a general statement and not an analysis of the mechanism of salvation.
The bottom line is that baptismal regeneration, consciously held, and specifically holding that the act of the sacrament is the efficient cause of the new birth, is unbiblical and contrary to salvation being by grace alone. Baptismal language is put in that way in the New Testament because God wants us to so associate the sign with what it signifies, that we take him at his word in receiving its grace.
William B. Evans gives a concise summary of the Federal Vision teaching on baptism and its efficacy.
“First, the grace of baptism is fully and objectively efficacious at the time of administration. Those baptized are regenerated and united with Christ. Second, this baptismal grace is well nigh universal—all baptized (at least all covenant children baptized as infants) receive the saving efficacy of the sacrament. Third, while the grace of baptism is bestowed in the administration of the sacrament, this grace is conditional in that it can be lost by those who fail to persevere in faith and obedience. Finally, because the grace of baptism is received even by those who later fail to persevere, it is not conditioned by God’s decree of election.”5
Evans concludes that “the FV is asking some important and even crucial questions but coming up with some unfortunate answers.”6
Is baptism in any sense necessary and if so, is that not works-righteousness? It all depends what is meant by “necessary.” Is it essential that one is baptized to be saved? No. Otherwise the thief on the cross would not have been saved. Neither, if we want to be overly-literal, could any of the Old Testament saints have been saved. Having said that, not all “necessities” are about how one “gets” saved.
What about ‘Jesus-only’ baptisms held to by Oneness Pentecostals? The Great Commission passage (Mat. 28:19-20) is normative for the formula, as is proper for the names of the three persons of the Triune God. In most cultures and at most times, the concept of acting “in the name” of another meant to do something either as their representative or in their authority. It is not meant to be a magic formula where the words in themselves grant power. So in the book of Acts, the phrase “in the name of Jesus” is likewise shorthand for “in his authority.” It is certainly not to be read against the words used by Jesus himself in Matthew 28:19 where baptism is instituted.
Should one ever be rebaptized? The Scriptures speak of “one baptism” (Eph. 4:5) which signifies one’s inclusion into the body of Christ. Since Jesus instituted baptism under the authority of the Trinitarian formula (Mat. 28:19), many of the most conservative Reformed have accepted even baptisms performed in the Roman Catholic Church. Although the Scripture does not explicitly either command or forbid a second baptism, where we draw the line begins to say something about what we think baptism is. On a practical level, we must always keep in mind that baptism is principally a sign of what God does in the gospel, and only secondarily an identification of anything like our response. We will all learn more after baptism. We will all sin big after baptism. We do have to take care that we don’t invest in baptism meanings and functions that it cannot bear.
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1. From טָבַל, “to dip.”
2. Calvin, Institutes, IV.15.1.
3. Calvin, Institutes, IV.15.17.
4. R. S. Wallace, Calvin’s Doctrine of Word and Sacrament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957), 185.
5. For a more detailed discussion of this fourth point, cf. William B. Evans, “‘Really Exhibited and Conferred . . . in His Appointed Time’: Baptism and the New Reformed Sacramentalism,” Presbyterion: Covenant Seminary Review 31/2 (Fall 2005): 72-88.
6. Evans, “Baptismal Efficacy: The Offer/Reception Model as Antidote to the Federal Vision”
