Baptized into Community

I was infant baptized by my father under the flag of The United States of America and in the Name of the Declaration of Independence.  I’m serious. My mother told me about it when I was a teenager, and I assumed it was some rite that my agnostic father had made up and didn’t think much more about it.  Then I was doing research on my German ancestors a few years ago who had settled in Wisconsin and discovered that this was a thing.  Freethinkers baptize their babies under the flag and Declaration of Independence.  My great great grandfather on both sides of my family happened to be a Freethinker. Henry Thien bought land in Southern Wisconsin and built a mill there in the 1840’s.  Freethinking was a small popular movement in Germany at the time called  Freidenkerbund.  It is considered one of the philosophical parents of Humanism and Socialism.  Henry Thien believed that people should worship God in nature not in churches, and when he chartered much of his land to start the town of Thiensville, he sold lots on condition that no churches would ever be built there.  It didn’t make him very popular with his devout Lutheran neighbors or many other people come to think about it.  (They said Thiensville was a godless place.) After his death, his son revoked the charter; churches started moving into Thiensville like they have in every other town in America.

In my mid twenties after years of being in the New Age movement, I began studying the Bible and became a believer. I believe that Jesus Christ is Lord  and rose from the dead. A few years after that I was baptized in a lake in the name of The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and my eight year old daughter was baptized at the same time.  I didn’t think much more about the subject of baptism until a few years later when I was fellowshipping with some Mennonites.  One of their most important books is the Martyr’s Mirror which is like an Anabaptist version of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.  The Martyr’s Mirror (the full title is The Bloody Theater or Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Christians who baptized only upon confession of faith, and who suffered and died for the testimony of Jesus, their Saviour, from the time of Christ to the year A.D. 1660.) is filled with, among other things, first hand reports of Catholic priests who kept records while torturing Anabaptists for the sin of having a believer or adult baptism. (Anabaptist was originally a derogatory term used against those who were “re-baptized.”)  That was when I got my first inkling that the rite of baptism was a big deal in church history.  That people were actually tortured and burned at the stake if they got baptized as an adult after they had been baptized as a child.  It seemed to me pretty obvious which ones were on the wrong side of the argument.

I didn’t become an Mennonite - I disagreed with some of their doctrines, but I had no problems with a believer’s baptism.  All the Christians that I ever spent time with or went to church with had believer baptisms.  Most of the people I knew who had been baptized as infants were like my parents -borderline Christmas and Easter type Christians, more of a cultural Christianity than a belief based one.  So this confirmed to me that infant baptism was a problem.  However, I am a bit of a historian. The more I studied church history, the more I realized that infant baptism was practiced from the earliest times and is still the most widely form of baptism for Christians around the world.

I became more reformed as I grew in maturity in Christ, and I went to reformed believer baptistic churches. I knew that my Puritan ancestors (my mother's side of the family) baptized infants.  I had visited Presbyterian churches (the heirs of the Puritans) a few times, but found them to be too liberal for my tastes with women preachers and elders and other teachings that I found unbiblical.  After I started regularly reading reformed pastor Douglas Wilson’s entertaining and pertinent blog, Blog and Mablog: Theology That Bites Back, I began to attend a CREC church where not only infant baptism is practiced but also paedo communion.  I knew that I needed to revisit the subject of baptism.

I have to admit, sometimes all the terms and debates concerning baptism can be confusing.  Why is it that theologians like to make simple things as complicated as possible?   Dr Michael Heiser has clarified the issue for me - even though I don’t think he calls himself reformed and is better known for his “Divine Council” studies (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible).  What I like about Heiser’s teachings on baptism is that he doesn’t have a denominational ax to grind; he studies the subject from a scholar’s perspective, and, for a scholar, he writes clearly.  Part One of his series demonstrates how complex a subject baptism actually is (http://drmsh.com/the-biblical-teaching-on-baptism-part-1/). The disagreements include when, where, who, how and why to baptize.

As a reformed Christian, I believe in the continuity of God’s people in the Old and New Testament and that God guides his people through covenants. The typical justification of infant baptism for the traditionally reformed is that circumcision in the Old Testament is similar to baptism in the new.  Heiser says that circumcision in the Old Testament didn’t guarantee salvation or mean anything for Israelite women (actually it performed a very important health benefit for Israeli women but that is off topic.)  Heiser states: “Circumcision granted the recipient admission into the community of Israel. Female children were also admitted by virtue of being the property of an admitted male (this is standard patriarchal culture, so women were NOT excluded just because they could not be circumcised).”  Heiser continues in Part Six of his series that baptism, in the same way, grants admission into the community of the church whether the one being baptized is an infant or an adult.  

It is pretty obvious that being baptized whether one is old enough to confess one’s faith or not, in no way confers salvation because, unfortunately, people fall away from Christ no matter what method of baptism they receive or how old they are when they received it.  If you believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and that he has risen from the dead, you should certainly be baptized and be part of a church that believes the same thing.  In my opinion, if you were baptized (in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) as a child and only come to faith as an adult, there is no need to be baptized again, but if you are, it is no sin.  I once heard a Messianic rabbi teach that there were five different baptisms performed by the Jews in Old Testament times.  Perhaps that is part of the reason why the rite of baptism is not more clearly defined in the New Testament.  

My views of baptism have evolved to a satisfying place where my family history and church practices and traditions come together.  My father baptized me into the community of Freethinker where I did not choose to stay.  In fact, I am the opposite of a freethinker. I try to confirm my thoughts, beliefs, and practices to the Word of God (aka the Bible).  Confirming my thoughts to God’s thoughts is a radical act which actually produces true freedom. Biblical thinking frees us from conforming to the ever changing current trends and philosophies of our society.  Biblical thinking frees us from the slavery of sin.  Biblical thinking values the acutely logical and delights in the  supernatural.  And the best part is I get to fellowship with others who think the same way I do.   I am part of a community of believers through baptism, a community of saints who believe in loving God and loving one another.   I think of it like this: Many are called, but few are chosen.  Baptism proves one’s calling not one’s election. Election is demonstrated by continuing love and obedience towards God and persevering to the end.

From accepting infant baptism, my church’s practice of allowing children to partake of communion seems perfectly reasonable.  For one thing, it is generally agreed upon that the communion of the very early church was a meal.  Surely children were included. I also look to the first Passover meal as a model for communion. Each household of the Jews living in Egypt were protected by the blood of the lamb upon their doorpost the night that Death came visiting for each first born.  When the Angel of Death saw the lamb’s blood protecting the family, he would “pass-over.” Inside the home, the whole family ate the Passover meal. They were all “baptized” together in the Red Sea (1 Corinthians 10:1-3).  Clearly Jesus was showing the connection when he initiated communion (this is my body: this is my blood) during Passover.  Some are concerned about the injunction in Corinthians 11 to not receive communion in “an unworthy manner.”  But small children cannot receive communion in an unworthy manner because they are innocent.  As they become older, the parents teach their children what communion means and the importance of faith and confession.  Sharing communion with children installs in them the practice of being part of the Christian community from the earliest age instead of keeping them out of that community.  It is a blessing to them that should not be withheld.

I love sitting in church on Sunday morning; watching all the well behaved children sitting with their parents through our rather long service, and sharing in the bread and the wine of our Lord’s supper.  Belonging is a very good thing.