Baptist Distinctive III: Believer’s Baptism
I told a friend of mine jokingly, and yet seriously, that I could not join a PCA church because I don’t want to sprinkle my babies. He laughed and gave me a fist bump. This matter is one of laughter now only because of the sacrifices made in earlier history.
Sacrifices Made By Anabaptists
At the dawn of 1524, Wilhelm Roubli, pastor of Zollikon and Wytikon — parishes in the canton of Zurich — preached against infant baptism. By August, two farmers in the Wytikon congregation refused to bring their children forward to be baptized. This led to a public dispute on baptism held on January 17, 1525. Zwingli and Bullinger, Zwingli’s successor, were awarded victory in the dispute by the city council. They won against Grebel, Mantz, Roubli, and Blaurock who argued for believer’s baptism. Zwingli and Bullinger stated that whoever did not bring their children for baptism within eight days would suffer banishment. Lay preaching and private gatherings were also forbidden.[1] Felix Mantz would be the first Anabaptist to die from drowning in Zurich on January 5, 1527.[2] Due to these sacrifices, Baptists should be clear about the distinctive of believer’s baptism. It is one of the ways Baptists work toward maintaining a regenerate church.[3]
Believer’s Baptism as a Baptist Distinctive
My intention is not to defend believer’s baptism thoroughly. There are phenomenal works that have effectively done that.[4] Like in my previous writings about Baptist distinctives, I want to write about my experience with them, why I believe in them, and what I wish to see Baptists reform in their practice regarding each distinctive.
Raised in Pentecostalism, I grew up believing in believer’s baptism. Later in life, it was helpful to reflect on how Anabaptists and Baptists clarified and defended believer’s baptism so that later denominations like Pentecostals could practice this position freely. Those who hold to believer’s baptism owe much to Baptist and Anabaptist thought.
Baptists believe that believer’s baptism
is the immersion in water of a believer, into the name of the Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost; to show forth in a solemn and beautiful emblem, our faith in the crucified, buried and risen Saviour, with its effect, in our death to sin and resurrection to a new life; that it is prerequisite to the privileges of a church relation.[5]
In this broad definition we can conclude that Baptists believe that baptism is an initiatory rite into the Trinity and the local church. Since it is initiatory, it functions as the public profession of faith from the believer. Repentance, faith, and baptism consistently go hand in hand throughout the church’s expansion (See Acts 4:4; 9:42; 13:12; 14:1; 17:12, 34).[6] What I often find missing in paedo-baptist arguments is a mention of repentance upon baptism. Repentance, faith, and baptism lead both to the forgiveness of sins and initiation to a local church for ongoing discipleship to Jesus (Acts 2:37, 41).
Balthasar Hubmaier (1480–1528), a leading 16th century Anabaptist who was the first systematic defender of believer baptism, argued that baptism “is nothing other than a public confession and testimony of an inward faith and commitment.”[7] Later, some Particular Baptists would have a more sacramental view of Baptism, but it was never less than a public profession of faith nor was it detached from the profession of faith. Jonathan H. Rainbow shows clearly how the Anabaptist position that Hubmaier was proposing was confessor baptism.[8] “At the core of Hubmaier’s doctrine,” Rainbow says, “was the conviction that the inner reality of faith and conversion and the outer sign of water baptism belong together.”[9]
This carried over into Baptist thought, though not in the language of “confessor baptism,” but the premise of baptism as a public profession of faith stands. Michael Haykin writes that for Baptists of the late eighteenth century like Andrew Fuller (1754–1815),
baptism was the place where Christians publicly made the ‘good confession’ (1 Timothy 6:12–13 CSB) and the Lord’s Supper the place where that confession was renewed on a regular basis.[10]
Baptism is faith going public.
A Reform to Consider
A return to, or reminder of, the importance of baptism as a public profession should be considered among Baptists today. Baptists believe this confessionally, but practically, many have used modern, pragmatic means like the altar call for people to make public professions. Michael Haykin again proposes a good thesis when he writes:
The altar call that became common in many Baptist churches during the twentieth century has undermined a rich understanding of baptism and the Lord’s Supper in Baptist communities.[11]
Baptists both in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries invited unbelievers to believe in Christ, not using an altar call, but by a free offer to believe in Christ. Early Baptists were right to take their cue from the New Testament where the only “invitation” given is to repent and believe in Christ. Baptists today would do well to remember this implication of believer’s baptism given in the New Testament and defended by Anabaptists and Baptists alike. Baptism is the good confession where faith goes public; not the altar call.
[1] Paraphrased from Nick R. Needham, 2000 Years of Christ’s Power. Volume 3, Renaissance and Reformation, Newly revised edition (Fearn, Ross-shire, Scotland, U.K., London, England, U.K.: Christian Focus Publications Ltd ; Grace Publications Trust, 2016), 258.
[2] Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, rev ed. (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2006), 142.
[3] By drawing from Anabaptist history, I am not holding to a view which states Baptists came from Anabaptists. I am simply drawing an example which should challenge Christians to hold to a view for or against infant baptism rather than arguing for both infant and believer’s baptism. Baptists would argue not for re-baptism but a true baptism based upon a profession of faith and by immersion.
[4] See Infant Baptism and the Covenant of Grace by Paul K. Jewett and Believer’s Baptism: Sign of the New Covenant in Christ edited by Thomas R. Schreiner and Shawn D. Wright. For another insightful argument against infant baptism, see Why Not Grandchildren? by Gavin Ortlund.
[5] XIV. Of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, The New Hampshire Confession of Faith 1833.
[6] Schreiner and Wright, 51.
[7] Quoted in Thomas R. Schreiner and Shawn D. Wright, eds., Believer’s Baptism: Sign of the New Covenant in Christ, NAC Studies in Bible & Theology (Nashville, Tenn: B & H Academic, 2006), 200.
[8] Schreiner and Wright, 203.
[9] Schreiner and Wright, 200.
[10] Michael A.G. Haykin, Amidst Us Our Belovèd Stands: Recovering Sacrament in the Baptist Tradition, (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2022), 124.
[11] Haykin, 123.
