In The Polemics of Infant Baptism, B.B. Warfield writes:
All Protestants should easily agree that only Christ’s children have a right to the ordinance of baptism. The cleavage in their ranks enters in only when we inquire how the external Church is to hold itself relatively to the recognition of the children of Christ. If we say that its attitude should be as exclusive as possible, and that it must receive as the children of Christ only those whom it is forced to recognize as such, then we shall inevitably narrow the circle of the subjects of baptism to the lowest limits. If, on the other hand, we say that its attitude should be as inclusive as possible, and that it should receive as the children of Christ all whom, in the judgment of charity, it may fairly recognize as such, then we shall naturally widen the circle of the subjects of baptism to far more ample limits. The former represents, broadly speaking, the Puritan idea of the Church, the latter the general Protestant doctrine. It is on the basis of the Puritan conception of the Church that the Baptists are led to exclude infants from baptism. For, if we are to demand anything like demonstrative evidence of actual participation in Christ before we baptize, no infant, who by reason of years is incapable of affording signs of his union with Christ, can be thought a proper subject of the rite.
Your thoughts?
Many bring the debate the presupposition that infants (1) cannot have faith and 2) are not deserving of the covenant sign. Given the fact that the Bible never specifically states that infants cannot be baptized, I would have to challenge those who make that assertion to defend that assertion, especially given that 1) Christ stated that the kingdom of God belonged to children and 2) God’s people always gave the covenant sign to their children for 2000 years and nothing in the NT abrogated that.
Scott,
Thanks for dropping by.
This caught my eye a while ago when I reading Warfield’s essay again. What jumped out at me this time was his statement that Baptists follow the Puritan conception of the church whereas Puritanism tends to get equated with Presbyterian and Reformed views today. Warfield’s statement probably looks strange to a lot of us today, so perhaps Puritanism wasn’t as synonymous with Presbyterianism 100 years ago. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said that Puritanism leads to Congregationalism and/or Independency.
I realize this is somewhat outside my current interests, but I do think there is something to your/Warfield’s statement. I think a lot of it comes down to whether infants can have faith and/or objectivity of the covenant. Puritans *tend* to deny that point, putting them in the same company as many Baptists.
I think the issue resists generalizations like that, but even during the FV controversy I noticed something like that.
I don’t think the Norseman is quite getting the essence of BBW’s drift. Perhaps I can reposition our orientation.
As you may have supposed, Chris, someone like myself is inclined to agree with BBW. And I agree with you that confusion is bound to arise because of the different uses and freight of a term like “puritan.”
The basic observation (expressed with slight difference) lies behind a few of my PB posts. It comes down to one’s understanding of ecclesiology. Is the church fundamentally an “imperfect” institution, comprised of “perfect” people? Such would be a certain “pure-strain” of puritan-to-baptist conception.
And I hope it’s clear I’m using perfect/imperfect as suggestive terms for the church-on-earth, and not as technical terms. The church is “imperfect,” because it cannot be a pure-gathering in this world; the “perfect” people are eschatologically-perfect, i.e. the elect, whose identity those in charge seek to filter membership for.
BBW was a hundred years closer than we are to the Colonial-Puritan era, which saw the development of the formulaic “conversion-experience” for the validation of one’s profession of Christianity. Conversion (the ability to report one) came to take precedence over Catechism (the ability to articulate a content-rich faith). I’m sure BBW preferred the latter.
The problem, as everyone knows, is both mechanisms can produce dead occupiers of the pew. But in the case of the former, gatekeepers cannot judge the reality of the report, only its quality. New England’s Congregational Ministers came to expect (and the people dutifully produced) testimonies with sufficient “marks” of genuine piety, whereupon the candidates were admitted to the Table as full members. And New England eased its experiential way into Unitarianism, abandoning the doctrinal rigors of Calvinism.
I’m opposed to the half-way covenant solution to issues that came up in the generations after the original migrations; but on one level, positively it reveals that a significant number of people were unable or unwilling to “produce” a conversion-story that would satisfy the gatekeepers.
Back to ecclesiology: On the other hand, is the church a “perfect” institution, comprised of “imperfect” people? This concept is what I believe BBW is getting at, defending a Reformation ecclesiology and piety that did not trend in the direction of a “purified” church-membership. And I think he’d identify his own brand of old-school, Westministerian/Scottish Presbyterianism as promoting this sort of ecclesiological vision, which flips the former ideas around.
His sort of ecclesiastical-vision envisions the church as “perfect,” only viewed eschatologically. And its composition in the world is of people, always identified as sinners who are presently in need a Savior (as opposed to being identified as “the saved” or elect). One’s subjective apprehension of salvation is quite a good thing; and assurance is valuable (but not of the essence of faith). However, what is measurable is that acquaintance with the rudiments of the faith (i.e. reciting the Creed in the early church; giving Catechism answers in the Reformation), into which Faith perseverance (marked by attendance on the regular and occasional means of grace) and submission to the ordinary and extraordinary discipline of the church mark the participant as one who walks the life of faith.
Of course, on this view there is no inherent contradiction to including believers *and their children* as members. All of them are sinners; and all of them are disciples, on this view of the church. As far as one can see (assuming good and proper discipline) these are “you who are being saved” (1Cor.15:2), being in the lifeboat (or ark) where salvation is designated.
Bruce and “Norseman,” thanks for weighing in. The Norseman is a man of many monikers! Who knew there were Baroque Norsemen in Northeast Louisiana? :)
I intended to reply to my Norseman friend, but unfortunately got sidetracked by other things.
As always, while I might perhaps quibble with some parts of it, Bruce has framed the issue in a helpful way. He also may come as close as any paedobaptist (at least on the Puritanboard) to actually presenting the Baptist view in a way that Baptists would recognize as not being an outright distortion or at best, a misunderstanding of their views. While the language of “perfect” and “imperfect” is not perfect, that’s acknowledged to be the case. It would probably require a longer comment, if not an essay, to more clearly unpack those ideas for the uninitiated.
More and more I’m coming to realize that what one does with the Abrahamic covenant is basically the linchpin that determines one’s ecclesiology as well as one’s eschatology.
My basic response to the Norseman is that compared to the Federal Vision men, (and perhaps any paedocommunion advocate) Warfield, who disclaims what he calls Puritanism in this case, is “baptistic” as well as Puritan for that matter. But as the Norseman rightly acknowledged, the issue resists generalizations.
As with many issues, there are ditches on both sides. I think catechism (or at least teaching and discipleship that somewhat approximates it) is essential. A credible profession of faith is also essential. Even the Old School Orthodox Presbyterian Church requires covenant children to make a public profession of faith prior to becoming communicant members. My understanding is that this was not so with older Westminsterian Presbyterianism. My recollection is that the “When he is sober and ready he should and ought to come to the table” language (is that from the Westminster Directory?) didn’t include anything about a public profession as such. I’ve seen some refer to this OPC requirement as evidence of a revivalist idea. That would include the Federal Visionists of course, but I’ve heard it from “High Church Calvinist” admirers of John Williamson Nevin as well.
I’m not that familiar with the history of Puritanism in North America, especially not compared to the British Puritans who produced the WCF. But to generalize very broadly, it seems that the relative peculiarities of Edwards’ thought (and especially that of his “New Divinity” successors) gave way to a subjectivity that eventually resulted in a widespread embrace of transcendentalism and unitarianism. But IMO you should not use that to throw the First Great Awakening as a whole under the bus.
As Bruce seems to allude to, Warfield is certainly not as “baptistic” as the “little vipers in covenant diapers” view, which apparently is still held by a good many Southern Presbyterians. Even though I am in the Deep South, I never really ran into that view in any of the Presbyterian churches I have been familiar with. (Or at least it wasn’t held by any of the ministers.) But it could be argued that to varying degrees all were atypical churches, ranging from a Vanilla Westminsterian OPC congregation to a charismatic EPC congregation. Based on this excerpt, Warfield’s view is a judgment of charity, which I’ve always seen as being in between a presumption of either regeneration or unregeneration, to coin a word.
Even the Southern Presbyterians are not really Baptists or even baptistic, at least not in the way that the term would have been historically defined. (I’m being very strict here in using the term Baptist the way the epithet was originally applied to them by their opponents–it was short for anabaptist i.e. re-baptizer. But Baptists were until the late 19th (in the North) or early-mid 20th century (in the South) rather strict in their practice. And this continues here and there down to this day.)
To go off on a bit of a rabbit trail, I’m beginning to suspect more and more that many of those in the past who were somewhat ambivalent on infant baptism (especially until the Fundamentalist/Modernist controversy changed the whole landscape) remained in paedobaptist denominations largely due to the sectarianism of the Baptists with regard to their insistence on immersion as well as close communion. (Not to mention “alien immersion.”) I don’t think that was true of R.L. Dabney, but I think that argumentation like the “Immersionists unchurch all” passage on the mode of baptism in his Systematic Theology carried considerable weight at that time, especially with regard to the logical conclusions of that doctrine. Now that most Baptist churches, even in the South apparently, practice open communion and will accept immersion from any church that is basically evangelical, that argument has lost much of its force. But it still carries some weight with regard to the requirements for church membership.
Even the early dispensationalists tended to hold on to infant baptism until they ran into increasing resistance in the mainline churches (i.e. the PCUS report in 1944) and eventually formed independent congregations. After that, the practice seems to have rather quickly been abandoned. And even today a lot of those congregations aren’t quite as insistent on immersion (particularly with regard to accepting new members) as capital “B” Baptist are. But at a certain point, that degenerates into doctrinal indifference on the question.
Interesting quite. Often, those of us who are paedobaptists can’t help seeing only the influence of Anabaptism in the first Baptists’ decision to exclude their covenant children from baptism. This quote by Warfield may help some of us also begin to get a grip on their claim to be building on the foundation of the Puritans–taking Puritan logic one step further. I can appreciate that.
I recently came across a comment in Adoniram Judson’s book on Christian Baptism that may throw some light on the practice of New England Congregationalists of his day as compared with Presbyterianism and Protestantism of the type that Warfield alludes to here.
I’ll try to find it and post it here, time permitting.