The Protestant's Dilemma (13 page)

Luther believed that the fundamental promise for salvation was found in Jesus’ command to his apostles to baptize, found in Matthew 28. He taught, as the Catholic Church does, a sacramental understanding of baptism: that it is something that God does for us. A person places his faith in Jesus Christ, who baptized him and made promises to him through this sacrament. As Alister McGrath put it, “for Luther, baptism was the cause of faith”
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—not, as for Evangelicals, merely a public sign of it. For Luther, the saving object of faith was what God has done for us through baptism.

Luther defended this belief against the Anabaptists, who claimed baptism was merely an external, symbolic act:

But as our would-be wise, new spirits assert that faith alone saves, and that works and external things avail nothing, we answer: it is true, indeed, that nothing in us is of any avail but faith, as we shall hear still further. But these blind guides are unwilling to see this, namely, that faith must have something which it believes, that is, of which it takes hold, and upon which it stands and rests. Thus faith clings to the water, and believes that it is Baptism, in which there is pure salvation and life; not through the water (as we have sufficiently stated), but through the fact that it is embodied in the Word and institution of God, and the name of God inheres in it.
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Hence today Protestants see baptism as a wide range of different things: from optional memorial, to purely symbolic but important action, to an ordinance that accompanies faith, to a regenerative sacrament that causes faith to be planted.
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BECAUSE CATHOLICISM IS TRUE,

God regenerates us through baptism, a truth that was taught by the apostles and then transmitted without corruption to their successors.

Evidence abounds from the Church Fathers, the early Church itself, and from the Bible that baptism regenerates. Around the year 150, Justin Martyr wrote:

As many as are persuaded and believe that what we [Christians] teach and say is true, and undertake to be able to live accordingly . . . are brought by us where there is water, and are regenerated in the same manner in which we were ourselves regenerated. For, in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Savior Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the washing with water. For Christ also said, “Except you be born again, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
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Justin is referencing a passage from John’s Gospel where Jesus is speaking to Nicodemus:

Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:3–5).

Justin explains that in this passage Jesus is talking about baptism. Evangelicals would say that Justin is just wrong—that being “born of water” means one’s
natural
birth. So, to be saved, you must be naturally born and then born again by the Spirit (through a conversion experience). However, apart from being a little nonsensical (why would Jesus mention natural birth as a prerequisite for salvation?), this interpretation is directly contradicted by all the many Church Fathers who wrote about baptism.
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Baptism is also explicitly mentioned in the Nicene Creed: “We confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.” Interestingly, this creed is affirmed not only by Catholics and Orthodox but also by most Protestant communities. Yet Protestants do not believe that God forgives sins through baptism! So Protestant Christians are left in the inconsistent position of affirming this ancient creed while making a mental exclusion for the words “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins,” interpreting them to mean something like “one baptism for the symbolic, outward proclamation that one has put his faith in Jesus.”

Scripture contains many passages supporting baptismal regeneration. One of the clearest is from 1 Peter 3:20–21:

[W]hen the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water. And corresponding to that, baptism now saves you not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Just as God saved Noah and his family through the ark, Christ gives us new life through baptism, which cleanses us from sin and thus gives us a “good conscience.”

On the day of Pentecost, Peter exhorts the people to receive baptism: “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). Protestants like to emphasize the “repent” part at the negation of the “be baptized” part, but both are essential. Paul, too, later in Acts, reinforces baptism’s essential role when he says: “Now why do you delay? Get up and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on his name” (Acts 22:16).

Because Protestants have been immersed in a tradition that rejects baptismal regeneration, when you show these verses to them you can almost see the scales falling off their eyes. They wonder how they never realized that Scripture connects baptism with forgiveness of sins and spiritual rebirth.

THE PROTESTANT’S DILEMMA

If Protestantism is true
, then the early Church—along with Luther and Calvin—was wrong to teach the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, and the formulation “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins” in the Nicene Creed means something other than what the plain words suggest. Or perhaps the opposite is correct. Further, this interpretation of biblical verses suggesting baptismal regeneration is mistaken, leading to a skewed and misplaced emphasis on the importance of baptism over faith. Or maybe it’s right. The one thing Protestantism can say for sure is that Christ commanded his disciples to baptize the nations because baptism is essential for salvation. Unless it isn’t.

20: INFANT BAPTISM

IF PROTESTANTISM IS TRUE,

We don’t know for sure whether infants should be baptized—not only dividing churches but potentially imperiling millions of souls.

Should infants be baptized? That simple question split the movements within Protestantism from the beginning and continues to be a divisive issue among them. The unchanging teaching and practice of the Catholic Church, based on Scripture and Tradition, is to baptize infants. Protestants all look to the Bible alone as the sole infallible rule of faith, yet one group comes to the conclusion that baptizing infants is laudable, while the other condemns the practice.

The Protestant Movements and Tradition

The Anabaptists (literally, “rebaptizers”) were the radical movement within the Reformation. They rebaptized anyone who followed them because they rejected infant baptism as invalid, claiming that the Bible taught credo-baptism (“believer’s baptism”). To them,
sola scriptura
meant that every doctrine should be explicitly found in the Bible without the influence of traditions, even those of the early Church as found in the writings of the councils, the Fathers, and other early Christians. If a doctrine was not explicitly stated in the Bible, then it was not to be taught as true, and they rightly pointed out that nowhere in the New Testament does it explicitly say that an infant should be baptized.

If their theological innovations ended there, perhaps some accord could have been reached between them and the other reforming movements. The Anabaptists went further, however, and asserted that the doctrines of the Trinity and of the divinity of Christ were also not explicitly found in Scripture and thus should not be accepted. These incredible claims were based on the belief that the Bible could be accurately interpreted by any Christian who had the Holy Spirit and that an individual’s judgment could trump that of the Church.

The magisterial Reformers—Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin—were appalled by the radical Reformers’ rejection of such fundamental Christian teachings. For them, it was good and even necessary to look to the traditions of the early Church and to the writings of the Fathers—especially those of Augustine—in order to formulate true doctrines. The magisterial Reformers believed that these past Christians had (for the most part) developed sound biblical theology by correctly interpreting Scripture. Any errors they saw in the Fathers’ teachings would of course be corrected by their own, wiser understanding of theology, but the core doctrines were to be preserved insofar as they were in harmony with the Bible. And the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, and infant baptism were most certainly in harmony with the Bible.

Protestantism today has inherited this centuries-old division from its founding fathers. (The situation is even more dizzying, given the vast number of denominational splits that have occurred since the 1500s.) Most Protestant traditions practice infant baptism, but large groups of Protestants—especially Baptists, most other Evangelical Protestants, and the very populous Pentecostal communities—reject it as unbiblical.

BECAUSE CATHOLICISM IS TRUE,

Infant baptism is consistent with revealed truths in Scripture and Tradition. Moreover, infants should receive baptism, because through it God infuses in them sanctifying grace, which saves.

Although no biblical verses command or explicitly describe infant baptism, various passages provide strong evidence that babies and small children received the sacrament. For example, recall Peter’s testimony to the crowds at Pentecost: “Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children” (Acts 2:38–39). Here he makes no mention to exclude children who had not yet reached the age of reason. Elsewhere in the New Testament (Acts 16:33, 1 Cor. 1:16) we read about entire households being baptized, and these would have included servants, children, and infants.

The Church Fathers also witness to infant baptism. In the early 200s, Hippolytus wrote: “Baptize first the children, and if they can speak for themselves let them do so. Otherwise, let their parents or other relatives speak for them.”
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And later that century, Cyprian of Carthage, in a council with many other bishops, defended the practice:

As to what pertains to the case of infants: You [Fidus] said that they ought not to be baptized within the second or third day after their birth, that the old law of circumcision must be taken into consideration, and that you did not think that one should be baptized and sanctified within the eighth day after his birth. In our council it seemed to us far otherwise. No one agreed to the course which you thought should be taken. Rather, we all judge that the mercy and grace of God ought to be denied to no man born.
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Later in the same letter, Cyprian reaffirms in no uncertain terms that infants, even ones just born, should be baptized without hesitation.
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Many other Church Fathers similarly testify to infant baptism’s being a noble and ancient teaching of the Church.

Martin Luther’s beliefs on infant baptism and the reasons for it were likewise quite Catholic. Recall that Luther believed God communicated grace to the person being baptized, and that it was God himself who baptized through the minister. Luther also recognized that the Church had always baptized infants, up to and including the sixteenth century when he began the Reformation. Combining this universal practice of the Church with his sacramental understanding of baptism, “Luther regarded infant baptism as the means by which God brought about faith in individuals.”
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In other words, God bestowed the theological virtue of faith on the individual through the sacrament of baptism. Luther offered an eminently reasonable explanation of how we can know that infant baptism is pleasing to God:

But if God did not accept the baptism of infants, he would not give the Holy Ghost nor any of his gifts to any of them; in short, during this long time unto this day no man upon earth could have been a Christian. Now, since God confirms Baptism by the gifts of his Holy Ghost as is plainly perceptible in some of the church fathers, as St. Bernard . . . and others, who were baptized in infancy, and since the holy Christian Church cannot perish until the end of the world, they must acknowledge that such infant baptism is pleasing to God.
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