I wrote this for my Omnibus class. It's a brief (well, about 1500 words) comparison/contrast of my beliefs, Calvin's beliefs, and my pastor's beliefs on the sacrament of baptism.
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Reformed
theologian John Calvin’s Institutes of the
Christian Religion was one of the most influential books of Western
Culture. In this work, Calvin challenges many of the theological views of his
contemporaries, including Luther, the Anabaptists, and the Roman Catholics. In
Book 4 of his Institutes, Calvin
deals with many issues, including the organization of the Church, civil
government, and the Sacraments.
Calvin
defines a sacrament as “a testimony of the divine favor
toward us, confirmed by an external sign, with a corresponding attestation of our
faith towards Him.”[1] To Calvin,
and to all Protestants, there are two sacraments: the Lord’s Supper and baptism.
While most Protestants would agree with this definition of sacraments, many
would disagree with Calvin’s view of baptism itself: its definition and
purpose, who should baptize, and who should be baptized.
Calvin
says, “Baptism is the initiatory sign by which we are admitted to the
fellowship of the Church, that being ingrafted into Christ we may be accounted
children of God.”[2] He doesn’t mean
that baptism saves us—that he clarifies in the next paragraph. “[T]he only
purification which baptism promises is by means of the sprinkling of the blood
of Christ, who is figured by water from the resemblance to cleansing and
washing.”[3]
In other words, baptism is a picture of what Christ has done for us.
I recently
interviewed my pastor, Kirt Dauphin, about Calvin’s ideas on baptism. He said
that he disagreed with Calvin’s definition because, he said, “It is salvation
that admits us into the Church, not baptism.” I would agree with Pastor Kirt.
As soon as someone accepts Christ as Lord and Savior of his life, that person
is “ingrafted into Christ.” He is not
excluded from the Church until after he is baptized. Although it is a symbol of
your salvation, baptism is not necessary
for salvation, nor is it necessary for Church membership.
In the
first few paragraphs of Institutes
4.15, Calvin
outlines what he believes are the three purposes of baptism: 1) to be a sign
and evidence of our purification, 2) to show us our death in Christ and new
life in him, and 3) to assure us that we are united with Christ to be partakers
of all his blessings. My pastor and I agree with Calvin on the first two
points, that baptism is a sign of our purification and of our death to our old
selves and new life. When a believer is baptized in our church, the phrase used
is “Buried in the likeness of Christ’s death, raised to walk in newness of
life.”
On the
third point, however, Pastor Kirt slightly differed with Calvin. As it is
possible to be baptized but not a Christian, he said, you cannot say that
baptism assures us of unity with Christ. I would add that our assurance of
salvation does not come through baptism, but through faith and the work of
Christ. “Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places
by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through
the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over
the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith.”[4]
On the
question of who could baptize, Calvin was very firm in his belief that it was
only proper for ordained clergy to baptize. “It is improper for private
individuals to take upon themselves the administration of baptism; for it… is part
of the ministerial office.”[5]
Because Christ didn’t command ordinary men and women to baptize, only the
eleven disciples (Matthew 28:16-20), Calvin believed that the power to baptize
passed through them to their successors, the ordained ministers of the Church. If
a layman baptized, it would be a usurpation of the ministerial office’s duty.
Now,
Calvin did not mean that ministers could baptize because they were holier than
“normal” Christians. On the contrary, he says that the efficacy of baptism does
not depend on the righteousness of the baptizer. Because it is really Christ
who performs the baptism through the
minister, and Christ is righteous, it matters not if the minister is
unrighteous. Calvin uses the example of a messenger: “[W]hen a letter has been
sent, if the hand and seal is recognized, it is not of the least consequence
who or what the messenger was; so it ought to be sufficient for us to recognize
the hand and seal of our Lord in his sacraments.”[6]
Calvin’s objection to baptism by laymen was, as stated above, more to do with
the fact that he believed Christ had given that task to the clergy alone. Like
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12, after giving the allegory of the body of Christ,
“The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to
the feet, ‘I have no need of you’” (v. 21). In other words, each member has his
own job, and it is improper for the eye to feel, or the head to walk.
I don’t
necessarily disagree with Calvin, but I would extend the term “ordained
minister” to include fathers, at least in this case. For, are not the fathers
responsible for the spiritual well-being of their family (see Deuteronomy
6:1-9, 20-25)? Like a pastor is the shepherd of his congregation, a father is
(or, at least, is called to be) the shepherd of his family. But I would not go
so far as to say that any father can baptize his children. As my pastor said in
our interview, baptism should be done by someone who is recognized as a mature
believer in the community or congregation. Therefore, as long as a father is
doing his duty in regards to shepherding his family, I would say that it would
be wholly proper for him to baptize his children.
Speaking
of the baptism of children, Calvin was a staunch Paedobaptist. It was his
opinion that, just like circumcision was a sign of the old covenant, baptism is
a sign of the new covenant. And, as the Jews in the Old Testament circumcised
their children, Christians should baptize their infant children.
When I
asked my pastor about this, he brought up Romans 4:9-11: “Is this blessing then
only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? We say that faith was
counted to Abraham as righteousness. How then was it counted to him? Was it
before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was
circumcised. He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the
righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.” Abraham’s
circumcision set him apart from those around him; it showed that he was
different. In the same way, baptism shows those around us that we are now
different—a new creation. But circumcision was not given to Abraham until after
he was credited righteous by faith. For this reason, I believe baptism should
not be given until after a confession of faith has been made.
One may
very well challenge this by saying that Abraham circumcised his children, even
though they were not “counted as righteous,” so we should do the same to our
children. I would respond to this by saying that in the Old Testament, the infants had to be circumcised by
others, because it is impossible for them to physically circumcise themselves.
Under the new covenant, however, “circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the
Spirit, not by the letter.”[7]
A parent cannot “circumcise” the heart of their child; the Spirit must work in
the child and renew his heart.
Calvin
does give a counterargument in his Institutes.
When Credobaptists deny paedobaptism on the grounds that it is never
explicitly mentioned in the Bible, Calvin comes back and says that neither does
the Bible explicitly give an account of women partaking of the Lord’s Supper.
By the same reasoning, he says, ought not women be prohibited from taking
Communion?
Though
this may seem sound reasoning at first, it really is not. When the Bible says
that entire households were baptized (Acts 16:33), it may very well have meant
only the consenting adults. Or, there may not have been any infants at all in
the household. On the other hand, there are very clearly women in the church of
Corinth. In 1 Corinthians, Paul admonishes the Corinthians multiple times
regarding the Lord’s Supper (see 1 Corinthians 11:17-34). In addition, he gives
them several guidelines concerning women, including marriage and head
coverings, showing that there were indeed women in the Corinthian church and,
by association, they participated in the Lord’s Supper.
The topic
of baptism has always been one of heavy debate among Christians, and I believe
it will continue to be until Christ returns. Though we may disagree with some
of John Calvin’s beliefs, we should not completely disregard his work, for it
is still full of biblical truth. Without a doubt, Calvin is one of the greatest
Christian theologians, and his Institutes
of the Christian Religion is one of the greatest works of Christian theology
ever written.
Works Cited
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Good News Publishers, Wheaton,
IL, 2001.
Calvin, John. Institutes
of the Christian Religion. 26 April 2013. PDF file.
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