A Reformed Theology Of Baptism

For the second generation of Reformed theologians (Heinrich Bullinger [d. 1572], John Calvin [d. 1564], John Knox [d. 1572]), baptism is a seal confirming and ratifying God's promise in the Word to save. Infant baptism does not accomplish salvation or free the child from original sin; rather, it sets the infant on a path toward repentance, conversion, and personal faith, a path that takes place within God's covenant community, the church.

Baptism is recognized and celebrated by Reformed churches as one of two sacraments which, when they are rightly administered, comprise the marks of the true church. Consistently, John Calvin (in The Institutes of the Christian Religion [1559]), Heinrich Bullinger (in the Second Helvetic Confession [1566]), and the Heidelberg Catechism ([1563], question and answer 67) insisted that the purpose of the sacraments, like Scripture, is "?to offer and set forth Christ to us?" through the illuminations of the Holy Spirit. Unlike the Anabaptist position, they are more than bare signs that announce God's initiative taken on our behalf in Jesus Christ. They are confirmatory seals that the Holy Spirit uses to authenticate God's promises to the elect. They are symbolic instruments, accommodated to the weakness of humanity's need for sensible representation, through which humans receive the benefits of God, provided recipients receive the sacraments in faith. Thus, the sacraments are the Word of God made visible, and are attached to the prior promises of God to make them more evident and ratify them. Accordingly the Reformed tradition has insisted that the sacraments must not be detached from the preached Word that explains the promises and benefits signified in the sacraments. Within this framework, Calvin defined baptism as "?the sign of initiation by which we are received into the society of the church, in order that, engrafted in Christ, we may be reckoned among God's children?" (Institutes of the Christian Religion). In the Reformed tradition the infant is usually called into the church through baptism. The sacrament does not affect salvation nor does it set the baptized free from original sin (the position of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions). Baptism instead announces God's forgiveness of the punishment and guilt of all sin and sets the infant on a lifetime of recalling God's promise through baptism in overcoming sin. This lifelong mortification of the flesh will take place in the context of the church through which God's benefits come to nurture the child's faith. Thus, baptism is an act of the whole church that must be accomplished in the presence of the worshiping community. While Calvin, Zwingli (d. 1531), Bullinger, and Knox found in circumcision the Old Testament prototype and anticipation of baptism, the heart of their defense of paedo-baptism did not rest on that analogical relationship, but on the one covenant into which Jews were circumcised and the children of Christian parents are baptized. It was a familiar argument of the Reformers that there has always been one covenant since the first announcement of the gospel in Genesis 3:15 with Christ as the object of faith. This singular promise has two administrations. Thus, Calvin argued that circumcision was the Old Testament Israelites' first entry into the church, while baptism is the New Testament church's entry into Christ. Since the promise offered to Christians in baptism does not benefit them until they embrace the promise by faith, the Reformed tradition has insisted that the child is baptized into future faith and repentance (in the same way that circumcision was a sign of repentance). Baptism is completed at confirmation, the child's personal confession of faith, which is the aim and goal of baptism. The consciousness of having been baptized into God's covenant is conducive to faith as one arrives at a responsible age; the child grows into the understanding of one's baptism. In the meantime, one of the parents must be a believer, so that a parent's faith may be conscious at the infant baptism. The Reformers did not deny that there could be faith in a child, and Bullinger argued that God imputed faith to a child who had no conscious faith. In any case in the Reformed tradition, the emphasis is not on what happens to the child at baptism, but on the child's acceptance into the covenant community and on the reaffirmation of grace by the church. An adult must profess faith in Christ at the time of baptism as she or he is received into full membership in the church. There are not two sacraments—infant and adult baptism—but one sacrament with a distinction between the candidates. Unlike the Augsburg Confession which insists that "?baptism is necessary to salvation?" (1530), the Reformed tradition has never argued that a child is damned who does not receive baptism (nor that a child is necessarily saved who does). Grace is not so bound to the sacrament that it cannot be obtained by faith through the Word of God alone. Nevertheless, parents who knowingly refuse baptism to their children are considered disobedient, arrogant before God's grace, and depriving the children of their right. Calvin and Bullinger insisted that there cannot be rebaptism (as the Anabaptists practiced) any more than there can be two circumcisions. However, they did not specify the mode of baptism, encouraging immersion as much as sprinkling and insisting only that it be performed by the ecclesiastical ministry (though its efficacy does not depend on the merits of the officiant). The Westminster Confession (1646) began to insist on sprinkling and pouring over against immersion.