Consensus Tigurinus and a Baptismal Rapprochement
Between Southern Baptists and Churches of Christ
John Mark Hicks
Lipscomb University
Just as Zurich (“Zwinglianism”) and Geneva (“Calvinianism”) found sacramental
common ground in the Consensus Tigurinus, this paper explores whether such a
rapprochement is possible between Southern Baptists and Churches of Christ who, in
many ways, are the credobaptistic heirs of Zurich and Geneva. Since there is presently a
renewed discussion among Southern Baptists and British Baptists concerning baptismal
“sacramentalism” and there is also a new openness among Churches of Christ toward a
more historic Calvinian understanding of baptism as a means of grace, there is hope for
some kind of “rapprochement” between Southern Baptists and Churches of Christ in the
United States.1 With historical perspective and theological reflection Churches of Christ
and Southern Baptists are potentially on the verge of a Consensus Americanus.
Consensus Tigurinus: Zurich and Geneva
In September 1544 Luther renewed the old conflict between Lutherans and
Zwinglians with his Brief Confession of the Holy Sacrament Against Schwenckfeld and
the Swiss. This initiated a flurry of correspondence among the Protestant Cantons of
Switzerland as well as several responses to Luther. Given Emperor Charles V’s control of
southern Germany by the end of 1546, Jean Calvin attempted to mediate a discussion.
Though he believed Luther had overstepped, he cautioned the Zurichers to remember
Luther’s great service to the truth. This new flurry, however, generated discussions and
shared materials between Calvin and Heinrich Bullinger as Calvin, at the direction of the
Geneva Council, traveled throughout Protestant Switzerland encouraging solidarity.
Specifically, in 1547, Bullinger shared with Calvin a manuscript on the Eucharist (later
published in 1551). Though disagreeing at first, their conversations ultimately led to the
Consensus Tigurinus.
Calvin drafted the document in late 1548 but was revised when Calvin, William
Farel (the first Reformer of Geneva) and Bullinger met in Zurich during May of 1549.
Geneva and Zurich negotiated the document over several months in 1549. The final Latin
text was published in February 1551 (which Calvin translated into French and Bullinger
into German).2 Not all Zwinglians received the document as the church at Berne opposed
it during Calvin’s lifetime. But Melanchthon, upon considering the statement, promised
that he would no longer attack the Swiss but it became the occasion for another round of
sacramental wars between the Swiss and the Germans through the writings of the
conservative Lutheran Joachim Westphal.3
A.B. Caneday, “Baptism in the Stone-Campbell Movement,” in Believer’s Baptism: Sign of the New
Covenant in Christ, ed. Thomas R. Schreiner and Shawn D. Wright (Nashville: Broadman & Holmann
Academic, 2006), 304; cf. 324-328.
2
This history is based on Wulfert de Greef, The Writings of John Calvin, Expanded Edition: An
Introductory Guide, trans. Lyle D. Bierma (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 172-177
3
Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom (6th ed; New York: Harper &Brothers, 1919), 1:472-473,
available at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/creeds1.ix.ii.ix.html.
1
Zwingli (Zurich)
The Zurich Reformer Huldreich Zwingli assumed a radical stance toward
sacramentalism as he rejected any idea that the sacraments could function instrumentally
in the distribution of divine grace or blessing. “External things are nothing,” Zwingli
writes. “They avail nothing for salvation.”4 Externals are material objects that cannot
effect spiritual blessings. Only faith, as an internal spiritual experience, can function as an
instrument of grace. By faith one already possesses what baptism symbolizes. "The one
necessary thing which saves those of us who hear the Gospel,” according to Zwingli, “is
faith."5 And Christ “did not connect salvation with baptism: it is always by faith alone.”6
Baptism, for Zwingli, is an ecclesial event for the benefit of “fellow-believers”
and not so much “for a supposed effect in those who receive it.”7 Baptism is not primarily
an assurance or seal of faith since if one’s faith is so insufficient as to need a sign, then “it
is not faith.”8 Rather, it is a sign for other believers, a pledge of commitment. “Baptism is
an initiatory sign or pledge,” Zwingli writes, “with which we bind ourselves to God,
testifying the same to our neighbor by means of the external sign.”9 Baptism is a public
act of allegiance, which signifies that recipients both belong to the church and the church
recognizes them as members. Zwingli’s baptismal theology has an anthropocentric
impulse. Instead of viewing baptism as God’s faith-strengthening pledge to the believer
much less a means of grace, he primarily described it as the Christian’s pledge to his
fellow believers.
Calvin (Geneva)
Calvin does not locate the chief purpose of baptism in its public profession. On
the contrary, he believes its primary significance is its correlation to saving faith. In other
words, baptism is more about what God does in relation to our faith than it about what we
do in our profession of faith. Much of what Calvin writes about the sacraments in his
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559) is directed against those who would reduce the
sacraments to some kind of anthropocentrism or mere public human profession. “We do
not tolerate,” he writes, “that what is secondary in the sacraments be regarded by them as
the first and even the only point. Now, the first point is that the sacraments should serve
Zwingli, “Of Baptism,” in Zwingli and Bullinger, ed. G. W. Bromiley (LCC; Philadelphia: Westminster
Press, 1953), 130.
5
Ibid., 137.
6
Ibid., 136.
7
Ibid.
8
Zwingli, “Commentary on True and False Religion,” in The Latin Works of Huldreich Zwingli, ed. C. N.
Heller (Philadelphia: Heidelberg Press), 3:184. Jack Cottrell, “Baptism According to the Reformed
Tradition,” in Baptism and the Remission of Sins, ed. David W. Fletcher (Joplin, MO: College Press, 1990),
55, translates a passage from Zwingli’s letter to Thomas Wyttenbach, June 15, 1523 in Werke (CR), 8:86,
which significantly illustrates this point: “"Therefore it is faith which is required there, which if it is so
great, that it has need of no certain point of time or (no certain) place or person or any other thing, by
which, through the circumstance itself, it would desire to be made assured and secure, it has no need of
baptism. But if he is still a little too simple-minded and unsophisticated, and needs a demonstration, let the
believer be washed, so that now he knows that he is cleansed by faith within just as he is by water without."
9
Zwingli, On Baptism, 148.
4
our faith before God; after this, that they should attest our confession before men”
(Institutes, 4.14.13).10
Calvin understood baptism as an effective sign through which God works efficaciously
by the power of the Spirit through faith. The sign and the thing signified, baptism and
forgiveness, have a real, spiritual connection through faith and the Spirit. Calvin positions
himself between two extremes. On the one hand, we must not think that “such graces are
included and bound in the sacrament, so as to be conferred by its efficacy;” but on the other
hand, “nor does he merely feed our eyes with bare show,” but rather God “leads us to the actual
object, and effectually performs what he figures” (Institutes, 4.15.14). The sign conveys the
“substance and reality, inasmuch as God works by external means” but only “insofar as we
receive [it] in faith” (Institutes, 4.15.1). “God, therefore, truly performs whatever he promises
and figures by signs” (Institutes, 4.14.17).
Calvin believes baptism is a genuine means of grace that is effective through faith
and the internal working of the Spirit. Concerning the sacraments in general, Calvin
wrote: “God…performs by the secret virtue of his Spirit that which he figures by external
signs, and, accordingly, that on the part of God himself, not empty signs are set before us,
but the reality and efficacy at the same time conjoined with them.”11
Theology of the Confession12
The Consensus Tigurinus was not all that either side desired.13 The Confession, as
Gerrish notes, “liberally employed” some of the “favorite Zwinglian terminology,” but
nevertheless “softly” introduced some “non-Zwinglian ideas.” For example, while the
document makes clear that the sacraments do not “confer grace” (conferunt gratiam) as if
they have any “sacral efficacy” within themselves (Article XVII), it also states that this
does not “denude the sacraments” but rather reserves this efficacy to the Spirit of God
who uses the sacraments “in freedom (ubi visum est!) as His instruments (Article
XIII).”14
Generally, the Consensus united the Protestant Swiss Cantons in their sacramental
theology and offered a mediating position between Zwingli and Luther which was
ultimately Calvin’s own position. In particular, the sacraments, according to the
Consensus, offer (praestat) what the signs symbolize (Article VIII), the reality is not
separated from the sign (Article IX), and the signs are themselves instruments of divine
grace (Article XIII). The Consensus bridged a gap between Zwingli and Luther by
10
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, LCC 20; ed. John T. McNeill and trans. Ford Lewis Battles
(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 2:1289. An older translation of the Institutes is available at
http://www.reformed.org/books/institutes/.
11
Calvin, “The Best Method of Obtaining Concord, Provided the Truth Be Sought Without Contention,” in
Selected Works of John Calvin: Tracts and Letters (Grand Rapids: Baker, reprinted 1983), 2:573, also
available at http://www.blessedhopeministries.net/bestmeth.htm.
12
Many translations and copies of the Consensus are available. I will use the one available at
http://www.bookofconcord.org/consensus-tigurinus.php.
13
Calvin sent Bucer a copy in June 1549. Bucer was critical of the document because it was too cautious
about communion with Christ and did not give Luther’s views due justice. Calvin responded with general
agreement but thought that the document nevertheless stressed a point of unity between Zurich and Geneva.
Cf. de Greef, p. 175.
14
B. A. Gerrish, “The Lord’s Supper in the Reformed Confessions,” Theology Today 23 (July 1966) 233.
stressing the instrumentality of the signs by the power of the Spirit. The signs effect
nothing by themselves (Article XII) but “they are indeed instruments by which God acts
efficaciously when he pleases” while at the same time “salvation” is “ascribed” to God
“alone” (Article XIII) because “it is God who alone acts by his Spirit” (Article XII).
In 1554 Calvin offered an exposition of the Consensus as part of his polemical
exchanges with Westphal.15 The Sacraments, he explained, “are helps and means
(adminicula et media) by which we are either ingrafted [sic] into the body of Christ, or
being ingrafted, are drawn closer and closer until he makes us altogether one with himself
in the heavenly life.” They are, he continued, “neither empty figures nor mere external
badges of piety, but seals of the divine promises, testimonies of spiritual grace to cherish
and confirm faith, and, on the other, that they are instruments by which God acts
effectually in his elect….the signs are not devoid of the things, as God conjoins the
effectual working of his Spirit with them.”16 Thus, “God uses their instrumentality, and
yet in such manner that he neither infuses his virtue into them, nor derogates in any
respect from the efficacy of his Spirit” which “power” is “exerted in them, and make[s]
them available for the salvation of God’s elect.”17
Though Calvin recognized that Cornelius had received the Spirit prior to baptism,
this does not entail that we “lay aside the use of signs, and be contented with secret
inspirations. Although the Lord occasionally, to prove that his virtue is not tied to any
means, performs without sign what he represents by sign,” nevertheless “Christ truly
performs what he figures” and the sacraments are “means and instruments of his secret
grace.” Consequently, the sacraments are not “only badges of all the blessings God once
exhibited to us in Christ,” but “the efficacy of the Spirit is conjoined with their outward
representation, lest they should be empty pictures.”18
Consensus Americanus: Churches of Christ and Southern Baptists?
1812 was a significant year for both Churches of Christ and American Baptists. In
that same year Alexander Campbell, Adoniram Judson and Luther Rice were immersed
upon their profession of faith in Jesus and embraced credobaptism as biblical theology.
Their heirs, however, engaged in hostile and sometimes bitter disputes over the design of
baptism.19 Generally speaking, conservative Stone-Campbell adherents—particularly
Jean Calvin, “Mutual Consent as to the Sacraments,” in Calvin’s Tracts, Containing Treatises on the
Sacraments, Catechism of the Church of Geneva, Forms of Prayer, and Confessions of Faith, trans. Henry
Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1849), 2:199-244, available at
http://books.google.com/books?id=nv0QAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_book_other_versi
ons_r&cad=3_0#PPP3,M1. Cf. Joseph N. Tylenda, “The Calvin-Westphal Exchange: The Genesis of
Calvin’s Treatises Against Westphal,” Calvin Theological Journal 9 (1974) 182-209.
16
Calvin, “Mutual Consent,” 2:222-225.
17
Calvin, “Mutual Consent,” 2:229.
18
Calvin, “Mutual Consent,” 2:236, 238, 227.
19
See the recent pieces by Jesse C. Fletcher, “The Separation of the Campbells from the Baptists,”
Discipliana 63.3 (Fall 2003) 80-92; Douglas A. Foster, “Efforts At Repairing the Breach: Twentieth
Century Dialogues of Churches of the Stone-Campbell Movement with Baptists and Presbyterians,”
Discipliana 63.4 (Winter 2003) 99-111; John Mark Hicks, “Baptism, Faith and Christian Experience:
Baptists and Disciples Part Company,” in Evangelicalism and the Stone-Campbell Movement, ed. by
William R. Baker (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2002), 91-124; and Thomas H. Olbricht, “Churches of
15
among 20th century Churches of Christ—moved away from Campbell’s own Calvinian
understanding of baptism as a “means of grace” to a positivistic watershed line between
heaven and hell20 and conservative Baptists—particularly Southern Baptists—embraced a
Zwinglian understanding of sacramental theology. However, there are signs that there are
converging interests and theology among leaders within Churches of Christ and Southern
Baptists.
Southern Baptists
Early British Baptist theology tended to follow Calvin, while Continental
Anabaptist theology tended to follow Zwingli. Eighteenth and nineteenth century
revivalism watered down British sacramentalism except among the Scotch Baptists.21
American Baptists, influenced by the Great Awakenings and revivalistic conversion
measures, rejected any kind of baptismal efficacy. Charles G. Finney, as the most
influential leader of 19th century revivalism, viewed the anxious seat, according to
Thornbury, “as a means of grace, a test of piety.”22 Baptism, according to Finney’s own
words, “held the same place the anxious seat does now: a public manifestation of
determination to be a Christian.”23 Billy Sunday popularized “coming down the aisle”
during the invitation song as a conversion ritual and the decision card assured respondees
that “by this act of coming forward…you are now a child of God.”24 The altar call or
sinner’s prayer became, as Hulse calls it, the “new evangelical sacrament” or as Leonard
deemed it “the sacrament of walking the aisle.”25 Baptism was thereby supplanted and
reduced to a mere human testimony as an appendage to the conversion narrative. Baptism
became what it was for Zwingli, that is, a mere ecclesial event without soteriological
significance.
The mid-twentieth century works of Alec Gilmore, Neville Clark, R. E. O. White,
and G. R. Beasley-Murray revived the earlier sacramental understanding of baptism
among British Baptists.26 Between 1973 and 1977 the Baptist World Alliance and the
Christ, Southern Baptist Times Together: The Debates,” available at
http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/studies/debates.htm.
20
John Mark Hicks and Greg Taylor, Down in the River to Pray: Revisioning Baptism as God’s
Transforming Work (Siloam Springs, AR: Leafwood Publishers, 2004), chapter seven.
21
Stanley K. Fowler, More than a Symbol: The British Baptist Recovery of Baptismal Sacramentalism
(Carlislie: Paternoster Press, 2002) and Derek B. Murray, “An Eighteenth Century Baptismal Controversy
in Scotland,” 419-429, in Baptism, the New Testament and the Church: Historical and Contemporary
Studies in Honour of R. E. O. White, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Anthony R. Cross (JSNT, 171; Sheffield:
Sheffield Academic Press, 1999).
22
John F. Thornbury, God Sent Revival: The Story of Asahel Nettleton and the Second Great Awakening
(Greand Rapids: Evangelical Press, 1977), 201.
23
Charles G. Finney, Lectures on Revival (Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1988), 171.
24
As quoted by William G. McLoughlin, Jr., Modern Revivalism: Charles Grandison Finney to Billy
Graham (New York: Ronald Press Co., 1959), 410.
25
Erroll Hulse, The Great Invitation: Examining the Use of the Invitation System in Evangelism (Welwyn:
Evangelical Press, 1986), 89 and Bill Leonard, “Getting Saved in America: Conversion Event in a
Pluralistic Culture," Review and Expositor 82 (1985) 121.
26
Gilmore, ed., Christian Baptism: A Fresh Attempt to Understand the Rite of Baptism in terms of
Scripture, History and Theology (London: Lutterworth Press, 1959); Clark, An Approach to the Theology of
the Sacraments (London: SCM Press, 1956); White, The Biblical Doctrine of Initiation (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1960); and Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962).
World Alliance of Reformed Churches met to discuss their theological perspectives. They
issued a document entitled “Report of Theological Conversations.”27 The report reflects a
Calvinian understanding of baptism’s meaning. Both Alliances affirm that baptism is an
“act of God and act of man.” Baptism is described as “a powerful sign and effective
means of grace” because “in baptism administered by water, God himself, by his Spirit, is
acting.” By virtue of the Spirit baptism is “an effective instrument of grace, actually
imparting what it promises: the forgiveness of sins, union with Christ in his death and
resurrection, regeneration, elevation to the status of sonship, membership in the church,
the body of Christ, new life in the Spirit, the earnest of the resurrection of the body. The
New Testament looks upon the operation of the Spirit in baptism as the application of the
fullness of saving grace.”
The impact of this revival is particularly evident among contemporary British
Baptists. Since 1999 a large number of monographs and journal articles have appeared in
British publications that have argued for baptismal sacramentalism, that is, baptism as the
“evangelical sacrament” that is a normative part of the conversion narrative.28 This
movement has embraced a Calvinian sacramental theology.
There are a growing number of Southern Baptists who are moving in this
direction as well though they are reticent about sacramental language.29 Their linguistic
hesitation is rooted in some of the same qualms and perceived baggage that is also
current among historic and contemporary Churches of Christ. Nevertheless, there is a
recognition that Baptist practice has de-emphasized baptism. Rainbow offers analysis:30
A real devaluation of baptism takes place when Baptists, overresponding
to the perceived overvaluation of baptism in the paedobaptists churches
(which is often the fruit of misunderstanding on the part of Baptists),
begin to talk about baptism as if it were a marginal, optional, not-verysignificant thing. What is really important, we often hear in Baptist
churches, is what happens in the heart, in the conversion experience as it is
transacted between God and the soul. Baptism is ‘just’ a symbol—like a
“Report of the Theological Conversations Sponsored by The World Alliance of Reformed Churches and
the Baptist World Alliance, 1973-1977” available at http://www.reformiertonline.net:8080/t/eng/rwb/tdecumen.jsp.
28
Anthony R. Cross, “The Evangelical Sacrament: Baptisma Semper Reformandum,” Evangelical
Quarterly 80.3 (2008) 195-217. His book Evangelical Sacrament: Baptisma Semper Reformandum will be
published by Paternoster in 2010. Cf. Stanley E. Porter and Anthony R. Cross, eds., Baptism, the New
Testament and the Church: Historical and Contemporary Studies in Honour of R. E. O. White (JSNT, 171;
Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999); Anthony R. Cross, Baptism and the Baptists: Theology and
Practice in Twentieth-Century Britan (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2000); Stanley E. Porter and Anthony R.
Cross, eds., Dimensions of Baptism: Biblical and Theological Studies (London: Sheffield Academic Press,
2002); Stanley K. Fowler, More Than a Symbol: The British Baptist Recovery of Baptismal
Sacramentalism (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2002); Anthony R. Cross and Phillip E. Thompson, ed., Baptist
Sacramentalism (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2003); Paul S. Fiddes, Tracks and Traces: Baptist Identity in
Church and Theology (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2004); John E. Colwell, Promise and Presence: An
Exploration of Sacramental Theology (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2005); and Anthony R. Cross and Phillip
E. Thompson, ed., Baptist Sacramentalism 2 (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2008).
29
Thomas R. Schreiner and Shawn D. Wright, Believer’s Baptism: Sign of the New Covenant in Christ
(Nashville: Broadman & Holmann Academic, 2006).
30
Jonathan H. Rainbow, “’Confessor Baptism’: The Baptismal Doctrine of the Early Anabaptists,” in
Believer’s Baptism, 205-6
27
wedding ring, nice but dispensable, a mere external ceremony…So
baptism, instead of being a cataclysmic gateway from death to life,
becomes merely the first of many acts of discipleship. The sense of drama
is gone, the sense of baptism having some real contact with salvation is
gone, and baptism has been reduced to an act of sheer obedience. The real
drama is elsewhere, in the private enclave of the heart….[baptism] is more
than a sign.
This movement by Southern Baptists has opened up the possibility of some kind of
“rapprochement” between the two traditions.31
Churches of Christ
The Stone-Campbell Movement emerged from Scottish Presbyterian and Baptist
roots. Thomas Campbell (1763-1854) and his son Alexander Campbell (1788-1866), in
particular, were Scotch Presbyterians who were strongly influenced by Scotch Baptists.
They were familiar with their leaders, particularly Archibald McLean and the Haldane
brothers (James and Robert). These influences came to the forefront when the Campbells
moved from Presbyterian to Baptists circles in conjunction with their rejection of the
Puritan conversion narrative.
In the wake of Walter Scott’s successful revivalistic substitution of the mourner’s
bench with immersion in 1827,32 Campbell began a series of essays entitled the
“Restoration of the Ancient Gospel.”33 In this series Campbell begins to use the language
of means or instrumentality: “forgiveness is through immersion”34 or baptism is “a
certain act by, or in which their sins are forgiven.”35 Baptism is a “medium through which
the forgiveness of sins is imparted.”36 Campbell is quite adamant about this point: “I do
earnestly contend that God, through the blood of Christ, forgives our sins through
immersion—through the very act, and in the very instant.”37 Campbell had moved well
beyond Zwinglianism and embraced a high Calvinian understanding of the
instrumentality of baptism as a means of grace.
This stance was increasingly clarified as Campbell engaged his critics. For
example, the Virginia Baptist Andrew Broaddus believed that Campbell ascribed to
external water what belonged only to the instrumentality of faith. It is a “living faith (not
immersion nor any outward or bodily act)…by which we pass from a state of
A.B. Caneday, “Baptism in the Stone-Campbell Movement,” in Believer’s Baptism, 304; cf. 324-328.
See Campbell’s recollection of his enthusiastic endorsement of Scott’s preaching in Millennial
Harbinger 20 (1849), 48.
33
Campbell, “Ancient Gospel—No. I,” Christian Baptist 5 (7 January 1828), 128-130; “Ancient Gospel—
No. II,” 5 (5 February 1828), 164-168; “Ancient Gospel—No. III,” 5 (3 March 1828), 179-182; “Ancient
Gospel—No. IV,” 5 (7 April), 221-223; “Ancient Gospel—No. V,” 5 (5 May 1828), 229-232; “Ancient
Gospel—No. VI,” 5 (2 June 1828), 254-257; “Ancient Gospel—No. VII,” 5 (7 July 1828), 276-279;
“Ancient Gospel—No. VIII,” 6 (4 August 1828), 14-17; “Ancient Gospel—No. IX,” 6 (6 October 1828),
72-74; and “Ancient Gospel—No. X,” 6 (3 November 1828), 97-100.
34
Campbell, “No. II,” 166.
35
Campbell, “No. V,” 232.
36
Campbell, “No. VI,” 254, or a “medium of remission…the means through which, by faith, we are
forgiven” (Campbell, “Reply to C.F.,” Christian Baptist 7 [1 February 1830], 181).
37
Campbell, “No. VII,” 277.
31
32
condemnation, into a state of favor and acceptance with God.” For Broaddus, baptism
functions as a “declarative justification” in that it is an “outward sign and declaration that
the believer has experienced” the blessing of remission of sins. Only faith functions
instrumentally.38 But Campbell complained that Broaddus reduced baptism to a “mere
external bodily act” or a simple “mutual pledge” by which people are received into the
visible church. Broaddus’s problem is that he “gives to baptism no instrumentality at all
in the work of salvation.”39 In other words, Broaddus was Zwinglian and Campbell was
Calvinian. Whereas for Broaddus the “exercise of faith” is wholly “internal” and a matter
of the heart alone, Campbell believed that faith is exercised through “trusting in Christ,
coming to him and receiving him” in the act of immersion.40
Alexander Campbell’s baptismal theology articulated an instrumental understanding
of baptismal grace but at the same time valued character more than ritual and mercy more
than sacrifice. A living faith that exhibited a transformed character was more important
than the full enjoyment of assurance in baptism.41 However, few in mid-twentieth century
Churches of Christ believed that faith without baptism was transformative. Baptism was
regarded more like a line in the sand or, to mix the metaphor, a watershed moment.
Baptismal water became an absolute distinction between the lost and the saved. James A.
Harding (1848-1922), a influential evangelist and educator among Churches of Christ,
illustrates the significance of this distinction.
Harding, among others,42 classified baptism as a “positive” ordinance in conformity
to “positive law” which is different from “moral law.”43 A “positive” law is a command
whose only basis of obligation is the fact that God commanded it while a “moral” law is
rooted in the moral character of God. Moral law is obligatory in its own right, but
positive laws are obligatory solely by the explicit command of God. For example, the
command “You shall not commit adultery” is rooted in God’s own sense of faithfulness,
but the command “Do not eat of that tree” is a test of strict obedience. Moral obligations
have crutches. There are inducements, inclinations, and natural propensities. But a
positive law is an absolute test of loyalty. The significance of the positive command,
then, is that it is unencumbered by the crutches of moral obligations and it gives a clear
indication of the loyalty of the person involved.
Harding stressed this hard-line as engaged in a lengthy give-and-take on the question
of the unimmersed in the1883 Gospel Advocate. Harding offered no biblical hope to the
unimmersed. “That these people,” he wrote, “are not in the kingdom is evident to us.”44
Andrew Broaddus, A Reply to Mr. A. Campbell’s M. Harbinger, Extra on Remission of Sins, Etc.
(Richmond, VA: Religious Herald, 1831), 5, 8, 19-24.
39
Campbell, “The Extra Defended,” Millennial Harbinger 2 (October 10, 1831), 14.
40
Campbell, “Extra Defended,” 16-17, 37.
41
John Mark Hicks, “Baptism, Faith and Christian Experience: Baptists and Disciples Part Company,” in
Evangelicalism and the Stone-Campbell Movement, ed. by William R. Baker (Downers Grove, IL:
InterVarsity, 2002), 91-124.
42
J. W. McGarvey, “Is Baptism a Positive Institution?” Apostolic Times 5 (26 June 1873), 4, claims that
there was a time “when every preacher in the Reformation had one or more discourses on Positive
institutions, and with many it was a favorite subject.”
43
The following material is derived from John Mark Hicks, "The Gracious Separatist: Moral and Positive
Law in the Theology of James A. Harding," Restoration Quarterly 42.3 (2000): 129-47, available at
http://johnmarkhicks.faithsite.com/content.asp?CID=17867.
44
Harding, “Should Unbaptized Sectarians be Called Upon to Lead the Prayers of the Lord’s House?”
Gospel Advocate 25 (22 February 1883) 118.
38
Even though “salvation is of grace, and it is also through faith,” it is also equally clear
that “God has made it dependent upon conditions with which man must comply; and no
man, who does not comply with these conditions, has a Scriptural reason for believing
that he has been, or ever will be saved.”45 Harding believed that the clarity of this
command was unavoidable. “If a man does not understand the baptismal question, in this
country,” he argued, “it is because he will not, not because he cannot understand. It is not
the Lord’s fault; he made the matter plain enough.”46 As a clear positive command, it
demands obedience rather than debating. Ignorance is no excuse.
By the early twentieth century a consensus emerged in Churches of Christ that
offered little, if any, hope of salvation to the pious unimmersed.
Theological Convergence
“Convergence”47 is possible within the paradigm shift currently evidenced among
some leaders of Churches of Christ and some Southern Baptists. I have identified four
points that are significant for this converging baptismal theology.
First, baptism is part of the New Testament conversion narrative. It is neither an
appendage to conversion nor merely the first act of ecclesial discipleship. It is part of the
process of becoming a Christian in the biblical text. While this is standard teaching
among Churches of Christ, it is increasingly recognized as a fundamental theological
insight among Baptists. Robert Stein’s 1998 article in the first issue of the Southern
Baptist Journal of Theology, entitled “Baptism and Becoming a Christian in the New
Testament,” initiated this discussion among Southern Baptists.48 Broadman & Holman’s
2006 publication entitled Believer’s Baptism is replete with affirmations of this thesis.
Stein, for example, concludes his essay with the statement that “water-baptism ‘in/into
the name of Jesus/Lord Jesus/Jesus Christ’ is understood as an essential part of becoming
a Christian.”49 Both Stein and Schreiner consistently refer to the biblical use of
“synecdoche” where “faith,” “repentance,” and “baptism” can stand for the whole
conversion process.50 Caneday boldly states: “Baptism is an indispensable aspect of
conversion along with at least four other elements: repentance, faith, confession, and
regeneration.”51 Baptism, he concludes, is part of the “normal conversion pattern.”52
Second, Calvinian baptismal theology correctly identifies the soteriological
significance of baptism as a means of grace. While Churches of Christ have not generally
Harding, “How Are We Saved? A Reply to the Liberty Baptist. No. 2,” The Way 5 (30 April 1903), 547.
Harding, “Should the Unbaptized,” 118.
47
Stanley Fowler’s term in his “Baptists and Churches of Christ in Search of a Common Theology of
Baptism,” in Sacramentalism 2.
48
Robert H. Stein, “Baptism and Becoming a Christian in the New Testament,” Southern Baptist Journal of
Theology 2.1 (1998), 6-17. The Baptist evangelical H. Wayne House, “An Evangelical Response to Baird
& Weatherly,” in Evangelicalism and the Stone-Campbell Movement, ed. William Baker (Grand Rapids:
InterVarsity, 2003), 188: “I enthusiastically acknowledge, contrary to the common practice in Baptist
churches, that the early church would not have understood a person claiming to be a Christian who was not
baptized.”
49
Stein, “Baptism in Luke-Acts,” in Believer’s Baptism, 63.
50
Stein, “Baptism in Luke-Acts,” in Believer’s Baptism, 51 and Schreiner, “Baptism in the Epistles,” in
Believer’s Baptism, 75.
51
Caneday, “Baptism in the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement,” in Believer’s Baptism, 313.
52
Caneday, “Baptism in the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement,” in Believer’s Baptism, 317..
45
46
used the sacramental language of “means of grace,” that baptism is an appointed act by
which believers are forgiven of their sins is typical teaching. Alexander Campbell himself
is best understood as advocating a Calvinian credobaptistic sacramental theology.53
British Baptists and the Baptist World Alliance have clearly embraced this kind of
sacramentalism in their baptismal theology. In the 1990s some American Baptists began
to use this language. James McClendon described baptism as an “effectual sign” which is
a divine “yes” to humanity’s cry for salvation; baptism is “an act of God.”54 Many regard
McClendon may as “left-wing,” but even some “right-wing” baptists, such as Wayne
Grudem, describe baptism as “means of grace” and reject those who argue that baptism is
“merely symbolic” and “that the Holy Spirit does not work through it.”55 Another
example from the recent Broadman & Holman publication is Caneday who heads his
article’s conclusion with the title “Baptism as Means of Grace” and endorses Alexander
Campbell’s own distinction between baptism as instrumental cause distinct from efficient
cause.56 Baptism is not merely the thing signified. Rather, God actually effects what
baptism symbolizes. Baptism in water is a performative sign (it accomplishes what it
symbolizes by the work of the Spirit) through which God has chosen to mediate his grace
through faith in Jesus Christ.
Third, baptism serves faith and is subordinate to its soteriological function. This is a
major premise in Calvin’s sacramental theology: “sacraments should serve our faith
before God” (Institutes, 4.14.13). Though baptism was ordinarily the means by which
God acted to save, according to Calvin, baptism is not absolutely necessary to salvation.
Indeed, faith is more important than baptism, and baptism is an “inferior mean” [sic]
though it is a confirmation of forgiveness through faith.57 He rejects the idea that “all are
lost who happen not to be dipped in water” and thus rejects the rationale for “emergency
baptisms” (Institutes, 4.15.20). In other words, baptism is God’s ordinary means of grace
but not an absolute one. Faith is the more fundamental means. While this is not
commonly heard among members of Churches of Christ, this was also Alexander
Campbell’s perspective. Campbell compares one who is unimmersed to an imperfect
Christian. He cannot bring himself to deny that any person who “is acting up to the full
measure of his knowledge,” and has not been “negligent, according to his opportunities,
to ascertain the will of his Master” is a Christian. He feels that if he were to paganize all
the unimmersed, he would be “a pure sectarian, a Pharisee among Christians.” Therefore,
he cannot regard all the unimmersed as "aliens from Christ and the well-grounded hope
of heaven."58 The God who has “always enjoined upon man ‘mercy, rather than
sacrifice’” has “never demanded” baptism “as [an] indispensable condition of
See Richard L. Harrison, Jr., “Early Disciples Sacramental Theology: Catholic, Reformed and Free,”
Mid-Stream 24 (July 1985), 255-92. Alexander Campbell, “Calvin on Baptism,” 4 (November 1833), 54347, quotes Calvin’s Institutes, 4.15.1-5 after which he writes: “We leave it to the good sense of the reader,
whether John Calvin ought not to be called a Campbellite as well as the Apostle Peter.”
54
James W. McClendon, Jr., Doctrine: Systematic Theology (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994), 388-389.
55
Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 953-954 (italics in original).
56
Caneday, “Baptism in the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement,” in Believer’s Baptism, 324-325; cf.
312.
57
Calvin, Commentary upon the Acts of the Apostles (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, reprint 1949), 1:118.
Available at http://www.ccel.org/c/calvin/comment3/comm_vol36/htm/ix.vii.htm.
58
Campbell, “Any Christians Among the Protestant Parties,” Millennial Harbinger 8 (September 1837),
412.
53
salvation.”59 Campbell never made immersion a sine qua non of eternal salvation.
However, Campbell felt—even in his own day—that some had “given to baptism an
undue eminence—a sort of pardon-procuring, rather than a pardon-certifying and
enjoying efficacy.”60 Unfortunately, it seems that such fears were fully realized in the 20th
century among Churches of Christ.
Fourth, salvation is a process of transformation into the image of Christ which
both gives baptism its theological significance and limits its soteriological importance.
Whereas some within Churches of Christ saw the “transformed” (pious) unimmersed as
people who are diseased with an unbelieving heart,61 Campbell did not think their nonimmersion a hindrance to recognizing their “inward” baptism. “Sir,” he asks, “will not his
uncircumcision, or unbaptism, be counted to him for baptism?”62 The transformation of
the character is more important than a single misunderstood command of God. Campbell
refused to “make any one duty the standard of Christian state or character, not even
immersion into the name of the father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” He would not
make baptism the single or most significant identifying marker of Christianity—he would
“not substitute obedience to one commandment, for universal or even for general
obedience.”63 Transformation, then, was more important than baptism itself and this is
precisely because baptism served the goal of transformation and was not itself the goal.
Campbell led believers down in the river to experience the assurance of God’s gracious
forgiveness as part of God’s transforming work, but some of his theological descendents
went down in the river to draw a line in the sand. They turned baptism into a legal
technicality rather than a divine work of transforming assurance.
I believe Churches of Christ and Southern Baptists can move closer to each other
if, on the one hand, those within Churches of Christ adopt a more self-conscious
Calvinian baptismal theology that recognizes the primacy of faith and the goal of
transformation and, on the other hand, Baptists adopt a more Calvinian baptismal
theology that recognizes baptism as a means of grace within the conversion narrative.
59
Campbell, The Campbell-Rice Debate (Lexington, KY: A. T. Skillman & Son, 1844), 519-20
Campbell, “Mr. Meredith on Remission,” Millennial Harbinger 11 (December 1840) 545.
61
Cf. James A. Harding, “Union Meetings,” Gospel Advocate 25 (27 June 1883), 410: “Now let it
be understood I do not find fault with these people because they have not been baptized. That is
not the disease; it is only a symptom; unbelief is the disease; their hearts are not right...What right
have we to call upon these people who will not obey the Lord, who cannot even endure to hear all
of his commands repeated, to lead the services of our Father’s house?”
62
Campbell, “Any Christians Among the Sects?” Millennial Harbinger 8 (December 1837) 565: “The case
is this: When I see a person who would die for Christ whose brotherly kindness, sympathy, and active
benevolence know no bounds but his circumstances; whose seat in the Christian assembly is never empty;
whose inward piety and devotion are attested by punctual obedience to every known duty; whose family is
educated in the fear of the Lord; whose constant companion is the Bible: I say, when I see such a one
ranked among the heathen men and publicans, because he never happened to inquire, but always took it for
granted that he had been scripturally baptized; and that, too, by one greatly destitute of all these public and
private virtues, whose chief or exclusive recommendation is that he has been immersed, and that he holds a
scriptural theory of the gospel: I feel no disposition to flatter such a one; but rather to disabuse him of his
error. And while I would not lead the most excellent professor in any sect to disparage the least of all the
commandments of Jesus, I would say to my immersed brother as Paul said to his Jewish brother who
gloried in a system which he did not adorn: "Sir, will not his uncircumcision, or unbaptism, be counted to
him for baptism? and will he not condemn you, who, though having the literal and true baptism, yet dost
transgress or neglect the statutes of your King?”
63
Campbell, “Protestant Parties,” 412
60
Pragmatically, Churches of Christ could cease questioning or doubting the eternal destiny
of unimmersed believers and recognize them as pilgrims in the process of transformation
on the same journey as themselves, and Baptists could invite believers to baptism as part
of their conversion experience and invite seekers to baptism as the sinner’s prayer itself.
Conclusion
Traditions run to extremes in the profession and practice of baptismal theologies.
Churches of Christ have often turned baptism into a technical line in the sand that divides
the lost and the saved and thus, at times, exalted baptism above transformation. Baptists
have, at times, devalued the soteriological significance of baptism and separated it from
the conversion narrative.
Historically, we stand in an analogous situation as Calvin and Bullinger. The
Swiss Reformation was divided between Zwinglian and Calvinian sacramental theology.
The Zwinglians feared that the Calvinians were too Lutheran and the Calvinians feared
that the Zwinglians devalued the sacraments. Geneva and Zurich were divided. The
ministers of the two cities reached an historic agreement in the Consensus Tigurinus.
Zwinglians and Calvinists were reconciled in such a way that the Reformed tradition has
sustained a significant consensus throughout its history.
. I am convinced that the difference between Southern Baptists and Churches of
Christ on baptism is the difference between Zwingli and a radicalized sacramentalism. I
believe a new consensus is possible with the self-conscious adoption of something akin to
a credobaptist Calvinian baptismal theology—which, in my estimation, is a biblical
theology. Baptists and Churches of Christ have an opportunity to live in harmony,
practice a shared biblical theology of baptism and together promote the kingdom of God
for the sake of the world.