Baptism
What are your thoughts about baptism? What’s your personal history with it?
I was baptized as a baby in the Presbyterian Church (PCUSA).
When I was fourteen, I grappled with faith and became a Christian, at about the same time that I went through confirmation classes. In the PCUSA, confirmation theoretically means that you adopt as your own the baptismal vows made by your parents on your behalf. Confirmation classes take place at the end of eighth grade, whether the confirmants understand and agree with what’s happening or not. I suppose someone who felt strongly about it could refuse to be confirmed. And of course the level of understanding and agreement can vary.
During high school and the first part of college, I attended different churches that believed different things about baptism. Since these people seemed to have the kind of faith that makes a difference in their lives, I tended to trust their views on various aspects of faith and belief, including baptism.
Neither church practiced infant baptism — instead baptizing when someone came to faith, at whatever age that might occur. This practice is called believer baptism. I wrestled with the issue for a while, reading relevant Bible passages and thinking and praying. I didn’t want to get baptized (again) without my parents’ blessing, since I was still a child and under their authority. Eventually I reasoned that since I had come to faith before my confirmation, I could consider it as it was intended, to confirm my baptismal vows.
By the end of college, I was Presbyterian again, but this time PCA, the more conservative branch. We have attended PCA churches almost continuously since graduation, except for a few years at a Bible church.
It has been an interesting journey, with a gradual refining of doctrine as we work to distinguish what good things we have learned in faithful churches of various kinds and what things are better abandoned or clarified or adjusted.
Before Amy was born, we were both inclined to believe in believer baptism. Since a baby cannot have her own faith, how can she make baptismal vows? Since people are individuals, independent, needing to choose faith or not for themselves, how can we make baptismal vows on behalf of someone else, especially when they are unable to choose for themselves? There are moments in the Bible where a man comes to faith and his whole household is baptized, but surely(?) that is a cultural remnant, from a time when the individuality of women and children and servants was not recognized, and they were coerced to follow whatever the man followed.
When Amy arrived, we both felt rather sentimental about baptism. Sweet white lacy baptismal gowns. The smiles and congratulations of friends and family. A way to celebrate before God and his people the gift of a child. But baptism is not a sentimentality. It’s not something to be done lightly just because it’s cute and sweet. And it means more than just thanking God for the baby.
We continued thinking, reading, praying, especially when our pastor asked us what we thought of the whole thing.
Did you know believer baptism is only about four hundred years old? Infant baptism was the standard of the earlier church.
Baptism acts out what Christ has done for us — as he died and rose again, so baptism pictures our identification with his death and resurrection. And these things were accomplished for us before we ever knew we were even sinners and in need of salvation — before we were born biologically, and before we were born again into faith. It makes sense that someone who comes to faith from outside the church would be baptized after coming to faith — they can hardly be baptized before coming to faith, since they’re outside the church. It might also make sense for those who are born into the church to be baptized according to the faith of their family and the church community.
It’s possible to think of household baptism as an extension of privilege, something inclusive and inviting, rather than as a coercion of those who may not choose for themselves. Baptism can be seen as extending the covenantal community to embrace those who are not yet able to choose for themselves, with hope that when they reach a point of choosing, they will choose for their own what we have brought them up into.
It’s possible for “community” to become too broad a banner, erasing individuality. As if baptism could save the child, could be a guarantee, as if the child would never need to accept or reject the faith for herself, as if it’s something that people just do.
It’s also possible for individualism to become too narrow, breaking the bonds of fellowship and even of family. As if baptism and all the privileges of fellowship must be strictly withheld until someone proves they are worthy. (Is anyone worthy?) As if baptism has to be earned. (If salvation is a free gift, not earned by works, why would baptism require works?)
It makes sense that the truth might lie in both respecting and recognizing individuality while also embracing our interdependence and fellowship with other believers and with our families. True, some people who grow up in Christian homes and churches abandon the faith later. True, some people who grow up with no church background or in another faith or in a church that doesn’t really believe anything anymore, later in life come to faith anyway. Also true, some people grow up in Christian homes and churches and come to embrace faith for themselves. God allows for some branches to fall away, and for others to be grafted in, while all the while the native vine grows.
We’re not entirely convinced of the PCA (or Reformed in general) view that baptism replaces circumcision as the sign of the covenant, at least not in any simplistic or arbitrary way (i.e. hey guys, let’s stop doing this and do that instead!). But it certainly does have parallels; for example, both include the whole family of the person who believes, and both assume that the family will raise the children in a context of faith, with hope that they will come to faith themselves. And it makes sense that there be some continuity, some connection, from one sign of the covenant to another. (Interesting that circumcision precedes the law — both circumcision and baptism are sacraments of grace and not of works.)
So it looks like we have come to agree with infant baptism — not because it’s cute and sweet, although that aspect is nice — but because we see how it can fit with what the Bible says about family, about the church, about faith. The Bible talks about what baptism means, but is not explicit about how and when to baptize; at this point in our faith journey it seems to us that infant baptism is a reasonable norm for believing families, and that believer baptism is an exception graciously extended to those who come to faith from outside.
Amy will be baptized on Sunday, June 24.
