· Biblically

· Theologically

· Historically

· Disciplemaking

· Pastorally

· Contextually

As the Classis endeavors to live in covenant community, sailing together in ministry, a spectrum of options appear that both need to be discussed and ultimately to determine where God is leading us together. These options may include:

1) Re-affirming the stated Reformed Church in America position as a Classis, leaving no room for deviation, and potentially requiring some difficult decisions with regard to the practice or non-practice of infant baptism by current Classis churches and pastors.

2) The affirmation of infant baptism as a practice of churches in the Reformed tradition as a sign of the covenant promises for that child, especially by Classis churches and leaders who value baptism as a sign of conversion.

3) The allowance and affirmation of the celebration of covenant promises for a child in the Reformed tradition, but may be practiced with or without the use of water as the symbol of these promises.

4) Providing for a change in the Classis of California theological and biblical understanding of baptism in a missional context that would allow baptism to represent two parts, both covenant promises and profession of faith, allowing churches and pastors to practice either, and providing room for both positions.

5) Work at making this a national, denominational discussion with changes coming at a General Synod level as we move theologically in defining the practice of infant baptism.

With a commitment to listen to and learn from each other, we move forward to live out our faith in a way that honors and glorifies God, and helps us to be salt and light in an exciting and challenging Southern California missional context.

WHAT IS THE QUESTION UNDER CONSIDERATION?

Whether infants who are children of believing parent/s should be baptized?

WHAT IS THE SITUATION IN THE RCA?

ØAs a denomination, we have been declining in numbers since 1964 at the rate of about 4-5% per year. We are not keeping even our own children – what does that say about infant baptism?

Ø In the California Classis we are in imminent danger of losing very talented young leaders over this issue. Is it worth that?

Ø1995 liturgy affirms too much concerning the infant’s being a “member” of Christ’s Church.

ØWithout a strong emphasis on personal confession of faith, the children of believers in RCA churches do not have the possibility of saying “NO” to their inherited faith in God, therefore also their “YES” is disempowered and looses meaning.

ØInfant baptism that moves toward christianization feeds nominalism. In the RCA we cannot seem to keep our children. Allowing children to partake of the Lord’s Table moves toward a christianization view of IB.

ØLoss of emphasis on infant baptism over-emphasizes personal choice and individual confession – weakens God’s initiative in covenanting with God’s People, demonstrating a weak ecclesiology.

ØWe need liturgical ritual that ties infant baptism much more closely to confession of faith – and confession of faith to infant baptism.

A PROPOSED PROCESS OF REFLECTION AND DISCERNMENT

As a follow-up to the symposium on infant baptism (IB), classis leaders met with the symposium presenters in August 2001. The group is seeking to design a process of discussion and discernment, of conversation and reflection, during the coming months through which members of the classis may listen to, and learn from, one another as we think together theologically and pastorally how we may best communicate God’s covenantal grace in Jesus Christ (unto the 3^rd and 4^th generation) in today’s context of ministry. We are seeking a process of discernment, not legislation – of conversation, not majority vote.

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS

In the Reformed tradition we make a distinction between the FORM and the MEANING of the sacrament of baptism. In Heidelberg Q 66 and in Belgic Art. 33 and 34 there is strong emphasis on the language of “sign” and “seal.” This speaks of an emphasis on the invisible theological MEANING as being of greater significance than the form. The form should follow the meaning. We are thinking theologically about the meaning here, with the matter of the form being a second-level derivation from the meaning.

What do we MEAN to be saying theologically when we baptize infants?

The matter to be considered has to do with baptizing INFANTS of believing parent/s, not with baptizing confessing adults. There is a difference in the meaning between adult and infant baptism. To assert the identical meaning for both is confusing, unbiblical, and not consistent with our Standards. It ends up affirming too much about the infant in IB. In adult B, though we still emphasize the role of the faith community, the person being baptized does have an active role in confessing his/her faith. No such personal appropriation is true in the case of an infant – not until the infant comes to the age of discretion and confesses his/her personal faith in Jesus Christ. IB awaits fulfillment of that which is promised by God and received by the believing community in the name of the infant. In adult baptism, promise and fulfillment are simultaneous.

In the Standards this difference is clearly registered. In Heidelberg Q’s 69 through 73 apply to an ADULT who is confessing faith in Jesus Christ. The meaning of Q’s 69-73 cannot be equally applied to an infant. In Belgic Art. 29 “belong to the church” has to do with adults. In Belgic Art. 34, the first 9 paragraphs the meaning applies to adults. Heidelberg Q. 74 and Belgic 34 (the last 4 paragraphs) are reserved for infants. And in both cases, the emphasis is on promise, on the mark that God places for special care of the children of believers, that the children of believers are to be distinguished from the children of unbelievers, and that infants receive the sign of God’s covenantal grace. This language is quite distinct from the meaning that is affirmed regarding adult baptism.

Adult Baptism

Individual faith is primary

Emphasis: Conversion, confession, commitment

Strength: personal faith, public confession

Weaknesses: God’s covenantal initiative, corporateness, ecclesiology

Infant Baptism

God’s Covenant Community is primary.

Emphasis: Believing community receives God’s promises. Child is part of the believing community

Strength: covenant reception

Weaknesses: Personal profession of faith, missional proclamation to the world

The Difference in Meaning Between Adult and Infant Baptism

Differences between Adult and Infant Baptism

INFANT BAPTISM	ADULT BAPTISM
a. Administered to men and women	Administered to men and women
b. God chosen by the parents	God chosen by salvation
c. God promises faithfulness	God promises faithfulness
d. God seals his covenant	God seals his covenant
e. God covenants with the parents	God covenants with the one baptized
f. The blood of Christ cleanses	God purifies in repentance and conversion
g. The child is part of the People of God	The one baptized is a member of the Body of Christ
h. The child grows in covenant with God in the home with the family	The one baptized grows in spiritual life in the church, the new family.
i. The child receives God’s grace through the parents	The one baptized receives God’s grace in public confession of faith.
j. Symbolizes the covenant of God, the parents, the church	Symbolizes the covenant of the one baptized with God and with the church
k. It is the work of God	It is the work of God
l. There is solidarity and identification of the parents and church with the work of Christ	There is solidarity and identification of the one baptized with the death and resurrection of Christ
m. The presence of the Holy Spirit	The presence of the Holy Spirit.

What Infant and Adult Baptisms Have in Common Theologically

On the basis of the differences seen above, we should reflect on the aspects that both baptisms have in common.

a. In both there is the possibility of failure.

b. In both the Church, the Body of Christ has responsibility.

c. In both the Blood of Christ purifies, cleanses the one baptized through the blood of Christ, represented in the sprinkling of water.

d. In both there is the promise of the faithfulness of God to the covenant that he establishes with the person.

e. In both there is identification and solidarity with the work of Christ in death and resurrection.

f. In both the free grace of God for the person is accepted.

g. In both the presence of the Holy Spirit is evident in the life of the church and the life of the one baptized.

h. Both are dependent on God for his faithful fulfillment of the promises symbolized in baptism.

Significant Theological Differences in Meaning Between Infant and Adult Baptisms.

a. The age of the one baptized.

b. The role that the parents and the church play in baptism.

c. The public confession of the one baptized.

d. The covenant of the one baptized with God and the Church.

e. That which the one baptized understands about the baptism.

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY INFANT BAPTISM?

In all the manifestations of the covenant of God with humans, it is obvious that the one initiating this new relationship is God himself, and not the individual. God sought out Adam and Eve after they had hidden themselves because of the sin they had committed. God chose and spoke to Noah when he least expected it. God looked for Abraham and called him to a pilgrimage that in reality was his search for God, and through which he found not only the land, but also his God. God called Moses on Mount Horeb. God, through Samuel, chose and prepared David to reign. God is the one who remained faithful when Israel abandoned the Covenant. God is the one who “so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (Jn. 3:16)

In baptism we need to emphasize that the sacrament involves first and foremost God’s initiative, and not the person’s faith-response. Immersionists have made immersion a testimonial of the faith of the believer, a test of the devotion of the individual, where he or she demonstrates his or her covenant with God. Nothing could be further from the primary emphasis of the Scriptures. Baptism is not the individual’s action, but God’s. The individual is baptized. This is a passive term. Baptism is something that is done to the one baptized, something that the one being baptized receives, not something that he or she does. God initiates, God does it. The one being baptized only receives the grace conferred.

However, though in second place, the covenant is also a call of God to the person to respond in faith, to conversion, to change their life style, life direction and life priorities. Repentance and conversion are intimately related to baptism. In receiving the grace of God, the individual responds in faith, in commitment, in repentance, in change. And this change is not only in the terms of the heart that accepts what God offers. This conversion is much more -- it is a commission to fulfill the mission that God ascribes to the believer at the moment of making a covenant with the person. God’s Covenant involves both election for salvation and election to participate in God’s mission to the world.

Adam received his responsibilities regarding his family and farming. Noah received his instructions about the animals that he was to save in the ark. Abraham received instructions about his family, his posterity, and the promised land. “And in you all the nations of the earth will bless themselves” was God’s word to Abraham. Moses received his commission to liberate the Israelite people from the oppression that they were suffering in Egypt – and to proclaim in Egypt that only the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was the true God. Israel, with Joshua, received instruction, mission, covenant, and commission to possess the promised land. David was commissioned to be the legal and ceremonial king of Israel, and to lead the People of God in the ways of Jehovah to continue his lineage in the reign, showcasing God’s grace and mercy before the nations that surrounded them. And Jesus, in his baptism, was commissioned to die. Jesus identified with sinners, those who only deserved death, who could in Jesus, by grace through faith receive new life.

So we see that the Covenant demonstrated in Baptism has two sides: The initiative, power, grace, commission, and mission come from God. The response, repentance for pardon, conversion, and participation in God’s mission are received by the Covenant Community of faith, the Church, and this includes the believing parent/s of the infant.

The Reformed tradition holds that on the basis of the faith of the parents and through the faith of the Church in Christ, its Head, the infant is received as a “member” of the faith community, and the community receives the covenant in the name of the infant being baptized. It is likened to someone giving a gift that is for an infant. It may be a ball or a bicycle. The infant is too small to know that this is a gift. So the parent receives the gift in the name of the child, to give it to him or her when ready to play with this gift. The gift is in reality for the child, but the believing community includes the believing parent/s who receive God’s promises for the infant in order to give it to the infant later on, at an appropriate time.

Yet to be a “member” in the sense of the child does not have the same meaning as it does with reference to adults who have publically professed their faith in Jesus Christ and become “members” of the church. Thus we have the category “non-communicant member” in the RCA to signal this difference. If this difference is ignored or downplayed, the infant’s being declared a “member” is tantamount to a christianization theology of infant baptism, something the Reformed tradition has never accepted. To blur these two meanings of “member” creates confusion.

In baptizing the child, the Church and the parents receive the gift that is given from God in the covenant of grace. This gift is kept until it can be given to the child when he or she can understand. That is, the parents are not responding for the child before God, nor are they annulling the faith of the child. Rather, the parents, as believers, and the Church, as the Body of Christ, receive the grace of God as a gift that will be given later to the child, upon the belief of the child, once the child is old enough to receive it.

In the Old Testament, each one of the persons with whom God made a covenant received the covenant not only for themselves, but for all their house. Therefore Abraham could circumcise all the males that were under his care, including his servants. Similarly, Moses, for example, received the Tables of the Law, the plan for the Tabernacle, and all the ceremonial laws for all Israel. This has to do with the principle of solidarity that presupposes a corporate understanding of the faith community. In the New Testament, this corporate People of God is the Church. The church and the parents receive the covenant to give the knowledge of this covenant to the child as the child grows up.

A Reformed view of infant baptism involves a strongly corporate understanding of the Church. In our present pre-Christian environment this will necessitate a significant amount of teaching, although many post-moderns tend to be more open to a corporate understanding of reality than their parents.

Even when we understand the corporate People of God receiving the promise of the Covenant for the entire community, including the infant, we still must consider the eventual confession of faith of the child. As an infant, the child has still not yet confessed his or her faith nor received the benefits of the covenant on his or her own account. Remember the cases of Isaac and Jacob – Ishmael and Esau. And remember the Pharisees standing before John the Baptist. John affirmed that although they had Abraham as their father, they could not escape the necessity to repent, ask for God’s pardon, and live a life full of the fruits of repentance. If we are to avoid baptismal regeneration or christianization and the nominalism and decline that accompanies such a view, we must still consider the issue of the confession of faith on the part of the baptized infant.

A way to resolve this situation is by giving due emphasis to the eventual confession (or confession) of faith on the part of the one baptized. We could say that in the case of infant baptism, the baptism takes place in two parts: The sprinkling of the infant is linked to that child’s eventual confession of faith later on. In this sense we can bring together the person’s faith-response with God’s initiative of establishing a covenantal relationship with the child. But we do not do this often. We place great emphasis on the baptism of the child. But in the RCA we have tended to downplay the child’s anticipated – in fact, expected – personal confession of faith in Jesus Chris several years later.

We must amplify our idea of infant baptism by including more intentionally the person’s eventual profession of faith. In baptizing infants, in reality we anticipate the day in which they, by their own accord, will respond in faith to God’s Covenant with them. This is a baptism that looks to the future, expecting its completion in the profession of faith of the individual that is baptized. We might say that upon making the profession of faith, a child of the church is ratifying and fulfilling what is promised at baptism. A promise without fulfillment is an empty promise. Fulfillment without the promise does not make sense. The two must be kept together.

So if the parents and the Church together accept the gift of God’s grace for the infant, there is also a very serious commitment on the part of the parents and the Church to see that this promise of the covenant, this commitment to receive God’s grace by faith, is fulfilled, completed on the day when the child to make his or her own profession of faith.

The children of believers need to be given the possibility of saying “no” to God’s offer. And they need to be encouraged to say “yes,” to respond in faith-commitment and faith-confession to God’s covenantal grace.

If our baptized children never profess their faith, their baptism itself loses significance, meaning and validity, because there is no reciprocating faith on their part to respond to God’s grace. What can we say about the thousands of baptized children in our RCA churches who never appropriate personally their spiritual birthright because they never make their own personal confession of faith, never commit themselves in covenant with God, and never take their place in the commission and mission of God to the world? Their baptism as infants has lost its significance. The seed of infant baptism must grow, develop and mature into a life consecrated to God. The confession of faith on the part of the infant at an appropriate age is essential. The child can then understand the promise and blessing that was received by the faith community, the Church, at baptism and an infant. God’s promises that were received then on the basis of God’s Covenant are now fulfilled.

As Reformed Christians, we urgently need to develop an in-depth teaching and discipling of our baptized children. We need to constantly teach them the importance and the significance of baptism that they have received as infants, and the covenant that God has made with them. It is imperative that we carefully bring them to the moment when they will be ready to receive by faith and commitment the fulfillment of the promise that was made years earlier in their baptism. To effect this teaching in the home and in the church, we also need to be completely convinced of the importance of baptism to our children.

Why baptize infants?

Why celebrate the promise of God’s covenantal care by baptizing infants?

Ø Because the promise exists: It has been made by God.

Ø Because it is a sign of the Covenant that is a reality by God’s grace and election.

Ø Because both the parents and the church are responsible to fulfill the implications of the covenant in the life of the child.

Ø Because it is the seal, the earnest to affect the fulfillment of the promise -- it is the first indication of the second part.

Ø Because of God’s command.

Ø For the proclamation to all nations of the Gospel of God’s love.

Ø Because in the celebration of infant baptism the parents and the faith community, the Church, commit themselves to participate in God’s mission to the nations.

In the case of an adult converted when grown, the two parts -- the promise and the fulfillment of baptism -- are joined in a single act at the same instant in sprinkling and confession. Baptism and confession of faith are simultaneous. In the case of infant baptism, there is a temporal separation between the promise and the fulfillment; a temporal but not logical separation that we have seen has its beginnings in God’s Covenant with humans, with their children, unto the third and fourth generation of those who seek Him.

Why emphasize the profession of faith?

This question is important because in our day there are many children of the church who never confess their faith in Christ. It is as if they were “Christianized” as children, making it seem that they do not need the second part of professing their own faith before many witnesses. It is at this point that the immersionists tell us that infant baptism has lost its validity -- because it does not come to fulfillment in confession of a personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And, clearly, in the New Testament salvation is received by faith, confessed with the lips, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. Why emphasize the confession of faith?

a. Because the child has the duty and right to freely seek the benefits of his or her baptism, and appropriate them to his or her own life.

b. Because this gives the person baptized as an infant the option to say “no” – or to personally appropriate the promise – it gives the person a choice. Of course, we know that it is by God’s election and through the grace-filled operation of the Holy Spirit that the person is able to say “yes” to God’s covenantal promises.

c. Because the grown child now can respond personally to God’s covenantal initiative.

d. Because the infant, once grown, commits him/herself to God, to the church, and to God’s mission to the nations.

e. Because the child, the parents, and the People of God in the act of profession of faith, celebrate and give thanks for the fulfillment of a promise made years before in baptism.

f. Because the fulfilled promise is sealed in the heart of the child by the Holy Spirit, for this person and his or her children – and is sealed in the hearts of the congregation.

g. Because public confession of faith in Jesus Christ is commanded by God.

h. Because public confession of faith in Jesus Christ is the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ for the nations.

A PROCESS OF CONVERSATION:

In what follows, I have attempted to make a short-hand list of what we might agree on, disagree about, and reserve as discretionary matters. You might not be in accord as to the items I have placed in each category – and if so, I would suggest you move them to where you would feel comfortable. You might think of other items of theological meaning that you would want to include in a certain category – please add them to your list.

WHAT WE WOULD AGREE ON IN THE CLASSIS?

1. The “Sola’s” of the Reformation are foundational to our understanding of baptism. The Reformed doctrine of Election is foundational for our understanding of baptism.

2. Water is important for baptism.

3. The Standards are our basis for the understanding the theological MEANING of Baptism. TULIP: we understand the infant baptism draws first from God’s grace, secondarily related to human response – thus, the doctrine of election, covenant theology, the meaning of “baptism” as a sprinkling of washing through God’s forgiveness of sin, God’s sovereignty and God’s initiative are all part of our understanding of IB. Baptism is God’s action, not the church’s nor the person’s.

4. Covenant Theology is foundational – God’s special mark, attention and care is placed on covenant children of believers, unto the 3^rd and 4^th generation – God’s covenantal promises flow throughout all of Scripture.

5. B is God’s action -- and calls for the person’s and the believing community’s reception.

6. We do not accept christianization – no “salvation” per se – in the baptism of the infant. IB is not the Church’s act; IB does not save. Here we differ markedly from Roman Catholic sacramentalism.

7. In this regard, we agree that the 1994-1995 RCA liturgy says too much. The 1968 is acceptable, with one provision – it needs stronger emphasis on the subsequent Confession of Faith on the part of the infant now grown – and this needs to be linked to the person’s earlier baptism as an infant.

8. We agree that it is essential that there be a subsequent personal appropriation and confession of faith by the person baptized as an infant. Though IB is “complete” with reference to God’s promises, it is incomplete with reference to the person’s personal appropriation of those promises and public confession that Jesus Christ is Lord. This linkage is essential for IB to make biblical sense. IB is eschatologically anticipatory of such a time when the person, at the age of discretion, shall receive and appropriate personally through Confession of Faith God’s covenant promises earlier received by the faith community. IB is not fulfilled until such time when the person confesses faith in Jesus Christ

9. We do not accept infant dedication – it is not biblical, except in cases of a parent dedicating a child for life-long ministry as, for example, in the cases of Samuel and Samson. But this is a different issue from IB.

10. We do not accept “ex opere operatio” – that the water in itself (either sprinkling or immersion) has any effectual influence whatsoever – except as a “sign and seal” of God’s promises that the Holy Spirit may use to affirm the faith of all participants.

11. There is a difference between the children of believers and the children of unbelievers. God promises God’s special attention, a special relationship with them, and calls for a special responsibility on their part. Children of believers grow in the midst of a believing faith community. One way to say this is to notice that the children of believers who have been discipled in the faith must make an effort to say “NO” to God’s grace already promised. Whereas the children of unbelievers need to be helped to understand God’s grace and enabled by the Holy Spirit to say “YES” to God’s covenantal love.

12. The act of immersion is a biblical imagery signifying God’s promises and forgiveness as the person identifies with Christ in Christ’s dying and rising (Rom. 4-6), received by the faith community and by the person baptized as a sign and seal of God’s covenant promises. This “dying and rising” presupposes a confession on the part of the one being baptized. This imagery is weak in paedobaptist traditions.

WHAT WE MIGHT DISAGREE ON IN THE CLASSIS?

1. That there should be any question whatsoever regarding IB, no discussion may apparently be necessary, since this issue is clearly stated in our Standards, in our government and in our liturgy.

2. That the matter of theological understanding of IB should not be a roadblock for new candidates for ministry in the classis.

3. On whether believing adults and their children should be baptized with water (as contrasted to baptizing only confessing adults).

4. That the use of the sacramental FORM: water – sprinkling, aspersion, or immersion – is secondary to the MEANING that has to do with receiving God’s covenantal promises. In other words, that the use of water is primarily a pastoral and contextual – a missiological – matter, due to the pervasive misuse and misunderstanding associated with IV in the minds of new members of our churches.

5. That leaders in our churches (including deacons and elders) need not be in agreement with a Reformed understanding of IB.

6. That pastors in the RCA are expected to baptize their children as infants.

7. Whether the MEANING of baptism as applied to an infant differs theologically from the meaning as applied to an adult being baptized.

8. That infant dedication is unacceptable in the RCA.

WHAT MIGHT BE A DISCRETIONARY MATTER THROUGHOUT THE CLASSIS?

1. It is a discretionary matter when to use the water: that the use of water for baptizing an infant in terms of a “reception of God’s covenantal promises” might be postponed until water is used at the time of the Confession of Faith by that infant now grown – either by sprinkling, aspersion, or immersion.

2. That “one baptism” may not necessarily mean that B is an unrepeatable celebration in which the person might participate more than once. One baptism signifies one meaning and one theology (over against Anabaptism practice of re-baptism). The repeatability issue may be more closely likened in Scripture to covenant renewal that was repeated many times by the People of God.

3. A consistory and pastor may choose between:

To “receive God’s covenantal promises” without the use of water, looking to the day when the person publically confesses faith in Jesus Christ (To avoid confusion this celebration would not be called “baptism.”).
Or traditional water sprinkling infant baptism wherein the covenant believing community received God’s promises, looking to the day when the person publically confesses faith in Jesus Christ.

4. That the churches in our classis who practice infant baptism are committed to a careful, clear and consistent discipling of the children of believers, looking to the day that their IB – their “engagement with Christ” is fulfilled in the marriage of their personal confession of faith in Jesus Christ. Christian instruction and guidance of the children of believers through prayer and example by the pastors and members of our churches is not optional.

QUESTION: IS THERE ANOTHER ALTERNATIVE FOR A BIBLICAL APPROACH TO BAPTISM IN OUR CLASSIS?

CONCLUSION

My hope and prayer is that this process of reflection and discernment will be one that brings us together more closely and provides greater clarity for all of us as to how we may celebrate together God’s covenantal promises signified in infant baptism – and thus more clearly and effectively proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ to a lost and hurting world so loved by God.

Web posted: April 12, 2005

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PREAMBLE

Where do we go from here?