LESSON EIGHT
2003-2004
BAPTISM
A. Issue of baptizing infants.
1. The first issue to divide opponents of papacy in the Reformation.
2. Revived in Protestant German territorial churches in 1950’s and 1960’s.
a. Approximately 40 pastors (some Lutheran) ready to dispense with baptizing their own children.
b. Others were ready to do so in their churches entirely.
1. The doctrine of Luther that children could believe.
2. Since Enlightenment, nearly all German Protestant theologians have denied this.
a. Position fundamental to Baptist position.
b. Inevitably, leads to dispensing with infant baptism, unless other considerations introduced.
c. Karl Barth: wholesale rejection in 1967.
(1) Had theology of the encounter.
(2) The divine “I” or “Thou” meeting the human “I”.
(3) The moment of the encounter was the moment of revelation.
(4) Required the participation of the human “I”.
(5) Infants not capable of attaining to his encounter with God.
1. At about same time (1938-1971)
2. An exegetical and historical debate between two widely recognized New Testament scholars in Europe.
a. Joachim Jeremias: affirmative (early church did)
b. Kurt Aland: negative (early church did not)
3. Neither advocated abolishing altogether.
4. Note that historical evidence generally mustered to support prior convictions, not vice versa.
5. At center of debate:
a. Greek ο̉ικος (oikos, house).
b. Greek ο̉ικία (oikia, household)
c. Esp., in Acts.
6. In Acts
a. Baptism presented as the rite of initiation.
b. First, Gospel preached.
c. Next, people confess sins and Jesus as Lord and Christ.
d. Then, admitted into fellowship through Baptism.
e. Pattern follows pre-Easter practices of John and Jesus.
f. But, is significant that this, in Acts, often takes place in households.
g. A household, in ancient world, more like an extended family than a nuclear family.
(1) e.g. Crispus: cf Ac 18:8 and 1Co 1:14.
(2) Seems to be same person.
(3) Would therefore seem that his household formed nucleus of that synagogue.
(4) Raises the possibility that his children belonged to synagogue.
(5) Which would provide ancillary evidence for including children in the church and their being baptized.
7. Synagogues
a. Came to prominence after fall of Jerusalem in 70AD.
b. But were the centers of Jewish life.
c. Also provided the setting for the ministries of Jesus.
d. The household of Crispus.
(1) Had served as a synagogue.
(2) Became a setting for a church.
(3) Inclusion of children in that synagogue quite plausible.
(4) They were already members of his household.
e. Other evidence were included in synagogue procedures.
(1) Children occasionally called “rulers of the synagogue”.
(2) May mean title was hereditary.
(3) Such titled children most certainly included in synagogues.
(4) When synagogues converted, children would have maintained place.
(5) 2Ti 3:15; 2Ti 1:4,5.
(a) “The sacred writings” included entire Old Testament.
(b) Were very costly, beyond ability of ordinary people.
(c) Women unlikely to have been given responsibility of reading them even to own children.
(d) Biblical scrolls were the treasured possessions of synagogues.
(e) Scrolls were for public reading in synagogues and the church.
(f) Timothy’s inclusion in synagogue highly probable.
II. Historical and Theological Debate
A. Jeremias’ and Aland’s debate.
1. Not about whether households served as churches.
2. Rather was about whether children were included in them.
3. Debate important.
a. Not because practice is necessarily derived from recorded apostolic customs.
b. But because a negative finding would lend support to those opposing it.
4. Aland’s arguments.
a. Were important for Baptists.
b. Even though he himself was not persuaded to give up baptizing children.
c. Theological convictions overcame his own historical conclusions.
5. No explicit New Testament reference that infants were baptized.
a. Can not be simply dismissed.
b. Cf Holy communion re: women.
B. Book of Acts.
1. An account of missionary church, Word spreading in Roman Empire.
2. Therefore, not surprising it recounts how adults heard Gospel and were baptized.
3. Absence of reference to children.
a. Not unusual phenomenon.
b. Unless gathering specifically for children, not mentioned.
c. Is more so of infants.
C. Pauline epistles.
1. Are more informative and detailed re: established matured church.
2. Are not missionary documents.
3. Are treatises on how Christians act and what they believe.
D. Accounts of church’s later developments, esp. in post-apostolic period, provide explicit historical detail re: baptizing infants.
E. Scriptural references.
1. Ac 2:38,39 (“and your children”).
a. Includes promise church will survive for generations (Mt 16:18).
b. Also includes children of those present in the promise.
c. “Children”, includes those not yet at age of maturity.
d. Passage is “the Magna Carta” for the rest of Acts.
e. Promise here applies to all those recorded in Acts as being baptized.
f. Promise including their children given to them also.
g. Mk 16:20.
2. Households of the ancient world.
a. Were self-contained social units (parents, children, servants and slaves and their children and others attached for agricultural or business reasons).
b. In size, some approximated small villages.
c. Argument centers on households of Cornelius, Lydia, or the jailer in Philippi.
(1) Question re: infants: absolute certainty elusive.
(2) But possibility can not be denied.
(3) Highly probable children were in all these.
(4) All three being childless, highly improbable.
d. 1Cor also speaks of households.
(1) 1Co 1:16.
(2) 1Co 1:14: clear implication of households.
(3) A significant number to be thankful for!
(4) Beyond these, add the great many households in which apostles preached and formed into churches.
(5) Ones without children would have been rare.
e. Households were embraced within the church.
(1) 1Co 16:15,19.
(2) (Eph 5:21-6:9)
(3) (Gal 3:28).
(4) 1Jn 2:12-14.
3. Under laws of historical probability, arguments strong in direction of Baptism of children and infants.
a. Must choose one of two options.
(1) Early church did not baptize infants, but an unknown person later introduced a practice foreign to established church custom, or
(2) Church from earliest times did baptize children.
b. 1st option: these is no report in existence of any disruption accompanying its introduction.
(1) Some one would have objected.
(2) Customs important (cf. circumcision)
4. Another demonstration in support: New Testament includes infants in the church.
a. Not chiefly historical but exegetical arguments (depends on how they are read).
b. Our Confessions argue the matter theologically.
(1) Is introduced as a corollary to doctrine of original sin.
(2) “All men who are propagated according to nature are born in sin”, with only solution provided by rebirth through “Baptism and the Holy Spirit” (AC II 1,2)
c. At start of Reformation, infant Baptism virtually only form of Baptism practiced.
d. Necessary for salvation.
e. Mt 28:19.
f. Theological principles of Law and Gospel are applicable to children as anyone else.
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