Baptism Debates

Justin Taylor has recently posted Lig Duncan’s view on paedobaptism in an attempt to give the paedobaptist view a credible hearing I suppose. As can be naturally expected his post has brought with it a long stream of comments batting about the issue of baptism from the two differing perspectives. Everyone has their arsenal loaded with their favourite books that disprove this or that theory and they throw them at each other. Everyone states how they moved, in their own thinking, from one position to another.

So instead of weighing in to that stream of comments I thought I’d post here on my own opinions on the subject. It would just be wrong if I didn’t weigh in with my credentials! So I was a baptist, even worked for a baptist church – now I’m an Anglican and a sympathizer with the paedobaptist view (how’s those credentials?). The piece of literature that helped me most in my shift in thinking was this article by Dennis Johnson, who like me moved from a baptist to a paedobaptist position. Since reading the article a number of my colleagues have cemented my thinking on the subject. In all of it though I found the article most convincing – even more so than Lig Duncan’s article.

To me the issue comes down to the discontinuity/continuity debate – wherever you draw your line on that issue is where you’re going to draw your line on the baptism issue – the baptism is just a subset of the bigger debate. Anyway – read the article and see what you think.

Baptism?

Justin Taylor interviews Thomas Schreiner on the subject of baptism. The interview is in view of a new book Believer’s Baptism: Sign of the New Covenant in Christ, which is edited by Schreiner. The interview was of interest to me as one who over the last 3 years has slowly moved from a Baptist position to an Evangelical Anglican position. I’ve been wrestling with the whole issue of baptism for quite a while now and so I’ve read quite a large number of articles and books both for and against infant baptism and/or believer’s baptism.

Upon reading the interview I thought Schreiner’s arguments were a bit weak in that he doesn’t really seem to interact with a truly evangelical infant-baptist view – or at least not the view I’ve been taught and that my denomination (CESA) practices. If the interview is a fair representation of the book then I don’t suppose it’s going to really say anything new in this age-old debate and so I find myself more and more comfortable and sympathizing with the infant baptist view. To get a more accurate idea of where my thinking is going on this subject read this article by Dennis Johnson of Westminster Seminary.

I get the feeling, more often than not, upon reading baptist defenses of adult believer’s baptism that they consider their view absolutely and dogmatically water-tight in terms of how it squares with the Bible – this worries me. In my mind, and reading of the subject, there are just too many questions and grey areas concerning both views for me to be dogmatic in that way about either view. I’m failing to see humility as this subject is approached especially amongst evangelicals which deeply distresses me.

As a young trainee minister trying to find his feet in gospel work it’s quite a shock to the system to deal with all this disagreement between evangelicals – it’s really depressing actually.