Davenant and Ward on Infant Baptism

Joel Garver, ubiquitous in his learning and lauded by divines across the world, has translated a letter from John Davenant to Samuel Ward, and he has also reposted a letter from Ward to Archbishop Ussher. Both letters have to do with the efficacy of infant baptism.

Davenant’s letter to Ward is here.

Ward’s letter to Ussher is here.
Both men affirm that some type of grace is given to all in baptism. Particularly, they affirm that original guilt is taken away from all baptized infants.

Davenant also affirms some critical distinctions between “efficacy” in infants and “efficacy” in those who have reached the age of reason. Two particularly important statements that he makes are:

That the justification, regeneration, adoption, which we admit does belong to baptized infants, is not univocally the same with that justification, regeneration, and adoption, which we say is never lost with regard to the matter of the saints’ perseverance.

and:

The justification and regeneration and adoption of baptized infants confers on them a state of salvation according to the condition of infants.

So baptized infants have “infant benefits” so to speak. These are not the same as those possessing full use of their reason, which would be the ever-persevering benefits. However, these “infant benefits” are sufficient for the infants’ salvation prior to reaching such age.

I believe this is essentially Calvin’s position as well, and it is how we should understand his own language of people rejecting the grace that was given to them at baptism. Compare what we’ve seen in Davenant to this from Calvin:

It is certainly true that when children of believers reach the age of discernment [and have never repented or believed] they will have alienated themselves from God and destroyed utterly the truth of baptism. But this is not to say that our Lord has not elected them and separated them from others in order to grant them His salvation. Otherwise, it would be in vain for Saint Paul to say that a child of a believing father or mother is sanctified, who would be impure if he were born of and descended from unbelievers (1 Cor. 7:14).

~ John Calvin, Treatises Against the Anabaptists and Against the Libertines pg. 52

Jean Daille on the Efficacy of Baptism

Daille was a Reformed minister in Paris, writing in the early to middle part of the seventeenth century. He represents a form of French Reformed theology which was widely lost after the persecution of the Huguenots. He has a few works translated into English, however, and you can perhaps access them on google books or at a nearby theological library. Of the available ones, I’ve found his book on the Right Use of the Fathers, his commentary on Philippians, and his commentary on Colossians.

Here is a bit of one of his sermons on Col. 2:12:

In truth, all the means of which God makes use in religion have no other tendency than to communicate Jesus Christ to us, as dead, buried, and risen again for us, to the destruction of our old man and the vivification of the new. Nor do they ever fail to produce these two effects in any of those who receive them as they ought. Therefore the holy apostles frequently ascribe them to the word of the gospel, which is the first and principal means which God employs to save us, in consequence of which it is called his power to salvation, Rom. i.16…

But although these two effects effects [death and resurrection] are common to all the means which God has instituted and makes use of in religion, yet the apostle speaks here only of baptism, first, because it is the first seal which we receive of our Saviour, and the proper sacrament of our regeneration, which contains the initial and beginning of our spiritual life in the house of God; consequently, when treating of the same subject in his Epistle to the Romans, chap. vi. 3,4, he makes mention of baptism in the same manner: “Know ye not,” says he, “that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore, we are buried with him by baptism.” Secondly, he so speaks that he might with more clearness confute the error which he here combats, even by opposing to the circumcision which the seducers pressed that baptism which we have received in Jesus Christ, by which has been fully communicated to us all that these people pretended to draw from the use of circumcision. Their folly was, therefore, so much the more insupportable, as they not only retained a shadow, of which Jesus Christ has given us the true body, but also would not allow one of the old sacraments of Moses to give place to one of those which Jesus instituted. If the question be of the substance and the very effect of circumcision, we have that truth and fullness in Jesus Christ, of which it had only some part shadowed out by its figure. If the subject be the sacrament itself, the Lord has given us one highly excelling, namely, baptism. So that, whichever way it is taken, there is no reason whatever that any man should desire still to retain circumcision.

Baptism to the Rescue

Calvin says that we need something to assure us that God really loves us. We hear it, and that ought to be enough, but we being weak need more:

And what if someone asks whether the word is sufficient? True, it should indeed suffice, and we must blame our vices and our unbelief for the fact that we do not attribute enough weight and authority to God’s word. The fact is that we are so weak that even after God speaks to us, we need him to add some confirmation to bring us to the understanding of what he wants to show us. For example, we will be told daily that our Lord Jesus Christ yielded himself to death for us in testimony of the love which God bears us and by which he adopts us as his children. That information will be repeated often, and it is worthy of our trust and of our receiving it as teaching from heaven. But our natures are so weak that even if we are instructed in it every day, we cannot accept what God says to us, but are always doubtful. There is no steadfastness in us. Our Lord supplies our deficiency and adds baptism, by which he gives us a visible sign that we are washed by the blood of Jesus Christ.

Now I’m not sure I agree with how Calvin words this, as if the Sacraments would be unnecessary in a perfect world, however, I do agree with him as to what the sacraments communicate.

Baptism says, to the party baptized, that they are washed by the blood of Jesus Christ.  Analyze it all you want, but whatever you decide, you must believe it.

You can read the entire sermon over at David’s blog.

The Gilgalling of Jericho

Joshua 5:2-9

At that time the LORD said to Joshua, “Make flint knives for yourself, and circumcise the sons of Israel again the second time.” So Joshua made flint knives for himself, and circumcised the sons of Israel at the hill of the foreskins. And this is the reason why Joshua circumcised them: All the people who came out of Egypt who were males, all the men of war, had died in the wilderness on the way, after they had come out of Egypt. For all the people who came out had been circumcised, but all the people born in the wilderness, on the way as they came out of Egypt, had not been circumcised. For the children of Israel walked forty years in the wilderness, till all the people who were men of war, who came out of Egypt, were consumed, because they did not obey the voice of the LORD—to whom the LORD swore that He would not show them the land which the LORD had sworn to their fathers that He would give us, “a land flowing with milk and honey.” Then Joshua circumcised their sons whom He raised up in their place; for they were uncircumcised, because they had not been circumcised on the way.

So it was, when they had finished circumcising all the people, that they stayed in their places in the camp till they were healed. Then the LORD said to Joshua, “This day I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.” Therefore the name of the place is called Gilgal to this day.

At the outset of the Holy War, the people of Israel have to become holy. Their reproach has to be rolled away through the rolling away of the flesh.

They then proceed to roll away Jericho, as they march around the city until its outer covering falls off.

In the new covenant we are given instructions to make the world holy. We roll away its reproach through the new sign of sanctification, baptism.

Matthew 28: 18-20

And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.

(James Jordan originally pointed out the connection between the circumcision of the people at Gilgal and the circumcision of the city at Jericho. His lectures on this can be found in his Numbers through Judges Survey at the Auburn Ave. media site.)

Baptism and “the Norm”

I’d just like to say that I look forward to the day when there will be no more adult baptisms.

Take Away the Doctrine of Original Sin, and the Baptism of Infants Seems to be a Very Ridiculous Thing

Anyone familiar with Augustine’s writings against Pelagius will recognize when his methodology reappears in later writers. One of his more memorable proofs for original sin was infant baptism. The argument went something like this, “If they don’t have any sin, then why are we baptizing them for the remission of sins?” You can’t wash off something that isn’t there.

This was a simple but effective maneuver. Peter Brown argues in his biography on Augustine that it was the practice of infant baptism that secured popular support for Augustine. Just like with Athanasius, liturgical practice helped secure dogma, at least in the larger public arena.

Again, the argument works because the belief that baptism washes away sins is presumed. Baptismal Regeneration was a doctrine universally agreed on prior to similar agreement on the doctrine of original sin. Therefore it could serve as the ground of the argument for original sin.

I find it informative that Augustine could use the argument in the 4th century, but it is even more interesting to me that folks still used it in the 17th century. Edward Polhill did just that in England in 1678 (*Hint- This is about thirty years after the Westminster Assembly). Here’s his argument:

Our Saviour Christ instituted baptism, and that for infants; but if there be no original pollution in them, what need a washing ordinance for them? The washing of their bodies, whose pure, innocent, undefiled souls are incapable of spiritual washing, is but a shadow without substance, a sacrament without internal grace, a thing too insignificant for Christ the wisdom of God to institute. Hence, when the Pelagians on the one hand granted the baptism of infants, and on the other denied original sin, St. Austin saith, that hey spoke wonderful things. In sacramento salvatoris baptizantur, sed non salvantur, redimuntur sed non liberantur, lavantur sed non abluuntur; In our Saviour’s sacrament infants are baptized, but not saved; redeemed, but not delivered; washed but not cleansed. And a little after he asks, If they are saved, what was their sickness? If delivered, what their servitude? If cleansed, what their pollution? Take away the doctrine of original sin, and the baptism of infants seems to be a very ridiculous thing. To avoid this absurdity, the Pelagians asserted, That the baptism of infants was necessary, not because there was any original sin in them, but that they might be capable of the kingdom of heaven. But I answer, Where there is no defect, there is all due perfection. If infants are pure and free from all sin, then have they all their righteousness and rectitude which ought to be in them; and if they have so, they are, without baptism, capable of heaven; or if they were not, the baptismal washing, which imports pollution, seems to be a ceremony very unfit and incongruous to be applied to them who are without spot, or to render them apt for heaven.

~ A View of Some Divine Truths pg 58-59

So in a dramatic sort of irony, we could say that those who deny baptismal regeneration are the semi-Pelagians.

Martin Bucer: Our Baptism is Christ’s Baptism

Our baptism, then, is Christ’s baptism, which the church must use, the symbol of our acceptance before God. By this symbol for the first time our regeneration and renewal through the Holy Spirit are offered and presented by words and washing in water, out of God’s kindness towards us in Christ earlier revealed to us. By it we are first consecrated to and ingrafted into the Father, the son and the Holy Spirit.

~ Martin Bucer What Should Be Believed About the Baptism of Infants (1553) quoted in David Wright’s Martin Bucer: Reforming Church and Community pg. 100

Why Were You Baptized As An Infant?

Q. 17 What do you call the Sacraments?

A. They are visible signs and seals ordained of God for the confirmation of my faith.

Q. 18 How do they confirm your faith?

A. By receiving them as pledges that Christ crucified (represented and offered in them) is given to me in particular to be my Savior.

Q. 19 How many Sacraments are there?

A. Two: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

Q. 20 Why were you baptized as an infant?

A. That thereby I might be ingrafted into Christ, and entered in His Church, which is His mystical Body.

Q. 21 What profit do you have by Baptism now?

A. It seals up the remission of my sins in Christ’s blood’ and advances the renovation of my heart in His Spirit: which are my spiritual washing.

The A, B, C or A Catechism For Young Children: Scotland 1641

How Do You Know?

I believe that I am and always will be a member of this church or people of God (John 10:28,29), since I believe in Christ, have been baptized into His name, and trust the promise, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved” [Mark 16:16]. I believe and am baptized; therefore I shall be saved. That is the only way, for Christ promised it.

~ Caspar Olevianus A Firm Foundation: An Aid to Interpreting the Heidelberg Catechism pg. 96 Lord’s Day 21 Q132

Baptism in Genesis 1

“And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”

This is a Day 1 scenario.  We know that light will be unveiled, and we know that Day 1 corresponds with Day 5 and Day 7, thus solidifying the connection between the Spirit’s work and judgment.  When God sees, He judges.  Making light is connected with that seeing.  In fact, the two words are plays on one another in Genesis 1 as “light” is AR and “see” is RA.

And so we see that the Spirit and the Water work together in judgment to create something new.  This will be a continuing theme all throughout the Bible, and when Jesus comes to baptize with fire (light), we shouldn’t be surprised to see him using the water.

Heavenly fire will become water in other places as well.  The fire comes down to lick up Elijah’s water-altars, but in the New Testament the fire comes down on the Apostles and they retain their water.  They proceed to fire-baptize people all throughout the book of Acts.  When God baptizes Jerusalem in AD 70, His fire is present.