Baptism is not only a sign of profession, and mark of difference, whereby Christian men are discerned from others that be not christened, but it is also a sign of Regeneration or New-Birth, whereby, as by an instrument, they that receive Baptism rightly are grafted into the Church; the promises of the forgiveness of sin, and of our adoption to be the sons of God by the Holy Ghost, are visibly signed and sealed; Faith is confirmed, and Grace increased by virtue of prayer unto God.
The Baptism of young Children is in any wise to be retained in the Church, as most
agreeable with the institution of Christ.
by the Rev. Dr. D. Jonathan Grieser
Historical Background
Baptismal theology in the sixteenth century was shaped by the great debates of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations—over justification by faith, the nature and efficacy of the sacraments, ecclesiology. It is possible, however, that if a substantial and persistent critique of the practice of infant baptism hadn’t emerged in the early 1520s, that the topic of baptism would hardly have received mention in many of the era’s confessions and formularies.
Just as Huldreich Zwingli was attempting to convince Zurich’s city fathers to enact reforms, from within his circle of supporters emerged a group that began to call into question the traditional theology and practice of infant baptism. In a series of treatises and public debates, Zwingli engaged these dissidents who were at the same time among the most articulate advocates for thoroughgoing religious reform. In the course of these debates, Zwingli crafted a theology of baptism and a sacramental theology that would bring him into sharp conflict with Martin Luther and ultimately result in the division of Lutheran and Reformed movements.[1]
Zwingli’s efforts to convince the doubters on infant baptism failed. In January 1525, a group of men, many of them among Zwingli’s closest associates, baptized each other. Zwingli and the Zurich City Council moved quickly to outlaw the practice. In 1527, the first Zurich citizen was executed for rebaptizing. The group, and similar groups that arose elsewhere in the Holy Roman Empire and the Netherlands, came to be known as Anabaptists—rebaptizers, a name given them in order to bring them under the old Roman Imperial law code that punished rebaptizers with execution.
In 1534, Anabaptists and their supporters gained control of the city of Münster in Westfalia. Dominated by apocalyptic fervor, these Anabaptists maintained control of Muenster for eighteen months. A coalition of Protestant and Catholic forces eventually laid siege to the city. As it continued, and as conditions in the city worsened, community of goods and plural marriage were introduced. The spectacle of these Anabaptists controlling a large town in Germany where they awaited Christ’s Second Coming brought terror to religious and political leaders throughout Europe, including England. For decades, the specter of the Anabaptist Kingdom of Münster haunted European authorities.
The memory of the Anabaptist Kingdom of Münster shaped the 39 Articles, especially Article XXXVIII, which refers specifically to Anabaptists, as well as Articles XXXVII and XXXIX, which address oaths and the civil magistrate. These issues often were points of contention for Anabaptists, who survived in spite of intense persecution. Anabaptists were especially numerous in the Netherlands. Because of English and Dutch commercial ties, as well as proximity, Anabaptists made their way to England as well.[2] It’s also worth pointing out that the execution (burning at the stake) of two Flemish Anabaptists in London in 1575 was the first execution of Protestants in England under Queen Elizabeth I.[3]
While Anabaptists appealed to any number of New Testament texts to support believer’s baptism, their favorite prooftext was Mark 16:16: “The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned.” For Anabaptists, confession of faith was necessary for effective baptism and to ensure salvation. Because infants could neither have faith or confess it publicly, infant baptism was invalid.
In his writings against the Anabaptists, many of them his former friends and associates, Zwingli made the case that baptism is an outward sign that distinguishes Christians from non-Christians. Zwingli had compared baptism to the sign of the cross that Swiss soldiers wore on their uniforms to distinguish themselves from their enemies. But for Zwingli, baptism was little more than that sign of membership.
Zwingli made another move that would be crucial for Protestant theologies of baptism. In the absence of strong scriptural warrant for infant baptism in the New Testament, he appealed to the example of circumcision as a sign of the covenant God made with Abraham. Just as male infants were circumcised as a sign of the old covenant, infant baptism was a sign of the new covenant God made with humanity through Jesus Christ. With the analogy to circumcision in place, Zwingli would also begin to use “covenant” more extensively to understand the relationship between God and humans.[4]
Baptismal Theology in Article XXVII
The brief article on baptism addresses explicitly only one of the issues raised by Anabaptists, namely their rejection of infant baptism. Building on the discussion of the nature of sacraments in Article XXVI, its authors sought to negotiate between Zwingli’s outright rejection of a transformation in the soul effected by the waters of baptism and the Roman Catholic doctrine that baptism was necessary to salvation and that unbaptized infants were unregenerate and damned.
On the one hand, the article begins with a clear rejection of a Zwinglian understanding: “Baptism is not only a sign of profession and mark of difference.” It struggles to identify the relationship between the water of baptism and the profession of faith and the internal state of the individual’s soul. The language that is used suggests some sort of internal change. Baptism is “also a sign of Regeneration or New-Birth.” How that happens is unclear.
The article states that this regeneration takes place “… as by an instrument,” a word which has several meanings in English: the obvious one, a tool or device, but it can also have the sense of a written record or document, a legal device. Article XXVII retains that ambiguity. Baptism is evidence of the regeneration and new-birth of Christians; it grafts them on to the church and promises them forgiveness of sins but there is no sense that baptism objectively accomplishes those effects. The use of “instrument” threads a needle skillfully. On the one hand, it suggests that something happens: grafting, forgiveness of sins, etc. but retains the ambiguity that such results might not occur in all cases as well as leaving unspecified how precisely those effects come about. In short, “instrument” states that these effects occur from baptism, but does not clarify how they occur, or if they necessarily occur.[5]
Another striking element in this article is the relative unimportance of sin. There is no mention of original sin, thus no necessity for infant baptism to remove its stain. While sin, both original sin and the questions of sins committed after baptism are treated elsewhere in the Thirty-Nine Articles, the lack of a reference to original sin here suggests that the article’s authors may have been closer to Zwingli’s position (that baptism cannot wash away the stain of original sin because material things cannot have spiritual effects) than to the Roman Catholic one. It’s also quite dramatically different than the view on baptism expressed in the Confessio Augustana:
“Of Baptism they teach that it is necessary to salvation, and that through Baptism is offered the grace of God, and that children are to be baptized who, being offered to God through Baptism are received into God’s grace.”[6]
Here, baptism is necessary to salvation. The grace of God is offered through baptism and those who are baptized are received into God’s grace. The clarity of the Lutheran position underscores the ambiguity of Article XXVII’s formulation. (In the Ten Articles of 1536, not only is baptism declared necessary to salvation and that it removes the stain of original sin, it also states unequivocally that unbaptized infants are damned).[7]
Article XXVII does mention forgiveness of sins. Here, too, the language is more opaque than clarifying. The “promise of forgiveness of sins” is among those things that are visibly signed and sealed in baptism. Salvation, regeneration, new birth are promised or made possible through baptism but there is no guarantee. To put it another way: baptism is not efficacious ex opere operato.
However ambiguous Article XVII may be, the rite as constructed in the Book of Common Prayer leaves little wiggle room. Comparison of the article on baptism with the baptismal liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer reveals the contradiction between the stated position of the Article and the theology of the rite:
DEARELY beloved, for asmuche as all men bee conceyved and borne in synne, and that oure Saviour Christ saith, none can entre into the kingdom of God (except he be regenerate and borne a newe of water and the holy Ghost); I beseche you to call upon God the father through our Lord Jesus Christ, that of his bounteous mercie, he will graunt to these children, that thing which by nature they cannot have, that they may be Baptized with water and the holy ghoste, and receyved into Christes holy church, and be made lyvely membres of the same. (1559)
While sin receives short shrift in Article XXVII, it dominates the rite in the Book of Common Prayer. All people are conceived and born in sin and (quoting John 3:5), no one can enter the Kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Holy Spirit. This language conforms to Article IX (Of Original or Birth Sin) that “there is no condemnation for them that believe and are baptized.,” alluding to Mark 16:16.
In Article XXVII and in the Elizabethan Book of Common Prayer, there seems to be a groping toward a baptismal theology that abandoned the traditional understanding of the effects of baptism being the washing away of original sin and as necessary to salvation. The rubrics in the BCP observe that in the Early Church, baptism was commonly observed only on Easter and Pentecost in the presence of the whole congregation. Recognizing the difficulty of enforcing this change, the BCP encouraged baptisms to take place on Sundays in public but acknowledged (and provided a rite for) private baptisms in homes. Among the stated reasons for preferring public baptisms were the symbolism of the newly baptized being welcomed into the community of the faithful and the opportunity for those present to recall their own baptismal vows.
The final sentence of Article XXVII is also revealing in its tentativeness. Expressing a preference for infant baptism “as most agreeable to the institution of Christ” it offers no scriptural warrant for that statement and doesn’t appeal to Mk 10:13-16, which is the appointed gospel in the baptismal rite in the BCP. Without such supporting arguments and in the absence of a clear statement in the article that baptism is necessary to salvation and washes away original sin, the authors fall back on custom as Elizabethan Book of Common Prayer bows to tradition and practice in permitting private baptism.
It may be that such inconsistency is a hallmark of Anglican baptismal theology. Even the 1979 Book of Common Prayer with its robust baptismal theology has failed to change significantly baptismal practices in the Episcopal Church. We may view the baptismal covenant as a clear expression of the Christian faith and what it means to be a follower of Jesus, but in reality we fall back on the traditional practice of infant baptism and sever the link between the sacrament of baptism and the Christian life into which baptism initiates us.
D. Jonathan Grieser
(ThD Harvard University) is Rector of Grace Episcopal Church, Madison, Wisconsin.
A former Anabaptist (Mennonite), he loves baptizing babies.
[1] The emergence of Anabaptism from within Zwingli’s circle was hotly debated in the 20th century and overviews are widely available. The interpretation here that Zwingli’s baptismal theology, sacramental theology, and reliance on “covenant” were crafted largely in debate with the Anabaptists reflects my own perspective.
[2] The classic study of Anabaptism in England is Irvin B. Horst, The Radical Brethren: Anabaptism and the English Reformation to 1558, (Nieuwkoop: B. De Graaf, 1972). It is crucial to distinguish 16th century Anabaptism both on the continent and in England from the emergence in the seventeenth century of Baptists in England, even though English Baptists did engage in conversation with Dutch Mennonites.
[3] Alastair Duke, “Martyrs with a difference: Dutch Anabaptist victims of Elizabethan persecution,” (Nederlands archief voor kerkgeschiedenis), 80/3 2000, 264.
[4] When writing in German, Zwingli would use the words “Bund” or “Bündnis,” the same words used for the Swiss confederacy, thus cementing the relationship between baptism and citizenship.
[5] Some may argue that here instrument means “tool” and only tool, but I’m struck by how much clearer the article would read if that phrase were omitted: “it is also a sign of Regeneration or New-Birth, whereby, …, they that receive Baptism rightly are grafted into the Church…”
[6] Confession Augustana, Article IX (http://bookofconcord.org/augsburgconfession.php – article9)
[7] http://www.henryviiithereign.co.uk/1536-ten-articles.html