We must begin with the foundational Christian axiom that water is thicker than blood. The call of baptism outranks every demand that might come from any other source.
“He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matt. 10:37).
Our allegiance to Jesus Christ has to be the arche of all our other allegiances. He is the only one who can keep them from becoming devouring idols, with a maw like Molech. The foundational claims of households, tribes, and nations must all be surrendered completely.
At the same time, precisely because Jesus is Lord, once surrendered, these other allegiances are supposed to be discipled, appropriately honored, and placed in their adjusted and very creaturely place. Some idols are destroyed upon repentance — like Molech, Baal, Dagon. Other idols are simply demoted — family, money, reputation, etc. The idols of households and tribes are idols that are called to come to Christ and continue their existence as households and tribes in their allegiance to Him. “And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 12:3). Blessed, not annihilated.
“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen” (Matt. 28:19–20).
Jesus tells us to baptize the ethnoi, not to eradicate them. The good news of the gospel is not simply good news for individuals — although it is obviously that — it is also good news for all kinds of human institutions.
“And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people” (Rev. 14:6).
Another way of putting this is that while in spiritual matters the authority of the church is much greater than the authority of the family, the spiritual authority of the family remains, and has to be considered as a very real part of the spiritual life of a congregation.
The office of father and husband is not an office in the church. It would make no sense for Paul to tell Titus to ordain elders in the churches (Tit. 1:5) if all the men were already automatically elders. The elders are those who govern in the church (Heb. 13:7,17), and there are clearly many married men who do not hold that office.
At the same time, it has to be acknowledged that husbands and fathers do have a deputized pastoral role. They are called to gladly take on clear spiritual duties and responsibilities with regard to their families. For example, all husbands are to proclaim the gospel by loving their wives sacrificially (Eph. 4:25). They are to wash their wives with the water of the Word (Eph. 5:26). The fathers are called to bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Eph. 6:4). Children are called — as Christian disciples — to obey their parents in the Lord (Eph. 6:1-3). A five-year-old Christian in my congregation has very little to do with our session of elders, but still has the daily accountability of spiritual oversight from his parents. Because this child is baptized, there is no way to understand this except in terms of godly pastoral care within the household. As said above, it is not a full church office, but when parents take baptismal vows, they are promising a whole series of things that involve intensive spiritual care.
These are the questions I ask in the course of a child’s baptismal service. The first three questions are addressed to the husband, and the fourth to the wife. After that, I address a question to the entire congregation.
Do you acknowledge your child’s need of the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ, and the renewing grace of the Holy Spirit?
Do you trust in God’s covenant promises on his/her behalf, and do you look in faith to the Lord Jesus Christ for his/her salvation, as you do for your own?
Do you now unreservedly dedicate your child to God, and promise, in humble reliance upon divine grace, that you will endeavor to set before him/her a godly example, that you will pray with and for him/her, that you will teach him/her the doctrines of our holy faith, and that you will strive, by all the means of God’s appointment, to bring him/her up on the nurture and admonition of the Lord?
You have heard your husband’s vows. Do you agree with him, and do you take these vows along with him?
Do you as a congregation undertake the responsibility of assisting these parents in the Christian nurture of this child? If so, signify by saying amen.
Now it is not my purpose here to defend the practice of infant baptism. I have done that elsewhere. My purpose is to address a debate/discussion that has developed among those who are already committed to infant baptism. The question concerns the propriety of including the heads of households in the distribution of the Lord’s Supper. Some of our CREC churches distribute the elements by having the heads of households come forward, who then return to their families with the elements. For critics, this seems to be a set up for beginning to think that husbands and fathers are de facto elders of the church, having more spiritual authority than they actually do, somehow holding the power of the keys. For defenders, we live in a time when biblical headship is under assault, and so this is a good way for the men to model servant leadership.
At Christ Church we do not distribute the elements this way — our elders distribute the bread first, which the whole congregation partakes of together, and then the wine is distributed the same way.
I am addressing this subject because the whole topic is theologically thick. The whole subject is fraught with peril in both directions. By that I mean that the practice of using heads of households in the formal liturgy of the church could signal a kind of unhealthy view of paternal authority — uber-patriarchy. I use uber here to distinguish it from the normal happy-face patriarchy. A sign that this error is in play would be when a father thinks he “holds the keys,” telling a child that he cannot partake this week because of how he was sassing his mom yesterday. But the other direction has problems also. If this is happening in a church that practices paedobaptism and paedocommunion, then the church has already recognized the spiritual authority the father and husband, and a refusal to acknowledge that in any formal ongoing way could signal an accommodation with baptistic individualism.
All this is simply to set the stage. I hope to dig deeper into what role families play as families in a sacramental community. Whatever we say about it, it is not everything and it is not nothing.
In our churches, we have members who hold credobaptist convictions and we do not require them to baptize their children. We also have paedobaptist members who, again out of conviction, do not commune their young children. What makes these instances of parental decision different from the decision of a paedocommunionist father that his child would be eating and drinking judgment on herself if she were to partake of the Lord’s Supper this week? I am not advocating (or condemning) the controverted practice, just asking how we justify the line drawn. All three have fixed practices; all three are conscientious; all… Read more »
To sharpen the point: “A sign that this error is in play would be when a father thinks he ‘holds the keys,’ telling a child that he [cannot be baptized yet] because of how he was sassing his mom yesterday.”
I may not have thought this out as much as others here but I don’t have a problem with any church member distributing communion. In which case it can be done in a variety of ways and perhaps the potential errors of one particular method may be less likely to occur?
The problem with cherrypicking Judaistic verses to support an “Abrahamic” sacramentalism is the tendency of your people to pick the wrong cherries, and bring in some Abrahamic baggage like head-of-households. It’s embarrassing, but the dividing line here is purely arbitrary. How much Judaism is too much? The “household baptisms” were a sign to Jews that the Abrahamic household was ending, that the “household of faith” was graduating from Father Abraham to the heavenly Father. It began with Jesus’ baptism, where the-only-Father-who-matters did indeed look on the heart of His Son as an individual, and was pleased. The Church is a… Read more »
Mike, so initiating the household baptisms meant that we should be fading out the household baptisms?
Thanks for the response. Well, we never hear of them ever again, so seeing these as “initiations” rather than merely mass conversions as a sign to the Jews (like the Day of Pentecost) is an assumption, and it entails the redefinition of baptism and the qualifications for baptizands. The real question is, what did Jesus’ baptism mean? What did it mean to be united with Him in that, when He said “Follow me”? One cannot be born a Christian any more than one can be born a Communist. So maintaining a household baptism including infants, one has to redefine baptism,… Read more »
One more thought – posted because it might help make more sense of my position: The household baptisms were the end of the Abrahamic household, as prefigured in the Tabernacle and Temple. Each house was begun with the shedding of blood, but completed in a filling by the Shekinah. The “rushing wind” in the house at Pentecost (Jew) and these few household mass-conversions (Gentiles) were the sign that God had moved into a corporate house made of flesh – the second birth. The household conversions were not a sign of a new “carnal” division of flesh any more than the… Read more »
Regarding the distribution of the elements, remember that Jesus distributed them by way of the disciples at the last supper. Jesus took His hand off of the cup as it got passed around. They served on another. Judas likely passed the cup too. There may be churches that have struggled against uber-patriarchy, and those churches may need to practice a more careful liturgy with the elements, but we shouldn’t assume that all churches face this same temptation, and look down on their practice because of our own weakness. Of course we don’t want worshiping families to see husbands and fathers… Read more »
Can someone please clarify this sentence for me:
What precisely is being referred to by the phrase “baptistic individualism,” ??
Thanks in advance,
Matt
Matt Massingill asks: What precisely is being referred to by the phrase “baptistic individualism,” ?? The standard baptistic view of the sacraments tends to bristle against the idea that parents can covenantally represent their children in the faith. For example, the baptist would generally argue that a parent has no authority to include an infant in baptism because the infant is a separate individual and must make their own individual self-conscious decision about whether they are in or out of the covenant. This attitude is what Wilson refers to as “baptistic individualism”. In contrast, a covenantal understanding sees that if… Read more »
The baptistic individualist must attempt to raise their children *to* the faith, whereas in a representative covenantal view, parents raise their children *in* the faith.
The New Covenant calls for individuals to repent and believe. That is not individualism. The problem with sacramentalism is that its Covenant is too small. There is no need for parents to “represent” their children in the Covenant because all people are already in it. The entire point of baptism was that the baptizand no longer needs a mediator (tying in with some of katecho’s comments) but has indeed become a mediator, a witness, enthroned with Christ. Paedobaptism is all about establishing human mediators and a “Judaistic” exclusivity. It misses the whole point of Pentecost, and indeed of Jesus’ baptism.… Read more »
Mike Bull wrote: The New Covenant calls for individuals to repent and believe. That is not individualism. The Old Covenant called for individuals to repent and believe too. Certain individuals who were baptized into Moses and ate spiritual food and drank from the rock (which was Christ) did not repent and believe, and their bodies were scattered across the wilderness. This was an example *for us* in the New Covenant. Unfortunately, Mike continues to conflate historical (visible) covenant status and eternal (invisible) status. The individual necessity for new birth and repentance is undisputed with regard to the later, whereas the… Read more »
Mike Bull wrote: Everyone on the planet is a “Covenant member” now, just as all Israel was under Covenant. But that is not the same as union with Christ, which is what is experienced only by those who respond in faith. Blows me away how this “does not compute.” Lots of erroneous teaching on Covenant, I suspect. Speaking of erroneous teaching on Covenant, Mike is setting himself against some very clear Scripture. Here is my attempt at a compact refutation of Mike Bull’s view: 1) If New Covenant membership is not the same as union with Christ, then why does… Read more »
Thanks Katecho “The Old Covenant called for individuals to repent and believe too.” Yes, and those who did were “true Jews” – a term which even came to include believing Gentiles. Circumcision of flesh was never the same as circumcision of heart, and baptism is about circumcision of heart. “Mike continues to conflate historical (visible) covenant status and eternal (invisible) status.” The visible/invisible debate is unbiblical. The true saint is a union of the visible flesh with the invisible Spirit (fire) and the result is a prophet. The way to tell a true saint is this: is he or she… Read more »