What is worship?

Definition of worship

Worship is a whole-being (body and soul) communication from me (a worshipper) to God, myself, and the world, of the holy-loving-and-glorious uniqueness of the triune God above anyone or anything else, giving praise for his goodness and thanks for his mighty acts. 

Particular expressions of worship

It is expressed in things like attitude, speech, time, attention, reading the Bible, prayer, church participation, singing, telling of what God has done, creative arts, making things, writing, giving, and service to others. It also involves recognizing and communicating the value of humans because they bear God's image. 

Scripture passages

My whole being will exclaim, 'Who is like you, LORD?' (Psalm 35:10)

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9) 

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 

“You shall have no other gods before me. “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. 

“You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name. 

“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (Exodus 20:2-11)  

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:1-2)

Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 5:15-20)

Attitudes, methods, images and themes that make theology resonate

 Yesterday evening, my counselor asked, "Who do you agree with most, theologically?"

I said Gavin Ortlund.

Why?

Because he's irenic, hopeful, saying he wants to dedicate his life to translating the deep primary sources of church history for the ordinary people who are interested in finding solid answers based on something real.

My counselor said that's not content; that's method. 

So maybe I forgot about content. Is theology in my preference just about how it makes me feel -- smart, deep, historic, peaceful, hopeful?

This is a bit disturbing, because two years ago I was a constant fan of Preston Sprinkle for similar reasons -- he's a good listener, he respects his opponents, he reads deeply and widely and is open to changing his mind -- but now I've moved away from actively listening to him because I perceive that he's too squishy and not historically rooted enough, and I tried on his view of conditional immortality/annihilationism because it was daring, but couldn't quite square it with the portrayal of hell in Revelation. If I was attracted to Sprinkle because of his method and personal qualities but now am less than one hundred percent enthusiastic about his conclusions, where will I end up in the future?

So let's go beyond method and attitude and examine some theological instincts that I've picked up from favorite authors in recent years.

The Spirit in the sacraments

Let's start with Baptism and the Lord's Supper. I want to highlight the role of the Spirit in uniting us with Christ and the Father, in a tangible way through the words of institution and the action (being dipped in the water, or eating bread and drinking wine). It is not just a symbol, but a symbol enchanted by the Spirit, and yet the Spirit has perfect freedom and is not bound by our actions.

Free will and God's freedom and presence

And then on free will, I want to highlight the goodness of creation, the seriousness of our responsibility, and the mystery of how God accomplishes his will under, beyond, and through our willing and working and even empowering our willing and working -- God with us *and* God beyond us.

Praying to the Trinity

And I like Thomas Cranmer's collects (short written prayers) precisely because they pray to the Father, Son, and Spirit by name. Not a hazy spirituality, this. I know whom I have believed. For example, "All this we pray in the name of your dear Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen."

Personal, relational theology

I like it when a theologian presents God's working in the world as personal.

I first heard this in a lecture by Greg Bahnsen, who said that providence or the laws of nature are simply God's ordinary and regular and consistent way of working in the world -- it's not a clock wound up, but rather God himself moving the clouds.

Moving on now from nature to the process of salvation, Cornelis van der Kooi and Gijsbert van den Brink (Christian Dogmatics) present effectual calling as something like the personal calling of Jesus to Matthew that enabled him to leave his tax booth and his old life, and this same story is repeated in different ways in the life of everyone who becomes a believer.

Similarly, Oliver O'Donovan in his commentary On the 39 Articles, chapter 5 (on Articles 9-10), speaks of effectual calling through the analogy of a friend's personal influence -- it is indeed greater than this, but it's a more personal and relational analogy than a cold and clanking chain of causation.

And speaking of chains of causation, I prefer the view of Aristotle, filtered through Aquinas to the Reformed Orthodox scholastics (as explained in Richard Muller's dictionary of Latin and Greek theological terms) of four types of causation, so that God upholds all things and yet supports our freedom on a lower level. 

There's also a neat little bar-graph diagram in DA Carson's dissertation book Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility, which shows God's work as 100 percent and our work as 10 percent -- co-occurring action on different levels, with God mysteriously empowering our work. John MG Barclay has several articles on the same theme of "not monergism, not synergism, but energism", dwelling on Paul's phrases like "I yet not I", "Christ in me" and "the grace of God that was with me" (1 Corinthians 15:10; Galatians 2:20; Philippians 2:12-13) replacing "I yet not I" and "the sin that is in me" (Romans 7:17,20).

Again on the personal theme, there is a complex yet satisfying diagram on the work of the Spirit by Volker Rabens (in The Holy Spirit and Ethics in Paul) -- it shows that the Holy Spirit does not fill us up like water in a cup, as the Stoics taught, but rather the Spirit is a dynamic connector, sparking our connection with the Father, the Son, the Word, and other believers.

And again, Roger T. Beckwith, in his proposed supplement to the 39 Articles in his book with JI Packer, The 39 Articles: Their Place and Use Today, says that grace is not a substance poured out to us, but is rather the light of God's presence and favor.

Figurative speech

Let's move on to metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche -- figures of speech where a part represents the whole or where one member of a pair is spoken of in terms properly attributed to the other member of the pair because they are so closely associated.

Augustine in On Marriage and Concupiscence said that the evil inclination is not actual sin, but it is called sin metaphorically because it comes from Adam's sin and leads to actual sin when we obey it. (Augustine also did some fancy footwork in his letter to Boniface on the reason for infant baptism and the theory of metaphorically attributed infant faith via the faith of the sponsors and the church, and baptism being a "sacrament of faith", but I don't agree with that, so it just goes to show that not all metaphorical speech is legitimate or helpful in my opinion.)

Robert H. Stein ("Baptism and Becoming a Christian in the New Testament") says that baptism is attributed with all the benefits of salvation in the New Testament because it was meant to accompany faith, repentance, confession of Christ as Lord, and receiving the Spirit, so that the benefits of salvation that accompanied these is attributed synecdochally to baptism as a figural stand-in for the whole conversion-initiation process. 

The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646-1647) and the Consensus Tigurinus (1549, by John Calvin and Henry Bullinger), in their own way, also affirm this -- the Spirit works in baptism but is not bound in time by it, *and* by the "sacramental union" the effects of the (outer) sign are attributed to the (inner) thing signified, and vice versa -- and yet, we can speak of *both* an inner regeneration and a sacramental (symbolic, official) regeneration that are sometimes separated in time, if we are careful. (See WCF 27.2 and 28.6.)

The Consensus Tigurinus (Article 19) says, "Thus the sins of Paul were washed away by baptism, though they had been previously washed away. So likewise baptism was the laver of regeneration to Cornelius, though he had already received the Holy Spirit. So in the Supper Christ communicates himself to us, though he had previously imparted himself, and perpetually remains in us."

And then we can also speak of memory (anamnesis) in the Lord's Supper in an imaginative way, as the Jews were instructed to speak at the Passover (and the offering of first fruits every year)  *as if* they themselves had personally walked out of Egypt. It's more than a memory; it's immersive imagination at a corporate level. (See Doug Moo, A Theology of Paul and His Letters, p.591; Exodus 12:24-27, 13:14-16; Deuteronomy 26:1-11.)

Themes in theology

And so we see several themes develop:

1) personal relational theology,

2) theology concerned with careful distinctions but also open to speaking in metaphor as long as it is explained, and

3) theology that cares about language and the presence and work of the Spirit as both mystery and positive good with nuances and layers that can be clearly seen but not completely grasped.

Speaking hard truth through gritted teeth

I also have mad respect for the church I'm currently attending, in that the preaching pastors say hard things but through gritted teeth, reading from their manuscript so they don't misspeak -- full of anxiety and yet caring enough to speak the whole truth. Contrast this with another church I have visited, which does so many wonderful things with ethnic inclusion, and yet they passed a new doctrinal statement seven times longer than the old one, and forgot to mention hell, which was clearly explained in the old doctrinal statement.

Catechesis as a concertina

I also value the pedagogical method of catechesis where it starts with the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Apostles' Creed, so that people can memorize these three key texts, and then use them as a framework for the rest of doctrine, prayer, and ethics. For example, like a concertina, the Ten Commandments can be reduced to two Great Commandments, that is, to love God (Commandments 1-4) and to love neighbor (Commandments 5-10), and then can be expanded outward into many different applications. The command to honor one's father and mother, in the Westminster Catechisms, is expanded to include instructions on how to treat and how not to treat our leaders, peers, and subordinates, both with our attitudes and our actions. This is a valuable insight, and a helpful teaching tool.

What is faith, and how does it lead to worship?

Finally, I want to close with a summary of what true faith is, partly drawn from Kevin DeYoung's Daily Doctrine and partly from Roger Beckwith's definition of faith in his supplement to the 39 Articles. I want to hint at faith as loyalty as Matthew Bates argues (The Gospel Precisely), but major on faith as an attitude of trust.

True faith is knowledge, assent, and trust, leading to treasuring Christ above all things, and loyalty until the end. This is evoked by the Spirit through the Word and nurtured in community. True faith always depends on Christ and his merits, not on oneself. But it works itself out through love, in response to the love of God that roots and grounds the believer.

True faith continually seeks to know God more, learning with the aim of closer personal union. (I find that this comes most naturally to me as I wrestle through tough intellectual problems.)

As faith works itself out through love, this always requires sacrifice. I hesitate to call it surrender, because surrender suggests passivity. Rather, I want to call it offering oneself, one's time and attention, one's work, and one's possessions to God and then to others as an expression of lifelong and daily worship of God.

To be sustainable, this often paradoxically requires solitude for resting and thinking, reading, writing, and praying. This is worship too.

A question for you

What about you? Do you find yourself drawn first to content, or attitude, in theologians? What attitudes, methods, themes or images have been most helpful for you?

Research report on baptism

 Here's a research update on my baptism study. 

1. I agree very much with the Sacramental Baptists -- Stanley K. Fowler, Anthony R. Cross, Robert H. Stein, and (although I haven't read much of him yet) George R. Beasley-Murray. Stein especially seems to strike the balance just about right in saying that all the strongly realist language about baptism's effects in the New Testament -- the experience of union with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection, cleansing from sins, and salvation through the appeal to God for a good conscience -- makes the most sense when we assume that the one being baptized knows what they are doing, because the water-baptism and the Spirit-baptism and the full experience of conversion happen at the same time. (See Stein's lecture on conversion or his article "Baptism and becoming a Christian in the New Testament".)

2. William G. Witt (retired Anglican professor from Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, PA) is just brilliant. In a 2009 blog post called "The Modern Debate About Normative Infant Baptism: A Discussion and Bibliography", he divides up six different views of the theology of baptism and makes them each answer the same four questions, and then evaluates them. Like John MG Barclay's analysis of perfections of grace in Paul and the Gift, he describes how four of these views stretch (perfect) various aspects of the truth into opposing extremes. It's all very geometric, like stretching a rubber star this way and that. But he comes down in favor of either the normative Sacramental Baptist point of view (with possible allowance for infant baptism), or the view which says infant baptism is incomplete as initiation until the child has come to make their own profession of faith later in life, at confirmation. 

3. Witt put me on to Geoffrey Wainwright. He is not only brilliant, but also warm, friendly, and honest. In a 1981 conference paper called "Christian Initiation: Development, Dismemberment, Reintegration", he walks you through the history of baptism, up to the 16th century Reformation, and says that confirmation was a historical accident in the West which became useful as a way to teach kids the faith and allow them a chance to express their own belief. (The delay of first communion was also a historical accident which later was rationalized by an appeal to an age of accountability, and because the wine was now thought be dangerous to the baby because of transubstantiation.) He comes down at the end with three ways to reintegrate the initiation process: 1) be like the Eastern Orthodox and do baptism, anointing/confirmation, and communion for babies all on the same day (although this doesn't bode well for an understanding of justification by faith); 2) be like the Baptists (and maybe the early church) and delay baptism until the child has been catechized and can profess the faith for their own -- and maybe enroll the kid as a catechumen from birth, like many early Christians did (see David F. Wright's article "Infant dedication in the early church", in Infant Baptism in Historical Perspective); or 3) be like the evangelical Anglicans and the Roman Catholic liturgical renewal movement and really make confirmation meaningful as the end of a really-long-stretched-out initiation that began with baptism. He says all three options can help preserve parts of the truth, and we should respect all of them and view them as equally valid.

4. I quite appreciate Anthony NS Lane's point of view -- which is much the same as that of Richard H. Stein -- that the elements of conversion-initiation (faith-repentance, confession, baptism, and receiving the Holy Spirit/regeneration) all happened usually on the same day in the book of Acts, but now both in paedobaptist churches and in credobaptist churches the process is stretched out in different ways, whether by infant baptism followed evidence of personal faith years later, or by delay of a child's baptism until months or years after their first evidence of faith, just to be sure it was credible. So we're all inconsistent in different ways, so deal with it -- but let's make sure that we call for all of the elements of conversion-initiation at some point, and also that we keep conversion-initiation as one unitary complex thing, theologically speaking, even if it does get stretched out in practice. (See his article in Themelios, "Conversion: a comparison of Calvin and Spener".)

5. The view of baptism as synecdoche for conversion-initiation as a whole is brilliant. I've seen it in Doug Moo's commentary on Romans, who cites James DG Dunn ("baptism is a concertina word"), and I've also seen the synecdoche angle pressed hard, in a good way, in Anthony R. Cross's Recovering the Evangelical Sacrament. As a linguist, I appreciate this move, and it makes everything make more sense -- that I finally understand the code (some) people were talking in before, like when Wendy gives Peter Pan a thimble and calls it a kiss, and he in return gives her an acorn -- and later she says she'd like to give him a thimble and gives him a real kiss.

I felt the same way a couple years ago when I read Augustine (On Marriage and Concupiscence) saying that concupiscence is called "sin" because it comes from sin and leads to sin, even though it literally is not sin:

Inasmuch, however, as by a certain manner of speech it is called sin, since it arose from sin, and, when it has the upper hand, produces sin, the guilt of it prevails in the natural man; but this guilt, by Christ's grace through the remission of all sins, is not suffered to prevail in the regenerate man, if he does not yield obedience to it whenever it urges him to the commission of evil. As arising from sin, it is, I say, called sin, although in the regenerate it is not actually sin; and it has this designation applied to it, just as speech which the tongue produces is itself called  tongue; and just as the word  hand is used in the sense of writing, which the hand produces. In the same way concupiscence is called sin, as producing sin when it conquers the will: so to cold and frost the epithet "sluggish" is given; not as arising from, but as productive of, sluggishness; benumbing us, in fact.

Augustine was a wily thinker (witness his contortions on proxy faith and baptismal regeneration in Letter 98 to Boniface), but a rhetorical-literary master, and sometimes that's just the way he thought (always in service to the church as he understood it), so we can't quite blame him if he uses short-hand later on and forgets to tell us the code.

I felt the same way last year when I read the Westminster Confession of Faith (Article 27.2) cuing us in on their private code: "There is in every sacrament a spiritual relation or sacramental union, between the sign and the thing signified; whence it comes to pass that the names and the effects of the one are attributed to the other."

So... sacramental language is at least full of non-literal referents, whatever else is going on experientially, socially, and spiritually. My only worry is that if we don't explain this well, it can lead to a magical view of the sacraments.

6. Reaching back to Point 1 and the Sacramental Baptist view, I am prepared to make a concession -- if some of the household baptisms in Acts included infants, or if it was reasonable for its original readers to infer this and possibly copy it with a household-including-infants baptism of their own, then that was a risk that the apostles -- or at least Luke, the author -- took. The fact is that infant baptism doesn't fit well with theology of baptism articulated throughout the New Testament, so if some in the early church did include infants in their household baptisms, it was a sort of tag-on to the prototypical case of baptism upon confession of personal faith. Maybe the apostles didn't think it through as much as we do, or maybe they didn't care -- or at least care enough to tell us not to. But in any case, it's not the central prototype.

7. While we're on the topic of household baptisms, I'd like to try an argument on you. The purpose of household baptisms in Acts, as a literary trope, seems to be to highlight not just household solidarity, but the joy as faith is transmitted from the head of household to everyone else in the house, and the miracle of effectual calling as the Holy Spirit opened the hearts of everyone in the house -- spouse, children, and servants -- to believe the gospel (and sometimes speak in tongues) at once. We know that this didn't always happen in every household, even if group conversion following the paterfamilias was a cultural expectation, because Peter wrote to wives with unbelieving husbands (1 Peter 3:1), and Paul wrote to both wives and husbands with unbelieving spouses (1 Cor. 7:12-16) and a believing master who had a slave who only came to faith after running away (Philemon). What this tells us is that the household conversions in Acts were miracles, and it didn't always happen like that in every case. And, since the children and unbelieving spouse of a Christian were both considered "holy" or "sanctified" in a sense through their connection to the believing spouse (1 Cor. 7:14), then baptism would be as unnecessary for the child as for the unbelieving spouse, until both came to profess faith on their own. (As a side note to confirm that paterfamilias solidarity doesn't always work, even in collectivist cultures, I read a story in a missionary friend's newsletter from the 1990s, where a shaman in a hilltribe in Thailand wanted to convert to Christianity after a power encounter, but he waited several years because his son wouldn't agree -- later, after his son went to jail, he finally converted and was baptized.)

8. Now, mind you, I'm still prepared to accept household baptisms that included infants, either by the households mentioned in Luke or by later readers who may have imitated them, but I consider this to be a different logic of baptism. Rather than a person appealing to God for a good conscience, it's more like a family undergoing a ritual cleansing of their house as they convert from paganism, say, in a folk-animist culture like where I lived in Taiwan or Thailand. Remove the idol shelf, dunk everyone, and that will get rid of the evil spirits and set our whole family on the right path. (This seems to be the logic of Jewish proselyte washings, too, from the 2nd century onward.) The logic doesn't work the same if the parents have already been baptized, and later they give birth to a baby, and they want to baptize their baby as an act of dedication. That's a third kind of logic altogether.

9. I now want to close by hitting a note on the piano that I touched on in my last post. Infant baptism, like being baptized while in a coma (see Augustine's friend), can be a powerful means of persuading someone to accept and live into the gospel, which has already been ritually spoken over them. It's like Jean Valjean when the priest gives him the candlesticks and says "I have purchased your soul for God." Even though Jean Valjean feels grateful and morally obligated to go on and be an honest man, he still has the choice to walk away from it if he really wants to. Similarly, when Jesus forgave and healed the paralyzed man on the basis of (mostly) his friends' faith who lowered him through the roof, the man still had the choice of whether to obey, stand up, pick up his mat, and go home. If he had just laid there and never gotten up, he might have been healed, but we would have no evidence of it, and it would have been just as if he hadn't been healed, in his physical functionality. The first solid evidence of personal faith we see in this man is when he stood to his feet. And so, even if someone's had the choice taken from them or made for them, so to speak, by their parents having baptized them when they were a baby or while they were in a coma, they have the choice now, as soon as they are conscious of things that matter, to affirm it and live into it.

10. One of the best examples I have seen of this kind of personal grasping of a faith that started in their parents is Jonathan Edwards. Read what he wrote when he was 19:

Saturday, Jan. 12 [1723], in the morning. I have this day solemnly renewed my baptismal covenant and self-dedication, which I renewed when I was received into communion of the church. I have been before God; and have given myself, all that I am and have to God, so that I am not in any respect my own: I can challenge no right in myself, I can challenge no right in this understanding, this will, these affections that are in me; neither have I any right to this body, or any of its members: no right to this tongue, these hands, nor feet; no right to these senses, these eyes, these ears, this smell or taste. I have given myself clear away, and have not retained anything as my own. I have been to God this morning, and told him that I gave myself wholly to him. I have given every power to him; so that for the future I will challenge no right in myself, in any respect. I have expressly promised him, and do now promise almighty God, that by his grace I will not. I have this morning told him, that I did take him for my whole portion and felicity, looking on nothing else as any part of my happiness, nor acting as if it were; and his law for the constant rule of my obedience; and would fight with all my might against the world, the flesh, and the devil, to the end of my life. And did believe in Jesus Christ, and receive him as a prince and a Savior; and would adhere to the faith and obedience of the gospel, how hazardous and difficult soever the profession and practice of it may be. That I did receive the blessed Spirit as my teacher, sanctifier and only comforter; and cherish all his motions to enlighten, purify, confirm, comfort and assist me. This I have done. And I pray God, for the sake of Christ, to look upon it as a self-dedication; and to receive me now as entirely his own, and deal with me in all respects as such; whether he afflicts me or prospers me, or whatever he pleases to do with me, who am his. Now, henceforth I am not to act in any respect as my own. I shall act as my own, if I ever make use of any of my powers to anything that is not to the glory of God, and don't make the glorifying him my whole and entire business; if I murmur in the least at afflictions; if I grieve at the prosperity of others; if I am anyway uncharitable; if I am angry because of injuries; if I revenge; if I do anything, purely to please myself, or if I avoid anything for the sake of my ease; if I omit anything because it is great self-denial; if I trust to myself: if I take any of the praise of any good that I do, or rather God does by me; or if I am any way proud.

This day made the 42nd and 43rd Resolutions.

42. Resolved, frequently to renew the dedication of myself to God, which was made at my baptism; which I solemnly renewed, when I was received into the communion of the church; and which I have solemnly re-made this 12th day of January, 1722—23.

43. Resolved, never henceforward, till I die, to act as if I were anyway my own, but entirely and altogether God's, agreeable to what is to be found in Saturday, Jan. 12. [[Jan. 12th, 1723.

11. This resolve in Edwards is the sort of thing Paul saw in Timothy, when Paul, who served God like his ancestors did with a clear conscience recognized a sincere faith in Timothy which had earlier lived in his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice -- and for this reason he was to fan the gift of God into flame more and more, which was likely a preaching gift, given when Paul and the council of elders laid his hands on Timothy at ordination to be an elder (1 Tim. 4:13-14; 2 Tim. 1:3-7). Paul also explained how the faith had taken root in Timothy -- it was because from childhood he had been acquainted with the Scriptures, which are able to make one wise unto salvation, and he had learned the truth from people he knew, such as Lois, Eunice, and Paul. (2 Tim. 3:14-15) In Timothy's case, he hadn't been circumcised when he was young, because his father was a Gentile, whereas his mother was Jewish. He likely had been baptized as a convert, which Paul references by reminding him of how he made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses" (1 Tim. 6:12). 

In the story of Timothy, we have someone who was raised in the faith, hearing the Scriptures, and (likely) later was baptized. I think it's very powerful to have all those experiences in your memory, and I have those memories, too. But even if baptism was something done to you before you could remember, you still have the choice, like Edwards did, to call upon God in self-dedication and take hold of that faith again and again. 

12. Finally, just by way of more book recommendations, do read everything by David F. Wright (Infant Baptism in Historical Perspective and What Has Infant Baptism Done to Baptism?). He was a Scottish Presbyterian, but he's very honest with the evidence, and very much against indiscriminate baptism of babies who aren't likely to be raised in the faith. 

Don't bother reading all of Everett Ferguson's book Baptism in the Early Church -- it's just too long and detailed, but do hit the high points and summaries, where he theorizes that infant baptism originated from emergency baptisms of children on their deathbeds. 

Don't waste your time with Scot McKnight's book It Takes a Church to Baptize -- it has some nice narrative descriptions of the ACNA Anglican liturgy of baptism and what it means, and he is kind and honest enough to apologize on behalf of all paedobaptists for the drowning murders of the Anabaptists in the 16th century. Actually, the Anabaptists were his heroes before he became Anglican, which was just a few years before he wrote the book. While I liked these parts, he simply lost all my trust when he claimed to show what the Bible says about infant baptism, but only gave us inferences, and when he and the author of the foreword, Gerald McDermott (another baptist-turned-Anglican) cite Tertullian and Gregory Nazianzen without mentioning that both of these church fathers advocated delaying baptism until an age when the child was able to understand (although Gregory recommended age 3, which is still pretty young!).

That's it for the research report. Thanks for journeying with me, if you've read this far! I'm truly grateful for your companionship.

Leaning on Jesus, his word, a creed, or the church's faith?

A month ago in an Anglican church, I heard a sermon on doubt and disappointment in the life of the believer. It included the following comments:

"We've had a couple conversations in our catechesis class this past fall. And I know a couple people in that class shared very openly, like, use the language of the dark night of the soul. I'm coming, but I feel distant from God. And one thing we talked about is every time we gather on Sunday, on the weekend, on Sunday, for us, Saturday, to worship Christ. And we stand together and we recite the Nicene Creed as most Christians throughout history have done all around the world. We say we believe in God, the Father Almighty. We go through all these words, our belief in Christ. Many of us, when we say that, we don't fully believe.

"We struggle. We doubt. We're disappointed, right? But we come back again and we trust God as best we can with, you know, our very little bit that we can offer. And Jesus is faithful to that, right? He honors that just standing up. Sometimes these aren't even words that make sense to you, but it's the church's words, right? The church carries you. The church's faith carries you. This is one of the reasons why we baptize children and infants, right? Because the true faith is not just about your individual faith. It's about the communal faith of the church. We all need each other. And if some of you are disappointed in Christ, I commend you for showing up today and standing in a couple minutes and saying the creed, just like John the Baptist is saying 'the Christ'. He's letting those words appear on his lips, even though he is uncertain and doubting."

As I hurriedly drafted this post over a bowl of Vietnamese noodles before Burmese church one Sunday afternoon in January, I didn't have access to the recording or transcript, but I summarized it from memory as:

"If you are struggling to believe all the words of the creed that we stand up and say together today, God bless you. Please know that you are not saved by your personal faith and confidence in every part of the creed, but rather you are held by the faith of the entire church, and so when God hears the voice of the entire church on heaven and earth together reciting the creed, he credits their faith to you. [Here my mind was drawing on the medieval idea of the Treasury of Merit.] This is also why we baptize our infants and young children, right? They are held by the church's faith."

This saying disturbed me. And I have thought about it ever since. I asked ChatGPT for some advice, and it reminded me of a letter that Augustine had written to Bishop Boniface (Letter 98, written AD 408), in response to questions on why the church has sponsors affirm the creed on behalf of the infant who is baptized. Augustine proposed some complicated rhetorical reasoning, saying essentially that baptism is the sacrament of the church's faith, and since the infant receives this sacrament of faith, in a sense it is appropriate to say that the infant believes, although it is only by proxy through the sponsors and the church as a whole, and the infant needs to be brought up to believe for himself or herself. 

I think there is a sense in which this is true, and a sense in which it is untrue. In the Gospels, sometimes Jesus healed children or slaves because their parents or masters asked in faith. And in the case of the paralyzed man who was let down through a hole in the roof by his friends, Jesus saw their faith and first told the man "Your sins are forgiven" and then told him, "Get up, take up your mat, and walk." Commentators think that Jesus was looking mostly at the faith of the friends, although presumably the man wasn't brought there against his will, and he at least exercised faith by standing up when Jesus told him to.

The theological question is, "What does it mean if Jesus forgave the man's sins because his friends believed?" Does that mean that proxy faith justifies? I am not comfortable with that at all, and in fact, Kevin DeYoung in The Biggest Bible Storybook tells the story with the interpretation that the man must have had faith, or else Jesus wouldn't have told him "your sins are forgiven", because he justifies those who have faith.

If proxy faith justifies, does this mean that we can pray for the salvation of those who have already died outside of the faith? Ordinarily, by that time it is too late. 

But notice too that Jesus raised the dead son of the widow of Nain -- we don't know if the son was a believer before he died. I imagine he was after he came back to life. 

And in other gospel stories, whole families believed after Jesus healed their child or servant. 

And on a plain and simple level, Jesus prayed for those who crucified him and mocked him at this death, saying, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." But at Pentecost, Peter boldly pleaded with this same crowd, "save yourself from this perverse generation!" So this forgiveness that Jesus asked for was either only for the sin of crucifying and mocking him, or it was conditional on their repentance and faith, which was mediated through Peter's preaching. Following Tom Schreiner and Ardel Caneday's arguments in The Race Set Before Us, this idea of God using means to bring about active faith leading to obedience on the part of the hearers in fulfillment of his promises makes a lot of sense to me.

At the same time, with edge cases like babies dying in infancy, or unbelievers brought back from the dead, there is a lot that we don't know.

And I'm not even going to get into stories like Augustine's friend who was baptized while he was unconscious for days with a fever -- when he finally woke up, people told him he was baptized, and he took it so seriously that he rebuked Augustine for joking about it. In his mind, he was now fully a Christian, even he hadn't chosen it when it happened. And not long after, he died, still firmly believing. This experience shook Augustine, and he wrote of it later in his Confessions (4.4.8, written AD 397-400). Maybe it was one of the things that together accumulated to draw Augustine himself to finally commit himself to the Lord. Can I say that, both in the case of the paralytic (assuming he didn't have faith until he stood up and walked) and Augustine's friend, that God brought them to faith by gently bending their will to trust and ratify a choice that others had tried to make for them?

But I want now to circle back to the way we conceive of the creeds. In a different church this morning, we sang, "My faith has found a resting place, not in device or creed, I trust the ever living One, his wounds for me shall plead, I need no other argument, I need no other plea, it is enough that Jesus died, and that he died for me."

The words rang true to me, that the faith by which we are saved, which the Holy Spirit himself gives us and grows in us, is first a heart attitude of turning toward God, and that belief in the points of the creed follow from that, because the creed summarizes God's Word given in Scripture. It reminded me further of a quote by R.T. Beckwith, which I have copied down in my journal twice in the last few weeks:

"Grace is not a quasi-physical substance but is the personal favor and goodness of God to man. Faith is not mere intellectual belief but is trust, and trust in God involves belief of what he says. Since God speaks to us in Scripture about our salvation, to trust him is both to believe that our sins are already atoned for through the cross of Christ, and to rely on him to accept us, preserve us, perfect us and glorify us for that reason." (J.I. Packer and R.T. Beckwith, The 39 Articles: Their Place and Use Today, pp.91-92)

The words of Beckwith have been ruminating in me since I read another essay he wrote in 1965 (in All in Each Place: Towards Reunion in England) on the problem of doctrinal standards in a proposed union between the Church of England, the Methodist Church, and other free churches. He argued that the Anglicans ought not force subscription to their own doctrinal standards without careful nuance and guarantees of conscience protection, because the independent churches had memories of persecution over aspects of doctrine that were only probably and not certainly proved from Scripture. And yet the Church of England itself needed reform, because it had stopped enforcing a good faith subscription to its own standards by even its own ministers, who developed a variety of private interpretations to stretch the standards whichever way they chose. 

In the end, Beckwith proposed a common subscription to the ecumenical creeds from church history in a way that carefully protected conscience and made clear that they were binding only because they accurately summarized the Word of God, and he further proposed selecting the best of the unique parts of the 39 Articles as an Anglican contribution to the good of the united church from their heritage. 

The book I quoted on the Articles, published in 1983, was a further development of Beckwith and Packer's overall project to teach a lean and life-giving heritage of doctrine for today, now that the proposed scheme of union had fallen through. The quote above was specifically from an appendix where Beckwith put forward some supplemental articles that should be added to the 39, to address issues that had arisen since the Articles were written in the 1500s. Both Packer and Beckwith are dead now, but their project lives on in unexpected ways, since Packer co-edited the catechism for the Anglican Church in North America (To Be A Christian), and since their writings are fertilizer for this blog post. 

The words of the song rang within me because I sang them in a choir twenty years ago led by Jim Schmidt, a man I truly trusted who is now with the Lord.

I am reminded again of a comment that the preacher I mentioned at the beginning of this post made during catechesis -- that the point should be not so much fencing in our doctrine as drawing people toward Christ at the center. I think this aligns with the song, too, and our catechism class as a whole was using Packer's catechism. But Beckwith's framing was particularly helpful to me, because it gets us through the problem of those who insincerely recite the creed with the congregation and think they are fine even though they persist in unrepentance. (See Deuteronomy 29:18-19, and Psalm 50:16) The very words they recited will condemn them at the last day, if they don't turn. That is why it is the job of every church member, not only to recite the creeds, not only to pray for faith and repentance for themselves and their neighbors, but also to pursue holiness and to pursue other members when they are wandering. (Hebrews 12:14-17)

And so, like Augustine (though I don't share his baptismal theology), I am led by a convergence of events and words, some I agree with and others I disagree with, both in following and in reaction, toward a place of deeper faith. 

Maybe as intended. 

Update 4/6/2026:

I'm now reading Justin Holcomb's book Know the Creeds and Councils, and found this quote explaining the relevance of the Athanasian Creed, with its disturbing anathemas for those who don't hold to it:

"We have a hard time accepting that eternal damnation is the potential result for any human being. This creed serves to remind us of that fact. Even its damnatory clauses are helpful 'in the reminder they give of the awful responsibility of making the right decision in matters of fundamental belief.' The Christian faith is not only a matter of the heart, an exercise in sentimentality, for 'Christian faith is a matter of the mind as well as the heart and the will, and as thinking persons we must give intellectual expression to our faith.' Still it does not demand blind acceptance to empty propositions. It is concerned with the direction of our souls. To paraphrase Philip Schaff, the point of the creed is not that we are saved by memorizing a set of statements, but that we are saved by trusting in the one who has revealed himself. Trusting in him, as far as he has told us about himself, is what saves, while straying from him is what condemns. The Athanasian Creed points us to the identity of the one who saves." (p.70)

I think the pastor that I quoted at the beginning of this post was trying to, indirectly, urge his listeners toward this trust. Where I am a bit uncomfortable is where he implies that we're saved by the church's faith rather than our own. I would say rather that God saves us, and he uses the church, through its relationships and the teaching of the Word to plant the Word in us in order to nurture our faith, and so we can do the same for others. 

Kevin DeYoung in his book Daily Doctrine (Days 172-173) helpfully distinguishes different meanings of faith: first, "that which is believed" (doctrinal content) vs "the faith by which we believe" (the attitude of faith, which is what saves us). Second, there are four types of faith, with only the fourth one being necessarily saving: historical faith (mental assent to some facts about God), faith of miracles, temporary faith, and justifying faith (a saving grace, wrought in our hearts by the Spirit and the word of God, whereby we are convinced of our sin and misery, assent to the truth of the gospel, and receive and rest on Christ and his righteousness). General faith means accepting God's word and trusting in the Scriptures. Special faith involves trusting in Christ and the promise of salvation, hungering and thirsting after Jesus, coming to him, and receiving him and all his benefits. Finally, at its simplest, faith consists of knowledge, assent, and trust. 

I would say that the Anglican pastor above was guarding against potential fears in the audience that they needed to master doctrinal content before faith could be justifying. And so he first praised their initial movements of trust, even if they were small, and then went back to enfold the idea of faith as the doctrinal content (the creed) in a generalized communal assent and attitude of trust which was modeled by others in the church and could be imitated by the listeners who struggled with doubt. However, the door was opened for evoking proxy-faith and the treasury of merit, which I think are dead ends unless they lead to actual justifying faith on the part of the listeners. Because it was a short sermon, it couldn't unpack everything I've mentioned above. I hope that some of these ideas can help clarify more of the full picture for others and inspire some sense of wonder at the many ways that our God uses to bring us to faith and to nurture that faith in him.

Baptizing the nations as believers, together

 This is a short post on baptizing the nations. Peter Leithart has written extensively on how Jesus's command in Matthew 28 applies to whole nations. He has been criticized for lauding medieval cases where whole nations and tribes were forcibly baptized at the request of their leaders. My way of extending the discussion is to ask whether paedobaptism is necessary for a continuing people movement. I don't think that it is.

I have several cases:

1) the Mennonites (a breakoff anabaptist group from Swiss and Dutch reformed in the 1500s, with a renewal movement in the form of the Mennonite Brethren in the 1860s in eastern Europe)

2) the Lisu (evangelized mainly by the China Inland Mission, Churches of Christ, and Assemblies of God, in China and Burma from around 1910 onward, and virtually all Christian in the Nujiang region of China and in Burma)

3) the Rawang (evangelized by the Churches of Christ, Assemblies of God, and Baptists, mainly in the 1930s-60s and now those in Burma are virtually all Christian)

4) the Kachin (mainly Jinghpaw and northern Burmic speakers) (evangelized mainly by Baptists, from the 1880s onward, with a major push in the 1960s-80s that made virtually all Jinghpaw speakers in Burma Christian)

These all are predominantly anabaptist or baptistic, and yet they have experienced gospel-ward people movements and then continued on in a tradition of baptizing their children after their children have made a mature profession of faith.

In all cases, there is the danger of nominalism and formalism, just as with paedobaptism, and the church in these groups is constantly in need of renewal, just as everywhere. But I want to point out that the cultural value of solidarity vs individualism is a different axis from paedobaptism vs credobaptism. 

John Chrysostom on agency in baptism

This Sunday morning I read John Chrysostom's two catechetical lectures. Toward the end of the second one, he has a passage affirming the agency of the ones to be baptized, that Jesus has already paid the price for them, but is waiting for them to willingly choose him as their master. 

Why I care about agency

This meant a lot me, because, while I myself was dedicated to God by my parents as a newborn, and later I willingly asked my parents for baptism at the age of seven, I have some hard memories of overly harsh discipline and pressure from my parents around ages 5-7, even to the extent of being given Jack Chick's tract "This Was Your Life" and another tract by Joni Eareckson Tada called "Joni's Story" by my mom, and being urged to pray the sinner's prayer by my dad during a discipline session when I had already done so on my own. I know that they had my best interests at heart and wanted desperately for me to know God. It just felt like a lot at such a young age. 

This meant that I reacted strongly against Calvinist teaching when I was first exposed to it as a teenager, and I still feel that there is something misordered about infant baptism. In both cases, the agency of the individual is ignored. 

An olive branch for those who disagree

In all charity, I suspect that Calvinism may be part of the truth, since we are contingent creatures in a universe ruled by a benevolent God, and I imagine that if I had been baptized as an infant I might have tried to defend it as something helpful for me to be automatically included in the external form of God's family. By calling infant baptism misordered I mean it in the literal sense of the word as the elements of conversion being out of their proper order, but I still recognize that it may play a helpful role in certain individuals' lives, and that the important thing is, no matter how we begin, that we continue in daily faith and repentance, living in Jesus and he in us. 

Excursus into family lore

Unfortunately, in my great-grandfather Harry Straub's life infant baptism played a crippling role as a barrier to repentance -- he was baptized as an infant in the Volga German Lutheran church in Russia, moved to the US in his early twenties, and had his son Henry, my grandfather, baptized on the eighth day. But by all accounts he was an angry man, prone to drunkenness and violence. He went to church only on special occasions like Christmas and Easter. His son Henry, after getting married, later was converted and rebaptized and joined the Church of Christ. Henry introduced his new way of thinking to his mother Katrina, who was Harry's sweet and peaceful stabilizing influence. She started attending evangelistic meetings at the Minnehaha Church of Christ (her husband drove her), and decided she wanted to get rebaptized. Harry told her to wait and they would do it together, but she saw it was just a delay tactic and he wasn't really going to go through with it. So she invited the ministers over to the Straub dairy farm one day when her husband was gone, and they rebaptized her in the Camas Slough. When Harry found out, he said that if those preachers ever came back to his farm he would shoot them with his shotgun. Years later, after Katrina died, he had a temporary softening, but even on his deathbed he refused to repent and believe the gospel when his son Henry presented it to him. Harry believed that his baptism as an infant was his passport to heaven, and so he apparently did nothing to appropriate to himself its true meaning. So now you see how faulty understandings of baptism can tear a family apart and keep someone from salvation. 

John Chrysostom's story, and part of his second catechetical lecture 

Chrysostom himself grew up in a Christian home, and was baptized around age 20, and yet also spoke approvingly of infant baptism. He's a complicated figure, and practice wasn't exactly consistent, nor was the rationale uniform in the early church. 

But his words here are a comfort to me:

__________

Say therefore constantly, I renounce you, Satan. Nothing is more safe than this word if we shall prove it by our deeds.

This I think it right that you who are about to be initiated should learn. For this word is a covenant with the Master. And just as we, when we buy slaves, first ask those who are being sold if they are willing to be our servants: So also does Christ. When He is about to receive you into service, He first asks if you wish to leave that cruel and relentless tyrant, and He receives covenants from you. For his service is not forced upon you. And see the lovingkindness of God. For we, before we put down the price, ask those who are being sold, and when we have learned that they are willing, then we put down the price. But Christ not so, but He even put down the price for us all; his precious blood. For, He says, you were bought with a price. (1 Corinthians 7:25) Notwithstanding, not even then does He compel those who are unwilling, to serve him; but unless you have grace, He says, and of your own accord and will determinest to enroll yourself under my rule, I do not compel, nor force you. And we should not have chosen to buy wicked slaves. But if we should at any time have so chosen, we buy them with a perverted choice, and put down a corresponding price for them. But Christ, buying ungrateful and lawless slaves, put down the price of a servant of first quality, nay rather much more, and so much greater that neither speech nor thought can set forth its greatness. For neither giving heaven, nor earth, nor sea, but giving up that which is more valuable than all these, his own blood, thus He bought us. And after all these things, he does not require of us witnesses, or registration, but is content with the single word, if you say it from your heart. "I renounce you, Satan, and your pomp," has included all. Let us then say this, "I renounce you, Satan," as men who are about in that world at that day to have that word demanded of them, and let us keep it in order that we may then return this deposit safe. 

... 

On this account, then, I beseech you to cleanse yourselves from this error [of theaters, omens, and incantations], and to keep hold of this word as a staff; and just as without sandals, and cloak, no one of you would choose to go down to the market-place, so without this word never enter the market-place, but when you are about to pass over the threshold of the gateway, say this word first: I leave your ranks, Satan, and your pomp, and your service, and I join the ranks of Christ. And never go forth without this word. This shall be a staff to you, this your armor, this an impregnable fortress, and accompany this word with the sign of the cross on your forehead. For thus not only a man who meets you, but even the devil himself, will be unable to hurt you at all, when he sees you everywhere appearing with these weapons; and discipline yourself by these means henceforth, in order that when you receive the seal you may be a well-equipped soldier, and planting your trophy against the devil, may receive the crown of righteousness, which may it be the lot of us all to obtain, through the grace and lovingkindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, with whom be glory to the Father and to the Holy Spirit for ever and ever — Amen.

Source: Translated by T.P. Brandram. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 9. Edited by Philip Schaff. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1889.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. <http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1908.htm>.

Saved by baptism by faith by God

Does baptism save, or does faith save? Good question. Were the citizens of West Berlin saved during the Berlin Airlift of 1948 by food or by the mechanics who fueled up the airplanes that brought the food? Or by the farmers that grew the food? Or by the United States? Yes.

So does baptism save? Yes. Ordinarily. For those who believe. 

What is salvation? Salvation is the gift of God coming into our lives and uniting us with Christ and making us whole. It comes on the basis of God's love poured out in the death of Christ and in Christ's ongoing intercession for those who belong to him, bringing forgiveness of sins and the life of the coming age. 

Salvation is applied to each person by the working of faith in us by the Holy Spirit. We can see it as a point at the beginning of our journey, as a point at the end of time, and a squiggle in the middle. 

To be honest, many of us don't see the point at the beginning, and yet in the midst of the squiggle, we look back and see that we have picked up the clustered elements of conversion along the way, even if through struggle, imperfection, and hardship -- or rather, that these have been worked in us by the Spirit's empowerment and the help and prayers of others, which spurred us on to force our way into the kingdom. These elements include: 

• faith (Rom. 5:1)
• repentance (Luke 24:47)
• confession of Jesus as Lord (Rom. 10:9-10)
• baptism (Rom. 6:3-5; Gal. 3:27; 1 Pet. 3:21)
• adoption by God into his global and local family (Gal. 4:5)
• receiving the Holy Spirit (Galatians 4:6)
• obedience to Jesus, his good news, and the truth (Acts 5:32; Rom. 16:26; 2 Thes. 1:8; Heb. 5:9)
• perseverance until the end (Mat. 24:13)

So what is baptism? A visible Word of God -- a bodily reminder of the promises of God worked out in the story of Jesus's death, burial, and resurrection, experienced by being dipped in water and having the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit pronounced over you.

If you receive baptism by faith, then it -- like prayer, the Lord's supper, and the Word -- will strengthen your faith so that you continue and grow up into salvation (1 Peter 2:2). The efficient cause of salvation is God and his gift. The means of reception is faith. The instrumental means that the Holy Spirit ordinarily uses to bring about faith and strengthen faith so that we endure to the end and so are finally saved includes baptism.

Now arise some problems:

1. Not all who are baptized are saved (because they don't combine it with faith).
2. Some who are saved aren't baptized (because God brings about faith in whoever he wants, even in some who have no opportunity to be baptized). 
3. Some have misunderstood, and said that baptism is absolutely necessary for salvation.
4. Others have misunderstood, and thought that since they were baptized, then they are saved even if they don't personally know Jesus or follow him. 

But on the other hand, there are some who say they believe, and yet have never been baptized because they're too shy to get up in front of people. This requires serious teaching and personal friendship to help their budding attender's faith turn into a martyr's faith. 

Lest you think I fell off the deep end, read the following Q&A from the 1693 London Baptist Catechism, which is basically the Westminster Longer Catechism with a credobaptist reform:

#90 What doth God require of us that we may escape his wrath and curse, due to us for sin?

To escape the wrath and curse of God due to us for sin, God requireth of us faith in Jesus Christ, repentance unto life, with the diligent use of all the outward means whereby Christ communicateth to us the benefits of redemption. 

#93 What are the outward means whereby Christ communicateth to us the benefits of redemption?

The outward and ordinary means whereby Christ communicateth to us the benefits of redemption are his ordinances, especially the word, baptism, the Lord’s supper, and prayer; all which means are made effectual to the elect for salvation. 

#96 How do baptism and the Lord's supper become effectual means of salvation?

Baptism and the Lord's supper become effectual means of salvation, not for any virtue in them, or in him that doth administer them, but only by the blessing of Christ, and the working of the Spirit in those that by faith receive them.

#97 What is baptism?

Baptism is an ordinance of the New Testament instituted by Jesus Christ, to be unto the party baptized a sign of his fellowship with him, in his death, burial, and resurrection; of his being ingrafted into him; of remission of sins; and of his giving up himself unto God through Jesus Christ, to live and walk in newness of life. 

#98 To whom is baptism to be administered?

Baptism is to be administered to all those who actually profess repentance towards God, faith in and obedience to our Lord Jesus Christ, and to none other.

#99 Are the infants of such as are professing believers to be baptized?

The infants of such as are professing believers are not to be baptized, because there is neither command or example in the holy scriptures, or certain consequence from them to baptize such.

#100 How is Baptism rightly administered?

Baptism is rightly administered by immersion, or dipping the whole body of the party in water, into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, according to Christ’s institution, and the practice of the apostles, and not by sprinkling or pouring of water, or dipping some part of the body, after the tradition of men.

#101 What is the duty of such who are rightly baptized?

It is the duty of such who are rightly baptized to give up themselves to some particular and orderly church of Jesus Christ, that they may walk in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.