Orthodox churches should not
accept the baptisms of mainline denominations that have chosen to revise their
teachings such that they are no longer orthodox in theology or ethical
practices. Many looking at this question content themselves with
whether the right form of baptism was administered—baptism in the name of the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This idea stems from what the Church
decided in the Donatist Controversy, that baptism was still valid despite the
theological or ethical state of the priest administering it. That
decision should be separated from the challenge facing the Church in our day,
where the form of orthodoxy is still practiced but the substance of orthodox
convictions and practices are rejected. This crisis of the Church
today centres around homosexuality and gender ideology, but it is not limited
to it. Because of this revision of orthodox teaching in what were
once orthodox denominations and churches, many have separated themselves and
their churches and even formed new denominations. However, the
question of whether their baptisms can be accepted is a serious issue.
Father Luis Ladaria, S.J., has
written an excellent article on baptism in regard to the Mormon Church, ‘The
Question of the Validity of Baptism Conferred in the Church of Jesus Christ of
the Latter-Day Saints’.[1] In
it, he argues that, for baptism to be valid (in the Roman Catholic Church), it
must be the right matter (water), the right form (words declaring that it is
‘baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’), with the right
intent of the minister, and the right disposition of the recipient. (Those
practicing infant baptism speak of the right disposition of the
parent/s). I think that these topics provide a fruitful way of
speaking about baptism (as also they have historically for discussion of the
Eucharist). Yet I would like to press harder on what is means by
‘intent’ and ‘disposition’.
The distinction between John and
Jesus on baptism helps us to see that Christian baptism is not just for the
repentance for the forgiveness of sins (John's baptism) but also a
participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (Christian baptism),
as we read in Romans 6. A baptism of repentance needs to become a
baptism into Christ for it to be fully Christian. This observation
relates to the discussion of whether the Trinitarian form of baptism (Matthew
28.19) is sufficient for baptism to be Christian. Mormons baptise in the name
of Jesus Christ. Even so, their understanding of the Trinity is not
orthodox Christian. Hence the Christian Church does not accept Mormon
baptism as Christian baptism or, for that matter, any unity with them.
Intent, too—I would
argue—must not only refer to the act: ‘I am not just pouring water on you but
am baptizing you’. That is essential, of course, but I would argue
that ‘intent’ must also involve what the act is symbolizing[2]:
a true cleansing from sin. Paul explains this intent regarding
baptism in Romans 6.1-4 and Galatians 3.26. Those baptised into
Christ are morally changed:
Romans 6.1-4
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By
no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Do
you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were
baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore
with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from
the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
Galatians 3.27 For as many of you
as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
Equally, the recipients’ disposition is
important. In baptism, new Christians pledge (or appeal to God
for—the Greek is ambiguous) a morally changed life—a good conscience—through
the work of the risen Christ. Peter writes,
Baptism, which
corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but
as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus
Christ (1 Peter 3.21).
By way of example—one highly
relevant in our times—if either ministers of baptism affirm homosexuality or
recipients of baptism continue in homosexual sin, they are rejecting the
ethical change declared in baptism of dying and rising with Christ (cf. 1 Corinthians
6.9-11). In the language of speech-act theory, they are separating
the locution (simply what is said) from the perlocution (what the words
actually accomplish). We associate the outward act of baptism with
an inward cleansing, a resurrection to a righteous life in Christ—what Jesus
calls being born from above/again (John 3.3). How can one perform
baptism while declaring a sin to be acceptable? How can a recipient
be baptised while affirming a sinful life? The equivalent would be
saying ‘I do’ in a marriage ceremony while already being involved with another
woman.
This needs to be expanded from a
discussion of individuals and applied corporately as well. I think
there needs to be a fifth category to consider in the case of baptism, the
Eucharist, and ordination: ecclesiology. (It is implied in Fr
Ladaria’s essay.) For baptism, being baptised into Christ is being
baptised into the body of Christ, the Church. Being ‘in Christ’ is not
simply an individualistic matter. The one being baptised is not only
saying, ‘I am a Christian’ but also ‘I am part of Christ’s Church’.
Paul says regarding those
baptised into Christ that they are all one in Christ. What Paul says
in Galatians 3.28-29 is equivalent to what he says in 1 Corinthians 12.13, and
both passages relate baptism to a unity with others in the Church:
Galatians 3.27-28 For
as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There
is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and
female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
1 Corinthians
12.13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks,
slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
Churches that separate from
denominations because they introduce heretical teaching are saying that they
are not one with them. They recognise a legitimate, even essential,
separation on matters of orthodoxy, as we see in 1 John 2.19 and 2 Peter 2.1-3:
1 John
2.19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been
of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might
become plain that they all are not of us.
2 Peter 2.1-3
But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false
teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even
denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift
destruction. 2 And many will follow their sensuality, and
because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. 3 And
in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from
long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.
The standard for orthodoxy is not
only the doctrine of the Trinity. First John is addressing a rejection of
Jesus and His saving work, and 2 Peter is addressing a similar error that
includes sexual ('sensuality') errors and greed. It surely follows that
we should also reject the baptismal and Eucharistic practices and the
ordinations of those individuals and denominations that teach falsely and
separate from us over orthodoxy. There is no unity in Christ with
those who determine to walk in sin and who teach unrighteousness. It
is immensely mistaken to accept baptism simply because it has the right form—Trinitarian
baptism—without substance--the claim that baptism makes.
Revisionist denominations and ministers have the form of Christian baptism, but
their intent is the opposite of baptism's intent. They
affirm sin and reject righteousness in Christ. They deny the need to be
cleansed from certain sins or that Jesus died for those sins, that the Master
bought them. Instead, they teach sensuality. Their baptisms,
Trinitarian in form, are nevertheless a rejection of the very dying and rising
with Christ that baptism involves.
I might add that the theology of
baptism that we gain from the relevant New Testament texts is in regard to
adult baptism. A passage like Romans 6 that I have briefly discussed
understands the individual coming to Christ as one identifying with Christ's
death and resurrection. We speak of 'believers' baptism' because only one
professing Christian faith for himself or herself can make this commitment and
live out the transformed life of a Christian that Paul describes in Romans
6. The same might be said regarding other passages mentioning baptism in
the New Testament. The level of commitment might be compared to marriage:
we do not allow children to get married. They cannot understand marriage
and cannot make the commitment of marriage. Some have tried to compare
baptism to the circumcision of the Old Testament, referring to the comparison
Paul makes in Colossians 2.11-12, where Paul calls baptism a 'circumcision of
Christ'. In this, however, Paul is speaking not of physical circumcision
of a child but of the circumcision of the heart in the Old Testament
(Deuteronomy 10.16; Jeremiah 4.4). The circumcision of the heart called
for in these Old Testament passages is not something done to a child to include
them in the covenant community but something an adult does 'to the Lord' and so
avoid God's wrath because of evil acts (Jeremiah 4.4).
Tertullian, for example,
recognised this in that he argued against infant or child baptism. From this we note that some in the Church
were practicing child baptism at this point (cf. De Baptisma).
Evidence from grave markers shows children baptized and dying at various ages. Tertullian believed that baptism is so tied
to salvation that it is not simply a sign of salvation by grace through faith
but also effects salvation--baptismal regeneration. This view also makes
sense of the grave markers: if children were dying, baptism was offered. Baptismal regeneration is one area where the
Patristic era strayed from the New Testament era. If Paul had believed in
baptismal regeneration, that the baptismal act actually accomplishes salvation,
he never would have said to the Corinthian church that he was glad he did not
baptise many of them and that he was not sent to baptise but to proclaim the
Gospel (1 Corinthians 1.13-17). Salvation is in and through Jesus Christ,
a dying and rising with Him in His death and resurrection. We do not
enact our own death and resurrection but participate in His death and
resurrection, which saves us. It is
Jesus’ death for the forgiveness of our sins that saves us and, having received
forgiveness, God gives believers the Holy Spirit (so Acts 2.38). Thus,
baptism can only symbolise this truth, but it is not an act that joins infants
to the covenant community like circumcision; it is the new covenant promise of
God to His restored people (Ezekiel 36.27), an act associated with Jesus’ cleansing
us from our sins and giving us the Spirit.
Infant baptism in Protestant
churches makes baptism a covenant initiation service, like dedication in
Baptist churches. This was a necessary correction of the notion that
baptism itself saves, but it reduced the 'substance' of baptism from its salvific
significance to a mere shadow of the theology expressed in the New
Testament. It became a social act, becoming part of the covenant
community, that only pointed to but could not testify to the depth of the Christian, ‘New Covenant’ life of salvation and regeneration. Instead of being
an outward act of a new Christian of confession and commitment that symbolised
what Christ has done, it became an outward act of a parent to include the child
in the covenant community with the hope of developing faith. This also
made baptism less about Christ and more about the church, the community into
which the child was baptised. (And when a local church also happens to be
full of sinful members practicing unrighteousness, the meaning of baptism is
even further undermined. Who would want
to baptise anyone, child or otherwise, into a community full of sinful people?)
The Anabaptist wing of the
Protestant Reformation insisted on reforming the Catholic church’s belief in baptismal
regeneration but also insisted that there was more to baptism than taught by
other Reformers. They insisted on a soteriological dimension to baptism
and therefore reserved it only for adults who had made informed confessions and
commitments such that they participated in the death and resurrection of
Christ. The rest of the Reformation treated baptism like arranged
marriages, with children growing up to reject, in many cases, the spouse that
they were supposed to marry. As George Beasley-Murray once put it (Baptism
in the New Testament), 'we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that
there are millions of baptized people in Europe who have no contact
at all with the Church' (p. 371). The result is that the established 'Churches' of
Protestant European nations and Britain are filled with many 'baptised
pagans'--children baptised by their parents but who rejected Christianity as
adults. This fact shows how the substance of baptism was largely removed
by reforming baptismal regeneration in the wrong way, as covenant membership.
Even so, what we now have is a
dramatic change in Protestantism. The mainline denominations, like
Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists, and Presbyterians, have the right form of
baptism, including the orthodox Trinitarian wording, but, as liberal
denominations, they have become heretical in their teachings, most
conspicuously their teachings and practices regarding sexuality. We not
only have a nation of baptised pagans in establishment Churches in Europe but now
'denominations of baptised pagans'. If the Reformation corrected a
long-standing mistaken view of baptism--baptismal regeneration--today we need a
further reformation of the Church. This 21st century
Reformation requires a reformation not so much around doctrines (though there
is that) but more around ethics. The substance of baptism points to the
work of Christ, the salvific and regenerative work of Christ due to our
participation in His death to sin and resurrection to new life. Those who continue in sin while entering the
waters of baptism enact nothing but a lie.
In Colossians, Paul describes this substance of baptism as
follows:
In him also you
were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the
body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; 12when you
were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in
the power of God, who raised him from the dead. 13And when you
were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made
you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, 14erasing
the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside,
nailing it to the cross (Colossians 2.11-14).
Baptism cannot be reduced to
covenant membership, like circumcision, without greatly reducing its
substance. Rather, it symbolises the convert's putting off the flesh with
its trespasses, and the forgiveness of God for our trespasses because of the
death of Christ on our behalf. No greater lie has been told in the Church
itself than the lie of a community baptizing people to include them in the
Church while assuring them that their lifestyles are not sinful at all. The baptism of such a Church is no baptism at
all, no matter the historic, Trinitarian form. What we need is a Great Purification of the Church.
We are, in fact, in the midst of the Great Purification of the Church. The Great Reformation of the Church took place in the 16th Century. After 1,500 years of the Church, the Church had accumulated various teachings and practices that came from culture and other influences with no Biblical backing. Although our current state appears to be the demise of the Church after Christendom, we are instead experiencing a Great Purification of the Church, a sloughing off of dross as when gold is purified in fire (1 Peter 1.7).
The central issues in the Great
Reformation were an understanding of Scripture and of salvation, and Reformers stated
their Biblical theology over against contemporary Catholic views, as follows:
Sola Scriptura—Church
tradition and reason are not separate authorities from but dependent upon the sufficient
revelation that we have in Scripture
Sola Gratia—we
are saved by God’s grace alone and not by any other means, such as indulgences
or the treasury of (or extra) merit of dead saints
Sola Fide—we are
saved by putting faith in God’s gracious salvation, not by our own righteous works
Sola Christo—God’s
gracious salvation is accomplished through Jesus Christ’s sacrificial blood on
the cross for the atonement of our sins once for all, not by the Church or some
other religion or ourselves
Soli Deo
Gloria—the chief end of creation, humanity, salvation—of everything—is God’s
glory alone
The Great Reformation had to
correct the erroneous Catholic understanding of salvation that developed
alongside a departure from understanding that Scripture alone is the authority
for Christian theology. The accretions
that the Church had picked up were what might be called Pelagian notions set
forth in the 5th century by Pelagius that allowed human works of
righteousness to contribute to salvation.
Humans had not sinned so badly that they could not contribute to their
own condition before God. The Pelagian
might say, ‘I’m good enough’ or ‘I’m not so bad’ such that God would not accept
me on Judgement Day. While allowing for
God’s salvation, humans, too, could play a role. Even though this Pelagian teaching had been
rejected by the great Catholic theologian of the 5th century, St.
Augustine, it managed to gain a foothold in much of the Roman Church by the 16th
century. Its errors were first addressed
by the Protestant Reformation and then by the Council of Trent in the Catholic
Church in the 16th century.
Five hundred years later, the
Church is in need of—no, is going through another reformation, the Great
Purification. The Great Purification of
the Church in our day needs to correct the erroneous Protestant understanding
of salvation that has accrued in mainline denominations, and the correct
teaching might be set forth as follows:
Recta
Interpretatio Scripturarum—Scripture must be rightly interpreted as it is Divinely
inspired and therefore authoritative, clear, and consistent; it must not be
revised, treated as a treasury of various items from which one might choose, or
even read against itself to serve readers’ agendas or ideologies
Sola Gratia—although
saved by God’s grace alone, this does not give us a license to sin; God’s grace
is not only forgiving grace but also transforming grace, and His transforming
grace is not only in regard to acts but also to passions and desires—a circumcision
of the heart
Sola Fide—although
saved by responding to God’s gracious salvation by faith, this does not mean
that salvation is merely a justification of the sinner and not also a
transformation of the sinner; a truly regenerated sinner will do good works
Sola Christo—salvation
is through Christ alone such that we must not refocus the Church and its
mission on anything other than Christ and Him crucified, such as our own comfort
through liberation or prosperity, or an activism to accomplish social justice,
or by so expanding Christian mission to include everything in regard to doing
good that it is in the end nothing and not about Jesus Christ
Soli Deo
Gloria—the chief end of all things is the glory of the Triune God alone: in God
as creator, not in antinatural practices or orientations or in worshiping the
creation rather than the Creator; in God as Saviour, not in philosophies of
life; in the Triune God, not some generic notion of God or gods applicable to
other religions than Christianity, in shared, human values and virtues apart
from the Church and Christ its head; not in humanism, with the glory that
should go to God going to humanity and its achievements or humanity’s (wrongly)
assumed goodness; or in established institutions of ‘Church’ such that unity in
these replaces unity of believers in God through Jesus Christ by the Holy
Spirit to the glory of God alone
This much needed reformation of
the Church, a Great Purification of the Church, points largely to moral reform,
where misinterpretations of the Great Reformation have allowed accretions of
false teaching about ethics. The presenting
issue has been homosexuality, with all its implications about the
interpretation of Scripture and understanding of salvation, God, the Church,
and other issues. The issues have
divided the denominations in our time and left many churches without a
denomination. This deconstruction of the
Church, its theology, and its ethics will lead to a Great Purification of the
Church. It will require a shrinking of what
people understand to be the Church. The
mainline denominations have been shrinking every since the 1960s and are no
longer serious expressions of the Christian faith. They are more like snakeskins, leaving the
appearance of the glory that these denominations once were but leaving all that
behind for the snake that has emerged from them.
[1] See https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20010605_battesimo_mormoni-ladaria_en.html (accessed
6 July, 2025).
[2] I
leave aside the wider discussion of this matter, that is, whether the act of
baptism is a symbol or an outward sign of an inward grace (a sacrament).
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