By Jesse B. Thomas, D. D., LL.D.
PART III.
FORMAL DEFINITIONS
V.
THE VOLUNTARY THEORY
1. Definitions.
The theories thus far considered, while differing in various other details, all agree as to the normal constituency of the Church. It is made up of those who have, in infancy and without their own volition, been made members of it, whether by the hand of the priest, by the universality of Christ's redemptive work, or by birth into citizenship in a Christian state or into membership of a Christian household. Adult baptism is, indeed, recognized as valid, but treated as exceptional. For all persons who are entitled to a share in the ordinance, on whatever ground, ought to have been baptized in infancy; their later baptism, therefore, is abnormal, and permissible only as meeting an emergency improperly created by negligence of those responsible.The Anabaptists of medieval times ("again baptists," as the word means etymologically), or "Anti-pedobaptists," as Dr. A.
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H. Newman prefers to call them, stood alone against the remainder of Christendom in rejecting this conception, and insisting that the Church is legitimately to be made up only of those who have for themselves intelligently and voluntarily accepted Christ, obeyed his command in baptism, and asked for enrollment among his people. The great body of the Christian world still remains pedobaptist. Of those who follow the Anabaptist view, the so-called Baptists are the most influential representatives. Let us look at some of their standards in historic order, and some interpretations of them by their recognized leaders.I. Formularies.
1. General, or Arminian, Baptist definitions. (For the following citations, except as otherwise noted, reference may be made to the "Confession of Faith, etc., of Baptist Churches in England in the Seventeenth Century," edited by E. B. Underbill (London, '54).
The early, so-called Amsterdam Confession of 1611 defines the Church of Christ, in Article X., as follows: It is "a company of faithful people, separated from the world by the word and the Spirit of God, being
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knit unto the Lord, and one unto another, by baptism, upon their own confession of the faith and sins."Article XI. adds: "That though in respect of Christ the Church be one, yet it consisteth of divers particular congregations, even so many as there shall be in the world; every one of which congregations, though they be but two or three, have Christ given them with all the means of salvation, are the body of Christ," etc.
Article XIII. reads thus: "That every church is to receive in all their members by baptism, upon the confession of their faith and sins, wrought by the preaching of the gospel, according to the primitive institution and practice. And, therefore, churches constituted after any other manner, or of any other persons, are not according to Christ's testament" (Underbill, p. 6).
The so-called London Confession of 1660 makes no allusion to a universal Church. It defines the constitution of a local church as follows:
Art. XI. "The right and the only way of gathering churches, according to Christ's appointment, is first to teach or preach the gospel to the sons and daughters of men;
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and then to baptize (that is, in plain English, to dip), in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, or in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, such only of them as profess repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. And as for all such who preach not this doctrine, but instead thereof that scriptureless thing of sprinkling of infants (falsely called baptism), whereby the pure word of God is made of none effect, and the New Testament way of bringing in members into the church by regeneration cast out: when, as the bondwoman and her son, that is to say, the O. T. way of bringing in children into the church by way of generation, is cast out, as saith the Scripture, all such we utterly deny; for as much as we are commanded to have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather to reprove them" (Ibid., p. 113).In their Confession of 1678 they cautiously define the Church universal thus: Art. XXIX. "There is one holy catholic church, consisting of, or made up of, the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be, gathered into one body, under Christ, the only head thereof; which church is gathered by special grace.
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and the pozverful internal work of the Spirit; and are efficiently united unto Christ their head, and can never fall away."Art. XXX. "Nevertheless, we believe the visible catholic church of Christ is made up of several distinct congregations, which make up that one catholic church or mystical body of Christ," etc. (Ib., p. 149).
2. Particular, or Calvinistic, Baptist definitions. (These Baptists correspond to the so-called Regular Baptists of America as the General do to the Free Baptists.) This body presented to Parliament in England in 1646 a confession which was avowedly intended to show the Cromwellian party, then in power, that certain charges against them, of antagonizing the Westminster Confession, had been slanderously exaggerated. They aim to show how largely they agree and in what points alone they differ.
Article XXXIII. accordingly says: "Jesus Christ hath here on earth a spiritual kingdom, which is his church, whom he hath purchased and redeemed to himself as a peculiar inheritance; which church is a company of visible saints, called and separated from the world by the word and Spirit of God, to the visible profession of
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the faith of the gospel, being baptized into that faith, and joined to the Lord, and each to other by mutual agreement, in practical enjoyment of the ordinances commanded by Christ, their Head and King." (The local church is thus really defined.) (Ib., p. 39.)The Confession of 1656 makes only the following allusion to the subject:
Art. XXIV. "That it is the duty of every man and woman, that have repented from dead works, and have faith toward God, to be baptized; that is, dipped or buried under the water, in the name of Our Lord Jesus, or in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Therein to signify and represent a washing away of sin, and their death, burial and resurrection with Christ.
"And being thus planted in the visible church or body of Christ, who are a company of men and women separated out of the world by the preaching of the Gospel, do walk together in all the commandments of Jesus; wherein God is glorified, and their souls comforted." (Again a local church is described.) (Ibid., pp. 89, 90.)
The Confession of 1688 (known in this country as the Philadelphia Confession, because adopted by the Philadelphia Association
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early in the eighteenth century: since widely used) is preceded by an apologetic statement, explaining that its purpose is to correct certain misrepresentations which have greatly prejudiced the minds of others against them, they being still stigmatized as Anabaptists, which they strongly resent They, accordingly, avow their purpose to follow the example of the Independents (or Congregationalists) in their Savoy Confession. They thus seek to "express their minds not only in words concurrent with the former (that is, the Westminster Confession) in sense, but also, for the most part, without any variation of terms. They have, therefore, made "use of the very same words with them both, in those articles (which are very many) wherein our faith and doctrine is the same with theirs." They are determined, they say, "to convince all that they have no itching to clog religion with new words."Article XXV. adopts the language of the other two Confessions, the Westminster and Savoy, substituting the word "kingdom" for "church" when speaking of the world-body: Christ "shall always, notwithstanding the degeneracy of particular churches,"
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have "a kingdom in this world to the end thereof," of such as "believe in him, and make profession of his name."Article XXVI., speaking of the invisible "catholic or universal church" of the other two Confessions, agrees that it con sists of all the elect; but, instead of calling it "invisible" outright as they do, says "which (with respect to the internal work of the Spirit, and truth of grace) may be called invisible."
There is no article affirming a "visible catholic church." But the language of the Savoy Confession is followed in part, in the statement that "all persons throughout the world, professing the faith of the Gospel, and obedience unto God by Christ according unto it," etc., "are and may be called visible saints" (instead of the "visible catholic church of Christ," as in Savoy); adding, "and of such ought all particular congregations to be constituted" (Ib., 219,220). The New Hampshire Confession of Faith (1833), the latest and probably most widely accepted of all among Northern Baptist churches, makes no allusion whatever to a Church universal, visible or invisible. It describes the local church only, under
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the title "A Gospel Church" (in Art. XIII.). We there read as follows:"We believe that a visible church of Christ is a congregation of baptized believers, associated by covenant in faith and fellowship of the Gospel; observing the ordinances of Christ, governed by his law and exercising the gifts, rights and privileges invested in them by his word" (Schaff, "Creeds, etc.," III., 746).
Turning to the voluminous literature in explanation and defense of the Baptist conception of the Church, it will be needful to make only two or three citations, especially as the subject will be further examined, directly, from the New Testament point of view.
Dr. W. R. Williams, one of the ablest of American Baptist writers, defines the New Testament church as "a local, independent, self-governed community . . . the original form of polity for the primitive Christian church." He adds that "some seem to forget this, and think of all the communities of primitive believers as making up but one visible church. To this new imaginary body it is easy to ascribe a legislation, a power of development and a power of depression and
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excision which the Holy Scriptures do not attach to churches as apostles move among them" ("Lectures on Baptist History," 95, 96).Dr. T. Armitage says, in his "History of the Baptists": "In the apostolic age the church was a local body, and each church was independent of every other church. The simple term ecclesia designates one congregation, or organized assembly, this being its literal and primal meaning. . . . It follows, then, that the New Testament nowhere speaks of the 'Universal, Catholic, or Invisible, Church' as indicating a merely ideal existence, separate from a real and local body. . . . A local church fully expresses the meaning of the word ecclesia wherever it is found in Holy Writ" (pp. 118-120).
II. Summary of Voluntary Theory.
1. The definition of the Christian church must be derived solely from the New Testament. All the Baptist symbols fortify their statements, one by one, by reference to New Testament passages, and rest exclusively on these. Defenders of other theories refer also to the same source, but lean in part on the Old Testament as well. They
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base their practice, also, collaterally at least, on church authority, on ancient custom, and on expediency. These latter hold that a church may be properly called Christian although only in part designed and molded by Christ. Baptists, on the contrary, insist that Christ alone is "King in Zion," to use one of their characteristic phrases.2. The term "church" in the New Testament primarily, if not exclusively, designates a local body. Any more extended reference, such as to a "church universal," if real, is tropical only. This question will be discussed later and need not be here dwelt upon.
3. The New Testament church was, and every Christian church ought in like manner to be, composed wholly of willingly baptized believers. From the time of Augustine, sacramentarians and others have argued that, since "the tares and the wheat" must "grow together" until the harvest, a purely regenerate membership of the church is neither to be expected nor aimed at. One Anglican writer goes so far as to justify the bringing of unregenerate infants into the church by baptism, on the ground that "very few
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of them would have embraced Christianity had it demanded individual conversion and personal effort." Congregationalists, on the other hand, have vigorously denounced the inclusion of the unregenerate in the church. Barrow, an early leader in that body, declared that "assemblies of good and bad together are no churches, but heaps of profane people." R. W. Dale, a modern Congregational leader, says ("Ecclesia" II., 356): "Formally a religious society ceases to be a church when it ceases to require personal union with Christ as the condition of communion with itself, and when it consciously, voluntarily, and of deliberate purpose, includes within its limits what John Robinson, after the manner of his age, calls a mingled generation of the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent." Yet, to this day, the Congregationalists insist in their formularies, that the church is composed not only of regenerate parents, but also of their (confessedly unregenerate) "households."4. The Christian church is purely voluntary in organisation and maintenance The "covenant" is the only formal constitutional basis of Baptist, or other congregationally
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governed, churches. Every member must for himself seek admission to the body, be accepted by its consent, and enter into mutual covenant with its members - the continuance of the relation being dependent on the continued assent of both parties. Into a church so constituted none can be legitimately thrust by priest, parent or irresistible predestination.5. The local church is subject, as are all its members, to the authority of Christ alone. The Congregationalists were first called "Independents" in England. This was because of their assertion of the absolute independence of the individual church. Revolting against the assumed supremacy of pope, bishop, king, parliament, or other man of body of men, over the local church, they became "separatists" from the other Puritans as well as from the state church. But this radical idea, which gave them birth, had long been insisted upon by, and was probably borrowed from, the Anabaptists. Robert Browne, who is recognized as the father of English Independency, is admitted to have been early associated with the Dutch Anabaptists settled in Norwich, England. Curteis (in "Church of England and Dissent," 71)
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insists that Browne learned his revolutionary ideas from them. Prof. W. Walker ("Creeds, etc.," 27, 35-6) confesses that the relationship is "difficult to deny," and recognizes the doctrine of churchly independence of state authority as an "Anabaptist" tenet, which Browne was the "first writer to proclaim in England." It remains to inquire whether Baptists and Congregationalists have been equally true in practice to this fundamental idea.III. Logical Sequences of the Theory.
1. Individual responsibility to Christ emphasised. Obedience is the other half of faith. If a child may render vicarious obedience to Christ's command to be baptized, how can we resist the logical inference that it may also vicariously believe? The responsibility for belief as well as for baptism is shifted in such a case to the shoulders of the magistrate, the priest, the parent, or the custodian, by whose act salvation is to be secured for those under their care. The Romish Church accordingly holds the sacrament to be efficacious through the faith of the priest alone. Luther held that faith may be unconsciously implanted, in sleep. The sponsor in the Anglican service professes
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faith in the child's name. Presbyterian writers contend that, by virtue of the prior faith of one of their parents, children may be "sanctified from the womb," and that on a parent's becoming a believer his children, already born, may be thereby rendered "holy." The Congregationalists, clinging to the theory of "birthright membership," have, as we have seen, found it impossible to couple logically with it the incongruous idea of an exclusively regenerate church. Practice is apt to override and remold theory. The "Half-way Covenant" and the Unitarian apostasy were the logical outcome of the futile attempt to marry two incompatible theories - the false practice inevitably neutralizing and voiding the true doctrine. The Baptists, on the other hand, have consistently maintained that responsibility for acceptance of the authority of Christ and obedience of his command are alike personal, and can not be shifted to another. Maintenance of this view normally entails, of itself, a regenerate church membership, and involves no need of equivocal hypothesis or ingenious qualification of language in order to escape a dilemma. The Baptists, and their allies who repudiate pedobaptism, are the only
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consistent defenders of the voluntary idea.2. Unquestioning loyalty to Christ inculcated. As a personal command requires personal obedience, so an unqualified command requires unqualified obedience. To evade or hinder such unhesitating response, by cavil as to a possible alternative meaning of words; by forbidding the right to ignore a supposed vicarious obedience already accomplished; by interposing ecclesiastical or traditional abolition or modification of an appointed rite, or by appealing to convenience or expediency or social relations as giving like sanction to change - is to derogate from the lordship of Christ and practically to set his explicit will at naught. The voluntary theory, therefore, consistently applied, must reject infant baptism, for it is admitted that Christ did not explicitly command it. It can therefore be no lawful substitute for the intelligently accepted baptism which he explicitly did command. "Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it," said the mother of Jesus, at the wedding feast. In like manner the Baptists loyally echo, "Do it," and not some other thing. Thus, and thus only, can the intrusion of the human, and the corresponding disparagement and
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displacement of the divine, be avoided. It is not accident or perversity that connects the insistence upon immersion with the rejection of infant baptism. Loving loyalty to Christ demands exact conformity to his expressed will alike in either case. It is needless to detail the evil results that have followed from tampering with the plain meaning of Christ's words; from the treatment of the thing commanded, acknowledged to be clearly defined, as, nevertheless, non-essential, and the like. Baptism and belief are constantly coupled in Scriptural command. If the one may be evaporated by verbal jugglery into indefiniteness of meaning or dismissed as non-essential, why may not the other be as legitimately dissolved into "shining ether," or peremptorily set aside as vain? One Congregationalist church not long ago broadened its conceptions of loyalty to Christ enough to take in a Unitarian church, which reckons neither faith in the authority of Christ nor baptism at his bidding as of serious consequence.3. Fraternal equality preserved. As there is "no difference" in the status of the sinful, so there is no gradation in rank among the saved. They have "one Master, even
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Christ," and all they are "brethren." The "princes of the church," "lord bishops," and all other hierarchical functionaries, assuming divinely imparted supremacy over the churches, as well as all other aristocratic or prelatic rulers in the local body, are excluded by the voluntary theory. Bogue and Bennett, in their "History of Dissenters," express surprise that Baptists, independent and variant as they have been in many things, have never adopted the episcopal or presbyterial polity. They do not seem to recognize the inevitable consequence of the Baptist conception of the nature of the church. If it has been constituted by, and rests upon mutual consent, then "every man must count for one, and no man for more than one," and absolute democracy results.To say nothing of other bodies, there are even in the Congregational body at least three grades of membership, theoretically; and there were, at one time, four. For when the "Half-way Covenant" was in force there were infants unbaptized, but "holy"; infants baptized, but unresponsive as yet to the "covenant"; persons baptized in infancy who had later "owned the covenant," and been
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admitted to certain church privileges; and, finally, the professedly regenerate. The first three classes were in some sense members (the terms "inchoate," "potential," "presumptive," "incipient," or other qualifying adjective, being used to designate their relative rank); but their exact status was always a matter of question. An entanglement again due to the effort to mix the incongruous.4. Religious liberty ensured. Robert Robinson, of England, who wrote a history of the Baptists more than a hundred years ago, announced the legitimate outcome of the voluntary theory, fairly followed, in the following terms:
"The freedom of religion from the control of the magistrate; the simplicity and perfection of revelation without the aid of the scholastic theology; the absolute exemption of all mankind from the dominion of their clergy - are all included in the voluntary baptism of an adult, and in the maxim that the visible church which Christ hath established on earth is an assembly of true and real saints, and ought, therefore, to be inaccessible to the wicked, and exempt from all institutions of human authority. It is
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this maxim, with its contents, and not rebaptizing, that hath occasioned most of the persecutions of this party of Christians" (Benedict, "Hist. Baptists," p. 435).In confirmation of these words may be cited the statement of Milman, an Anglican, that "infant baptism was one of the strong foundations of sacerdotalism." He adds that the early Anabaptists were "Biblical antisacerdotalists." Wall, in his "History of Infant Baptism" (p. 626), notes that "no state church has ever relinquished infant baptism." The German historian Gervinus, in his "Introduction" to the "History of the Nineteenth Century," credits the Anabaptists with being the "first advocates of that principle of religious liberty which brought the Pilgrims later to America." Skeats, in his "History of the Free Churches," characterizes the' Baptists of England as the "proto-evangelists of religious freedom."
The Independents, with Robert Browne their leader, have often been claimed as the pioneers of this doctrine. But Skeats says (pp. 21, 34): "The first Independents adhered to the doctrine that it was the official duty of princes and magistrates to suppress heresy and root out all false religions and
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counterfeit worship of God." Curteis, in his "Dissent, etc." (p. 69), says Browne "had no idea of what we now mean by toleration." The very title of Browne's work on "Reform without Tarrying for Any" implies as much; for those whose slow movements he would not await were the civic rulers.The English Presbyterians openly advocated the union of church and state. The Westminster Confession declares that "they who, upon pretence of Christian liberty . . . shall maintain such erroneous opinions or practices as are destructive to the external peace and order of the church, may lawfully be proceeded against by the censure of the church and by the power of the magistrate." The speedy and inconsistent lapse of New England Puritanism into persecution is evidence enough of the danger of departure from rigorous adhesion to voluntarism in religion, either in doctrine or practice. A recent writer says as to the "two swords" in New England: "Short as has been the interval between our own and colonial times, it has become difficult to get a clear and undistorted vision of the men and events of that era. There was so much incongruity in the temper and conduct of the
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Pilgrims and Puritans themselves, that it is not wonderful to find assailant and defender each furnished with ample weapons for his purpose in their own history. They were 'separatists' from the Church of England for conscience' sake, but they would not endure 'separatists' from themselves. They limited the right of citizenship to church-members, and construed this to mean the avowedly regenerate alone; while their standards declared the Church to be constituted of believers and their offspring, including the unregenerate. They resented civil interference, on the part of the English authorities, in religious affairs, but had to be restrained from like interference by the English king."______________
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