Why No Rebaptism?

A friend recently wrote asking for resources about the topic of rebaptism.  One of the things I sent him was this little piece that I wrote for Reformed Perspective back in 1999.

WHY IS THERE NO REBAPTISM FOR EX-ROMAN CATHOLICS WHO JOIN A REFORMED CHURCH?

A good question!  We could even extend this question to those who come to us from other false churches.  This difficult question has a long history in the Christian church.  Since the time of Augustine, the Christian church has recognized the validity of baptisms administered by heretics — with one condition:  a valid baptism must be administered by an ordained minister of the gospel according to the Trinitarian formula of Matthew 28:19.

However, an appeal to history is meaningless if we do not also show from the Scriptures why the church has always maintained this position.  One thing we notice from the Scriptures is that it is always the role of God which is central.  We see this for example in Colossians 2:12.  We do not get the impression from the Bible that baptism depends upon the one who is baptizing, other than the fact that the administrator must also be one ordained to preach the Word.  As long as the baptism is administered according to the command of Christ it is valid.  We must look to what baptism signifies, namely the covenant promises of God which are signed and sealed by God to the one being baptized.   God is the active subject in the administration of baptism, and thus a baptism is valid so long as it is administered by an ordained minister of the gospel in the name of the Triune God.  For that reason we should accept the baptism of an ex-Roman Catholic (administered under those conditions), but we should not accept the baptism of an individual baptized in an evangelical church only in the Name of the Lord Jesus.

Tied up with this question is the question of what constitutes a church.  Consider this:  in our confessions we imply that the Roman Catholic Church is a false church.  But note that we still consider it a “church.”  It has gone drastically astray, but it retains some things which permit us still to speak of it as a “church.”  It has vestiges or traces of what the church should be.  It still confesses the Triune God and baptizes in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (although adding many unscriptural elements).  It still maintains the Apostles’ Creed, although it is understood in often radically unscriptural ways.  Among the Jehovah’s Witnesses, however, we do not find traces of what the church should be.  A baptism administered among the Jehovah’s Witnesses should never be recognized as valid.  Of course, that leads right back to the conditions for a valid baptism.

For further study:  Dr. J. Faber wrote his doctoral dissertation on this very subject: Vestigium Ecclesiae:  De doop als ‘spoor der kerk’  (Goes:  Oosterbaan & Le Cointre, 1969).  Although this book is in Dutch, there is an English summary by Rev. G. VanDooren: “Baptism as ‘Vestige of the Church.’” in Canadian Reformed Magazine, Vol. 18, Nos. 37-40 (1969).  For the history of this issue, cf. “Baptism as Administered in Non-sister Churches,” by Rev. G. VanRongen, in Una Sancta Vol. 34, No. 26, and Vol. 35 No. 3 and No. 4.

Women in Office in the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (GKV)

I have been debating whether to write this post.  I don’t like to be the one who breaks bad news.  I don’t like to point out the failings and weaknesses in other churches.  Yet putting our collective heads in the sand does no one any favours either.  There is a need to be up front about what is happening among our sister churches and we need to speak up — because we care and because there is no guarantee that we will not head down the same road.

Een in Waarheid has a story here (rough English translation here) about a church planting project in the Netherlands that’s sponsored by the Reformed Churches (GKV) — those would be the sister churches of the Canadian Reformed Churches.  The work (“Stroom” — “Stream” or “Current” in English), in Amsterdam, is close to institution.  However, the GKV classis involved (Amsterdam/Leiden) is faced with a problem because Stroom already has a provisional council which includes female elders.  The church planter, Martijn Horsman, defends the practice.  As a church plant, Stroom comes from a different context and that needs to be taken into account.

What we have here is a blatantly unbiblical practice being smuggled into the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands under the cover of mission and church planting.  Forget about what the Bible teaches — that doesn’t even really figure into the equation.  Stroom is about the freedom of Jesus and finding new ways of bringing that into practice.

Thankfully, there are voices within the GKV protesting this.  The story reports how a GKV missionary in Ukraine, Rev. Henk Drost, has voiced his opposition.  He argues that this has do with disconnecting Reformed identity and the Reformed confessions from mission.  He is correct.  There are those who see being Reformed and being mission-oriented as being antithetical.  To be missionary churches, we have to give up our Reformed identity and therefore also our confessions.  This makes our Reformed identity more about culture than about confessing and holding to the truth of Scripture.  To be sure, there are certain aspects of our identity that are more culturally conditioned than we have previously recognized.  But is the restriction of the offices of the church to men only one of them?  If the GKV accept that argument it’s a dangerous step away from the authority of Scripture.  Let’s pray that the brothers in Classis Amsterdam/Leiden will have the wisdom to draw the line with Stroom and call Rev. Horsman and his fledgling congregation to repentance.

Discussion of Mission at Classis

Some time ago, I shared a mission proposal that the Providence Canadian Reformed Church made at a recent Classis Ontario West.  Sadly, that Classis was not persuaded of the value of such a proposal.  Perhaps a future classis will be.

Meanwhile, I just noticed that, on the other side of the country, a Classis Pacific West discussed and adopted a similar proposal.  It’s in this press release.  Here are the pertinent details:

Proposal from the church of Surrey-Maranatha: After an amendment, the proposal of Surrey-Maranatha was adopted to add to the Classis Regulations a standing item to Appendix A: ‘Mission: Fraternal Apprisal’, giving the churches an opportunity at each Classis meeting to update each other on their various outreach and mission activities.

I like the wording: “Fraternal Apprisal.”  This is exactly the right idea.  I pray this is a blessing for the advance of the gospel in British Columbia and elsewhere.

Setting Course — Excerpt from Chapter 6

Our (Canadian/American Reformed) History

Revivalistic pietism was not only an American phenomenon.  In fact, pietism began in Europe, specifically in Germany.  The revivalistic side of things doesn’t really seem to have caught on the continent, but you do find it in Great Britain.  In fact, Whitefield was British.  But what did pietism look like in Europe?

In the time of the Reformation and the century following, confessional Protestantism placed a lot of emphasis on the doctrine of justification – what God does for the believer outside of the believer, declaring the believer righteous because of Jesus Christ and his redemptive work.  Though it is often attributed to Martin Luther, it was J. H. Alsted, a Reformed theologian, who first said that justification is the doctrine by which the church stands or falls.  However, beginning in the seventeenth century, voices were heard that placed more emphasis on sanctification – what goes on in the believer’s life and the believer’s obedience to God.  Pietism stressed the holiness of the Christian and godly living.  Of course, the Bible teaches that we are to be holy as God is holy, that without holiness no one will see the Lord, that if we love Christ we will keep his commandments, that faith without works is dead, and that we are to live godly lives in Christ Jesus.  Those are biblical truths we should all affirm.  Please don’t misunderstand me.  I’m not saying that a Christian life is inconsequential, irrelevant or unimportant.  This is about where the emphasis falls in our churches and in our general view of the Christian faith.  In pietism the emphasis fell on the Christian life.  The gospel was sometimes taken for granted and the focus was on holy living.  An obedient life became the doctrine by which the church stands or falls.

Philipp Jacob Spener was one of the pioneers of pietism in Europe.  He founded the University of Halle, a college devoted to training Christians for obedient lives, as well as providing instruction in academic areas.  When he established this college, there was a fear that this emphasis on being inward looking and focusing on man’s efforts would result in a far-reaching subjectivity and even anti-intellectualism.  Doctrine would be made out to be irrelevant and the slogan of “deeds and not creeds” would triumph.  These concerns were well-founded.  The children of the first pietists were leaders in the attack on the Christian faith that took place during the Enlightenment.  Men like Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and Soren Kierkegaard undermined the very foundations of the faith.  As Michael Horton noted, “The war would come from the prayer closet, not the classroom, and it would be led by those who insisted that they were pious Christians, not vicious atheists.” (Made in America, 108).  There is a trajectory in history from pietism to activism to unbelief.

There have been waves of pietism in European church history.  One particular wave took place in the nineteenth century.  In the early 1800s, a pietistic movement took place in Geneva, Switzerland.  This movement was Calvinistic in its orientation.  It placed emphasis on personal faith and regeneration, but was not concerned with the state of the church.  This movement was known as the Reveil.  Though it originated in Switzerland, it soon spread to other European countries.  For instance, it spread to Germany and there focused mainly on alleviating social misery, addressing poverty and injustice.

It also spread to the Netherlands.  People were reacting against the rationalism and materialism of the late Enlightenment period – not realizing that the very rationalism they were reacting against had itself grown out of earlier pietistic movements!  Many of the followers of the Reveil in the Netherlands were upper class folks who were concerned for social justice.  Rather than becoming a movement to reform the Reformed Church, which was desperately adrift, it settled on being a movement which stimulated people to social and political action.  As such, it did a lot of good for the Dutch poor and Dutch society in general, but it did little to recover the gospel in Dutch churches.

As I just mentioned, the situation in the Dutch churches was ugly.  Though it’s hard to imagine, men would become ministers in the Reformed churches without ever having studied or read the Canons of Dort.  There are accounts of men administering the Lord’s Supper and joking about it, making a mockery of it.  Even the name of John Calvin was virtually unheard of, to say nothing of the true gospel of Christ.  Those were dark days.

In the 1820s and 1830s, a reformatory movement took place in the Dutch Reformed Church.  We know this as the Secession or Afscheiding and it’s typically associated with the year it began, 1834.  The Secession was a movement to re-establish confessional orthodoxy in the Netherlands.  It was led by men like Hendrik de Cock and H.P. Scholte.  Through various means, ministers like de Cock were introduced to the gospel for the first time and they believed it and it transformed them and their ministry and led to massive changes in the ecclesiastical landscape of the Netherlands.

********************************

The above is an excerpt from chapter 6 of Setting Course:  Sermons and Essays Shaping the Vision of a Local Church.  You can order the book here.  Until August 15, you can get 15% off by using the code MYBOOK305.  All proceeds go in support of the building fund of the Providence CanRC.

Setting Course — Excerpt from Chapter 3

And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way:  bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God….  Colossians 1:10

As you may have heard, the airshow is coming back to Hamilton later this spring.  Those of you who’ve been, know that there are two parts to an airshow.  There is the flying part where all the aircraft perform for the audience – this is the part where you might get to see the Snowbirds.  This is the dynamic part of an airshow; there’s lots of movement and action.  But there is another part of most airshows:  the static display.  The static display is where all the aircraft are standing still and you can check them out.  Some of them you can even climb aboard and look around.  You can do that because the aircraft are static – in other words, they’re not moving or going anywhere.

Static or dynamic.  If our church were an aircraft, which would we be?  Would we be the CF-104 mounted facing skyward at the Warplane Heritage Museum?  It looks nice, but it’s old and is never going anywhere again.  Or would we be the Westjet flight lifting off of runway 30 and headed for some far off destination?  Are we static or dynamic?  Standing-still-status-quo, or actively moving forward?

This is a question of vision.  How do we see ourselves as a church?  As we develop the expression of that vision, we need to be guided by the Word of God.  What does Scripture say about how we should see our church and especially the question of static versus dynamic?

That’s what we’ve attempted to answer in the Providence Vision…

**********************

The above is an excerpt from chapter 3 of Setting Course:  Sermons and Essays Shaping the Vision of a Local Church.  You can order the book here.  Until June 30, you can get 20% off by using the code SUNSHINECA305.  All proceeds go in support of the building fund of the Providence CanRC.