Going Public by Bobby Jamieson

For years I have appreciated 9Marks books and videos on ecclesiology. They contain a wealth of practical Biblical teaching on membership, eldership, missions, congregationalism, baptism and the Lord’s supper. But I have often wondered, “What about our children?”

I anticipated Going Public: Why Baptism is Required For Church Membership would address this. Of course it would be credobaptist, but I’ve been paedobaptist-leaning while attending credobaptist churches most of my life, so I’m used to the tension. I’ve seen that these two views can work in the same body. But I was not prepared for the strenuous argument for excluding paedobaptists from Baptist church membership.

But it also left me perplexed. In arguing that baptism should be required for church membership, why are paedobaptists the main concern in a Baptist church? Why the repeated scare quotes on their “baptism”? Are they really infiltrating the ranks? By chapter 10, I felt rising anger in response to the direct confrontation. “So why would a paedobaptist seek to join a baptist church? …Is it really a conviction? …Indifference may be closer to the mark. …And indifference is right next door to disobedience.” Even absorbing those blows, I was still waiting to hear Jamieson’s guidance on when and how to baptize our children.

Finally, on page 215, right before the book ends, Jamieson writes, “One sticky issue this whole discussion raises is the age at which churches should baptize young people.” Now we are finally there. What is the answer? To my shock and surprise he continues, “Historically, Baptists have tended to begin baptizing believers around age eighteen.” Now it made sense to me.

The following is my critique of delaying baptism to adulthood and not accepting paedobaptism by other churches. I hope it leads to greater understanding and less division.

First, children are not “a special case” (p217). They are the main case. To be fair, he uses the phrase “special case” only to qualify the New Testament practice of “immediate baptism”, but addressing children only in the last few pages of a 228 page book suggests he really thinks of children as a special case on the issue of baptism and membership. On the contrary, most Christians come to know the Lord as children. A healthy church will also have new adult converts, but they will soon be having children or grandchildren that outnumber them. A church will also have transfer growth, but the primary challenge for Baptists is whether to accept infant or child baptism. So the baptism or non-baptism of children is the main case in any doctrine of baptism, not a special case.

Second, it is not true that “churches are not in a strong position” (p216) to assess whether a child’s claim to believe in Christ is credible. The church is required to make this very assessment concerning the children of its elders. Titus 1:6 says that elders should be “above reproach, the husband of one wife, and his children are believers [or faithful], and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination.” Can the church carry out this duty? Clearly it can. The church’s children are known in worship, in Sunday school, in home fellowship. Normal church life will lead to innumerable age-appropriate conversations and real-world observations that reveal if those children know the Lord because of their father’s instruction.

Third, Jameison doesn’t believe we can “separate baptism from church membership” (p218), which is surely correct, but he sees this as an insurmountable barrier for children. He suggests accommodations in congregational practices to recognize baptized children as part of the church even if they aren’t ready for all adult responsibilities. But he feels the cost of the inconsistency is too high. Best to wait. But what about the costs of waiting? The children are officially outside the church and excluded from its ordinances. I have never felt the force of Jesus words’ more strongly, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”

Imagine a young man who grows up in such a Baptist church. He has Christian parents but he is unbaptized. He never takes the Lord’s supper. He has no official recognition by the church body that he’s a believer (although he has lots of unofficial recognition which is meaningful). On his 18th birthday he begins the membership process. He is baptized. He takes communion once, maybe even a few times. But then he moves away to college. When he meets the atheist professor, or the worldly but attractive young woman, you want him to know deep in his bones that he belongs to Christ. The spiritual formation should be substantial. The Lord gives us baptism and the Lord’s supper, official recognition by the church, precisely for this spiritual formation. To delay it in order to gain greater assurance of the genuineness of his profession seems misordered.

Finally, I believe the root problem of Jamieson’s position is a radical skepticism of any young person’s profession of faith. “Kids being raised in a Christian home should generally look and act like Christians. How then can a church tell if they really are? I’d suggest they can’t, at least not in a consistent, principled, across-the-board kind of way” (p216). So the church can’t affirm a child’s profession of faith. Do you really believe in Jesus or are you just trying to please your parents? Do you really believe the gospel or will you just fall into sin right after you move out? How do we know for sure that you are regenerate? Best to wait. This is a strike at the gracious promises of the gospel. Jesus gives himself to repentant sinners freely and generously, and it is the Pharisees who sit back and judge whether this one or that one is really worthy of his attention. This doesn’t remove the need for church discipline or accountability or rebuke when one of our children falls into sin or rejects the faith in adulthood. On the contrary, it establishes a basis for that confrontation.

The paedobaptist raises his children with gratefulness that they are Christians. They belong to the Lord, their simple faith is genuine, and they have been graciously given the gift of life in Christ. They grow up knowing they are part of the church. It seems the credobaptist raises his children with skepticism, waiting to see if they will become Christians and eventually join the church.

My defense of paedobaptism

I have never considered myself a paedobaptist until now. For years I have appreciated paedobaptism convictions at a distance, but I have also valued staying faithful to my credobaptist church. We should not divide unless absolutely necessary. This book has prompted me to shift my stance slightly. I can now simply state that I am a paedobaptist. I have little desire to argue someone into my position, and I have even less desire to shift my church’s practice. But I would like to present my reasons so that such baptism can be accepted as valid for church membership. I do not think we need to divide on this.

The question for me is simple: when did my children become disciples of Jesus? My answer is that they were disciples from birth. Therefore, in obedience to Jesus’ great commission, they were baptized by our church and taught by us and by their church to obey everything he commanded us.

When did my children first hear and believe? They certainly gave a clear profession of faith as young as 4 years old in front of our credobaptist church, and then were baptized. But they were able to profess faith at 3 years old as well. And they were already hearing and believing at 2, with even then the simplest of professions. Jamieson considers the same profession of faith at 3 and 2 years (p218) and he reasons in the opposite direction. If we can’t trust it at 2 or 3, why trust it at 6 or 10? For him this drives the issue out of childhood and into adulthood. But this denies the promise of Acts 2: “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” Is that promise really for our children, or only when our children become adults? I see the pattern of belief and then baptism in the book of Acts, but I also see there the belief of parents and the subsequent baptism of households. That is still belief followed by baptism. The promise is for you and for your children.

Regarding parental persuasion, is it possible that my children would not have believed at 4 years old? I don’t think so. God has made the family such that children will believe their parents’ instruction. It is not presumption for a father to know that a newborn child will believe. It is a gracious gift of God that should be stewarded. So it is not presumptuous to apply the sign of initiation into the New Covenant.

Is it possible that in adulthood my children will reject the faith? Sadly it is, but that will be a Hebrews 6 moment where they will reject not only their parents’ instruction but also their inclusion in the church. They will be rejecting the enlightening of baptism and the heavenly gift of the Lord’s supper which was only theirs by being in some sense members of the church. And if it happens, I will appeal to their church’s discipline to confront them with their backsliding and unbelief. Their baptism does not provide an excuse to presume they are Christians apart from the church’s ongoing affirmation. It does the exact opposite. They are raised knowing they are Christians who are part of a body. They have seen church discipline happen. They know the names and faces of people who have been restored and of those who have walked away. They have been part of this from the very beginning.

Jamieson’s has a helpful description of baptism as a synecdoche (p42), a single thing that stands for the entire process of coming to faith and professing that faith, in a way that doesn’t require parsing out exactly when each component happens. This is why the paedobaptist reads Romans 6, Galatians 3, Colossians 2, and 1 Peter 3 and sees that this state of being a baptized Christian must apply to his children.

Jamieson rightly sees how circumcision and Passover are analogous to baptism and the Lord’s supper, but he doesn’t mention the force of the children’s inclusion in the Passover meal. They are part of the covenant by circumcision and so they share in the covenant meal. Presbyterians covenantal system described in the Westminster Confession is surely part of the “sophisticated rationale” (p167) that Jamieson doesn’t like, and I don’t particularly like the formulation of Covenant of Works/Covenant of Grace or the tripartite division of Mosaic Law either. But these more technical arguments aren’t necessary to believe the covenantal nature of the church and God’s promises to include our children in that covenant.

Finally, I have seen how a paedobaptist can function in a credobaptist church as long as his children are baptized at a young age. The impact on his children’s spiritual development doesn’t differ significantly. Likewise, a credobaptist can function in a paedobaptist church as long as he is not derided for waiting some years for a simple profession of faith which is sure to come. His attitude about the covenantal inclusion of his children doesn’t differ significantly. But deferring baptism until 18 years poses a real obstacle. It’s hard to see how it doesn’t divide a body.