Participating Witness. Anthony G. Siegrist
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family. They both add so much.
Introduction
The vast majority of Christian communities began baptizing infants at some point during the four centuries after the faith transcended the boundaries of its Jewish origins. In the West, pockets of dissent existed throughout the Medieval era, but it was the Radical Reformation of the sixteenth century that forcefully reopened the question. In the wake of works critical of received sacramental theology such as Martin Luther’s The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Anabaptists of that period searched the Scriptures with newly critical eyes.1 Following the models of Luther and Ulrich Zwingli they arrived at a position more discontinuous from the received tradition than did any of the Magisterial Reformers. Debate and contradictory practice persists within Christianity to our own time. A variety of strong biblical and theological arguments have been advanced on both sides. The exchange between Oscar Cullman and Karl Barth is a classic example.2 The clash of theological giants, to say nothing of the endless debates in the pew and on the web, has failed to settle the issue. And even though some representatives of both sides have lately exhibited remarkable flexibility, the disagreement remains intractable.
The Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry document, produced by the World Council of Churches in 1982 and still one of the most important contemporary statements on baptism, engages this obvious ecumenical problem. It affirms the goal of mutual recognition of baptism across lines of church division and advocates that, where it is possible, “mutual recognition should be expressed explicitly by the churches.”3 Toward this end it advises,
In order to overcome their differences, believer baptists and those who practice infant baptism should reconsider certain aspects of their practices. The first may seek to express more visibly the fact that children are placed under the protection of God’s grace. The latter must guard themselves against the practice of apparently indiscriminate baptism and take more seriously their responsibility for the nurture of baptized children to mature commitment to Christ.4
This is valuable counsel expressed in an important forum, yet it is also demonstration of the fact that despite important commonalities, the deep differences over baptism are not going to be resolved in the near future. It is now time to forgo attempts to prove one traditional form of the practice right or wrong and to pursue instead how baptism might aid us in the task of being faithful Christian communities in an era marked by fracture. Even though sociological and political tectonics may yet destabilize the divide, the working assumption of this book is that the gift of unity on this issue has not yet been granted to the church. Each way of understanding and practicing baptism possesses an internal theological coherence, but neither can be rightly elucidated according to the assumptions of the opposing view. This is evidenced by the protraction of the debate and the ancient legacy of each tradition. Therefore, even though the divisive practice of baptism presents the issue with which this book wrestles, my argument will be developed in such a way as to avoid both tired polemics and undue ecumenical optimism.
Tradition is better understood as a vine than as a tree. At least that is what one inheritor of the Radical Reformation legacy, Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder, has suggested. His point is that a productive vine’s health is not maintained through untended organic growth. It requires careful pruning.5 This is the type of work I intend to take up here. Even though the major division over baptism is not one that can be “fixed,” attentive pruning of each branch is needed. In the context of North American Anabaptism, developments related to the practice of baptism require just such attention. This is because the working theology of baptism suffers from a deficient account of divine action, especially as mediated through the church. This project’s goal is to develop resources to mend this weakness, and in so doing to strengthen the key Anabaptist distinctive of believers’ baptism. Toward this end I will draw not only on the Anabaptist tradition, but also on a range of theological resources related to the sacraments and ecclesiology. This project probes the integrity of the current practice and theological construal of believers’ baptism within the wider web of Anabaptist life and thought. In response to problematic developments I will attempt to ground baptism in a doctrine of God and an ecclesiology that is practical and Trinitarian, concrete and Anabaptist. The jumble of genealogies and contemporary alliances that make up Christianity is so deep and impenetrable that to speak of any substantial theological project as merely Christian is simply unworkable; therefore, readers should know that this book’s argument is intentionally developed within the Anabaptist tradition. Yet I do hope this volume contributes to the ecumenical conversation on baptism, and throughout it I will offer hints about ways my analysis might apply beyond its intended focus on the beliefs and practices of North American Anabaptist communities.
Assumptions
This book is an exercise in constructive theological reflection. I could elaborate on this in various ways, but Thomas Aquinas captures many of the implications near the beginning of his Summa Theologica when he writes, “As other sciences do not argue in proof of their principles, but argue from their principles to demonstrate other truths in these sciences: so this doctrine does not argue in proof of its principles, which are the articles of faith, but from them it goes on to prove something else.” 6 It seems to me that Thomas worked under the assumption that the creator of the universe is indeed self-revealing and has commissioned human creatures to reflect on this fact. Working within such a frame allows the theologian to move with all due humility beyond description of historical or social phenomena toward constructive and normative applications. In recent Anabaptist scholarship the church’s practices have often been analyzed from historical or sociological perspectives. In this project I intend a deeper, dogmatic treatment. This means that my analysis and constructive proposal will not shy away from the center of Christian theology—the doctrine of God. This does not mean that the themes opened up here are hopelessly abstract. This book is after all intended for the betterment of concrete worshiping communities and the ways they respond to the One without whom nothing would be.
Several other assumptions support the argument of this book. One stems from the observation that the communities I seek to address are still trying to find ways to adjust to their post-Christendom context. Gone are the days when churches could pretend to control the society in which they found themselves. A related observation is that this project is being undertaken in an age of dying denominationalism. This is one of the reasons for my deliberate ecumenical tone. I assume that even though theology rightly acquires local inflection, listening to the voices of the broader tradition, past and present, is an essential part of the theologian’s task. As we attend to voices less like our own, our most pressing concerns are given new texture. It is precisely such cross-tradition pollination that holds the promise of a Christianity capable of bearing faithful witness to Christ in this new and relatively uncharted age after the death of Christendom.7 Specifically in this case, if it was not for the witness of pedobaptist traditions the critique that follows might never have been conceived. One final assumption is worth naming directly: initiatives of repentance and reconciliation between denominations that at one time denounced or even fought one another represent new conversations and point to avenues of learning and unity that did not exist a mere fifty years ago.8 The appreciation given to believers’ baptism by the Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry document, as well as the impact of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults developed by the Roman Catholic Church demonstrate parallel liturgical developments. It is with these factors in mind that this project’s focus on contemporary Anabaptism will be deliberately interwoven with ecumenical threads that were simply not available to a previous generation of scholars.
Themes
This book is about the church’s practice of baptism. In various ways the