It is sadly ironic that the actions Christians are commanded to share commonly—acknowledge "one baptism" (Eph 4:5) and celebrate the Lord's Supper together (1 Cor 11:18,21,33)—have been the focus of much dispute and division through the church's history. Disputes have centered on both the number and the nature of the ordinances to be practiced by the church.
Roman Catholic Church
Among theologians between Augustine in the fifth century and Hugo of St. Victor in the twelfth century, there was not an agreed-on number of sacraments.1 Numbers ranged from two all the way to 30 or more. Since the thirteenth century the Roman Catholic Church has acknowledged seven sacraments. The theologians of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, especially Hugo of St. Victor, Peter Lombard, Alexander of Hales, and Thomas Aquinas, largely brought the Roman Church to its current understanding of the number and nature of the sacraments. Along with baptism and the Eucharist, the Roman Catholic Church also teaches that confirmation, confession and penance, marriage, ordination to the priesthood, and extreme unction (last rites) are sacraments to be observed by Christians as God's ordained means of grace.
While arguments might be made for the biblical basis of these latter five, the Roman Catholic Church does not hold to the sufficiency of Scripture. Instead, it teaches that the traditions of the Church, along with Scripture, preserve God's revealed will for his people. Therefore, the development of any of these sacraments after the New Testament writings is, in and of itself, no embarrassment to Roman Catholic theology.
Quakers and Salvationists
Other groups, such as the Quakers and the Salvation Army, have maintained that no ritual ordinances should be observed today, not even baptism and the Lord's Supper. They teach that these actions were meant for the first believers only and were never intended as continuing observances for the church. What must continue, however, are the spiritual realities of descending into new life in Christ and communing with God who has now come. Both of these things were signified by baptism and the Lord's Supper.
Speaking about George Fox, founder of the Quakers, Rufus Jones wrote:
His house of worship was bare of everything but seats. It had no shrine, for the shekinah was to be in the hearts of those who worshipped. It had no altar, for God needed no appeasing, seeing that he himself had made the sacrifice for sin. It had no baptismal font, for baptism was in his belief nothing short of immersion into the life of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit—a going down into the significance of Christ's death and a coming up in newness of life with him. There was no communion table, because he believed that the true communion consisted in partaking directly of the soul's spiritual bread—the living Christ.2
Certainly, Fox's eschewal of baptism and communion is consistent with his prioritization of the Inner Light (taken from John 1:9) over and above the written Word of God.
Some Baptists: Foot-Washing
Some Christians have maintained that foot-washing should be regarded as a third ordinance. Among these are a number of Old Regular and Regular Baptists, Primitive Baptists, Grace Brethren, and a few other groups.3 Citing evidence from John 13:13–15, they construe Jesus' example not just as a lesson about humility; instead, they have taken this to mean Jesus intended the ritual to be continued by Christians. No historical records suggest that the early Christians practiced foot-washing as a church ordinance. Still, several of these groups in the post-Reformation period have reinitiated the practice.
Contemporary Evangelical Indifference
All the discussion concerning the number and nature of Christ's ordinances might seem far removed from the concerns of evangelical churches today. Christ's command to baptize is either ignored or minimized in the teaching of many churches, in the books written and read by evangelicals generally, and in the membership requirements of those churches. Also, the Lord's Supper is seldom celebrated in many congregations. Through all of this the Reformation doctrine sola fide ("faith alone") has been exploited for ill purposes, being used to relegate anything not directly necessary for salvation to the status of unimportant. But surely if Christ has commanded something, his followers have no authority to alter his command—either by adding to it or by ignoring it.
Historically, Baptists were never in danger of ignoring Christ's ordinances. From name to practice, Baptists have been shaped by a particular understanding of baptism. Yet it has never been the practice of baptizing professing believers which has prompted controversy between different denominations. Rather, the baptism of infants has caused many of the debates and divisions in the history of Christian churches.
The Rise and Development of Infant Baptism
Considerable debate has raged around the question of when infant baptism was first practiced.4 Proponents of infant baptism argue that first-century Christians performed infant baptism, though they must admit the New Testament evidence is inferential. Others have been less apt to find its origins in the earliest history of the church. From William Wall's History of Infant Baptism, the monumental seventeenth-century Anglican defense of the antiquity of infant baptism, to the famous mid-twentieth-century debate between New Testament scholars Joachim Jeremias and Kurt Aland, consensus has continued to elude scholars.5 The Didache, Letter of Barnabas, and The Shepherd of Hermas, second-century documents that all reflect church practice in that time, know nothing of infant baptism. In fact, their statements on baptism all presuppose the baptism of believers. However, Tertullian's statement in De Baptismo (written between 200 and 206) attacking the baptism of infants "constitutes the earliest express mention of infant baptism in the history of the church" and shows that infants were being baptized by the time of Tertullian.6 Later, in the first half of the third century, Origen believed the baptism of infants to be an apostolic practice.7 At this point it cannot be said today how widespread the practice was. The practice of infant baptism seems to have originated with the rise of an ex opere operato understanding of its effects—it was thought that baptism would secure forgiveness of sins for the baptizee without fail. When Christianity became legal and established, pressure followed for extending church membership to the whole community. By the Council of Carthage in 418, anyone who taught against infant baptism was anathematized.8 In the sixth century the emperor Justinian made infant baptism mandatory throughout the Roman Empire.
Historical Significance of the Recovery of Believer Baptism
While Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and various dissenting groups continued to practice believer's baptism in the case of converts, there was no general recovery of the practice of baptizing only believers until the early sixteenth century, when some people, particularly the evangelical Anabaptists, began to reject the validity of infant baptism.9 It is no accident that the nature of true conversion began to be clarified at the same time the gospel of justification by faith alone began its recovery. Before the Reformation, most Christians called themselves Christians largely to affirm the family, the parish, the town, and even the nation to which they belonged. The Reformation led to a reappreciation of the radical nature of Christian conversion. Conversion did not result from a rite of infancy or from membership within a particular political entity. It resulted from a self-conscious profession of faith in God's justifying work in Christ.
The reaffirmation of the authority of Scripture and the clarity of the gospel led to a surprisingly wide rejection of the bishop of Rome's authority. As the gospel of justification by faith alone spread, the impossibility of justification without faith quietly challenged the practice of indiscriminately administering baptism and the Lord's Supper to everyone who belonged to a particular political entity, whether city, nation, or parish. Naturally, this meant that the ancient Constantinian relationship between church and state was itself being challenged. Yet only the Anabaptists and the Baptists were at first willing to rethink ecclesiology and so reconceive the relationship between church and state, as examined further below.
In Christian Europe, to reconsider what it meant to be a Christian required a reconsideration of what it meant to be a citizen of a city or a nation. Previously, a Christian could probably imagine other Christians living outside of one's own nation. Now, by virtue of a Baptist ecclesiology, it became possible to imagine citizens in one's own nation who were not Christians or at least were not members of the same church. From the beginning, ecclesiology has set Baptists apart from other evangelicals. The doctrine of a visible church composed of only the baptized regenerate is the hallmark of Baptists.
Implications of Gathered Church for Relations with the State
Recapturing the New Testament picture of a church of believers challenged the assumptions most Christians had made since Constantine, namely, that the state is responsible to provide for the church, and the church is responsible for guiding the state. The strongest connection of this sort between church and state continued among Constantine's heirs and others in the Eastern Orthodox areas. In the East what has been called caesaro-papism treated the church as the responsibility of the ruler; in effect, to see Caesar as the pope, thus the name. In the West a less centralized and more varied relationship has existed between church and state. Whereas the state typically held the dominant position in the East, especially since the rise of Islam, the church typically had predominance in the West, given its more centralized organization and tradition of enforcing episcopal jurisdiction over rulers. At times emperors were excommunicated, and entire cities were interdicted—unthinkable in the East.
During the Protestant Reformation the leading theologians continued to affirm the traditional Western understanding of the relationship between church and state. Whether a somewhat more passive (Lutheran) or aggressive (Calvinist) stance was taken toward the magistrate's authority, the various reformations effected little immediate change in the church-state relationship. A nation facing a reformation would focus on the questions of which church to recognize and what structure to adopt, two questions about theology and leadership that did not disrupt the basic unit of the European parish. Protestant nations varied in their answers to these questions. But in no magisterial reformation was the local parish dissolved or replaced.10
As we have seen, the Baptist denial of infant baptism crucially imperiled the Constantinian church-state settlement in Western Europe.11 The Baptist belief in regenerate church membership made the relationship between citizens and their church, and thus between church and state, voluntary. This would have been unimaginable in the early and mid-sixteenth century. Ultimately, the Baptist ecclesiology provided the seed for the birth of modern notions of freedom of religion, in which no one church is established and the rights of citizens of every religion are secured. As Christians tried to answer the simple question, "Who should be baptized?" they found that their answer to that question had tremendous effects. If they concluded that only believers should be baptized, that would preclude having a membership that was coextensive with the general population and so effectively would preclude having an established church.
In What Sense Baptism Is a Means of Grace
The Roman Catholic Church teaches that baptism conveys God's grace in and of itself, remitting all sin, both original and actual. The Lutheran Reformation taught that baptism was as certainly effective.12 Luther in his catechism said, "Baptism works forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare."13 Calvin, echoing Augustine, called baptism "the visible Word."14 The Council of Trent (1545–63) anathematized anyone who taught that baptism conferred grace only to those who had faith. The Presbyterian and Reformed understanding has treated baptism as a sign and seal of God's grace.15
Among Baptists, baptism has never been treated as an essential conduit for God's grace. Rather, they have regarded it as a command given to new believers and therefore the normal means for marking and celebrating their salvation. Baptism is a visible sermon, informed by the Word, and entirely dependent on God's Spirit to create the spiritual reality it depicts. In the baptism of a believer, "there is the blessing of God's favor that comes with all obedience, as well as the joy that comes through public profession of one's faith, and the reassurance of having a clear physical picture of dying and rising with Christ and of washing away sins."16
Baptism has not been the only ordinance beset by controversy in the history of the church. The Lord's Supper in its nature and effects has been variously construed. These various interpretations have helped distinguish Roman Catholic theology from Protestant and have also led to differences between Protestants. At its center the discussion has settled on the question, "What is the relation of Christ to his Supper?"
Transubstantiation
Fully developed by Thomas Aquinas and confirmed at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), the doctrine of transubstantiation describes the Lord's Supper as a re-presentation of the sacrifice of Christ. Aquinas argued the substance of the bread in the celebration of the Eucharist changes into Christ's physical body, while the substance of the wine changes into his physical blood.17 Why then do the bread and wine not change in appearance? Aquinas's response depended on a philosophical distinction, drawn from Aristotle, between the accident, or the outward form, and substance, or inner essence, of a thing. Only the substance of the bread and wine change, said Aquinas, thus the word "transubstantiation." The accidents, or those characteristics which impress themselves upon human senses, remain unchanged.
The Eucharist is understood to be a real and effective "unbloody sacrifice." All who partake of it, aside from those who have committed a mortal sin, receive God's grace. Merely witnessing a mass counts as a participatory act worthy of that grace. More often communicants receive the consecrated wafer which is understood to be the transubstantiated body of Christ. Since Vatican II (1962–65) laypersons have more often been allowed to participate in the cup. Proponents of transubstantiation often apply Christ's promises in John 6:53–57 to the Lord's Supper, even though he had not yet established the Supper.18
Consubstantiation
Consubstantiation denies the literal and essential transformation of the bread and wine into Christ's essence, but it proposes the body and blood of Christ join together with ("con" being the Latin prefix for "with") the substance of the bread and wine at the Lord's table. Lutheran theologians have described the body and blood of Christ as "in, with and under" the physical bread and wine.19 As Luther's Small Catechism teaches, "What is the Sacrament of the Altar? It is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, under the bread and wine, for us Christian to eat and to drink, instituted by Christ himself."20 Luther's view allowed him to continue holding a deep reverence toward the elements (and one should never underestimate the effect of popular piety on theology), while also ridding himself of a logical problem of Rome's view, namely, that something appears to be what it is not (its accidents and substance no longer agree). This doctrine of consubstantiation continues to be the teaching of Lutheran theologians.21
Spiritual Presence
John Calvin taught that Christ really is present in his Supper, but his presence is not physical, as the Roman Catholics and Lutherans taught, but spiritual.22 This spiritual presence is perceived and profited from by faith, not by the physical senses. Apart from faith the Supper is not effective. According to this understanding, "in exchange for a personal claim on and actual possession of all this wealth [in Christ], believers express faith in Christ as Savior and pledge obedience to him as Lord and King."23 As the Westminster Confession puts it, Christ's body and blood are "really, but spiritually, present to the faith of believers." They "really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally but spiritually, receive, and feed upon, Christ crucified, and all the benefits of his death."24
Memorial
Of the four views of the Lord's Supper detailed here, only the Supper as memorial is universally accepted. Advocates for the other three positions go beyond the Supper as memorial, but no one denies this is an aspect of the Lord's Supper. Paul was unambiguous: "Whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes" (1 Cor 11:26). So it is not surprising that memorialist language is found frequently in the history of the church, from Clement of Alexandria to Origen, from Cyril of Jerusalem to John Chrysostom. Even Augustine frequently used such language. This view came to prominence in the Reformation along with a denial of the physical presence of Christ in the Supper.
Huldrych Zwingli taught that the Lord's Supper is a re-presentation of Christ's sacrifice but only in the symbolic sense of proclaiming it again.25 Zwingli pointed to Paul's words in 1 Cor 11:24–26 as the clearest biblical testimony for how the Supper should be understood. Since Zwingli, many Protestants, including most Baptists, have adopted this memorial understanding, primarily because it is indubitably biblical, and secondarily (perhaps) because it avoids any hint of the sacramentalism of the Roman Catholic position. That said, Baptists have historically used language so rich about Christ's presence in the Lord's Supper for those who come by faith that little difference is perceptible between their position and the Reformed idea of Christ's spiritual presence.26
In What Sense Is the Supper a Means of Grace?
The chief division about the way in which the Lord's Supper is a means of grace in the lives of Christians is the same division that is found in understanding baptism. The basic dividing question is, What is the relation of faith to the ordinance? Does the participant's faith make the ordinance a means of God's grace, or does the ordinance bestow grace regardless of faith? Among Baptists, the Lord's Supper has not been regarded as an essential conduit for God's grace. Rather, it has been regarded as a command given to new believers, and therefore the normal means of marking out those who have been separated from the world and given fellowship with Christ. Like baptism, the Lord's Supper presents a visible sermon, and it is entirely dependent on God's Spirit to create the spiritual communion between God and believers that it depicts.
C. H. Spurgeon's mid-nineteenth-century catechism well represents this view. In answer to Question 80, "What is the Lord's Supper?" Spurgeon wrote:
The Lord's Supper is an ordinance of the New Testament, instituted by Jesus Christ; wherein, by giving and receiving bread and wine, according to his appointment, his death is shown forth, (1 Cor 11:23–26) and the worthy receivers are, not after a corporeal and carnal manner, but by faith, made partakers of his body and blood, with all his benefits, to their spiritual nourishment, and growth in grace.27
Communion: Closed, Close, or Open?
Baptists have disagreed about what faithfulness to Paul's exhortation in 1 Cor 11:27–31 implies. Indeed, there has been a wide spectrum among Baptist Christians about who are proper participants in the Lord's Supper.28 These can be generally summarized in three positions (though there are almost an infinite number of variations). The first position is called "strict," or "closed," communion. Many Baptists, particularly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and among Landmarkists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, have taught that only members of the local congregation celebrating the Lord's Supper should be allowed to partake of the Supper when celebrated by its church. "Close" communion has usually referred to a position advocated throughout Baptist history—but advocated more widely in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the wake of the evangelical revivals—that would say that all of those believers who have been baptized as believers are welcomed to the Lord's table.29 "Open" communion, again a position advocated throughout Baptist history (for example by John Bunyan) but becoming dominant only in the twentieth century, advocates that all who know themselves to be trusting in Christ for salvation, regardless of whether they had been baptized as believers, are welcomed to the Lord's table.
1 Eastern Orthodox churches today are still less uniform in establishing a specific number of sacraments.
2 Rufus Jones, "Introduction," to George Fox, An Autobiography, ed. R. Jones (London: Headley Bros., 1904), 22.
3 See H. Dorgan, "Foot-Washing, Baptist Practice of," in Dictionary of Baptists in America, ed. Bill J. Leonard (Downers Grove: IVP, 1994), 119–20.
4 One of the most careful and balanced treatments of the historical origin and development of infant baptism is David F. Wright, Infant Baptism in Historical Perspective: Collected Studies (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 2007). For a compilation and commentary on many of the earliest written records of infant baptism, see Hendrick Stander and Johannes Louw, Baptism in the Early Church (Leeds, England: Reformation Today Trust, 2004).
5 William Wall (1647–1728), The History of Infant Baptism (London: J. Downing et al., 1705). Joachim Jeremias, Infant Baptism in the First Four Centuries, trans. David Cairns (London: SCM Press, 1960). Michael Horton stated that "by the second century the literature is replete with references to the practice [of infant baptism]" (Horton, The Christian Faith [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011], 797). The present author has seen no convincing evidence of this assertion. See also Kurt Aland, Did the Early Church Baptize Infants? trans. G. R. Beasley-Murray (London: SCM Press, 1961); contra Aland, Joachim Jeremias, The Origins of Infant Baptism: A Further Reply to Kurt Aland (Naperville: A. R. Allenson, 1963). Aland held the interesting position that infants today should be baptized, even though, he admitted, no evidence exists for infant baptism before the third century. For a careful consideration of the evidence from the first few centuries, see Steve McKinion, "Baptism in the Patristic Writings," in Believer's Baptism: Sign of the New Covenant in Christ (Nashville: B&H, 2006), 163–88.
6 Jewett, Infant Baptism, 21.
7 See Origen's Homilies on Luke (XIV), Homilies on Leviticus (VIII), Commentary on Romans (V). Cyprian also in his letters advocated the baptism of infants at the earliest age possible (see "Epistle LVIII" in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson [1886], 353–54). His action was confirmed by a council of 66 pastors at Carthage in 253.
8 Though even here, David Wright suggested that infant baptism may not have become the norm in practice until the sixth century (D. F. Wright, "At What Ages were People Baptized in the Early Centuries?" Studia Patristica, vol. XXX, ed. E. A. Livingstone [Leuven: Peeters, 1997], 389–94). For a review of the evidence concerning the earliest date of infant baptism, see Jewett, Infant Baptism, 13–43. Cf. Peter Leithart, "Infant Baptism in History: An Unfinished Tragicomedy," in Strawbridge, ed., Covenantal Infant Baptism, 246–61; David Wright, Infant Baptism in Historical Perspective (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 2007). For a fascinating summary of the archaeological remains of baptismal practices in the early church, see F. M. Buhler, Baptism, trans. W. P. Bauman (Dundas, Ontario, Canada: Joshua Press, 2004).
9 See William Estep, The Anabaptist Story (Nashville: Broadman, 1963).
10 The magisterial reformations were those reformations in which the politically established churches were reformed by the political authorities (e.g., the Lutheran, the Anglican, the Calvinist). They get their names from the Latin word magister, meaning "master" or "official." Therefore the other reformers (chiefly the Anabaptists) were referred to as the nonmagisterial reformers, meaning that they did not have the backing or support of the government.
11 This was so much the case that Anabaptists and Baptists throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries repeatedly needed to publicly disavow anarchism.
12 When pressed in conversation about historical Lutheran statements affirming the necessity and saving power of baptism and how those statements can be squared with justification by faith alone, some Lutheran theologians recently told this author that one may be saved without baptism but one may not be saved without faith.
13 See John Theodore Mueller, Christian Dogmatics (St. Louis: Concordia, 1955), 494–95.
14 See Calvin, Institutes, IV.xiv.6.
15 The Belgic Confession (article 33) says that baptism and the Lord's Supper "are visible signs and seals of an invisible thing, by means whereof God works in us by the power of the Holy Spirit." Cf. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (1871; repr. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952), 582.
16 Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 980–81.
17 Aquinas, Summa Theologica, part 3, questions 75–77.
18 Joseph Pohle, The Sacraments: A Dogmatic Treatise, vol. 2, ed. Arthur Preuss (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1942), 25.
19 See Mueller, Christian Dogmatics, 510.
20 Cf. Augsburg Confession, article X.
21 E.g., Mueller, Christian Dogmatics, 509–20.
22 Calvin, Institutes, IV.xvii.9–12. Cf. Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 653–54. Calvin received serious criticism on this point from later Reformed theologians like William Cunningham, Charles Hodge, and Robert Lewis Dabney.
23 Erickson, Christian Theology, 1127.
24 Westminster Confession, XXIX.vii.
25 Cf. Strong, Systematic Theology, 538–43. Charles Hodge saw little difference between Zwingli and Calvin on this point (Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 3, 626–31). The present author agrees with Hodge.
26 In fact, Wayne Grudem represents these two views together as the view of "The Rest of Protestantism," in his Systematic Theology, 995–96. Cf. Ligon Duncan, "True Communion with Christ: Calvin, Westminster and Consensus on the Lord's Supper," in The Westminster Confession into the 21st Century, vol. 2 (Rosshire, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2003), 429–75; W. G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology 3rd ed., ed. Alan W. Gomes (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2003), 814. Cf. Lutheran theologian Mueller, Christian Dogmatics, 509. "Calvin's doctrine was nothing but a polished form of Zwingli's crude teaching, couched in phrases approaching the Lutheran terminology as closely as possible" (F. Bente, cited in Mueller, Christian Dogmatics, 514).
27 Spurgeon echoed emphases of the Second London Confession (1689; chap. 30, paragraph 7): "Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible Elements in this Ordinance, do then also inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally, and corporally, but spiritually receive, and feed upon Christ crucified & all the benefits of his death: the Body and Blood of Christ, being then not corporally, or carnally, but spiritually present to the faith of Believers, in that Ordinance, as the Elements themselves are to their outward senses." In this the Baptist ministers adopted the language entirely of the Westminster Confession (from 1646; chap. 29, paragraph 7) except for changing the word "sacrament" to "ordinance," and omitting the description of how the body of Christ is not corporally present "in, with, or under the bread and wine."
28 See Peter Naylor, Calvinism, Communion and the Baptists: A Study of English Calvinistic Baptists from the Late 1600s to the Early 1800s, in Studies in Baptist History and Thought (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 2003). The classic defense of the Southern Baptist position was penned in 1846 by R. B. C. Howell, at the time the pastor of Second Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia, and later the pastor of First Baptist Church, Nashville, Tennessee. Howell articulated a non-Landmarkist position of close communion that is still instructive for Baptists today, wondering why they should exclude from membership or participation of the Lord's Supper paedo-Baptists. See Howell's The Terms of Communion at the Lord's Table (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1846). There is a vast literature of nineteenth-century Baptist works on proper terms for admission to the Lord's table which would be a fruitful field of study for Christians today wanting to better understand church membership.
29 Added to this requirement of having been baptized is naturally the requirement that the self-professed believer also be a regular member of another evangelical congregation where they are also allowed to take the Lord's Supper. This kind of occasional communion would allow for what has been called "occasional communion," respecting the membership and discipline of other congregations.