Friday, April 8, 2022

Stanley K. Fowler (Baptist): A Sacramental Understanding of Baptism is not Works Righteousness and Opposed to Romans and Galatians

  

When Paul talks about works in Romans (and Galatians), what he has in view are works of the Mosaic Law, Paul does not include baptism in the category of works any more than he includes, say, repentance in that category. Baptism is, in fact, something that we allow to be done to us, and in what way it is a fitting way to express faith and grace. For Paul, faith and baptism are like two sides of a coin, distinct but never disconnected, both looking to Christ for the benefits of salvation—the one as attitude and the other as act. (Stanley K. Flower, Rethinking Baptism: Some Baptist Reflections [Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf and Stock, 2015], 23)

 

A sacramental understanding of conversion-baptism would deny the Pauline teaching about justification by faith alone if baptism were a “work” in Paul’s mind, but that is a misreading of the apostle’s concerns. When Paul affirms justification by faith in Romans and Galatians, he is setting faith in Christ against adherence to Mosaic Law, thus arguing that Jews and Gentiles are accepted by God in the same way. His essential point is about Christ versus Torah, not faith versus baptism. When Paul says “faith alone,” is he saying “by faith, not by repentance?” Of course not, as he makes clear in a text like Acts 26:20. Conversion can be denoted by either repentance or faith, or by both together, each assuming the other. Similarly, Paul assumes that baptism accompanies faith, as is evident in Galatians 3, where those who are saved can be described either as those who have faith in Christ (3:26) or as those who have been baptized into Christ (3:27). Baptism is a “work” only in the sense that it is something that we do, but the same thing could be said of faith. Believing the gospel is something that we must do to be saved, even though it is not a physical act. The mere fact that we do it does not make it a “work” in Paul’s terms.

 

Justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone is language rooted in the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, but the major reformers in both the Lutheran and Calvinistic streams all thought of baptism in sacramental terms. The Lutheran tradition has always spoken of baptism as a means of regeneration, while emphatically justification by faith alone, which means that it is historically inaccurate to see a sacramental view of baptism as opposed to the understanding of the gospel recovered in the Reformation. I think it is accurate to say that the baptismal theology that I have proposed is essentially a Reformed/Calvinistic view as applied to confessing believers. The Reformed tradition refers to baptism as a “sign and seal” of inclusion in the covenant people, and the crucial word is “seal.” I would not argue that the term “seal” is ever used in Scripture to refer t directly to baptism, but at a conceptual level it seems to capture the biblical balance in which faith is the crucial reality on the human side of salvation, but baptism ratifies faith experientially. As a seal, baptism ratifies both God’s offer of grace and the human reception by faith, as Calvin argues:

 

It seems to me that a simple and proper definition would be to say that it is an outward sign by which the Lord seals on our consciences the promises of his good will toward us in order to sustain the weakness of our faith; and we in turn attest our piety toward him in the presence of the Lord and of his angels and before men. Here is another briefer definition: one may call it a testimony of divine grace toward us, confirmed by an outward sign, with mutual attestation of our piety toward him. (Institutes Book IV, Chap. XIV, 1).

 

Even though I am not convinced by Calvin’s application of this to infants (who have to faith to ratify), it makes very good sense of the biblical linkage between the benefits of salvation and baptism for confessing believers. To say “sacrament” is to say “grace,” not to introduce a means of gaining merit before God. Even in the Catholic tradition that does speak of merit earned during the Christian life, baptism is not conceived of as a means of gaining such merit. In Catholic thought, baptism conveys sanctifying grace that empowers obedience but it is obedience in the form of acts of love for God and others that leads to merit. However, baptism may be described, it is not in biblical terms a meritorious “work.” (Ibid., 33-34)