Ecclesiological and Ecumenical Implications of Baptism

The same phenomenon exists both among the evangelical communions which have become so numerous, and among the Pentecostal churches.(37) They take up the concerns of the older free church movements for revival (Methodists, Quakers, Pietists and so on). Since for them too baptism is not an objective means of salvation, the emphasis falls all the more on the subjective experience of inner rebirth, Spirit baptism and spiritual charisms. At present such churches are having huge success in mission with this "enthusiastic Christianity". Incontestably, biblical motives which have often fallen into oblivion in the historic churches, with their sacramental view of baptism, come into play here -- even though, I believe, in a one-sided way. The historic churches will therefore have to take up the challenge from these new and extremely varied church communities, and do so in a constructive way.

Recently, on the basis of scriptural testimony, individual Baptist authors such as G. Beasley-Murray(38) have been re-emphasizing God's action through baptism, and thus the spiritual effect of baptism. And in the evangelical and Pentecostal communities -- not the great majority, admittedly, but still by individual representatives -- the question about the sacramental character of baptism is again being asked.(39) Thus a few hesitant rapprochements are under way.

All this clearly shows that in these developments the question is not only about the right sequence between baptism and a personal decision of faith; there are also fundamental questions about how baptism, and the church, are understood. It took a theologian of Karl Barth's stature to raise this debate to an adequate theological level. Karl Barth's doctrine of baptism(40) has the great merit of having introduced the free church doctrine of baptism -- which among many theologians had tended to be dismissed as weak -- into serious theological discourse, thus stimulating the theological debate afresh. For all the criticism, both exegetical and systematic, that one can and must make of Barth's position -- and his destruction of the sacramental view of baptism -- we must not underestimate his effect on many of today's theologians. Ecumenically this is more important, by far, than many ecumenical papers on dialogue and "consensus".

Barth distinguishes between baptism with the Spirit and baptism with water. For him, baptism with the Spirit is "effective, causative, even creative action on the human being and in the human being. It is, indeed, divinely effective, divinely causative, divinely creative" (p.34). Baptism with water, on the other hand, is an obedient response to baptism with the Holy Spirit, and thus Barth comes out against the consensus of the "historic" churches which see baptism sacramentally. For him water baptism has cognitive but not a causative significance; it is not a means of grace (pp. 105ff.).

Thus it is not surprising that -- for all his criticism of this position -- Barth feels a certain sympathy for the approach of Zwingli, the Baptists and the movements that focus on the Spirit. He does not see infant baptism as simply invalid, but nevertheless it is "a profoundly irregular" practice, "a wound from which the church suffers at this genuinely vital point with its many-sided implications" (p. 194). In infant baptism, that is, "the character of baptism as both obedience and response is so obscured as to be virtually unrecognizable" (p. 195)