Sunday, April 8, 2012

Election and Anglican Baptism

One of the greatest privileges I have in my job is taking our Youth Ministry leaders through some basic Christian leadership training once a fortnight. They are a wonderful group, eager to know the Lord Jesus, engage with their Bibles, and lead others to Christ. They always push back against some of my more provocative ideas and are seldom satisfied with easy answers. Perhaps that's why our meetings always run overtime.

Recently we have been discussing the theological commitments of our Church. Last week I asserted that, if we are committed to a Protestant Reformed Evangelical faith then I believe that there are grounds for saying that the Anglican system provides the best (not "the perfect" or "the only") ecclesiastical "hardware" (to borrow Michael Jensen's terminology) to run this "software". One of my points was that, if Anglican churches stick to the Prayer Book (a shocking idea!) then our sacraments should express our Reformed theological principles, particularly with respect to Election in Baptism. I have written about some of my views on this matter earlier. This caused a bit of confusion in the group, as several people had stated that they had never heard of Anglican baptism having this theological basis and had interpreted the act of baptism differently. On checking the wording of An Australian Prayer Book (the most used modern resource in Sydney for these rites), I had to agree that the language of election or predestination was not present, nor do I think it would be easy for the laity to pick up on the theological nuances unless they had been trained to do so.

At first I feared that I had overstated my case. I must confess to not being an expert on the theological foundations of the 1662 Book Of Common Prayer. As such, I was uncertain as to how strongly the Anglican rite of baptism (particularly of the Infant variety) was shaped by a Reformed understanding of election. Was it really as straightforward as I had been led to believe? Was the language left "vague" on purpose?

After going back to the sources and looking at some commentary on the matter I have reassured myself that a Reformed understanding of Election is indeed at the heart of Anglican baptism. For the benefit of my Youth Ministry leaders (and anyone else who might possibly be interested), I make the following observations:

1) The 1662 BCP baptism service (which is an update of Cranmer's 1552 service) takes Mark 13 as its Scriptural basis, drawing attention to Jesus' promise to receive all little children brought to him. The response to this is one of thanksgiving and prayers for actual grace to the child in the future, rather than conferring on the ceremony itself any sacramental grace. The words of preparation to the godparents express confidence in what Christ has promised to do for the child rather than relying on the imputation of adult faith onto the child. While the language of election and predestination is not used, the wording of this rite only makes sense if the theological basis is on what has already been achieved in Christ rather than what is achieved by the ceremony itself.

2) Article XXV states that Anglican sacraments are understood as "certain sure witnesses, and effectual signs of grace, and God's good will toward us". Obviously, the way that Anglicanism interprets the operation of grace will affect our understanding of the use of baptism. This is not spelled out in detail in this Article and so we must look for clues elsewhere.

3) Article XXVII states that baptism, as well as being a rite of acceptance into the Christian community, is the means by which "the promises of forgiveness of sin, and of our adoption to be the sons of God by the Holy Ghost, are visibly signed and sealed". Given that the Article also states that the application of baptism to young children is consistent with the teaching of Christ, we must conclude that the framers of the Articles believed that those infants who were baptised had been forgiven and adopted by God prior to the rite and that the application of water was merely the physical sign of what had been promised in Scripture.

4) G. W. Bromiley in Baptism and the Anglican Reformers provides a survey of the Reformed views on infant baptism that were key influences on the Anglican reformers (e.g. Bullinger, Beza, Calvin, etc). He concludes that the Reformed position on baptism on infants is that it was done "not to make them God's but because they were God's already".

5) Michael Jensen and Tom Frame in Defining Convictions and Decisive Commitments: the Thirty-Nine Articles in Contemporary Anglicanism state that the understanding of grace which was behind the framing of the Articles was of a character different from medieval theology, which saw it in terms of "substance". Rather, grace was seen as an attitude of God towards humanity. Sacraments could be effectual signs because they could mediate this graciousness of God to sinners. With respect to baptism they state that it "is not primarily a human response to God but rather a sign of God's grace in forgiveness".

None of the above points are definitive proof that the Reformed understanding of election was paramount in shaping Anglican baptism. In fact, as I did my (admittedly preliminary and patchy) research, I was surprised at how little considerations of election and predestination arose when dealing with baptism. However, I interpret the evidence as it stands as lending a strong circumstantial case for seeing a relationship between election and baptism. The wording of the Articles and Prayer Book are consistent with the view that the eternal election of God formed the theological background for the practical application in the sacraments. Concepts of election are, therefore, a few steps removed from the practice of baptism and so the language will rarely be used together, but this does not mean that the relationship is incidental or unimportant.