by our staff
¨
Real Questions help
with bereavement
¨
In My Place the
power of the message of the cross
¨
Why it’s
so good to baptise babies
¨
What’s
wrong with Living Together?
¨
All is
well? Death is nothing at all?
Why
it’s so good to baptise babies
Many
Christians in all sincerity question the wisdom of baptising babies, even the
babies of committed Christian believers. In this part of the website, whilst
respecting the opinions of those Christians with whom we differ, we argue that
not only is Christian Family Baptism biblical but it is positively good
and should therefore be encouraged.
First we
explain why we believe it to be biblical and then we set out reasons why we
believe it to be a positive good.
The Bible and Christian Family Baptism
We do
not pretend that indiscriminate infant baptism can be defended from
scripture, however we advance the following lines of evidence from scripture in
support of the baptism of children from Christian families, whilst accepting
that there is no watertight case (please pardon the pun) from scripture either
for or against the practise. Here goes, then, with our biblical reasons:
1. The two
signs (or sacraments) of the old covenant, circumcision and Passover, were
administered to the children of believing families and there is sufficient
continuity between the two covenants (see Romans 4, Colossians 2.9-15) to
suggest that the signs of the new covenant might properly be given to children
of Christian families. In the case of circumcision, the rite of initiation into
the privileges of the Old covenant, a specific link with baptism is made in
Colossians 2.9-12.
2. In
the book of Acts, whole families or households were baptised (Acts 16.15,
16.33)
3.
Gospel preaching in Acts that includes baptism as a response specifically
includes children (Acts 2.39). See also Paul’s exhortation to the Philippian
jailer (Acts 16.31).
What’s so good about baptising babies?
In this section we advance two main
reasons for positively advocating Christian family baptism:
1. It magnifies the grace of God. The
helplessness and vulnerability of the child is an illustration of our own
helplessness before God and inability to save ourselves.
Through our blindness and sin we never make the first move towards God. The initiative is always his. His grace goes before, creating in us a spiritual thirst for himself, convicting us of our sin, opening our eyes to see the truth of his Gospel and giving us the gift of faith to believe in it.
As a sign of God’s grace, baptism
given at the beginning of life, witnesses to the priority of God’s grace, over
and against human response.
2. It includes Christian children
fully in the life of the church. Most children parents would
agree that the ideal is for a child to know and love the Lord Jesus from their
earliest years. Many adults who have had a Christian upbringing would say that
they have never known the time when they have not believed in Jesus, although
of course their knowledge of Jesus and of the implications of following him has
grown and matured over the years.
If our aim is that the children of
Christian parents should grow up as a Christians, never in fact knowing a time
when they were not believers, it seems only right that our basic stance towards
our children both in the home and in the church is to treat them as believers,
until and unless they give some indication of being otherwise (which we pray
they will never do).
A decision to treat our children as
Christians is likely to lead to us having them baptised because there is no
separate and enduring category in scripture of unbaptised believers. In
the Bible, believers are baptised at the beginning of their Christian lives,
without preparation or a probationary period. This would suggest that Christian
children should be baptised at the beginning of their lives.
(Although not everyone would want
to follow the logic of this argument in the way they treat their children in
practise, not to have our children baptised is in effect to treat them as
unbelievers).
Encouraging the baptism of babies
To summarise, it is for these two reasons that we positively wish to encourage Christian family baptism:
1.
it encourages a right attitude to God: the
baptism of a small defenceless child at the beginning of its life, magnifies
the grace of God in a culture which is too man-centered and over concerned with
human response
2.
it encourages the right attitude to Christian children: we treat
them as full members of the family of the church from the beginning of their
lives.
For these reasons we would
positively encourage Christian parents to have their children baptised. We
agree with the 39 Articles that the baptism of infants is ‘most agreeable with the institution of Christ’ (Articles 27).
Baptismal Integrity website of a UK group campaigning for the practise of infant baptism with honesty and integrity
Other articles by members of our staff
The word
‘evangelical’ comes from the greek word euangelion which means ‘gospel’
or ‘good news.’
It was
first used in the sixteenth century to describe the leaders of the Reformation.
Men such as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), Nicholas
Ridley and Hugh Latimer, also bishops, were part of a movement that sought to
return the Church of England to the New Testament Gospel, which they believed
had been obscured by the teachings and practises of the medieval church. Their
counterparts on the continent were men such as Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Bucer
and Melancthlon. Later the term ‘protestant’ was applied to these early
evangelicals but at first only in Germany.
The
reformers emphasised the authority of scripture, the finished work of Christ on
the cross and the doctrine of justification by faith. In England this can be
seen in their liturgy, the Book of Common Prayer, and their confessional documents such as the 39 Articles, which together remain part of the doctrinal basis of the
Church of England.
The term
‘Evangelical’ was next used to describe those part of the evangelical revival
or spiritual awakening of the eighteenth century, people such as John and
Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, John Newton, Charles Simeon and William
Wilberforce. This movement drew heavily upon the teachings and writings of the
Reformers and of the Puritans who followed them. John Wesley, for instance, was
converted as Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans was read at a
church meeting. Particular emphases of the eighteenth century revival was on
the new birth, the doctrine of assurance, evangelistic preaching, and the
social and political aspects of the Gospel.
In the
twentieth first century evangelicals comprise a large and diverse international
movement spread over the majority of Christian denominations. The key elements of Evangelical belief
remain as before. As their name suggests, evangelicals are first and foremost
‘gospel people’ and because of this they are also ‘bible people.’ Although they
look to the spiritual forebears of the sixteenth and later centuries, the real
heart of evangelical belief is in the first century AD, because it is in the
light of the teaching of Scripture that Evangelicals believe all things
should be evaluated, including evangelical Christianity itself.
In one
sense evangelical Christianity is the most traditional form of Christianity
because it seeks constantly to go back to the origins of the faith. In another
sense it is the most radical because to the evangelical nothing is sacrosanct
except scripture itself. Everything must be open to change, renewal, and
reformation in the light of scripture, (especially the church and its customs).
This is why, on the one hand, evangelicals are some of the most doctrinal conservative
Christians but, on the other hand, the group in the church most likely to
experiment with new forms of worship and methods of communicating the Gospel.
Evangelical
belief has no distinctive doctrines of its own. It aims to be no more or no
less than New Testament Christianity. It believes that the church must be
continually reformed in the light of God’s word in Scripture.
Anglican
evangelicals
Of all
Anglicans, evangelicals are perhaps the most comfortable with the doctrinal
basis of their church. The 39 Articles and the Book of Common Prayer
witness to the key evangelical doctrines, especially:
1. the supremacy of scripture (Articles VI, XX, XXI, XXII)
2. the finished work of Christ (Article XXXI and the prayer of
consecration at Holy Communion)
3. justification by faith (Article XI).
Anglican
evangelicals therefore believe that the Church of England is an evangelical
church at heart and that there is no inherent contradiction between being both
Anglican and Evangelical.
Holy
Trinity, since its inception, has stood
in the evangelical tradition of the Church of England. The Simeon Trustees are
the patrons of Holy Trinity and as such have the responsibility of choosing the
vicar. They continue the work of Charles Simeon (1759-1836), the great Anglican
evangelical leader of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, who
founded a body of trustees for securing and administering Church patronage in
accordance with his evangelical principles.
Other articles by members of our staff
How
people come to faith
In this part of our
website we consider research evidence on how people come to faith in modern
Britain. We then consider the implications of this are for our evangelism.
In 1992 Churches Together in England
sponsored an ecumenical survey which looked at how people in a variety of
different denominations and traditions came to faith. (Finney, J., Finding Faith Today, Bible Society,
1992)
The survey was based on a random
sample of churches who were asked to give the names of those people over 16 in
their congregations had made a ‘public profession of faith’ in the past year.
Depending on the tradition of the church this may have been through baptism,
confirmation, reception into membership or some other similar rite.
(1) Mode of conversion: gradual or sudden?
In non-evangelical churches, 80% of
respondents said their conversion was ‘gradual’ and 20% ‘sudden.’ In
evangelical churches where perhaps crisis conversions might be expected at a
greater frequency 63% said it was
gradual, 37% sudden. (‘Sudden’ was defined as a conversion that was ‘dateable’,
gradual as a conversion that happened over a period of time).
The majority of journeys to faith
are gradual (the Emmaus Road?), though a substantial minority are sudden (the
Damascus Road?). However, the reality may be more mixed. Even gradual journeys
may have crisis points along the way, and sudden conversions often involve a
long period of spiritual preparation leading up to the crisis of conversion.
Even in the Bible the distinction
between process and crisis is not clear cut. St Paul’s Damascus conversion was
attributed by him to a process that stretched back to birth (Galatians 1.15)
and was followed by a longish period of instruction and nurture, whilst the
Emmaus journey, the classic ‘process conversion’, took place in a matter of
hours and was clearly dateable.
b) Length
of Journey of Faith
The
average length of the journey to faith was about two years, although for some
the journey had been ten years or more (6%) whilst other respondents (28%) saw
it as an ongoing process that had not yet finished.
c)
Principal Factors leading to Faith
Respondents were asked to consider
what they considered to be the main factor in their coming to faith.
The top three were as follows:
For Men
1.
Spouse/partner (22%)
2.
Christian friends (15%)
3.
Minister (13%)
1.
Christian friends (24%)
2.
Minister (17%)
3.
Children (13%)
In each case the main factors are relational
and not directly concerned with church events or activities. For men the
influence of the spouse or partner is particularly significant. For women, but
not for men, children are an important factor.
The respondents were then asked to
list supporting factors, in addition to the main factor, that helped them in
their journey to faith. (They could say more than one so the percentages add up
to more than 100).
1.
Minister (42%)
2.
Christian friends (39%)
3.
Bible (23%)
4.
Church activities (21%)
1.
Minister (43%)
2.
Church activities (42%)
3.
Christian friends
(40%)
4.
Bible (29%)
At this
point the ministry of the church becomes much more important in terms of its
activities and its ministers. Church activities are particularly important to
women in their journey to faith, but less so for the men. The minister is very
important to both men and women as a supporting factor. The Bible features
prominently as a supporting factor, though not as the main factor.
(d)
Changing Perceptions of God
Lastly the researchers looked at
how people’s perception of God changed from before to after the time of their
profession of faith. The changes are summarised as follows
|
VIEW OF GOD BEFORE CONVERSION |
VIEW OF GOD AFTER CONVERSION
|
Pictorial
view
‘old man in the sky’ ‘white
beard’ ‘like Santa Claus’ |
Attribute
Centred View
‘Loving, kind, forgiving’ |
Vague
|
More
precise
|
Impersonal
‘force or spirit or power’ |
Personal
‘father, friend, someone I can
talk to’ |
|
Distant ‘on another plane’ remote, stern,
judgmental, harsh |
Intimate friend, always with me, father |
|
Irrelevant old-fashioned, boring,
non-existent |
Contemporary |
What are the implications for our
evangelism?
1. Process
Even when a conversion is sudden, a
prior process is usually involved. If becoming a Christian for most people is a
process, then process forms of evangelism such as Alpha, Christianity Explored,
or Emmaus will be most effective. If the average person takes two years to
become a Christian then church strategies for evangelism need to take account
of that, perhaps giving people repeated opportunities to hear different facets
of the Gospel in a variety of different contexts.
2. Relationships
Relationships are the single
biggest factor in people coming to faith. We need to encourage people to build
meaningful relationships with neighbours and friends through which the Gospel
can be shared. Christian women with non-Christian partners should be
encouraged, for the single biggest influence of men in coming to faith is their
wives.
3. Church activities
The right sort of activities have a
key role in helping people come to faith. This indicates typically that people belong
before they believe. The average person starts coming to church and then
through the ongoing life of the church, proclaiming the Gospel in word and
lives lived out, they come to share the faith of the people they have come to
know. This suggests we should find ways of helping enquirers to be part of the
church and to take part in its activities. We should also tailor at least some
of our activities to helping those people grow in their understanding of the
faith.
4. Teaching
Finney has shown that before they
come to faith people in Britain today have a view of God which is a long way
from the Bible’s. We cannot assume that when we use the word ‘God’ people
understand the same thing by the term as we do. This points to the need for
some kind of teaching evangelism where the true nature of God can be explained.
At the heart of this teaching will be a presentation of the person of Christ,
for Jesus said ‘whoever has seen me, has seen the Father.’ To know Jesus is to
know the true God.
Other articles by members of our staff
All is Well?
Death is nothing at all?
An Christian Analysis of Henry
Scott Holland’s words about the after-life
Many people have derived comfort
from Henry Scott Holland’s ‘All is well.’
The familiar piece that continues ‘Death
is nothing at all, I have only slipped away into the next room’ is often
given to bereaved families, sometimes even by well-meaning funeral directors.
At funerals families often ask the minister to read it but many feel
uncomfortable in doing so?
Why ?
In this
part of the website we explain our reasons. But first, the piece in full:
Death
is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room. I am I, and you
are you. Whatever we were to each other, that we still are. Call me by my
familiar name, speak to me in the easy way which you always used. Put no effort
into your tone, wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always
laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray
for me. Let my name be ever the household name word that it always was, let it
be spoken without effect, without the trace of a shadow on it.
Life
means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was; there is unbroken
continuity. Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am waiting
for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner.
All is well.
The Real Thing
Without wishing to offend those who
have found comfort from these words in hard times we feel bound to question them.
True lasting comfort comes from what is true and it is in the area of truth
that we find these words sadly deficient. Here is where we believe the truth
lies, both in human experience and in the teaching of God’s word.
Death is not ‘nothing at all’
In a laudable desire to bring
comfort to the bereaved Holland seeks to minimise the tragedy of death. The
intention is good but reality shouts against it.
Nobody who is bereaved really
believes Henry Scott Holland. The Bible is far more realistic in calling death
our ‘last enemy.’ Death is a terrible thing. Those who are bereaved need
understanding and comfort rather than the saccharine make-believe of ‘death is
nothing at all.’
Separation is real and lasting
In its understandable desire to
play down the seriousness of death, Scott Holland downplays and even denies the separation that death always brings
and which is such a part of the pain and cost of bereavement. We are invited to
believe that our loved one ‘has only slipped away into the next room’ and that
there is an ‘unbroken continuity.’
But, this is simply not so.
Death brings a real separation in
human relationships that is permanent for this life and immensely painful. The
parable of the rich man and Lazarus makes this abundantly clear. Psychologically
this is obvious too. Whilst in the early stages of bereaved it is common to
sense the presence of the departed nearby, it is only by coming to accept the
real separation that has occurred through death that people can begin to come
to terms with their bereavement.
The expression of grief and sorrow
is normal and healthy but Scott Holland appears to discourage it. He exhorts
us to ‘Put no effort into your tone, wear no forced air of solemnity
or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household name
word that it always was, let it be spoken without effect, without the trace of
a shadow on it.’ but he leaves no room for mourning, for sadness, for
weeping.
In denying, the seriousness of
death, he denies the bereaved the opportunity to express their grief.
The Bible is more realistic and
ultimately more kind. It frankly portrays grief at the face of death. Jesus
himself wept at the death of Lazarus and St Paul exhorts us to ‘mourn with
those who mourn.’
True assurance and hope is found in
the Gospel
True assurance and hope is found,
we believe, not in Henry Scott Holland’s denial of death but in the acceptance
of Jesus Christ’s victory over death. Jesus has passed through death and
has been raised to life by God’s power. Jesus offers forgiveness, and eternal
life to all who put their trust in him. The Gospel accepts the terrible reality
of death, not seeking to minimise it or deny it and points us to the victory of
the resurrection.
Further help and advice for bereaved families is given on our help
page.
Other articles by members of our staff