The Ohio Independent Baptist, October 1960

·r I [li () l l 1 l l 1:;- J>l N I I T' 131\ 1>·1 I ·r ) ctc) bcr, 19 • in < )l.lr re, tt\\ c>t ., l .. uthcr.,11 l)<)<>k, , lr q) tur.11 l3 ,tJ) l1s1n, 1 ul1l1shcd \)y Vant,lHC f>rcss, I nc., 1 ] ' \ ( th , ( , C\\ ) ' 0 r k. ) ( l n~t.,11 n1t tlt 1\ 1 n th 1, l.l,t tt\ t.1llnlt.'llt <){ <>llf fC.' \ lC\\ o f l)r S,\,\flll\ ,l,lr.t's I ( )1'. , ,,t· ,, ,11 \l)11 ,1 1.ic, t,,c.) <Jt h1, t l1.1rtcr. t111dc1 chc hcc1d 1ng of .. nc. , h1, \h,,1 ccr t)tl the 111()\,le c)f b.,1 tt 111 11ced\ 111u c h tr,tlltttt>n (l • u t.11n tr •\, ,, t" l,egin ., cc, 1c,, <)f the e.1rly <>r t\ nte 1cene fac l1 c1 s •l1c.,111 the .1uthc.>r use, tt) prc.>\ C 1nl.1nc ba~) ti · n1, ,, e ,v.1nt ou r ft',l \lt"f' (() ft"tlll'llll)Cf tll,lt C\ en l f 0 111C begctO tc> b,tl)tize tnfaots • c. )11 1tre1 th<? .,i C)stlcs d1e\l, it does not prove they ,vc c ri g ht 1~.1ul .tn\i J ()l111 l1.1d to tight f.11 ·e dot tr1ne 10 their c.lay, so it i ,1t1t ,tc.,n~e it rrc.1r gre,, ra1 11..{ly after the in pire1..l apo cle · \\'ere uc t) t tl1c ,, .,, An<. 1ent error L' till error. IR[ AEU l) r .1.1rn1, a.tr ,1 cla1n1 chat Irenaeu , ,,•ho \\ 1 a born 110 A .D ., ~tlluded to 1nt.1nt bar ci 01 ,, hen he aid, " hri t came co save all t et)l"l th r(>t1gh him ·elf. I ay all ,, ho through him are born again ro xL nur. 111,g babe . n1all chi ldren, ch i ldren, young people, and olt{ r people. therefore he pa ed through all the different ages, b con11ng a nur 1ng infant for the sake o f nu rsing infants.. :· If 11 l1.1d quoted more, it ,vould have been even plainer that Irenaeus a no t thinking of bapci m. but of Christ as goi ng through all the cage of human life that he mig ht be Master of all . Dr. ..ear ha pointed out that I renaeus never used the phrase, " born again to God," for baptism but "bath of regeneration" or some ike phra e. JU TI 1-fARTYR ( died 165 A .D .) The author makes much of the statement o f Justin that in ht day many men and women had " been disciples already as <hildren." et he admi ts that Justin did not say how old these h ildren were. ince sixty year old men ofcen say they did some- thing as children when they were already in their teens, it naturally doe away with this argument. He should have quoted Justin 's econd Apology, in which he tells the emperor how the Christians bapti1ed: " I will now relate the manner in which we, having been re- newed by Christ, ded icate ou rselves to God . . . As many as are per uaded and bel ieve that the things taug ht are true, and promise to live accordi ng to them, are di reaed first to pray and ask of God, with fasting the forgiveness o f their former sins; we pray– ing and fas ting together with them. Afterward they are con– ducted by us to some place where there is water , and after the same way o f regeneration whereby we were ourselves regenerated, they are regenerated. For they then take a bath in water in the name of the Lord God, and Father of a ll, and o f our Saviour J esu Christ and of the H oly pirit. " He goes on to say that .our physical birch was by necessity, but this by choice. I f Dr. aarnivaara had tried to prove that by 150 A .D . Christians believed in baptismal regeneration , we could have un– derstood his use of Justin Martyr, but not infant baptism, since this longer passage clearly denies it. Nor does it prove he fully :believed in baptismal regeneration, though he used the language, since he seated that it was renewed people that dedicated themselves <o Christ in baptism . He was coming close to that doctrine, h ow– .ever, and that is what we Bapti sts claim : people first confused the sign with the thing signified and began co believe the new birch was wroug ht in baptism. La ter, troubled mothers demanded that their dyi ng infants be baptized, that they might be re– ,generated and saved. ORIGEN ( born 185 A .D .) le is claimed chat Origen was himself baptized as an infa'1t, and that he said this : "The church has received from the apos1 les t he traditi on to give bapti sm even t o infants. For chose who were entrusted with che divine mys teries knew that all men have the natural pollution of sin, which must be washed away through water and the p1r1c. o man is free from che defi lement of sin , even if he is one day old. ince the inborn uncleanness is washed away through baptism, little children also come co be baptized. For unless one is born of water and the pirit he cannot enter the kingdom o f God.., Dr. aarnivaara should have looked acr oss the Baltic co weden, where a gifted Lutheran, Andreas Wiberg, turned Bap– tise a century ago and dealt with this quo tation from Origen in Christian Bapti sm , pp. 232, 233: ' ' Jc ought co be observed chat they ( these quotations ) do not exist in the language in whjch they were written by Ori gen , but only in Latin, into which they were transla ted near the close of che fourth century by Jerome and Rufinus. These Fathers ha.ve taken such liberties with the Greek orig inal by alterations, addi– tions, and omissions, cha t they rather may be considered to have g iven treatises than a faithful translation of the writings of Origen. This clearly appears by comparing such passages in the writings of -Origen as srill exist in the Greek." 1"'FR1 ULT.J AN ~ c need fl () t ton5.1dcr Y}) r1an, fo r ,1 11 Bar>t1 sts rccogn11c I he t,iughc 111fc1nt l1ar>c1sm frc>m 25 ~ 1\ D onwa1d, ,tnd pc.rh fc)r so111e t11ne before T er tullian is admi ttetll y against inf baJ1t1s1n, bu t Dr. aar n1v,1ra tries t<> pro"'! tr,,r ,,,. did riot oop 1 t bclause he thought 1 t was u n cr1 ptural, but because he thou s ins after ba1)tism could not be forgive n Therefore it was 1 ter to \Va 1t until lacer in life. He also says infant baJ) ti sm m have been very prevalent arou nd 20() A.D ., or Tertul l1an ,vo noc l1ave said cha t " In fants haste to tl1e forgiveness of sins." st resses th.e point cha t the ! acin word "parvuli ' ' mea ns infa an<l then pi ctures their parents as hascen1n a wi th chem co b tism. l-[e forgets chat Tercu ll ian did not ~om nl1in that par, were running with babes in arm to the baptiscry b·, t chat " parvuli" were themselves hastening. Origen ~ailed Jesus "parvulus" a t che age o f twelve, so it is probable that Terrull had children in mind, not infants. Again it would be legcima te to use Tertull1an co prove t by 200 :".D . people . thought they were forg1ven in baptism, it is foolish to use him as a proof fo r infant baptism. The ea church fathers do not prove chat infant bapti sm goes back to Apostles. If anything, they prove the opposite. BAPTI M IN THE MIDDLE AGE When Dr. Saarnivara comes to the Middle Ages, he ea~ proves tha t some Baptists have claimed coo many grand fath< He points out that the Montanists and Novatians of the th and four th ceotu ries, the Pat1 l icians of the seventh, the Cachari the ninth, and and the Waldensians and Albigenses o f the I and 14 th centuries, all had some beliefs that modern Bapt do not share. He uses the Baptise, Thomas Armitage, to pr< it. Then he comes to chis audacious conclusion : "A historical fact is that the baptistic view of baptism is I found in the Bible; neither is ir found in the history o f · Church for more than a millennium after the birth o f the Chur No group held the baptistic principles in the Christian Chu1 until the appearance of the Petrobrcsians. Thus the history Baptism begins about 1104, and all attempts co trace it fart! back than that have failed , or have been based on falsification faas" p . 91 . It sounds like a good conclusion from the facts he gives, l r-e has not given them all . He has forgotten to say that Cathe persecutors destroyed the writings of the various non-Cathe sect s so thoroughly, and so mis-represented what they taug chat we do not know too much about them; but some seem have been quite baptistic indeed. There is good evidence that I Pauli cians of the 7th century were only a revival of an ear movement in the same area in the 4th cenrury, and chat these ( not reject water baptism. He negleccs co tell how much like t Baptists che early Christians in Britain and Ireland were, and h, the Welsh Baptists claim they can trace themselves back to th< Christians. Careful Bapt ise historians like Armitage, Vedder and Ne man do not try co prove that there has been an unbroken line organized Baptist churches back to the Apostles. That is Lar markism , which has done us more harm than it has done any o else. They do hold, however, that when the spiritual life large died ou t in the Catholic churches, that God preserved enough eva gelical truth in and through these various groups, so that the Chur of the Born Agai n did not die, but lived on and spread in an li derground movement that suddenly came back to life in the 16 century and is best represented by the pepole called Baptist. All Baptist scholars, even the m ost zealous of them, ackno~ edge that all o f the Ana-Baptists were not true Baptists. Th. were much divided, just as evangelicals are today. They W( affli cted with false doctrine from time to time, and some we off on tangents never to return, just as Christian sects do cod. Yet it was ou t of the spiritual ferment that these sects spre through Europe that the modern Baptist movement began, a for that reason we look back to these much maligned and ii perfect sects as those who brought the wine of truth to us. V are on solid historical ground when we make chat claim, and the baptismal controversy we need claim no more. THE MODE OF BAPTI M Dr. Saarnivaara wanes us to know chat he is familiar with t sta tements of Luther and Calvin to the effeet that baptism mea immersion. "All that you say is well known co me. . . . In 1 Trea tise on Baptism, published in 1519 ( Luther ) says: 'Bapti~ is called in the Greek language baptismos, in Latin mersio, whi means to plunge something entirely into the water, so that t water closes over it. . . . It would be better that, according · the meaning of the word baptize, the child, or whoever is ba (Continued on 'P(lge 16)