General Secretary

The Quest for Consensus AROUND BAPTISM

By Neville Callam S

The following are excerpts of a lecture by BWA General Secretary Neville Callam at the 8th Annual E. Glen Hinson Lectures at the Baptist Seminary of Kentucky on February 29.

ome Baptist churches participating in the BWA are seeking for a way to recognize infant baptism, without giving up their convictions about baptism and the

ecclesiology that undergirds it, and so to enter into a closer fellowship with paedobaptist churches (those who also baptize infants).

This is evident through various dialogues that have taken place

between Baptists and numerous other Christian traditions at the local, national and regional levels, mainly in Europe, and at the international level between the BWA and other Christian World Communions.

Baptists share the conviction that believers’ baptism, that

is, baptism in water with the invocation of the triune God, administered in the midst of the worshipping community upon the free, personal confession of faith by the person who is to be baptized, is “the most clearly attested pattern of baptism in the New Testament” and is a guide for those seeking to practice their faith in continuity with New Testament teaching. Some Baptists have developed ways of coexisting with other denominational groups in their communities without necessarily understanding baptism as part of an extended process of initiation. In some cases, the prevailing belief is that “Christian charity and fellowship among the churches” require that respect be shown to Christians who were baptized as infants, so much so that they are welcome at the Lord’s Table. The life of the Baptist community is marked by an increased acceptance among many Baptists of the equivalence between

What Baptists Believe About Baptism Continued

into the one church. Doctrinal consensus was not deemed a sine qua non for this unity in Christ. This is one significant reason that explains why Baptists refuse to regard Christians baptized in infancy as non-Christians. Infant baptism does not disqualify churches from being regarded as full and authentic expressions of the one church of God. Meanwhile, spiritual unity was generally understood to issue in loose patterns of cooperation among churches than in either a fundamental construction of agreed statements of faith or in expressions of organic, that is, institution unity. It appears that increase among Baptists of the readiness to

concede that the New Testament may not accurately be said to reflect a single, coherent theology of baptism has softened the earlier traditional Baptist objection to justly including, within the discussion of baptism, those images associated with baptism in the New Testament that were not usually emphasized in some

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