the processes of initiation practiced by credobaptists (those who practice believers’ baptism) and certain paedobaptist churches. The widespread Baptist agreement on the spiritual unity of all Christians remains a bulwark against any inclination to deny those baptized as infants their status as fellow Christians and fellow members of the one body of Christ, the church. It would appear that an increasing number of Baptists now more fully embrace the sacramentality of baptism. Many Baptists who use the term “sacrament” reveal a desire to adopt a theology of baptism that they believe to be in harmony with the various ways in which baptism is described in the New Testament. In their use of the term they intend to imply both the declarative and the instrumental significance of the event of baptism. They affirm that the Holy Spirit who draws a person to faith in Jesus Christ is still active in the event of that person’s baptism. Many Baptists use the language not of “sacrament” but of “ordinance” when they are referring to baptism. By appealing to our Lord’s command to baptize and by emphasizing certain other texts associated with baptism in the New Testament, they place emphasis on one dimension of baptism, namely the Holy Spirit- enabled human response to the divine initiative in the process of salvation. For them, the expressive, rather than the instrumental, dimension of the event of baptism has found a home in their use of the term “ordinance.” While it is true that certain assumptions are reflected in the

decision to refer to baptism as “sacrament” or “ordinance,” careful reading needs always to attend the interpretation of what those who use the terms intend to convey. When baptism is called an “ordinance,” the tendency is to focus on recognizing baptism as a sign of the faith of the one whom the Holy Spirit has drawn to God and who bears witness to this in the waters of baptism. Meanwhile, the use of the term “sacrament” intends to assert the efficacy of divine activity in the event of baptism of those who come confessing their faith.

Still, some Baptists use the terms “sacrament” and

“ordinance” interchangeably. By this means, they affirm the lack of discontinuity between baptism as a dominical ordinance and baptism as “a place of rendezvous” between God and human beings, which has real consequences for the life of those who are blessed to enjoy this grace. Indeed, it has been shown again and again that, in the history of the Baptist movement, the use of the terms “ordinance” and “sacrament” has been a complex matter.

earlier Baptist discussions on baptism. In some Baptist contexts, the delinking of baptism from its

communal moorings is likely the result of a rather powerful individualism. This limitation restricts a fuller appreciation of the proper locus of the event of baptism within the community of faith.

Many Baptists believe that baptism is predicated on a decisive

prior encounter with the risen Lord in which the Holy Spirit draws a person to faith, leading to baptism. This important claim does not necessarily lead to a diminution of baptism to merely symbolic, rather than instrumental, proportions. However, in Baptist life, it has often had a deleterious effect on the understanding of the work of God in the event of baptism conceived as a mere follow up to the “real event of conversion” or as an optional extra that is not indispensable to the process of a person’s salvation.

Facing page: Mass baptism at the 1990 Baptist World Congress in Seoul, Korea

Above: Baptismal candidates and baptism (top) in Samsun, Turkey

APRIL/JUNE 2016

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