Baptism and local church membership in Baptist history

This is the sixth in a series of blog posts in which we are seeking to answer one overarching question—is a properly qualified administrator essential to valid baptism? The first post introducing the series can be found here.

We’re still considering the immediate question, is baptism the act which inherently unites a believer to a particular local church?

Previously, we have seen that since John the Baptist was administering baptism prior to the existence of local churches, addition to the membership of a local church cannot be part of the essential nature of baptism.

We’ve also seen that the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch by Philip could not have united him with any particular church, because no congregation could have possibly given its consent to receive the Ethiopian eunuch into membership when they had never even heard of his conversion. Therefore we find that, even after Pentecost, baptism does not inherently join a believer to a local church.

Although the scriptural evidence we have already provided is more than sufficient to establish this fact, it will also be beneficial for us to consider how Baptists have historically thought of the relationship between baptism and local church membership before finally moving on in our study.

We must emphasize at the outset that the Bible is our only rule of faith and practice. What makes a doctrine true is not that Baptists have historically believed it, but only that the Bible teaches it. Therefore, we must never appeal to church history as having any kind of inherent authority. Nevertheless, it is still helpful to consider doctrine from a historical perspective. At the very least, if we can find a certain doctrinal view represented in historic Baptist theology, we can show that it is not new.

As early as the middle of the 17th century, some Baptists have argued that baptism should precede the observance of the Lord’s Supper. They believed that it would be disorderly to admit even a true believer to communion if he were unbaptized. This practice came to be known as “closed communion”, and this principle was affirmed in the 1646 revision of the First London Baptist Confession:

Baptism is an ordinance of the New Testament, given by Christ, to be dispensed upon persons professing faith, or that are made disciples; who upon profession of faith, ought to be baptized, and after to partake of the Lord’s Supper.

(A Confession of Faith of Seven Congregations or Churches of Christ in London, 1646, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo2/A80328.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext, emphasis mine)

In the same year, Benjamin Cox, one of the signatories of the First London Confession, published an appendix to the confession, writing on behalf of the churches. With respect to closed communion, Cox writes:

Though a believer’s right to the use of the Lord’s Supper does immediately flow from Jesus Christ apprehended and received by faith; yet inasmuch as all things ought to be done not only decently, but also in order … and the word holds forth this order, that disciples should be baptized … and then taught to observe all things (that is to say, all other things) that Christ commanded the Apostles … and accordingly the Apostles first baptized disciples, and then admitted them to the use of the Supper … we therefore do not admit any to the use of the Supper, nor communicate with any in the use of this ordinance, but disciples baptized, lest we should have fellowship with them in their doing contrary to order.

(Cox, An Appendix to a Confession of Faith, 1646, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo2/A80728.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext, emphasis mine)

Nevertheless, some Baptists continued to admit unbaptized believers to the Lord’s Supper, a practice which came to be known as “open communion”. Later in the 17th century, the controversy between closed communion Baptists and open communion Baptists was brought into public view through several published works arguing for each position.

One of the foremost advocates for open communion was John Bunyan, the now-famous author of The Pilgrim’s Progress. In 1672, Bunyan published a work entitled A Confession of My Faith, in which he presented a number of arguments in favor of open communion. He specifically responds to the objection that water baptism is the “initiating ordinance” which unites a believer to a church:

Question. But do you not count that by water baptism, and not otherwise, that being the initiating, and entering ordinance, they ought to be received into fellowship?

Answer. No. But tarry, and take my sense with my word. For herein lies the mistake, to think that because in time past, baptism was administered upon conversion, that therefore it is the initiating and entering ordinance into church communion, when by the word no such thing is testified of it. Besides, that it is not so, will be manifest, if we consider the nature and power of such an ordinance.

(Bunyan, A Confession of My Faith, 1672, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A30136.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext, emphasis mine)

Bunyan then proceeds with an elaborate argument proving why baptism does not join a believer to a church. If we stopped here, we might assume Bunyan’s opponents were actually in favor of this idea.

However, a response to Bunyan’s work was published the next year by Thomas Paul, a closed communion Baptist associated with the renowned William Kiffin. Kiffin himself would eventually become perhaps the most well-known advocate for closed communion, and he wrote the preface to Paul’s book, the full title of which is Some Serious Reflections On that Part of Mr. Bunion’s Confession of Faith: Touching Communion With Unbaptized Persons.

In his book, Paul gives a rather interesting reply to Bunyan’s lengthy argument against baptism being the “initiating ordinance” into church fellowship:

Your great noise about an initiating ordinance, wherein you spend time enough, I shall take no notice of. I know none that assert it to be the inlet into particular churches, though it prepares them for reception. It’s consent on all hands, and nothing else, that makes them members of this or that particular church, and not faith and baptism.

(Paul, Some Serious Reflections, 1673, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo2/A70907.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext, emphasis mine)

Surprisingly, Paul says that Bunyan’s argument is completely irrelevant, because none of the advocates of closed communion that he knows of holds baptism to be the “initiating ordinance”. In Paul’s view, baptism simply prepares believers for membership in a particular local church. It is only mutual consent between a believer and some particular congregation which makes him a member of that local church.

All that being said, some closed communion Baptists—including William Kiffin—later did go on to use language describing baptism as an “initiating ordinance”. Nevertheless, other closed communion Baptists continued to reject the idea that the act of baptism inherently unites a believer to a particular local church.

Writing about a century later, the noted Baptist theologian John Gill carefully described baptism as an act which prepares a believer for admission into a local church:

[Though baptism] is not a church ordinance, it is an ordinance of God, and a part and branch of public worship. When I say it is not a church ordinance, I mean it is not an ordinance administered in the church, but out of it, and in order to admission into it, and communion with it. It is preparatory to it, and a qualification for it. It does not make a person a member of a church, or admit him into a visible church. Persons must first be baptized, and then added to the church, as the three thousand converts were.

(Gill, A Complete Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity, Vol. 3, 1796, p. 288, https://books.google.com/books?id=HYtQAQAAMAAJ, emphasis mine)

But even though Gill understood baptism as simply a prerequisite for local church membership, he remained resolutely committed to closed communion. In the same work, a few pages later, he writes:

After the ordinance of baptism follows the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper. The one is preparatory to the other, and he that has a right to the one has a right to the other, and none but such who have submitted to the former ought to be admitted to the latter.

(Gill, A Complete Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity, Vol. 3, 1796, p. 315, https://books.google.com/books?id=HYtQAQAAMAAJ, emphasis mine)

Several decades after this, in 1833, the New Hampshire Baptist Convention produced a declaration of faith, which went on to be published in 1853 by J. Newton Brown, and has since become known as The New Hampshire Confession of Faith. There are still many Baptist churches in America today that subscribe to this venerable confession. The New Hampshire Confession acknowledges baptism as preparatory to church membership and the Lord’s Supper:

We believe that Christian Baptism is the immersion in water of a believer, into the name of the Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost; to show forth in a solemn and beautiful emblem, our faith in the crucified, buried, and risen Saviour, with its effect, in our death to sin and resurrection to a new life; that it is pre-requisite to the privileges of a church relation; and to the Lord’s Supper, in which the members of the church by the sacred use of bread and wine, are to commemorate together the dying love of Christ; preceded always by solemn self-examination.

(Brown, The Baptist Church Manual, 1858, p. 17, https://repository.sbts.edu/bitstream/handle/10392/5718/Brown-Baptist%20Church%20Manual%201853-ocr.pdf, emphasis mine)

After this, in 1858, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary adopted the Abstract of Principles, which also embodies a similar view of baptism as a prerequisite for church membership:

Baptism is an ordinance of the Lord Jesus, obligatory upon every believer, wherein he is immersed in water in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, as a sign of his fellowship with the death and resurrection of Christ, of remission of sins, and of giving himself up to God, to live and walk in newness of life. It is prerequisite to church fellowship, and to participation in the Lord’s Supper.

(Abstract of Principles, 1858, https://www.sbts.edu/abstract-of-principles/, emphasis mine)

It is important to note that if baptism is indeed a prerequisite for local church membership, then it certainly cannot be the act which itself results in local church membership.

Although we have seen that this understanding of baptism as simply a prerequisite for local church membership has been well represented in Baptist thought for the past four centuries, it bears reiterating that we are not making an appeal to church history as having any kind of inherent authority. Again, what makes a doctrine true is not that Baptists have historically believed it, but only that the Bible teaches it. Nevertheless, it is clear this view is by no means new among Baptists.