The laboring mother gave one last push and the baby emerged into the capable, experienced hands of the midwife. Infant mortality was high and the midwife knew it. She had seen too many babies that looked like this one die before they ended their first day in the world. So she did what she had always done, what her mother had done, and what the midwives in the other villages did: she reached for a pitcher of water, crossed herself and the infant, said the Lord’s Prayer, and baptized the infant in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit as she had seen priests and midwives do. Now, in her mind, in the minds of the parents and the anxious villagers waiting outside, they could rest in the knowledge that should the Lord take this child too, as he had taken so many, the child would be justified and in the arms of the Lord.

Lay Baptisms in the Reformation

When the Reformation came to the villages and cities, some of the people embraced the new practices, but many people, especially in the villages and on the farms, were reluctant to accept them. After all, this is what they had always known. It is what they had always done. The Protestant Reformers encountered resistance in the cities too. Scott Manetsch explains,

Many of Geneva’s townspeople and country folk were slow to embrace the changes in baptismal theology and practice introduced by Calvin and his reformed colleagues. Indeed, some of Geneva’s residents were openly hostile to these reforms. Between 1536 and 1609, Geneva’s ministers struggled to eradicate a variety of traditional baptismal practices, including emergency baptisms, participation in Catholic baptisms, and naming children after Catholic saints. On rare occasions, Calvin, Beza, and their colleagues also disciplined people who espoused Anabaptist convictions.¹

He explains that in “the first decades after Geneva’s reformation” (beginning in 1536), “the Consistory investigated a handful of baptismal cases in outlying villages where godparents or midwives performed emergency baptisms out of concern for the salvation of a sickly newborn infant.”² The Reformed churches, however, regarded this practice as “pernicious” because they were convicted by the Scriptures that baptism was instituted by the Lord to be administered in the visible church, by ministers, in conjunction with the preaching of the Word.³ They did not believe that the administration of baptism was essential to salvation—though it was part of the ordained and ordinary path of salvation—such that anyone who, for reasons beyond their control, died unbaptized was necessarily lost. The ministers explained to those who were tempted to have the midwife baptize their children that children are members of the covenant of grace and that “the children of the faithful are saved, even as the faithful are assured that God is their God and the God of their children.”⁴ The Venerable Company of Pastors explained to those who were so tempted: “The doctrine which claims that baptism is necessary for salvation is false.”⁵

Calvin wrote at some length against lay baptism generally and against emergency baptism by midwives in particular.⁶ It is wrong, he wrote, for “private individuals to assume the administration of baptism; for this as well as the serving of the Supper is a function of the ecclesiastical ministry. For Christ did not command women, or men of every sort, to baptize, but gave this command to those whom he had appointed apostles.”⁷ He recognized that he was swimming against the tide of a long history of emergency baptisms. He quoted Augustine: “Even if a layman compelled by necessity should give baptism, I do not know whether anyone might piously say that it should be repeated. For if no necessity compels it to be done, it is a usurping of another’s office; but if necessity urges it, it is either no sin at all or a venial one.”⁸ Calvin reminded his readers that the Council of Carthage had forbidden women to practice emergency baptism. He rejected the notion that those who die unbaptized are deprived of the grace of regeneration:

Not at all. God declares that he adopts our babies as his own before they are born, when he promises that he will be our God and the God of our descendants after us (Gen 17:7). Their salvation is embraced in this word. No one will dare be so insolent toward God as to deny that his promise of itself suffices for its effect.

Few realize how much injury the dogma that baptism is necessary for salvation, badly expounded, has entailed. As a consequence, they are less cautious. For, where the opinion has prevailed that all are lost who have not happened to be baptized with water, our condition is worse than that of God’s ancient people—as if the grace of God were now more restricted than under the law! For men will think that Christ has come not to fulfill the promises but to abolish them cf. Matt. 5:17, seeing that the promise (which was then effective enough of itself to confer salvation before the eighth day) Gen. 17:7; cf. v. 12 now would not be valid without the aid of a sign.⁹

For Calvin, baptism was also and only the sign and seal of salvation, not salvation itself. He denied that baptism works ex opere (i.e., automatically). He did not teach that baptism automatically confers new life to every recipient. He argued that the example of Zipporah (Exod 4:25) was no ground for emergency baptism. He argued that Zipporah was impetuous and that created the crisis.¹⁰

Afterward, a sort of seal is added to the sacrament, not to confer efficacy upon God’s promise as if it were invalid of itself, but only to confirm it to us. From this it follows that the children of believers are baptized not in order that they who were previously strangers to the church may then for the first time become children of God, but rather that, because by the blessing of the promise they already belonged to the body of Christ, they are received into the church with this solemn sign.¹¹

In the Ordinances for the Supervision of Country Churches (1547), the Genevan Pastors proposed a church order for the rural congregations around Geneva. It was adopted by the City Council and the Council of 200 in December. In light of Calvin’s teaching, we will not be surprised to read that one of the stipulations said,

If midwives usurp the office of Baptism, they are to be reproved or chastised according to the measure of fault found, since no commission is given them in this matter, under penalty of being put on bread and water for three days and fined ten sous; and all who consent to their action or conceal it will be liable to the same penalty.¹²

Despite the strength with which the ministers condemned the practice of emergency baptism by midwives, it does not appear those who had been so baptized were re-baptized in the church by ministers. Nowhere in his discussion of the emergency baptism by midwives did Calvin call for the re-baptizing of those so irregularly baptized.

In articles 56–58, the Church Order adopted by the Synod of Dort (1619) instructed:

God’s covenant shall be sealed for the children of Christians by baptism as soon as its administration can take place, and that in a public meeting when God’s word is preached. But in places where few preaching services are held a certain day of the week shall be set aside to administer baptism extraordinarily. Nevertheless, this shall not take place without a sermon being preached.

Ministers shall do their best and strive to the end that the father present his child for baptism. In congregations where besides the fathers also godfathers or witnesses are taken to the baptism (which custom in itself is optional and should not be lightly changed) it is fitting that those be taken who hold to pure doctrine and are of pious behavior.

In the baptism of young children as well as of adults the minister shall use the forms of the institution and administration of baptism which have been respectively drawn up for that purpose.

Again, though the churches required that baptism be administered by the minister, in a public service, in conjunction with the preaching of the Word and the use of the forms, nothing is said about the status of Trinitarian baptisms irregularly administered by laity.

In their commentary on the Church Order, Idzerd Van Dellen and Martin Monsma spoke to this issue somewhat strongly, but not entirely coherently. Initially they give the impression that the churches have never recognized the validity of lay baptisms:

Baptism administered by private parties has never been held valid, even though such parties should have acted upon instructions given by a Consistory, inasmuch as private parties are not called and ordained for this task. Neither was baptism administered during the early years of the Reformation by assistants to the Ministers, such as catechetical instructors, sick-visitors, etc., held valid. However, the Synod of Dort, 1578, held that if an Elder, upon the authority of a Consistory or a Church, had administered baptism, that then such a baptism was not to be repeated, inasmuch as such an Elder in a way had a call for this administration. But the Synod also decided that practice should not be followed by other Churches or Consistories.¹³

This all seems straightforward except that they offered no evidence for their claim that private baptisms have “never been held valid.” If the facts are so clear, the evidence should be easy to produce; but they offer none.

Further, they complicated their own claim when they wrote,

But the baptism of monks was considered to be invalid for they have no charge to Baptize. Even “emergency Baptisms” administered by midwives, doctors, etc., were usually held to be valid because the Roman Church charges individuals to Baptize a child which is about to die. Whether the Reformation Churches were justified in acknowledging even these latter classes of Baptisms is indeed a question.¹⁴

What they took away with the one (the validity of lay baptism), they seem to have implicitly conceded with the other. Baptism by monks (who were not always ordained priests) was “invalid” they say, but “emergency baptisms” were valid because they were commissioned by the “Roman Church.”

It might have helped their discussion had they used the distinction between regular and irregular, especially since, unless there is a typo in the text, they admitted the validity of some lay baptisms.

Louis Berkhof spoke to this same issue in strong terms without resolving the question of the validity of lay baptisms:

The Reformed Churches always acted on the principle that the administration of the Word and of the sacraments belong together, and that therefore the teaching elder or the minister is the only lawful administrator of baptism. The Word and the sacrament are joined together in the words of the institution. And because baptism is not a private matter, but an ordinance of the Church, they also hold that it should be administered in the public assembly of believers. They have generally recognized the baptism of other Churches, not excluding the Roman Catholics, and also of the various sects, except in the case of Churches and sects which denied the Trinity. Thus they refused to honour the baptism of the Socinians and of the Unitarians. In general, they considered a baptism as valid which was administered by a duly accredited minister and in the name of the triune God.¹⁵

He was quite right about what the intended practice of baptism was in the Reformed churches and why they came to that conclusion. He is quite right that baptism is not a private matter, that it is an ordinance of the church, and that the dividing line between Roman baptisms (which we accept) and those by the “sects” (e.g., the Socinians and the Unitarians) is the ecumenical doctrine of the Trinity. He did not, however, speak to the question of the validity of a Trinitarian, lay baptism.

On Being Reformed in America

The validity of lay baptisms is a significant question in America because it happens frequently. The stark reality is that since about 1800 (so more than 224 years and counting), American evangelical religion has been populist and radically egalitarian. This means that the sorts of principles and concerns expressed by the Reformed churches have not typically held much water in the New World. Americans like to make up things as they go along, and that inclination manifests itself in the practice of religion too. Who knows how many self-appointed lay preachers baptized people as they moved west, across the Plains, the Rockies, and to the Pacific Coast?

Most Reformed pastors have had to grapple with the ecclesiastical consequences of evangelical enthusiasm and pragmatism. I myself was on a consistory when we faced the case of a person who was baptized by a Campus Crusade worker. We have all probably seen videos of football coaches baptizing people. When it comes to it, in some evangelical settings, ordination is a rather thin process. Some fellow, with no theological education and no ecclesiastical examination, who can speak well and has an internal sense of call can easily be “ordained” by a well-meaning but not very orderly Baptist church. I have seen it in my Christian life. In the case that a congregation that, according to Belgic Confession (BC) 29, lacks the marks of the true church has ordained someone, does that make them ordained? In the sixteenth century and beyond, we faced an analogous problem in the reception of baptisms performed in Anabaptist congregations. We condemned their doctrine of baptism (BC 35), arguably denied that those congregations had the marks of the true church, and we even called them “sects,” but we seem to have accepted the validity of their baptisms. Calvin married the widow of an Anabaptist. Did she get re-baptized? If she did, I am unaware of it.

My own baptism was unusual and perhaps irregular. I was baptized by a Lutheran minister in the hospital, because they thought I would die. I fooled them, but I have never doubted the legitimacy of my baptism. I was baptized by the wrong person, at the wrong time, in the wrong place, for the wrong reasons. The Reformed churches certainly would discourage that sort of thing, but no church has ever questioned the legitimacy of my baptism.

There may be good reasons for rejecting a Trinitarian baptism conducted by a Campus Crusade worker or by a football coach or by a midwife. Those administrations are certainly irregular, but if we are going to say that they are invalid, we are going to have to reckon with our own distant past and even our own intermediate past. Without further information about traditional Reformed practice (e.g., what, if anything, do the church orders say about the legitimacy of irregular baptisms?), it seems that we should proceed cautiously before saying that an admittedly irregular Trinitarian baptism is invalid and thus not a baptism. Should a consistory make that decision, it is best for the peace and purity of the church to submit to it. There are prudential considerations that may make it the wisest course, and I would be prepared to submit to consistory should they determine that my baptism was invalid. But given what I know about our history (and the practice of the church going back to Augustine), it seems that a consistory could also justifiably rule that an irregular Trinitarian lay baptism is a valid baptism. In cases such as these, there may be more than one orthodox answer, but this is something about which the churches ought to prayerfully give further consideration.

Notes

1. Scott M. Manetsch, Calvin’s Company of Pastors: Pastoral Care and the Emerging Reformed Church, 1536–1609 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 261. See also R. Scott Clark, “Why Did the Geneva Consistory Insist on Biblical Names at Baptism?“
2. Manetsch, Calvin’s Company, 261.
3. Manetsch, 261.
4. Manetsch, 261.
5. Manetsch, 261.
6. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 4.15.20–22.
7. Calvin, Institutes, 4.15.20.
8. Augustine, Against the Letter of Parmenianus, 2.13.29; Migne, Patrologia Latina, 43.71, quoted in Calvin, Institutes, 4.15.20.
9. Calvin, Institutes, 4.15.20.
10. Calvin, 4.15.22.
11. Calvin, 4.15.22.
12. J. K. S. Reid, Calvin: Theological Treatises (Louisville, KY; London: Westminster John Knox Press, 1954), 79.
13. Idzerd Van Dellen and Martin Monsma, The Church Order Commentary Being A Brief Explanation of the Church Order of the Christian Reformed Church, 3rd edition (Grand Rapids: Zondervan), 235.
14. Van Dellen and Monsma, The Church Order Commentary, 236.
15. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1938), 631.

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

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Post authored by:

• R. Scott Clark

  

  R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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