When the ancient church began to use the adjective catholic (universal) to describe her theology, piety, and practice, and to distinguish herself from the Gnostic, Marcionite, and Montanist cults of the second century, the best evidence is that they did not read the history of redemption the way the Anabaptists and Baptists later did. Put briefly: one covenant in multiple administrations. Indeed, the stress in the early fathers upon the unity of the covenant between the old and new administrations was so strong that they described the whole Bible as law and distinguished between the “old law” and the “new law.” They regularly appealed to Abraham as the paradigm for the new covenant. They argued against the Gnostics and Marcionites that the orthodox understanding of redemptive history was that Moses was temporary and Abraham was permanent and abiding. It was the Marcionites and the Gnostics who posited a radical disjunction between the old and the new, who denied a substantial continuity between the old and the new, and who conflated Abraham with Moses.

Further, the most likely interpretation of the fragmentary evidence from the second century, when read in light of what we know with certainty from the very early (AD 206) third century, is that when the church began to describe itself as catholic, infant baptism was, as Augustine thought, the universal practice of the church.¹

Were it the case that the apostolic practice was believer’s baptism only and that the early post-apostolic church followed them, but that, somehow unrecorded by any of the ancient church historians, by AD 206 infant baptism had become widespread and established practice, we should expect some evidence of controversy. Strangely, for this theory, there is simply no evidence of any such controversy.

Contrast the absence of any evidence of controversy over a change in covenant theology and baptism with the controversy over the day of the year on which to recognize Jesus’ resurrection. This became known as the Quartodeciman Controversy, which arose early in the second century. The Quartodeciman faction (including Polycarp) thought that the annual observance of Jesus’ resurrection should be on the fourteenth (quartusdecima) day of Nisan, which corresponds approximately to March/April.² The other side of the debate thought that the annual day to be recognized should be on the following Sunday.³ This was a major controversy that lasted into the fifth century. We have clear, ample record of this dispute, yet not a word about a major change in the theology and practice of holy baptism. That such a thing might have happened is beyond unlikely.

Baptist Catholicity: An Oxymoron?

In 1523 the Anabaptists radically broke with this understanding of the history of redemption, the nature of the covenant of grace, the nature of the promise, and the nature of the external administration of the covenant of grace. In his brief biography of Menno Simons (1496–1561), Harold S. Bender explains that Menno was unimpressed with any of the various facets of the Protestant (i.e., Lutheran and Reformed) argument for infant baptism, including the covenantal argument.⁴ Menno’s engagement with Heinrich Bullinger’s defense of the unity of the covenant of grace is instructive.⁵ To anticipate an objection from my Baptist friends that it is unfair to address Baptists by looking at Menno: His arguments are your arguments. His objections to infant baptism are your objections. Indeed, Menno does a better job of engaging Bullinger than many contemporary Baptists do. To dispute this obvious identity of Baptists with the Anabaptists on covenant and baptism suggests two things: 1) Contemporary Baptists have not read their Anabaptist forebears and therefore do not understand the theological debts they owe to them. 2) Some Baptists have adopted a contemporary Postmodern approach to language, to wit—since Baptists do not self-identify as Anabaptists, they are not Anabaptists. We have all seen where this logic leads.

On Colossians 2:12, where the Reformed see that Paul connects circumcision to baptism via the cross, Menno objected that there are no other places in Scripture where circumcision is a prototype of baptism.⁶ Thus, he rejected any connection between circumcision and baptism. For Menno, circumcision is only and ever a “figure of spiritual circumcision, but not of infant baptism.”⁷ He went on to reject the idea that Abraham is a sacramental pattern for Christians.⁸

Brethren, understand it well. If we wish to remain with the believing circumcised, Abraham in the covenant with God (into which covenant we are all graciously accepted, young and old, male and female, through Christ Jesus, and not through any sign), then our earthly, carnal birth, which is of the earthly carnal Adam must be circumcised with this same stone knife, which is Christ Jesus and his holy Word.⁹

Menno simply rejected the idea of an external administration of the covenant. For him, as for the Baptists, people are admitted to the visible church not in order to be brought to faith but only after they can demonstrate that they have come to faith. I contend that Menno’s view of redemptive history, his refusal to recognize the continuity of the external administration of the covenant of grace, places him and all the heirs of his argument at odds with genuine catholicity.

Consider Augustine’s response to the Donatists:

And this is the firm tradition of the universal church (universitas Ecclesiae), in respect of the baptism of infants, who certainly are as yet unable “with the heart to believe unto righteousness, and with the mouth to make confession unto salvation,” as the thief could do; nay, who even, by crying and moaning when the mystery is performed upon them, raise their voices in opposition to the mysterious words, and yet no Christian will say that they are baptized to no purpose.¹⁰

When Augustine wrote “universitas ecclesiae” he was saying “the whole church” or “the church catholic.” In the next chapter he appealed to circumcision as a prototype of baptism and to the Abrahamic pattern.

And if any one seek for divine authority in this matter, though what is held by the whole Church, and that not as instituted by Councils, but as a matter of invariable custom, is rightly held to have been handed down by apostolical authority, still we can form a true conjecture of the value of the sacrament of baptism in the case of infants, from the parallel of circumcision, which was received by God’s earlier people, and before receiving which Abraham was justified, as Cornelius also was enriched with the gift of the Holy Spirit before he was baptized.¹¹

When Augustine made this argument, he was receiving and transmitting what, as far as he knew, the church catholic thought. It was not spelled out in greater detail because Augustine faced no Anabaptist movement. The controversy with the Donatists was over the legitimacy of their schismatic baptism. So, that he wrote as he did is all the more remarkable because it reflects a way of reading of Scripture and not a mere polemical point. The Anabaptist and Baptist reading of redemptive history and approach to the administration of the covenant of grace puts them at odds with the entire church prior to 1523.¹²

Notes

1. In 1539 Menno Simons conceded that Tertullian regarded infant baptism was an established practice. Simons simply asserts that it was invented after the apostles. See Menno Simons, Christian Baptism, in John Christian Wenger, ed., The Complete Writings of Menno Simons c. 1496–1561, trans. Leonard Verduin (Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press), 248.
2. John D. Barry et al., eds., “Nisan,” in The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016), s.v., “Nisan.”
3. F. L. Cross and Elizabeth A. Livingstone, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), s.v., “Quartodecimanism” and “Paschal Controversies.”
4. Wenger, ed., The Complete Writings of Menno Simons, 8. His account of the various Protestant arguments assumes that they were mutually exclusive and that, for example, Luther did not also make covenantal arguments or that some of the Reformed did not sometimes make an argument from infant faith. Further, his account of the ancient church is stereotypic and grossly deficient, and yet it seems to have widespread purchase among Baptists as well.
5. Bullinger published De testamento seu foedere Dei in 1534. Given Menno’s arguments in this 1539 treatise, it is reasonable to think that he is responding to this work.
6. Simons, Christian Baptism, 260.
7. Simons, Christian Baptism, 260–61.
8. Simons, Christian Baptism, 261.
9. Simons, Christian Baptism, 261. He made this argument repeatedly in this section. See, e.g., Simons, Christian Baptism, 262.
10. Augustine of Hippo, On Baptism, Against the Donatists, 4.23, in St. Augustin: The Writings against the Manichaeans and against the Donatists, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. J. R. King, vol. 4, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1887), p. 461. The Latin text says: “Quod traditum tenet universitas Ecclesiae, cum parvuli infantes baptizantur, qui certe nondum possunt corde credere ad iustitiam, et ore confiteri ad salutem, quod latro potuit: quin etiam flendo et vagiendo cum in eis mysterium celebratur, ipsis mysticis vocibus obstrepunt; et tamen nullus Christianorum dixerit eos inaniter baptizari.”
11. Augustine, On Baptism, in St. Augustin: The Writings against the Manichaeans and against the Donatists, 4.24, p. 461.
12. Remarkably, Menno’s account of redemptive history is more orthodox than those Baptists who argue that the covenant of grace never existed in history until the new covenant.

©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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