Studies & Actions
of the General Assembly of
The Presbyterian Church in America
THE REPORT OF THE STUDY COMMITTEE ON
QUESTIONS RELATING TO
THE VALIDITY OF CERTAIN BAPTISMS
[15th General Assembly (1981), Appendix P, pages 416-428.]
APPENDICES TO THE REPORT ON
THE VALIDITY OF CERTAIN BAPTISMS
[M15GA, Appendix P, pp. 422-425]
1. The Action of the General Assembly, Old School, of 1845,
(Minutes, 1845, pages 34-37).
The Committee appointed to draw up a minute expressive of the views of
the Assembly, presented a report, which was read and adopted, and is as
follows, viz.
"The Committee appointed to prepare a minute expressive of the view of
this Assembly, in returning a negative to Overture No. 6, leave to report.
"The question presented to this Assembly by Overture from the Presbytery
of Ohio, 'Is Baptism in the Church of Rome Valid?' is one of a very grave
character, and of deep practical importance. The answer to it must involve
principles vital to the peace, the purity, and the stability of the church
of God.
"After a full discussion carried through several days, this Assembly has
decided, by a nearly unanimous vote, that baptism so administered, is
not valid.
"Because, since baptism is an ordinance established by Christ in his Church,
(Form of Gov., chap. vii; Matt. xxviii. 19, 20,) and is to be administered
only by a minister of Christ, duly called and ordained to be a steward
of the mysteries of God, (Directory, chap. viii, sec. 1.) it follows that
no rite administered by one who is not himself a duly ordained minister
of the true Church of God visible, can be regarded as an ordinance of
Christ, whatever be the name by which it is called, whatever the form
employed in its administration. The so-called priest of the Romish communion
are not ministers of Christ, for they are commissioned as agents of the
papal hierarchy, which is not a Church of Christ, but the Man of Sin,
apostate from the truth, the enemy of righteousness and of God. She has
long lain under the curse of God, who has called his people to come out
from her, that they be not partakers of her plagues.
"It is the unanimous opinion of all the Reformed churches, that the whole
papal body, though once a branch of the visible church, has long since
become utterly corrupt, and hopelessly apostate. It was a conviction of
this which led to the reformation, and the complete separation of the
reformed body from the papal communion. Luther and his coadjutors, being
duly ordained presbyters at the time when they left the Romish communion,
which then, though fearfully corrupt, was the only visible church in the
countries of their abode, were fully authorized by the word of God, to
ordain successors in the ministry, and so to extend and perpetuate the
Reformed churches as true churches of Christ: while the contumacious adherence
of Rome to her corruptions, as shown in the decisions of the Council of
Trent, (which she adopts as authoritative,) cuts her off from the visible
Church of Christ, as heretical and unsound. This was the opinion of the
Reformers, and it is the doctrine of the Reformed churches to this day.
In entire accordance to this is the decision of the General Assembly of
our Church, passed in 1835, (See Minutes of General Assembly, vol. 8,
p. 33) declaring the Church of Rome to be an apostate body.
"The decision by the Assembly of 1835 renders the return of a negative
to the inquiry proposed by the Presbytery of Ohio indispensable on the
ground of consistency; unless we be prepared to admit, in direct contradiction
to the standards of the Presbyterian Church, that baptism is not an ordinance
established by Christ in his Church exclusively and that it may be administered
by an agent of the Man of Sin, an emissary of the prince of darkness;
that it may be administered in sport or in blasphemy, and yet be valid
as though administered by a duly commissioned steward of the mysteries
of God.
"Nor can it be urged that the papal hierarchy is improving in her character,
and gradually approximating to the scriptural standard. She claims to
be infallible; her dogmas she promulgates as the doctrines of heaven;
and she pronounces her heaviest anathema against any and every man who
questions her authority, and refuses to bow to her decisions. She cannot
recede from the ground she has assumed. She has adopted as her own, the
decisions of the Council of Trent, which degrade the word of God; which
claim equal authority for the Apocrypha as for the New Testament; and
which declare the sense held and taught by holy mother church, on the
authority of tradition and of the Fathers, to be the true and only sense
of Scripture. All who deny this position, or who question her authority,
she denounces with the bitterest curses.
"She thus perverts the truth of God; she rejects the doctrine of justification
by faith; she substitutes human merit for the righteousness of Christ;
and self-inflicted punishment for gospel repentance: She proclaims her
so-called baptism, to be regeneration, and the reception of the consecrated
wafer in the eucharist, to be the receiving of Christ himself, the source
and fountain of grace, and with him all the grace he can impart. Is this
the truth? Is reliance on this system, true religion? Can, then, the papal
body be a Church?
"The Church, (i.e. the church visible,) as defined in our standards, is
the whole body of those persons, together with their children, who make
profession of the holy religion of Christ, and of submission to his laws.
(Form of Gov. chap. ii, sec. 2) As certainly then, as the dogmas and practices
of papal Rome are not the holy religion of Christ, must it be conceded,
that the papal body is not a Church of Christ at all; and if not, then
her agents, be they styled priest, bishops, archbishops, cardinals or
pope, are not ministers of Christ in any sense; for they have no connection
with his true visible Church; and not being true ministers of Christ,
they have no power to administer Christian ordinances, and the rite they
call baptism, is not, in any sense, to be regarded as valid Christian
Baptism.
"Further, by the perverted meaning they affix, and the superstitious rites
they have superadded to the ceremonies they perform under the name of
baptism and the eucharist, the symbolical nature and true design of both
the ordinances of baptism and the Lord's supper are lost sight of and
utterly destroyed, - so that, could we by any possibility assign to her
the name of a church, she would still be a church without the two grand
ordinances of the gospel: she neither administers Christian baptism, nor
celebrates the supper of our Lord.
"Moreover, since, by the 11th canon of the Council of Trent, she declares
the efficacy of her ordinances to depend upon the intention of the administrator,
no man can know with certainty that her form of administration in any
ordinance is not a mere mockery: no consistent papist can be certain that
he has been duly baptized, or that he has received the veritable eucharist:
he cannot know, that the priest who officiates at his altar is a true
priest, nor that there is actually any one true priest, or any one prelate
rightly consecrated in the whole papal communion. The papal hierarchy
has by her own solemn act shrouded all her doings in uncertainty, and
enveloped all her rites in hopeless obscurity. Even on this ground alone,
the validity of her baptism might safely be denied.
"Nor is the fact that instances now and then occur of apparent piety in
the members of her communion, and of intelligence, zeal, and conscientiousness
in some of her priests, any ground of objection against the position here
taken by this Assembly. The virtues of individuals do not purify the body
of which they are members. We are to judge of the character of a body
claiming to be a church of Christ, - not by the opinions or practices
of its individual members, but by its standards and its allowed practices.
Bound as he is by the authority of his church, - and that on pain of her
heaviest malediction, - to understand the Scriptures only in the sense
in which his church understands and explains them, a consistent papist
cannot receive or hold the true religion, or the doctrines of grace. If
he does, he must either renounce the papacy, or hypocritically conceal
his true sentiments, or he must prepare to brave the thunders of her wrath.
True religion and an intelligent adherence to papal Rome are utterly incompatible
and impossible. The Church and the papacy are the repelling poles of the
moral system.
"Difficulties may possibly arise in individual cases. It may not be easy
at all times to say whether an applicant for admission into the Church
of Christ has, or has not been baptized: whether he has been christened
by a popish pastor or not. In all such doubtful cases the session of a
church must act according to the light before them. But it is safer and
more conducive to peace and edification, to embrace a well established
principle for our guidance, and act upon it firmly in the fear of God,
leaving all consequences with him than to suffer ourselves, without any
fixed principles, to be at the mercy of circumstances.
"While some other churches may hesitate to carry out fully the principles
of the Reformation, in wholly repudiating popish baptism, as well as the
popish mass, we, as Presbyterians, feel bound to act on the principle
laid down by our Assembly, so long ago as 1790, (see Digest, pp. 94, 95,)
that, so long as a body is by us recognized as a true church, are her
ordinances to be deemed valid, and no longer.
"In 1835 the Assembly declared the papacy to be apostate from Christ,
and no true church. As we do not recognize her as a portion of the visible
Church of Christ, we cannot, consistently, view her priesthood as other
than usurpers of the sacred functions of the ministry, her ordinances
as unscriptural, and her baptism as totally invalid."
2. The central portion of the report relating to Roman Catholic and Unitarian
baptism (Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.,
1871, p. 30).
Our Church has always held, agreeably to the Scripture, that the administration
of baptism may present irregularities or imperfections which are not to
be approved, but the sacrament may still have substantial validity. It
is plain from Scripture, that baptism has by the Lord Jesus Christ been
given to His true visible Church catholic (see Matt. XXVIII, 19, 20; Acts
ii, 41, 42; I. Cor. xii, 13; Book of Government, Chap. VII; Directory
for Worship, Chap. VII, Sec.1), and cannot be out of her pale. The administration
of this sacrament may be in two ways invalidated; either by the apostasy
of the body wherein it is exercised, so that this society is no true part
of Christ's visible Church; or by the utter change of corruption of the
element and doctrine of the sacrament. And our Assemblies have correctly
held, that the form called by the Popish communion "Christian baptism"
has ceased, for both reasons, to be valid; because that society is declared
in Scripture to be antichrist, and Babylon, and apostate, out of which
the Lord requireth His "people to come, that they may not be partakers
of her plagues;" and because she hath, with superstitious design, substituted
a mixed element in place of water, which Christ ordained to be used as
the emblem, and hath utterly corrupted the doctrine of holy baptism into
an incantation working ex opere operato.
In other societies, as the Unitarian, their rites may have due regularity
of outward form, and yet be no valid baptism, because their bodies are
not true parts of Christ's visible Church. The validity of such cases
therefore depends upon the claim of the communion in which they are administered
to be true churches of Jesus Christ. But the scriptural mark of a true
church is its holding forth the Word of God. (See Rom. iii. 2; 1 Tim.
iii. 15; Book of Government, Chap. II, Sec. II; Confession of Faith, Chap.
XXV, Sec. III.)
In view of the fact that several churches hold grave errors in connection
with much saving truth, and that perhaps no church receives in everything
the exact mind of the Spirit, it may be asked with what degree of strictness
or liberality this mark of a true visible Church is to be applied. It
seems to us consonant with the Scriptures and the judgment of charity
to answer, that so long as any communion so retains the essential truths
of God's Word and the aids of the Holy Ghost as to save souls by its ministrations,
it shall be held a true, though imperfect, member of His visible body.
Though it may omit or impugn some principles which we have received from
God, and may even deny to our ordinances all recognition, and to our communion
all church character, yet we may not imitate its uncharitableness; so
long as Christ visibly entrusts it with His saving Word and Spirit, we
are bound to recognize it as His visible body, notwithstanding its errors,
and to pray for its attainment of a more peaceable unity in the bonds
of the truth. But in judging the tendency of its ordinances to save souls,
it is obviously proper that we shall estimate those ministrations as a
consistent whole, as set forth by this communication. If their only tendency
as a whole, taken as it expounds them to its members, is destructive to
souls, then we cannot admit that it is a pillar and ground of saving truth,
merely because of some disjointed fragments of the gospel verities, mixed
with heresies which, if heartily accepted by the people as taught, must
be fatal to souls; or because a few persons, through the special teaching
of God's Spirit, leading them to select the spiritual meat and reject
the poison, actually find Christ under those ministrations; for the proper
function of a visible Church is instrumentally to communicate to its disciples
spiritual discernment, and not to presuppose it; and the happy escape
of these souls from damnable error is due to the special grace of God
shielding them against the regular effect of these ministrations, rather
than employing and blessing them. If this rule of judgment be denied,
then might a valid church character possibly be established for an association
of infidels investigating parts of God's Word only for purposes of cavil,
since the Almighty Spirit might, against these purposes, employ those
parts of the Word to awaken and convert some member. |