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Update 47 page 6.

UFCOS' report on Baptism

John Hartley gives an overview of the report on baptism (2001) of the Panel on Doctrine of the United Free Church of Scotland.

Roger Godin recently discovered a mine of theology loitering on a well-hidden web site, and obtained goodwill for us to reproduce the material on our web site, where you can read it at your leisure. Like many such reports, it's very long, so here's the brief flavour:

The remit was "to re-examine the whole issue of Baptism and, in particular, the practice of Infant Baptism". There follows a tour of all the theology you'd expect, and a few bits you wouldn't: the institution of baptism by Jesus, what "in the name of ..." means, whether Christian baptism originates in Jewish or Qumran ritual washings or proselyte baptism or comes from John the Baptist, what the Old Testament views of family and covenant have to say, what the NT says about children and households, how the early church viewed baptism, and how all this relates to the present day. Quite a read!

And in some ways quite inspiring. There's a genuine attempt to get back to basics, and a lot of openness to reading the best of what writers say. The "origins" chapter corrected my views (Jewish rituals aren't as relevant as I'd thought), and the chapter on Patristic writings is very useful. Two other useful bits are summarised on p7-9 following.

In other ways, I was reminded of Gordon Kuhrt's point in Believing in Baptism (his chapter 2) - that where you start determines where you're likely to end up. If you begin with the family solidarity in the Old Testament, as this report does, it's no surprise to conclude that infant baptism of the children of believers is the scriptural norm, and you'll decry those who focus on a more individual responsibility (as the OT chapter does). If you take circumcision as prefiguring baptism, you can guess who are likely to be the "proper subjects" of baptism!

Any report has weaknesses. Although very biblical, there are some scholarship blind spots (e.g. on whether Jesus spoke the words in Matthew 28:19, chapter 2). The authors declined to explore Thanksgivings - maybe for good political reasons, but a pity nevertheless. And the web page typography is hard to read (at least on Internet Explorer), so you might prefer the copy on our web site.

The report can be read on the web site of UFCOS at:
www.ufcos.org.uk/ga01/panel01.htm (or .../panel02... for chapter 2, etc.),
and on our web site at: www.baptism.org.uk/UFCOSremit.htm (&c).

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This web page was last updated on 16th May 2004.