Washer refers to infant baptism as the golden calf of the
Reformation. To put it bluntly, he's wrong... but there's a sense in which he's
right. He's wrong on the issue of paedobaptism there's a hint of truth to his statement.
Paedobaptism is Scriptural and despite Baptist assertions to
the contrary it is even testified to in the book of Acts but the problem is
when it's applied in a Sacralist milieu. Then it becomes distorted and
destructive. Baptism, paedo- or otherwise should never be universally applied
to a tribe, nation or culture. It is applied only to the separatist pilgrim
Church that has come out of the world and continues in perseverance. Within
that context paedobaptism has its import and can function correctly. Sacralism
necessarily waters down discipline to the point of near irrelevance and it
destroys the Church's distinct identity and (as a consequence) renders the Word
and Sacrament almost meaningless.
Baptised children who grow up and don't continue in the faith
must be put out of the Church. I'm not speaking of Confirmation or some kind of
conversion-profession followed by a waterless baptism ritual as is often seen
in Confessionalist circles. That's not 'continuing in the faith'. That's a
man-made ritual. For all the Confessionalist extra-biblical gatekeeping it
often still fails to work. The same is true of the Baptist system.
Part of the problem is the understanding of Justification as a
onetime event and the equation of 'salvation' with Justification, or to put it
another way to make Justification the main and central focus of salvation.
Washer wouldn't agree with me here (on the technical aspects of this) but he
would agree that the Christian life must continually produce fruit and that
faith must be living, active, growing and maturing.
Paedobaptism isn't the golden calf of the Reformation but
Sacralism is and continues to be. One of the most fundamental errors of Roman
Catholicism, it was not addressed by the Reformers and in fact it was given
something of a boost. The subsequent 'Protestant' and later 'Classically
Liberal' forms were different than the old Roman Catholic sacralism but in some
ways they were worse because they opened up doors that would ultimately lead to
the secular zealotry we're seeing today along with nationalism, capitalism,
industrialisation, empire and much else. They can blame the Pietists but the
roots of the Enlightenment and modern secularism run deep and run a course
right back to the Reformation itself.
Even if you don't agree with me on Baptism at least consider
the point with regard to Sacralism. Once again when there's no sense of pilgrim
separatism, no called out and peculiar people breaking with the world, it leads
to church discipline breaking down and the line between the Church and the
world disappears. It's not infant baptism which (by even Baptist accounts)
antedates Constantine by at least 150 years, rather the problem is the
Sacralism birthed of the post-Constantinian era. Paedobaptism in this context
is not an error in itself but it does help to emphasize and perhaps exacerbate
an already existing abuse.
To put it another way there's Biblical paedobaptism and then
there's Sacralist Paedobaptism. The latter is a corruption of the former. While
we don't live a Sacral society that intertwines paedobaptism and citizenship anymore,
Sacralism still reigns in the Christian mind and it still penetrates and
affects many spheres of thought and practice.
The sacral system relied (and relies) on patronage and the
state which it then helped to reinforce. The sacral system provided de facto
support for the aristocracy, and later the bourgeoisie. It necessarily becomes
an arm of the system. Marx in this limited sense and scope is right. Marx of
course is wrong but the Church he criticised deserved criticism. It was part of
the Establishment. This is antithetical to the doctrines of the New Testament.
Under this arrangement preaching and discipline will necessarily take the easy
road, seek to offend no one, especially those in power and controlling the
money. It seeks to stir up and challenge... nothing. It is first and foremost a protector
of the status quo and it became so
egregious within a century or two after the Reformation that individuals and
groups began to protest. The failure of the pulpit and ecclesiastical
leadership will drive people to seek more and such a seeking is warranted. A
deeply entrenched Sacral Christianity produces only a veneer of Christian life
and anyone reading the Scriptures is going to want something more. That there
would be overreaction in some cases was to be expected if not inevitable.
Their resistance was not always on solid ground and was
sometimes misguided. Many sought reformist paths and failed or were corrupted. In
the 19th century others within the Evangelical-Pietist strain
focused more on reforming 'Christian' society and yet built a house on sand
which quickly collapsed in the crises of the early 20th century.
Have some of these many resistance movements taken a bad
turn? Certainly they have. If
substitutes are found for the Word and sacrament then that kind of pietism will
devolve into forms of legalism and in some cases a reliance on mystical
experience. This of course is highly problematic.
It was systematics and rationalism and the reliance on these
forces which took theology over the cliff into the treacherous waters of
theological liberalism. Some like Schleiermacher sought to preserve a religious
and spiritual element and his solutions were (in the end) as bad as the
problem. It produced but another form or aspect of theological liberalism. Had
this not happened the bulk of those churches would have closed more than a
generation ago. That would have probably been a good thing but that's not what
happened. These attempts to infuse religious sentiment and spirituality into
the corpse of theological liberalism are not the fault of pietism but another
fruit of the dead orthodoxy sacralism produced.
Is Washer downplaying doctrine? Is that what he's doing? Is
he opening the door to theological liberalism through some kind of subjective
understanding of Christian doctrine? Hardly. Is he teaching works salvation? Not
in the least. He even refutes some popular aspects of Pietism in his sermon.
He understands better than most modern Reformed (paedo-
craedo- or otherwise) that the Gospel transforms, the Spirit works and that
many errors have overtaken the Church and a lot of the poison of Evangelicalism
has crept into Reformed and Confessionalist circles. He also seems to
understand something that many do not. Once Saved Always Saved is not the same
as the old doctrine of perseverance. Once Saved Always Saved or Eternal Security is
a presumptuous and destructive doctrine, the fruit of deduction and the
prioritisation of a few verses that logically dominate the rest of Scriptural
testimony. This was not how older generations understood perseverance of the
saints and thus it's no surprise that many New Calvinists and Kuyperians are
not always terribly fond of their theological antecedents. They claim the
tradition but often don't realise just how far removed they are from it. They
try to read Eternal Security back into Reformation theology and even
Scholasticism but the writings of Puritans and other belie their claims.
Further I would argue many Reformed of today represent the rationalist
tendencies that honed and streamlined doctrine in the 18th and 19th
centuries and many of the old doctrines have been re-cast in both rationalist
and in other cases world-friendly evangelical terms.
Washer's Lutheran critics aren't as afflicted by the
presumption of Once Saved Always Saved but instead suffer from another form of
easy believism which practically speaking has all too often translated into a
kind of antinomianism. And thus they rail against Washer and call him heretic,
a preacher of neo-nomian salvation. In other words Washer's gospel is a new
kind of law to be kept. That's not the case. They would emphasise grace, and
indeed grace is to be emphasised. And yet if we amplify it at the expense of
what the rest of the New Testament teaches we are in danger of making it cheap
and turning the Gospel into a tool for gain, for license and ultimately the
destruction of conscience and godliness.
I cannot fully endorse all that Washer says but re-listening
to his talk, some 8 years after I first heard it 2010 was refreshing. Clearly
he's not a Pietist and he's not teaching works salvation. If fault is to be
found it's in his Baptistic categories and maybe in some hints of legalism but
overall it's a powerful message and one I'm keen to pass on. It's a sermon
people need to hear and had more pulpits been preaching such a message back in
1988 and 1978 then the situation today might be different. Maybe, maybe not.