01.003. The Commission

The Commission.

"Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you."-- Matthew 28:19-20.

"Teach, matheeteusate, make disciples of all the nations, bring them to an acquaintance with God who bought them, and then baptize them in the name of the Father."--DR. Adam Clarke, Methodist.

"The rite thus termed presupposes a good deal that is not always expressed. "(a) The person baptized has repented of his sins, and baptism implies the consequent forgiveness of them (Acts 2:38). "(b) Baptism also implies belief in Christ. The person baptized expressed this belief, and was regarded after baptism as a disciple of Christ."--W. C. Allen, in International Critical Commentary on Matthew.

We have already seen that Pedobaptists are not agreed as to the Scriptural warrant for their position. Some of them--as J. A. Beet, Methodist, and A. Plummer, Anglican--cheerfully allow that there is no text from which it may be clearly inferred that the practice was apostolic. Others, however, believe that there is a valid argument by way of inference. We shall, therefore, examine some of their proof texts, beginning with our Lord’s commission. The tract on Should Only Believers be Baptized? published by the Spectator Publishing Co., and now being circulated by Methodists, has this extraordinary pronouncement on Matthew 28:19 : "A ’disciple,’ according to this verse, is a baptized person. ’Make disciples, baptizing them.’ In other words, by baptism claim them for Christ that they may be taught all things whatsoever He had commanded. That is the very thing we do in infant baptism. The Apostles were to disciple, or baptize, all the nations. Surely ’the nations’ includes children! Nothing in the text excludes them." This is in harmony with the greater part of what is said in Mr. Madsen’s chapter significantly entitled "The Baptizing Commission." So the Methodist Church in Victoria and Tasmania through its Literature Committee seems to vouch for such an interpretation as is given above. The first thought that comes to us is that Pedobaptists do not act on the above. They are not wont to baptize infants because they are infants, part of the "all nations." There has been many a pretty difference amongst advocates of infant baptism as to what infants are to be baptized. Avoiding minor differences, we note that the following questions have been raised: Must both parents be members of the visible church? or, will one Christian parent suffice? Must the parents be communicants? Or, are all infants without exception eligible? The Westminster Confession of Faith says that "the infants of one or both believing parents are to be baptized." The practice is generally limited to cases in which the infants are children of believers. A missionary who went to a place and caught and baptized the children of unbelievers would, we are constrained to believe, receive a well-deserved reprimand from his Pedobaptists official board. If this is so, then infants are not baptized because as infants they are included in the "all nations" of the commission.

Again, the argument that infants may be baptized because they are in the nations would prove altogether too much for the Pedobaptists. Idiots, deists, atheists, drunkards, are as truly part of the nations as the infants are. Our friends repudiate with horror the thought of baptizing these on the ground of their being in the nations. Here are two syllogisms, one of which is as valid as the other: (1) All nations are to be baptized (i.e., discipled; so Methodist tract says); infants are in the nations; therefore infants are to be baptized. (2) All nations are to be baptized (i.e., discipled); idiots and drunkards are in the nations; therefore idiots and drunkards are to be baptized. If the one argument is false, as all our friends agree, so is the other. If one objects that persons who are idiots or drunkards are folk on whom it would "obviously be a scandal to confer baptism," we answer that this very objection itself shows that being in the nations is not the ground of baptism. There must be some additional ground. Infants are not baptized because they are in the nations. Baptism alone will not disciple. It is absolutely essential to Mr. Madsen’s argument that "discipleship" be shown not to involve any belief or instruction. Otherwise, it is evident that it would be ludicrous to suggest that infants may be discipled by baptizing. We shall examine, therefore, the amusingly futile attempt to dissociate discipleship from instruction and belief. In doing so, we deem it fair to state that the following argument has not cogency against all Pedobaptists; for, as a fact, as we shall abundantly prove, many of them, including some of the best Methodist scholars and divines, reject entirely Mr. Madsen’s interpretation. On page 18 of The Question of Baptism are "three facts to which attention is directed": "(i) There were persons who ’believed’ on Christ, who never received any teaching whatever, and had never even seen the Saviour. An instance of this is--the Samaritans who believed on the testimony of the woman who had had five husbands, as recorded in John 4:39."

I assure the reader of this that a Methodist preacher in Victoria published these sentences as a "fact." Apparently, he did not do it as a joke. We may remark that we do not see that it was a marvelous thing that they who "had never even seen the Saviour" yet believed, seeing that possibly a few hundred million folk on earth today are in that case. But the Samaritan men believed without "any teaching whatever!" And Mr. Madsen is penning this as a means of proving that " ’teaching,’ or preaching, was not even necessary to induce people to believe," and this in order to help his case in making disciples by baptism of infants who cannot believe! If Pedobaptists will give all persons before baptism as much- teaching or preaching as the Samaritans got and with as happy an issue, the present controversy will cease. John says, "Many of the Samaritans believed on him because of the word of the woman, who testified, He told me all things that ever I did" (John 4:39). The second of "the three facts" is stated thus: "(2) Our Lord had ’disciples’ who, though receiving instruction, were not ’believers.’ This appears in the reference to the people who went back and walked no more with Him, as related in John 6:66."

Accordingly, it is held "that ’to disciple,’ it was not necessary to make persons ’believers.’ " One question will suffice: Did the folk who disbelieved and went back and walked no more with Jesus continue to be regarded as disciples ? If Mr. Madsen’s argument is to stand, he must answer--Yes. We would like a proof from John 6:1-71. "(3) Many ’believed’ in Christ who were not ’disciples.’ For example, the Jews who witnessed the raising of Lazarus from the dead (John 11:45)--and those who would not confess Christ lest the; should be put out of the synagogue (John 12:42)."

We may express cordial agreement with the fact that not all believers are disciples. This fact, however, does not begin to suggest that one can be a disciple without being a believer. If one asks how one can be a believer without being a disciple, we can ask Mr. Madsen to answer: "It is manifest that in the New Testament ’to disciple’ means to bring into Christ’s school--the Church--those who are willing to be taught, how to become Christians, the initiatory sign of discipleship being baptism" (p. 16). A believer who would not confess Jesus (as in John 12:42) was manifestly not willing to come into Christ’s school. It is curious that Mr. Madsen did not see that in the quotation just made he is answering his own statement that Methodists disciple the infants by baptizing them; for infants have no will to come into Christ’s school, or to be taught. He answers also the words of the Methodist tract, "to disciple, or baptize," which seem to identify the two things. "To baptize" can hardly be "to disciple" if baptism is simply the initiatory sign of discipleship.

Pedobaptist controversialists sometimes make great capital out of the fact that in the commission "teaching" is mentioned after "baptizing." We cordially agree that the New Testament does not contemplate anything like probation or the catechumenate of the later centuries. But we wholly dissent from Mr. Madsen’s claim that, since "teaching" follows baptism, therefore discipleship need not involve previous instruction or present teaching of any kind.

Already we have seen how ludicrous are the attempts to dissociate instruction, belief and discipleship, based on John 4:39; John 6:66; John 12:42. There is instruction needed to make a disciple, and the baptized disciple then needs to be taught to observe all that the Lord commanded.’ In his zeal against Dr. Carson, the well-known Baptist writer, Mr. Madsen endeavors to show that Alexander Campbell contradicted Carson’s view that the commission itself limited the subjects of baptism to believers. With us, neither Campbell nor Carson is authoritative. The one man might contradict the other as often as Methodist expositors contradict Mr. Madsen, and yet it would be true that no one could get authority for infant baptism in Matthew 28:19. We are interested, however, in accuracy and fairness of representation, and so beg to point out that Alexander Campbell’s position is not that which the person who only read The Question of Baptism would necessarily believe it to be. Mr. Madsen quotes A. Campbell as follows:--"Does not the active participle always, when connected with the imperative mood, express the manner in which the thing commanded is to be performed? Cleanse the room, washing it; clear the floor, sweeping it;. .. Convert the nations, baptizing them, are exactly the same forms of speech. No person, I presume, will controvert this. If so, then no man could be called a disciple or convert. .. until he was immersed" (p. 20).

Now, while A. Campbell (who, by the way, was not the "Founder of the Disciples," as Mr. Madsen declares) wrote that one could not be called a disciple unless he was baptized, he did not agree with the view of Mr. Madsen, that baptism apart from previous belief could make a disciple of anybody. He held that the word "disciple" itself carried with it the idea of previous instruction. He said: "We have two words of very different meaning, occurring in the same verse, translated by one and the same word, teach. These are matheteuoo and didascoo. They are visibly and audibly different words. They are not composed of the same characters, nor of the same sounds. They are just as different in sense. They both, indeed, mean to impart instruction; but it is a different kind of instruction. The first indicates that instruction necessary to make a disciple: the second imparts that species of instruction afterwards given to one who has become a disciple with regard to his duties" (Christian Baptism pp. 220, 221).

Again Campbell wrote: "A disciple, then, according to the commission, is one that has heard the gospel, believed it, and been immersed" ("Christian System," p. 198). Thus Alexander Campbell repudiated the notion that baptism alone could disciple. We could scarcely expect, however, that his position would receive better treatment in The Question of Baptism than that awarded to "scholarly authorities" among Pedobaptists.

It is possible that an attempted answer to the foregoing may be made, as follows: A. Campbell was forced to admit that the participle "baptizing" after the imperative "disciple" declared the manner in which the imperative should be obeyed; and that is enough to support the claim in The Question of Baptism. The other statement of Campbell, that "disciple" involves previous instruction may be said to be an unsupported statement of his, made in order to bolster up his belief in believers’ baptism. We therefore, in reply, point out that there are candid and scholarly Pedobaptists who, while they tenaciously believe that baptizing is the method of making disciples, also declare that previous instruction or belief is implied in the command to disciple.

Prof. H. B. Swete, writing on the commission in The Expositor, takes this view. He says: "The church is bidden not only to baptize those whom she disciples, but to instruct the baptized. Evangelistic work is implied in matheeteusate."

E. E. Anderson, M.A., in his recent Commentary on Matthew, explicitly states that baptism "is not spoken of as a rite which followed the being made a disciple," yet acknowledges the antecedent belief in discipleship. He says: "Christian baptism, requiring as its condition repentance, and implying faith in Christ, and symbolizing the forgiveness of sins through Christ, was the rite by which one became a disciple and entered the Christian Society."

S. Cheetham, in his well-known Church History, writes: "From the earliest times a profession of faith was required of him who would be baptized. When the Lord charged his apostles to admit men to discipleship by baptism into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, it is clear that he required faith in the Holy Trinity as a condition. A man must ’confess the good confession’ in order to receive baptism." The name of Olshausen is referred to in The Question of Baptism as against the restriction of the commission to the baptism of believers. It was worse than rash to use Olshausen’s name, as the following quotation shows:

"That some have altogether misunderstood this passage (as we have already intimated) is manifest from their interpreting the matheeteusate as something which should precede baptism, just as if the meaning of the words had been, ’first instruct, then baptize them.’ But the grammatical construction does not warrant such a mode of interpretation; for the two participles baptizontes and didaskontes are precisely what constitute the matheeteuein. And again, that view is contradicted by the apostolic practice, according to which instruction never preceded baptism. On the contrary, baptism followed upon the mere confession that Jesus was the Christ. But when, through baptism, the believer had become a member of the community of the saints. then, as such, he participated in the progressive courses of instruction which prevailed in the church."—Olshausen on Matthew 28:19.

Meyer, the great German exegete, is as definite as any that the baptizing is something in which the discipleship is to be consummated, not something that must be done after making disciples; but he does not believe that therefore there is no present teaching or belief involved. He says on the "teaching them" that since it is not said baptizing and teaching, therefore the word "teaching" is not co-ordinate with but subordinate to "baptizing," "intimating that a certain ethical teaching must necessarily accompany in every case the administration of baptism: while ye teach them to observe everything, etc. This moral instruction must not be omitted when you baptize, but it must be regarded as an essential part of the ordinance. That being the case, infant baptism cannot possibly have been contemplated" in "baptizing," nor, of course, in "all the nations" either. As before, we have here allowed Pedobaptists to answer Pedobaptists. On the general question of the bearing of the commission on the question of infant baptism, we may say that many scholarly advocates of infant baptism deny absolutely that the commission will furnish the requisite authority for it. We give a few quotations, the first two being from well- known Methodist writers:

Richard Watson, in his Theological Institutes, refers to the commission as showing the form of words used in baptism the authority conveyed, and third, by "the faith required of the person baptized,--faith in the existence of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost." He says that "in the primitive church, men were not baptized in order to their being taught, but taught in order to their being baptized." "The A.V. has the right meaning in ’teach.’ It was through the instruction (13:52) which prepared for baptism that baptism itself came to be called ’illumination.’ "--Prof. W. F. Slater, of Didsbury College, Matthew 28:19 in The Century Bible.

"Baptizing them--Christ enjoins that those who have submitted to the gospel, and professed to be his disciples, shall be baptized; partly that their baptism may be a pledge of eternal life before God, and partly that it may he an outward sign of faith before men.--JOHN Calvin.

"’Make disciples of all the nations’ (Matthew 28:19), implies those who are old enough to receive instruction."--A. Plummer, in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary. "What is expressly commanded by Christ in regard to baptism is, that those who are made disciples by the preaching of the gospel should be baptized, i.e., those who had been heathens or unbelieving Jews, but had come to believe in Jesus. These only are referred to in Matthew 28:19; Mark 16:15-16."--Prof. Candlish, Presbyterian, whose book was recently recommended by Mr. Kelly in the Presbyterian Messenger.

Apart from the views and comments of men, we may see from the New Testament itself what the verb matheeteuo means. The Westminster Confession of Faith admirably says that "the infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself." The verb translated in R.V. of Matthew 28:19 by "make disciples of" is found besides in the following places, and in these alone, in the New Testament: Matthew 13:52; Matthew 27:57; Acts 14:21. The first says: "Every scribe who hath been made a disciple to the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old," That there are knowledge and belief here is obvious. In the second passage, Joseph of Arimatha is said to have been Jesus’ disciple. This man is thus described: "A good man and a righteous. .. who was looking for the kingdom of God" (Luke 22:50-51); so he could hardly have been as uninstructed as the infants, which Mr. Madsen thinks he disciples by baptizing! In Acts 14:21 Luke says, "When they had preached the gospel to that city, and had made many disciples," Paul and Barnabas returned. Here was preaching preliminary to discipleship. That is, in every other case in which the verb matheeteuo is used in the New Testament there is previous instruction. The attempt, then, to eliminate it in Matthew 28:19 must fail miserably.^- The writer of The Question of Baptism, after claiming that the commission gives warrant not only for the baptism of believers, but also for their infant children, declares, "We have to study the religious history, training, and acts of the Apostles, to discover what the commission meant, and how it was interpreted" (p. 21). If this is so, then infants are not directly warranted by the commission. If infant baptism were preached from the beginning by virtue of the presence of infants in "the nations," why have we in the history of the "acts of the Apostles"--held by Mr. Madsen necessary to the interpretation of the commission--no mention of the act of baptizing an infant? We have mention of the baptism of believers, men and women. The inferential argument from Acts 2:39 and other Scriptures we shall notice later.

It is interesting to see the anxiety which Pedobaptists writers manifest to throw the onus of proof on those who practice believers’ baptism. When we ask for a definite Scripture warrant for their practice, they seek to turn the tables by asking us to produce a passage which expressly excludes infants. Over and over again, in The Question of Baptism such an attempt is made. The chapter on "The Baptising Commission" has it: The commission does not directly exclude infants; therefore, it is held, infants are Scriptural subjects of baptism. The disciples, it is declared, could not exclude them without an explicit command so to do. Such a claim is, as was mentioned in our first article, utterly wrong. We seek to do what the Lord warrants, not to do everything that he has not expressly prohibited. We may here add that the disciples learned to take this view of the word. John says a man must not go onward, take the lead, or transgress the teaching of Christ, he must abide in it (2 John 1:9). So we gather that the commission authorizes what it includes; it does not authorize all it does not explicitly exclude. The only hope of getting infant baptism in the Bible is to argue that the Lord did not say: Thou shalt not baptize infants! But neither did he say: Thou shalt not baptize unbelievers. He did authorize preaching and baptism of those who accepted the gospel message; and in doing these things we know we are abiding in his teaching.

One of the chief objections to Mr. Madsen’s treatment of the commission is that it makes too much of baptism. Baptism, as ordained by our Lord, must be a good thing. God has attached special promises to it. But the Bible never suggests that the application of water, however performed, can make anyone a disciple. An infant cannot believe, cannot repent, cannot confess Christ; but it cannot object to having some water sprinkled on it; and the last-named act, according to Mr. Madsen, makes him a disciple who was not a disciple before! Jesus says: "Whosoever doth not bear his own cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:27). Madsen says: "We disciple the infants by baptizing them." With all due respect to the author of The Question of Baptism, we prefer the statement of the Lord Jesus.

We have dealt at some length with the commission, because our opponents refer to it as "the strategic passage upon the question in Scripture," and as "our authority for administering baptism." From our study we see that in consistency we must either say that the commission warrants our baptizing anybody at all who is in "the nations" (and our Methodist friends will not say this), or we must hold that there is no warrant for the baptism of infants and others who are uninstructed and non-believing.