Nana Yaw Aidoo
A YouTube video I watched of Caleb Robertson interviewing Rubel Shelly brought to my attention that D.A. Carson in the 1980s reviewed Rubel Shelly’s book, I Just Want to Be a Christian. To be very honest, I was quite surprised when I heard that had happened. I have read a lot from these evangelicals to come to the conclusion that they generally ignore the claims of the churches of Christ, so to hear about this review was quite a revelation to me. I haven’t read Rubel Shelly’s book. I, however, know that many of my brethren do not have a lot of complimentary things to say about it. I assumed since that was the case, surely Don Carson would have a lot of good things to say about the book. In the interview, Caleb Robertson implied that the review wasn’t complimentary, but I wasn’t prepared for the negativity I encountered when I read the review.
On page 2 of the review, Don Carson set the tone for what was to come by saying that most of what he had to say about the book was negative, and it didn’t take me long to figure out why. His review was organized around twelve points, which he claimed were “not necessarily in order of importance.” However, I know enough to be absolutely certain that it was not incidental or a mistake that the first of the twelve points says this:
The book suffers somewhat from the fact that the author has chosen to address two rather disparate audiences. To understand the difficulty, it is crucial to grasp the conundrum in which the American Restoration Movement finds itself. In its beginnings, the Movement was concerned to restore unity to Christians by rejecting all forms of denominationalism. At the same time, it developed a view of baptism which is adopted by almost no one outside the spectrum of congregations represented by the American Restoration Movement. These polarities generate a problem. Even within the Movement, those who generally stress the importance of their distinctive doctrine of baptism are inclined to think that very few people outside the churches generated by the Movement are Christian at all, except perhaps for those who were baptized by immersion and who did not deny the critical interpretation of baptism observed by followers of the Movement… (2-3).
In other words, if the pioneers of the Restoration Movement (and those who believe in the validity of its plea) really cared about unity, they wouldn’t have taught that baptism is in order to the remission of sins. Rather, they would have “kowtowed” to the popular view among evangelicals (a term Don Carson says on page 17 that he isn’t embarrassed by) that baptism is just to obey God or merely to confess salvation publicly and not for the remission of sins. It becomes easily apparent to the reader of this review that Don Carson’s main, yea, only issue with Rubel Shelly’s book is with the design of baptism, which he calls, “Dr. Shelly’s understanding of baptism.” Take again as an example what he says under his tenth point:
To his credit, Dr. Shelly tells us again and again how splintered, divided, and weak the ‘Churches of Christ’ really are. He is candid about the things that have divided them, candid about the way some of them are inclined to ‘disfellowship’ others, and so forth. But they are all safely within the camp since they hold to the doctrine of baptism of which Dr. Shelly approves. If some of them have become ‘sectarian,’ in their case it does not place them outside the camp, but simply makes them less than wholesome exemplars of the unity that the American Restorationist Movement publicly mandates (21).
Again, I do not know the full content of Rubel Shelly’s book, and so I cannot say anything about it. I just want to point out that Don Carson is happy to read that there is division among the churches of Christ. His glee with that information is seen in the fact that he is willing to give Rubel Shelly “credit” for providing it. However, he can neither recommend the book nor take Rubel Shelly’s side all because Rubel Shelly takes the position that baptism is necessary to be saved. Don Carson wants Rubel Shelly to accept his position that it is possible to be a Christian without baptism, yet, and ironically, he doesn’t want to accept Rubel Shelly’s position that a person must be baptized in order to be a Christian. In this matter, he formulates his own rule, which essentially is this: “do unto me, what I do not want to do unto you.”
In April 2022, I reviewed for the Gospel Preceptor a sermon by John MacArthur (who is from the same camp as Don Carson) on Acts 8, in which he said:
True evangelism presents the whole doctrine of salvation. You know what else Philip even taught him? About Baptism. You say, “Is Baptism important?” It must be. Philip taught him about it. Is it important for salvation? No. But it’s important for the confession of salvation publicly (13).
This is the crux of the matter. Baptism, according to Don Carson and people who think like him, is not important for salvation and thus any group of people who do not agree and who sincerely believe that the Bible knows nothing about an unbaptized Christian, “in fact constitute a sect, a distinct group [is he suggesting we aren’t Christians?], a denomination, complete with an ‘in-out’ mentality” (Carson 3).
But who makes the rules? Of course, as they say, “history is written by the victors” or, in our case today, the ones who own the popular publishing houses and also as the old song goes, “Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong.” So, it came as no surprise to me to see Don Carson appeal to the “orthodoxy” or truthfulness of his position on the basis of what the majority believes today. That is what he does when he writes: “At the same time, it developed a view of baptism which is adopted by almost no one outside the spectrum of congregations represented by the American Restoration Movement” (3). In other words, the Restoration Movement’s view of baptism must be wrong since they “developed” it and also since they are the only ones who believe it, as if truth is decided by a majority vote.
Don Carson’s assertion is only half true. The view that a person must be baptized to be saved is the minority view today. That one is true. However, I was surprised -very surprised-that Don Carson with all of his learning contends that the view that baptism saves was “developed” by the Restoration Movement. How true this is will be made apparent by what follows. What most people do not know is that the evangelical or majority view of baptism is actually
an interpretation of baptism that was invented only in the 1520s. It was created by the Swiss reformer Huldreich Zwingli (1484-1531), developed further by John Calvin, and accepted throughout most of the Protestant world. Until Zwingli, the entire Christian world for the first 1,500 ears (sic) of its history was in agreement: water baptism is the God-appointed time when he first gives saving grace to sinners. Exceptions to this belief were extremely rare, limited mostly to medieval dualist sects that rejected all physical forms of worship (Cottrell).
Much has been said on the pages of the Gospel Preceptor discussing the essentiality of baptism in the salvation of alien sinners from a biblical point of view, so that is not my concern in this article. In order to “put my money where my mouth is,” I want to survey the views of some believers in Christian history on the issue of the design of baptism. I am not interested in surveying what has been said for a 1500-year period. I only want to survey the views of believers in the sub-apostolic age (2nd century AD). While I do not believe that any view outside of the Scriptures is authoritative (see my article in the February 2022 issue of the Gospel Preceptor), I do believe, however, that it is an enriching enterprise to study the historical development of any doctrine. I also am aware that “selective citations can prove almost anything and therefore practically nothing” (Moore 4), Hence, I want to set forth what believers who lived immediately after the apostles and who are generally considered as orthodox were saying about the design of baptism and the implication of what they said for today. I also will in this article briefly discuss Zwingli and his view on baptism.
The Testimony of the Sub-Apostolic Church
The following quotes are taken from the 3rd edition of Everrett Ferguson’s book, Early Christian Speaks.
Irenaeus:
Now, this is what faith does for us, as the elders, the disciples of the apostles, have handed down to us. First of all, it admonishes us to remember that we have received baptism for remission of sins in the name of God the Father, and in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became incarnate and died and was raised, and in the Holy Spirit of God; and that this baptism is the seal of eternal life and is rebirth unto God, that we be no more children of mortal men, but of the eternal and everlasting God (Proof of the Apostolic Preaching 3).
Tertullian:
A. Baptism itself is a bodily act because we are immersed in water, but it has a spiritual effect because we are set free from sins. (On Baptism 7).
B. It has assuredly been ordained that no one can attain knowledge of salvation without baptism. This comes especially from the pronouncement of the Lord, who says, “Except one be born of water he does not have life.” (On Baptism 12).
Justin Martyr:
We shall explain in what way we dedicated ourselves to God and were made new through Christ lest by omitting this we seem to act improperly in our explanation. As many as are persuaded and believe that the things taught and said by us are true and promise to be able to live accordingly are taught to fast, pray, and ask God for the forgiveness of past sins, while we pray and fast with them. Then they are led by us to where there is water, and in the manner of the new birth by which we ourselves were born again they are born again. For at that time, they obtain for themselves the washing in water in the name of God the Master of all and Father, and of our Savior Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit. For Christ also said, “Unless you are born again, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” . . . Since we have been born without our knowledge or choice at our first birth from the moist seed at the union of our parents and have existed in bad habits and evil conduct, in order that we might not remain children of ignorance and necessity but become children of choice and knowledge and might obtain in the water the forgiveness of past sins, there is called upon the one who chooses to be born again and who repents of his sins the name of God the Master of all and Father (Apology I, 61).
The Shepherd of Hermas:
The tower which you see being built is myself, the church. . . . Hear, then, why the tower has been built on the waters. Your life was saved and will be saved through water. The tower has been founded by the pronouncement of his almighty and glorious Name, and it is supported by the invisible power of the Master. (Vision 3.3.3, 5 = 11.3, 5).
What Does the Foregoing Imply?
Many more examples could be cited, but these are enough. Whatever one’s views on the design of baptism, only the dishonest person would deny that just about a generation or two after the death of the apostles, believers held that baptism was necessary to be saved with some of them suggesting that this view was handed down to them by “the disciples of the apostles.” One would be hard pressed to find any writer or apologist or preacher or document from the sub-apostolic age who/which believed anything other than this doctrine, which Don Carson implies is somehow a Restoration Movement innovation. Evidently, it must have been apostolic doctrine, the teaching that baptism is necessary to be saved, if people who sat at the feet of the apostles not only believed and taught this doctrine but also passed it down to their own students. Everrett Ferguson himself in discussing these quotes wrote:
The unanimity and vigor of the early second-century statements about baptism are presumptive of a direct relationship between baptism and forgiveness of sins from the early days of the church. The consistency with which second-century authors make the statements which they do would have been impossible if this had not been the common Christian understanding earlier. It is inconceivable that the whole Christian world reversed its understanding of the meaning of its central rite of conversion within fifty years of the lifetime of the apostles (Kindle Locations 703-707).
Huldreich Zwingli
The real innovators as far as the design of baptism is concerned are not the pioneers of the Restoration Movement but as has already been noted, Zwingli in the 16th century who in a treatise designated, Refutation of the Tricks of the Baptists, which was designed to defend infant baptism against the “anabaptists” wrote the following:
In this matter of baptism—if I may be pardoned for saying it—I can only conclude that all the teachers have been in error from the time of the apostles. For they have attributed far too much to baptism, as though it were a washing away of sins, and have thus obscured the glory and merit of Christ. For if baptism washes away sins, what need is there of the blood of Christ?
As he himself notes, all the way to the sub-apostolic age, he was the only one who believed as he did as far as he was aware of. Apparently, he differed with his contemporaries, too. Mark Moore quoted from Karl Barth who noted that concerning this view of baptism, among Zwingli’s contemporaries, “he was a lonely figure” (Moore 12). Zwingli’s rationale for his view was threefold (in no particular order). First, he claimed that salvation is solely by individual election. The so-called sola fide trumpeted today by evangelicals is simply God giving faith to those whom he has individually elected to be saved.
But are we not justified by faith? Yes, but calling precedes faith. For Christ warns also that no one can come to him unless the Father have drawn him. To draw and to call are here equivalents…We see that the first thing is God’s deliberation or purpose or election, second his predestination or marking out, third his calling, fourth justification… When therefore it is said: ‘Who believeth not shall be condemned,’ it must be that faith is used for that chain already spoken of, so that the meaning is: ‘Who is not elect shall not be saved.’… For faith is not of all the elect, as now is clear of elect infants, but it is the fruit of election, predestination and calling, which is given in its fit time” (Zwingli 239-242).
Second, he claimed that God is not really sovereign if humans must do something in order to be saved. Zwingli, like most evangelicals and/or Calvinists today, held to a fatalistic view of God’s sovereignty. Third, he claimed that the blood of Christ, not water, is what cleanses sins. While there might be some groups that believe this idea, that certainly cannot be said of the churches of Christ. The question, however, is, at what point does the blood of Christ cleanse a sinner? According to Zwingli, that would be at the point when the sinner is elected to be saved, for while faith alone brings blessings, a person cannot have faith until he or she is elected by God.
There is one notable thing that one finds when reading Zwingli. He had a knack for explaining away the Scriptures by using the figure synecdoche. He would take New Testament texts that clearly teach the essentiality of baptism for salvation and just dismiss them as synecdoche. “If we say baptism takes away sins, that is just a figure of speech; for it is not baptism that takes them away, but faith” (Cottrell). The translator of his Selected Works also said in a footnote that synecdoche was “considered by Zwingli an unanswerable argument” (Zwingli 239). It is also worth noting that due to this innovative view on the design of baptism, Luther parted ways with Zwingli (Moore 2).
Anyone who is interested in reading more about Zwingli’s views on baptism can consider Mark Moore’s essay, “Zwingli on Baptism” and Jack Cottrell’s, “The History of Baptism Parts 1&2,” both of which are online. Both these writers suggest that since Luther also felt strongly about God’s sovereignty and yet didn’t see any disconnect between it and baptism for the remission of sins, it must be then that there was a much deeper reason for Zwingli’s new views, which is that Zwingli held to an “incipient philosophical dualism.” In other words, he believed that flesh is evil and spirit good, and so both couldn’t meet (Cottrell; Moore 18). Thus, since baptism in water is of this earth and salvation is of heaven, then both cannot meet. John Calvin would later take up this view of baptism, and until this day, evangelicals like Don Carson who have adopted this view in one form or the other sell it to the world as a doctrine taught by the Holy Scriptures (Cottrell).
Conclusion
I cannot charge Professor D.A. Carson with “hermeneutical naivete” like he does to Dr. Rubel Shelly because I know that he isn’t naïve. There is a reason why D.A. Carson is a world-acclaimed Bible scholar. However, when he dismisses the Restoration Movement’s view of baptism as a “sectarian stance” and one “characterized by a certain hermeneutical parochialism” (22), I cannot help but see a man who thinks he is so advanced in Bible interpretation [on page 22 of his review he says that Rubel Shelly at least at that point in the 1980s was not advanced, thus implying that he was] that he seems painfully unaware of the pre-suppositions that skew his interpretation of the very Scriptures he claims to honestly interpret.
Professor Carson asserted that Shelly does not recognize “that there are millions of people in the world with exactly his view of Scripture [he mentioned former Princeton theologian Charles Hodge] who have come out with quite different interpretations than his own” (22). It is true that a person can believe and teach sound hermeneutical principles and still be unable to arrive at the truth simply because that person approaches the Scriptures with presuppositions that are wrong. No one knows this more than D.A. Carson himself since he has an entire chapter in his book Exegetical Fallacies that deals with the issue of presuppositional and historical fallacies. As he notes in that book, one can bring to the task of interpretation presuppositions that end up creating “barriers to understanding” (Carson 128). I wonder whether Professor Carson thinks that this is a problem that is far away from his doorstep.
It is not lost on me personally that it wasn’t the scholars but the common people who heard Jesus Christ gladly (Mark 12:37), and I think that still holds true for today. When all is said and done, irrespective of a person’s academic standing or what the majority thinks, God’s word when rightly handled will still be true. This is what it says: “And now why tarriest thou? arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord” (Acts 22:16). The Bible knows nothing about a Christian who has not been baptized for the remission of sins.
Works Cited
Brewer, Jerry C., editor. The Gospel Preceptor. April 2022, https://thegospelpreceptor.com/2022/04/.
Carson, D.A. Exegetical Fallacies. Baker Book House, 1984.
Carson, D.A. “Reflections on the Book I Just Want to be a Christian by Dr. Rubel Shelly.” PDF file.
Cottrell, Jack. “The History of Baptism Part 1 & Part 2.” PDF file. https://www.orcuttchristian.org/Cottrell_The%20History%20of%20Baptism%20Parts%201%20&%202.pdf.
Ferguson, Everett. Early Christians Speak. 3rd ed., Kindle ed., Abilene Christian University Press, 1999.
Moore, Mark. “Zwingli on Baptism: His Incipient Philosophical Dualism as the Genesis of Faith Only.” DocsLib, 8 Nov. 1999, Zwingli on Baptism: His Incipient Philosophical Dualism As the Genesis of Faith Only – DocsLib.
Zwingli, Huldreich. Selected Works of Huldreich Zwingli. Translated by Samuel Macauley Jackson, Philadelphia: University of Pennslyvania, 1901. Internet Archive.
