by Billy Champion
Why do Baptists (credobaptists) disagree with Presbyterians, Methodists, Anglicans, and others (paedobaptists) about baptism? As much as we may want to conclude it is simply because we interpret passages about baptism differently, the answer is not quite so straightforward. Those passages, of course, are not insignificant, but the issue runs deeper. For credobaptists and paedobaptists alike, our interpretation of baptism is driven largely by our understanding of the nature of the biblical covenants, particularly by the relationship between the old and new covenants. Theologian Pascal Denault makes this very point:
The most obvious distinction between Baptists and Presbyterians is, of course, baptism. However, baptism is not the fundamental distinctive between these two groups. We propose that covenant theology is that distinctive between Baptist and paedobaptists and that all the divergences that exist between them, both theological and practical, including baptism, stem from their different ways of understanding the biblical covenants. Baptism is, therefore, not the point of origin but the outcome of the differences between paedobaptists and credobaptists.[1]
In other words, baptism may be the pressing and practical issue we debate, but the question of how we understand the covenants will drive our understanding one way or the other.
Covenantal theology typically separates every covenant in the Bible into two categories: covenant of works and covenant of grace. The covenant of works, which is understood to have been a covenant made with Adam prior to the Fall, required perfect obedience to God’s commands. In the covenant of grace, as the name suggests, God relates to His people on the basis of grace rather than works.
At the heart of the issue is the Abrahamic covenant. In Genesis 12, God first makes His promises to Abraham. In chapter 15, we are told explicitly, “On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram” (v. 18) with reference to the promised land. Then, in chapter 17, God instructs Abraham, “This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised” (v. 10). Paedobaptists view circumcision as part of the covenant of grace, inseparable from God’s promises and covenant in Genesis 12 and 15. The paedobaptist logic, then, is that if circumcision pertained to the covenant of grace as a sign of the old covenant, then baptism also pertains to the covenant of grace as a sign of the new covenant and should be administered not only to believers but also to their children.
The late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Separatist pastor John Smyth was well aware of the covenantal case for infant baptism; he himself was a convinced paedobaptist until his mid-to-late thirties. But when he became a Baptist, he did not dismiss the covenantal theology he knew out of hand. Rather, he contended for a more biblically faithful covenantal theology that could appreciate the connection between the covenants while also understanding the proper distinctions that exist between them, particularly in relation to the Abrahamic covenant.
Smyth and The Character of the Beast
Smyth’s Baptist covenant theology is developed most clearly and forcefully in his work The Character of the Beast. Overall, the book is a focused critique of infant baptism, arguing that the only true “constitution” of the church is believer’s baptism. This argument develops from his understanding of the nature and relationship of the covenants. In his introduction, Smyth writes “but there is one, and indeed but one argument which the separation principally stand upon, and that is the covenant which say they if it be answered they must needs yield unto the truth.”[2] In other words, the Separatists (paedobaptists) were convinced that proper covenantal theology, particularly concerning the Abrahamic covenant, necessitated an affirmation of infant baptism. For paedobaptists, baptism is the seal of the new covenant just as circumcision was the seal of the old.
Smyth retorts that there is not one covenant with Abraham but two, one “carnal” and another “spiritual.” He writes, “one covenant was made with Abraham and his carnal seed and of that covenant was circumcision a seal: another covenant made with Abraham and his Spiritual seed, and of that covenant the Holy Spirit of promise is the seal.”[3] He does not deny that circumcision was given to be the seal of a covenant. But it must be made clear for which covenant it stood as a seal. The problem, then, is that paedobaptists have conflated these two covenants, interpreting as spiritual what God established as carnal. And this conflation of the covenants has led to the conflation of circumcision and baptism.
Yet Smyth admits some connection between baptism and circumcision. First, he understands a special connection with Abraham and his circumcision. Abraham’s circumcision was unique in that it served “as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised” (Rom. 4:11, ESV). Thus, for Abraham, circumcision served as a sign of the spiritual covenant since he had already been sealed with the Spirit through faith.[4] In this way, Abraham’s circumcision functioned for him in the same way baptism functions for believers today.
More consequentially, Smyth maintains, the point of connection with circumcision is the sealing of the Holy Spirit. These are the seals of the carnal and spiritual covenants, respectively: “As in the Old Testament, the carnal children were carnally circumcised and so admitted into that Church of the Old Testament. So in the New Testament the spiritual children must be spiritually circumcised, that is in heart, and then be admitted by baptism into the Church of the New Testament.”[5] Baptism is included here, but it is the sign that follows the seal (circumcision of the heart), not the seal itself. As theologian Jason Lee has explained, Smyth saw the carnal covenant as a type of the spiritual.[6]
So, then, for Smyth, the covenant theology of the paedobaptists that sees a direct connection between circumcision and baptism is fundamentally flawed. Conflating the carnal and spiritual covenants, it fails to recognize the proper nature of circumcision and its original intention. It also fails to understand the spiritual reality to which circumcision was intended to point. Thus, infant baptism is a false and unbiblical practice founded on faulty theology.[7]
Baptist Covenant Theology since Smyth
Smyth was far from the only one to make this argument in the seventeenth century, though he was at least one of the first to do so. Though not made in the same way or with the same emphases, later treatments show a remarkable amount of agreement on key points with Smyth. Some of the most important works on this subject have come from Particular Baptists like Thomas Patient and Nehemiah Coxe and General Baptists like Thomas Grantham.[8] All three, in concert with Smyth, view the covenant of circumcision as distinct from the covenant of grace. Grantham states it very clearly: “the Covenant of Circumcision, and the Covenant of Grace were then distinct, and not the same Covenant, so, but that the one might and did subsist without the other.”[9]
Undoubtedly, the argument employed by Smyth and others enjoyed more popularity in the seventeenth century than it does in the twenty-first. Baptist theologian Stephen Wellum, in his nearly seventy-page chapter “Baptism and the Relationship between the Covenants,” does not interpret Genesis 12 and 17 to present two covenants but rather one with various “elements”: “the Abrahamic covenant is very diverse; it encompasses not only spiritual elements that link us to the new covenant, but it also consists of national and typological elements that result in significant discontinuity as the era of fulfillment is inaugurated.”[10] In their book on the biblical covenants, Peter Gentry and Wellum—both Baptists—explicitly argue against the idea of two distinct though related covenants. They write that Genesis “15 and 17 are one and the same covenant, and together these texts present a full-orbed, three-dimensional idea of the one covenant.”[11] However, theologian Paul Williamson, also Baptist, holds that Genesis 15 and 17 describe “two distinct covenants . . . established between God and Abraham.”[12]
Conclusion
What should Baptists today make of Smyth’s argument? Is it too much to say that there are two distinct covenants between God and Abraham? Clearly some think so. Does an understanding of a single covenant with Abraham lend credence to a paedobaptist covenantal theology? It seems that Smyth and his later Baptist counterparts might hold that such a position was untenable. Is there such a thing as a biblically faithful Baptist covenantal theology? If believer’s baptism is biblical, there must be. We as Baptists have no reason to be afraid of thinking deeply about the covenants, their nature, and the proper relationship between them.
Plenty of exegetical, theological, and historical work is still to be done here. And be done, it must. Smyth understood that as our understanding of the covenants goes, our understanding of baptism goes. And as our understanding of baptism goes, our understanding of the church goes.
About the Author: Billy Champion (MA, Welch College) is the pastor of Philadelphia Free Will Baptist Church in Folkston, GA. He and his wife, Sunni, have three children: Jude, Isaac, and Sophia.
[1] Pascal Denault, The Distinctiveness of Baptist Covenant Theology: A Comparison Between Seventeenth-Century Particular and Paedobaptist Federalism (Vestavia Hills, AL: Solid Ground Christian Books, 2013), 5.
[2] John Smyth, The Works of John Smyth, Fellow of Christ’s College, 1954–1958, ed. W. T. Whitley (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1915), 2:569. By the “separation,” he means the Separatists who had left the Church of England but still retained their paedobaptist convictions. Smyth was a Separatist before embracing believer’s baptism.
[3] Ibid., 2:579. Smyth does not use the language of “covenant of works” and “covenant of grace” throughout his treatment, as will be observed in the other writings considered below. However, the idea is the same. As a point of interest, the phrase “covenant of grace” (2:596, 636) appears twice in the whole book and “covenant of works” does not appear at all.
[4] Ibid., 2:582.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Jason Lee, The Theology of John Smyth: Puritan, Separatist, Baptist, Mennonite (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2003), 150.
[7] The conclusion of his argument, then, is that if infant baptism is an unbiblical practice, then founding or constituting a church on a false practice will inevitably result in a false church.
[8] Thomas Patient, Baptism and the Distinction of the Covenants, ed. Quinn R. Mosier (1654; repr., Kansas City, MO: Baptist Heritage Press, 2022); Nehemiah Coxe, A Discourse of the Covenants That God made with men before the Law, in Covenant Theology: From Adam to Christ, ed. Ronald D. Miller, James M. Renihan, and Francisco Orozco (Palmdale, CA: Reformed Baptist Academic Press, 2005); Thomas Grantham, Truth and Peace: Or, The Last and Most Friendly Debate Concerning Infant Baptism (London: Printed for the Author, 1689; Ann Arbor: Text Creation Partnership, 2011), http://name.umdl.umich.edu/A41792.0001.001.
[9] Grantham, Truth and Peace (emphasis in original).
[10] Stephen Wellum, “Baptism and the Relationship between the Covenants,” in Believer’s Baptism: Sign of the New Covenant in Christ, ed. Thomas R. Schreiner and Shawn D. Wright, NAC Studies in Bible and Theology, ed. E. Ray Clendenen (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2006), 133.
[11] Peter Gentry and Stephen Wellum, God’s Kingdom Through God’s Covenant: A Concise Biblical Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2015), 118.
[12] Paul Williamson, Sealed with an Oath: Covenant in God’s Unfolding Purpose, NSBT 23 (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2007), 89.
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