I’m a baptist — a very happy baptist — but you don’t need to capitalize the b for me. First and foremost, I’m a Christian, identifying primarily with Christ, and only secondarily with my dear baptist brothers and sisters.

We baptists sometimes encounter a tension created by our baptistic convictions: How do we, as baptists, orient to those whose baptismal belief and practice differ from ours? In particular, how do we relate to paedobaptist individuals and churches?

Paedobaptism (from the Greek root paedo for “child”) is the practice of baptizing the children of believers in infancy, in anticipation of their profession of faith in Christ. Rather than baptizing after someone professes faith, as credobaptists do (credo for “faith”), paedobaptists regard baptism as the New Testament counterpart to Old Testament circumcision. Therefore, they administer the visible, public sign of the covenant to children of Christians.

Now, we baptists believe that paedobaptists err in their baptismal theology and practice. We think they’ve got it wrong. At the same time, we don’t believe that rightly understanding and applying baptism is essential for someone to be a true Christian. We regard sincere, Christ-loving paedobaptists as our brothers and sisters, and we want to celebrate our common confession of faith in the triune God and our salvation in Jesus Christ.

Two Impulses

This creates a tension between two impulses. First, there’s the baptist impulse — we want to teach and practice according to our credobaptistic convictions. We believe that baptism is a visible sign of invisible realities. Baptism is public and objective, like a wedding ceremony. And like a wedding ceremony, in baptism God makes promises to us, we receive those promises by faith, and we also make promises to him. God promises to forgive our sins and transform our lives, and we promise to trust Jesus and follow him as Lord, Savior, and Treasure. In baptism, we publicly identify with Christ, and he publicly identifies with us. We say, “You are our God,” and God says, “You are my people.” And as credobaptists, we believe that only those who have made a credible profession of faith should be baptized.

“Christians ought to have a holy instinct to recognize and welcome all genuine Christians as visible saints in the Lord.”

On the other hand, there’s what we might call the catholicity impulse. The word catholic here doesn’t refer to the Roman Catholic Church, but instead means universal. This is the recognition that the people of God, Christ’s church, is bigger than our local church, bigger than our denomination, bigger than our theological tribe. As the Apostles’ Creed says, “We believe in the communion of saints.” As professing saints, we seek to maintain holy fellowship and communion in the worship of God with other Christians. Such communion ought to be extended to all those who, in every place, call upon the name of the Lord Jesus. Thus, Christians ought to have a holy instinct to recognize and welcome all genuine Christians as visible saints in the Lord, despite the various disagreements we may have with them on matters of secondary or tertiary importance.

These two impulses create a tension in how we regard the baptisms of paedobaptistic traditions. Are such paedobaptisms valid baptisms? Or are they not baptisms at all? Can we welcome those baptized as infants into church membership? Can we welcome them to the Lord’s Table?

Different Aspects of the Church

Let’s begin with the church and its government. Theologians often consider the church under different aspects.

The church as universal and invisible is composed of all those, in every time and place, who are chosen in Christ and united to him through faith by the Spirit in one body. The church as universal and visible is composed of all those who are baptized in the triune name and do not undermine that profession by foundational errors or unholy living. The church as visible and local is composed of all those in a given area who agree to gather together to hear the word of God proclaimed, engage in corporate worship, practice the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, build each other’s faith through the manifold ministries of love, hold each other accountable in the obedience of faith through biblical discipline, and engage in local and world evangelization.

Many aspects of local-church government are matters of biblically informed prudence. Such matters are to be ordered by the light of nature as informed by the general principles of God’s word. Prudence enables us to take these general principles, derived from general and special revelation, and wisely apply them in concrete settings.

Two areas of church government that are to be ordered by biblically informed prudence are, first, the requirements and expectations for membership in the local church, and second, the requirements and expectation for leadership in the local church. Membership in the local church is an inference from biblical passages that assume an identifiable body of believers (such that individuals may exercise and be subject to church discipline) as well as the pastor-elders’ responsibility to oversee a particular people.

The Scriptures teach, both by precept and example, that the requirements for leadership in the church are higher than the requirements for membership in the church. In keeping with that expectation, it is prudent to expect a greater degree of theological knowledge and clarity from leaders than members.

Thus, it seems prudent for membership in the local church to be extended to all those who profess faith in Christ and apprehend the foundational truths of the gospel. Likewise, it seems prudent for leadership in the local church to be restricted to those who are able to teach the whole counsel of God. For example, in my own church, while members are not required to be Reformed in their soteriology or complementarian in their anthropology in order to join, leaders are required to hold these convictions in order to teach and govern.

Baptism and Church Membership

How then does baptism factor in? As the Desiring God Affirmation of Faith puts it,

Baptism is an ordinance of the Lord by which those who have repented and come to faith (Acts 2:38; Colossians 2:12) express their union with Christ (1 Corinthians 12:3) in his death and resurrection (Romans 6:3–4), by being immersed (Acts 8:36–39; Romans 6:4) in water in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19). It is a sign of belonging to the new people of God (Mark 1:4–5; Romans 2:28–29; Galatians 3:7), the true Israel, and an emblem of burial and cleansing (Hebrews 10:22), signifying death to the old life of unbelief, and purification from the pollution of sin. (12.3)

Baptism marks entrance into the universal and visible church and is a prerequisite for membership in the visible, local church. Expressing it this way accounts for the fact that Christians are not re-baptized every time they join a new local congregation. Instead, like a passport, their one baptism is recognized by all subsequent congregations as meeting this requirement for membership.

This definition of baptism includes four elements:

water
in the triune name
by immersion
after repentance and faith in Christ

Essentially all Christians regard the first two elements as essential for a baptism to be valid. Many baptists regard the third element as important, but not essential. In other words, many baptist churches accept sprinkling and pouring baptisms of professing believers as “valid but improper” or “true but irregular” baptisms. The question concerns the fourth element. Is the administration of baptism after repentance and faith an essential element of a baptism?

Some baptists say yes. These baptists (so far as I’m aware, the majority of current baptists in America) deny that paedobaptisms are baptisms at all. Because they believe that baptism should be applied only to professing believers, those who have had water sprinkled on them as infants have not been baptized. At the same time, nearly all of them also believe that there are genuine Christians who have wrong baptismal theology and wrong practice.

However, this position creates a number of confusions and inconsistencies. For example, this position sends conflicting messages to non-baptists. It says, “We regard you as a believer, but we cannot receive you into membership in our church, nor welcome you to the Lord’s Table without your being (re)baptized as a believer. Your baptismal error is so significant that it bars you from membership, even though it doesn’t prevent us from being ‘together for the gospel.’”

Moreover, since a right administration of the ordinances is a necessary mark of a true church, such a position seems to deny that paedobaptist churches are churches at all, since they fail to baptize their members. And because they fail to baptize their members, it would seem that they are likewise unable to eat the Lord’s Supper, since the family meal requires the presence of a proper family.

In contrast, I would argue that while water and the triune name are essential to baptism, the other two elements are important for the proper administration of baptism, but not essential for the validity of baptism. In other words, the proper mode of baptism is immersion, and the proper timing of baptism is after one has believed. Nevertheless, one can err on these elements and still administer and receive a valid baptism.

Valid but Improper

Paedobaptisms, then, may be regarded as valid but improper baptisms. The use of water in the triune name (or the name of Jesus, Acts 2:38; 10:48; 19:5) to mark entrance into the visible church establishes the baptism as valid. Sprinkling or pouring the water (rather than immersion), as well as the application of water to infants, renders the baptisms as improper.

“Paedobaptisms may be regarded as valid but improper baptisms.”

The result is that we are able to duly honor both the baptist impulse and the catholicity impulse. As baptists, the leaders of the church teach the biblical meaning of baptism and practice the proper administration of baptism. At the same time, we are able to regard paedobaptist churches that embrace the foundational truths of the gospel as genuine churches, despite their error on baptism. Indeed, recognizing their baptisms as valid is one of the fundamental ways we acknowledge them as true churches.

Guided by biblically informed prudence, then, we might regard all valid baptisms — including those that are improper with respect to mode and timing — as sufficient prerequisites for church membership, provided there is a credible profession of faith. What’s more, we might consider such valid baptisms sufficient as prerequisites for participation in the Lord’s Supper, provided the Table is guarded as being only for those who trust in Jesus alone for the forgiveness of sins.

On the night before he died, as Jesus looked at his twelve men and, beyond them, the billions who one day would follow him, he prayed for a oneness that would make the world take notice: “[I ask] that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you” (John 17:21). Father, take Jews and Gentiles, men and women, old and young, and make them one. Heaven-sent unity was his great prayer for us.

And yet, just moments earlier, he voiced another request that gives Christian unity a tension and a tang: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17). Father, take these disciples, and bind them by your word. Spirit-given truth was also his great prayer for us.

Jesus wants his church to be one, and to be wise. He wants us to love all his people, and to treasure all his word. He wants us to offer an earthly illustration of Trinitarian unity, and an earthly witness to Trinitarian truth.

Few Christians and churches naturally maintain a balanced grasp on both prayers; on our own, we tend to drift toward a “unity” that erodes truth, or a “truth” that destroys unity. And so, we often need recalibrating: our inner ecumenist needs more backbone; our inner watchdog needs less bite.

To that end, one ancient tool, rearticulated and clarified in recent decades, may help: theological triage.

What Is Theological Triage?

Theological triage — a term coined by Albert Mohler in 2005 — seeks to organize Christian truth on different tiers, ranging from essential doctrines to more peripheral teachings. In a helpful recent book, for example, Gavin Ortlund offers the following fourfold model:

First-rank doctrines are essential to the gospel itself.
Second-rank doctrines are urgent for the health and practice of the church such that they frequently cause Christians to separate at the level of local church, denomination, and/or ministry.
Third-rank doctrines are important to Christian theology but not enough to justify separation or division among Christians.
Fourth-rank doctrines are unimportant to our gospel witness and ministry collaboration. (Finding the Right Hills to Die On, 19)

Rightly handled, theological triage does not justify indifference to doctrines below the first tier. All Scripture carries God’s breath (2 Timothy 3:16), and so, when Jesus prayed that we would be sanctified “in the truth,” he meant all of it — every iota (Matthew 5:18).

Nevertheless, Scripture itself treats some doctrines as more foundational than others, and theological triage seeks to follow suit. As Jesus spoke of “weightier matters of the law” (Matthew 23:23), and as Paul spoke of the gospel as “of first importance” (1 Corinthians 15:3), so theological triage seeks to differentiate the weightiest, most important doctrines from those with less urgency. (Hence Mohler’s triage image: ER doctors treat gunshot wounds differently from sprained ankles.)

The main benefit, as we’ll see, is balance and wisdom in our pursuit of unity. We don’t minimize mountains, and we don’t magnify molehills.

Science and Art

As in a medical context, the process of triage is often complex. We will not always discern immediately whether a doctrine fits on the first tier (dividing Christians from non-Christians), the second tier (dividing local churches, denominations, or ministries), or the third tier (dividing nothing). Triage is both science and art; it requires both intellectual perception and spiritual wisdom; it runs on both careful judgment and godly instinct.

“Triage is both science and art; it runs on both careful judgment and godly instinct.”

The same doctrine, for example, may fit into a different category depending on the situation. As Ortlund observes, the issue of spiritual gifts sometimes fits on the second tier — but not always. Currently, a convinced cessationist gladly worships in the continuationist church where I serve.

Cultural or missiological contexts also influence the practice of triage. New churches on unreached frontiers, along with some missionary teams, may lower some typical second-tier doctrines to the third tier. In America, a church’s elders might limit membership to those who have been baptized as believers; in Afghanistan, the elders might not, or might not yet (and wisely so).

At times, even evaluating first-tier disagreements calls for wisdom. One person may reject justification by faith because he doesn’t understand it; another may reject the doctrine because he understands and hates it. The first situation calls for careful teaching and further evaluation, while the second does not.

More complexities could be mentioned (see Joe Rigney’s article “How to Weigh Doctrines for Christian Unity”), but these suffice to show the need for humility, patience, and collective wisdom rather than individual reflex. We read of a plurality of local-church elders in the New Testament, and for good reason. Theological triage happens best in a group of spiritually discerning pastors, men who have their eyes on the flock and are wise to the needs, dangers, and opportunities of their local context.

Just as ER doctors need more than medical knowledge to practice triage well, a church’s elders need more than scriptural knowledge to do the same. They need to know not only the canon of Scripture, but also the case before them and the context around them. They need to ask, “All things considered, is this doctrine worth dividing over now?”

Three Triage Tests

In his book When Doctrine Divides the People of God, Rhyne Putman offers three tests to aid the discernment process (220–39):

The hermeneutical test: the clearer the Bible teaches a doctrine, the more likely it belongs on a higher tier.
The gospel test: the more central a doctrine is to the gospel, the more likely it belongs on a higher tier.
The praxis test: the more a doctrine affects the practice of a church, the more likely it belongs on a higher tier.

These three tests won’t answer every question, but they do offer a start. Consider where some common doctrines fall after running them through hermeneutics, gospel, and praxis:

Doctrines like the deity of Christ and the Trinity (clear hermeneutically and central to the gospel) belong on the first tier.
Doctrines related to baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and the callings of men and women (less clear hermeneutically, but still near the gospel and shaping a church’s praxis) typically belong on the second tier.
Doctrines like the age of the earth or the nature and timing of Christ’s millennial reign (less clear hermeneutically, less connected to the gospel, and less important for a church’s praxis) typically belong on the third tier.

Again, however, each category admits of complexity, requiring churches to practice triage in light of individual cases and their broader context.

Why Practice Theological Triage?

If theological triage involves such complexity, why practice it? Because, in all likelihood, only a habit like this one will keep our heartbeats in rhythm with Jesus’s John 17 prayer. Only as we distinguish doctrines will we learn to avoid the dangers of theological maximalism, theological minimalism, and what we might call unconscious triage.

Theological Maximalism

Theological maximalists, or theological sectarians, may differentiate doctrine to a degree — they may not equate Christ’s deity and a church’s form of government, for example. But they tend to raise third-tier doctrines to the second tier, and second-tier doctrines to the first tier. And in so doing, they often separate when they should tolerate, divide when they should bear with. Afraid of wolves, they attack other sheep.

Maximalists rightly sense that protecting sound doctrine sometimes calls for strong words; like Jude, they “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” But as Ortlund points out, they do not necessarily share Jude’s eagerness to celebrate “our common salvation” (Jude 3). And so, failing to distinguish the weightiest from the less weighty, they can end up cutting at the limbs of Christ’s body.

Theological Minimalism

Theological minimalists also struggle to speak of “weightier matters” — not, however, because they raise so many doctrines to the higher tiers, but because they raise so few there. If pressed, they may agree that an anti-Trinitarian cannot be a Christian, but only if pressed. On their own, minimalists tend to lower first-tier doctrines to the second tier, and second-tier doctrines to the third tier. And in so doing, they often say, “Unity! Unity!” when there is no unity (Jeremiah 6:14; 8:11).

“True unity requires an immovable core of conviction; otherwise, what are we even uniting around?”

Minimalists seek to embody the seventh beatitude — “Blessed are the peacemakers” — but they rarely or never take stands strong enough to embody the eighth: “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” (Matthew 5:10–11). They struggle to see that true peace, true unity, requires an immovable (and sometimes offensive) core of conviction; otherwise, what are we even uniting around?

Unconscious Triage

Perhaps the best reason to practice theological triage, however, is because we already functionally do. We can’t help but treat some doctrines as weightier than others. And unless we have carefully considered which doctrines really are weightier, our approach to triage likely will be shaped less by Scripture and more by a mixture of personality, background, and whim.

Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for “straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel” (Matthew 23:24), and many of us, though less hypocritical, need to hear the same warning. Naturally, we are peculiarly attuned to some gnats and strangely dense to some camels: some vehemently contend for a young or old earth but breeze past justification; some attack complementarians or egalitarians as Athanasius attacked Arius, but dismiss Trinitarian controversies with a wave. We cannot abide the gnat in our stew, but we can stomach the camel in our meatloaf.

Theological triage, then, helps us weigh not only doctrines, but ourselves. It exposes our own besetting tendencies, and it invites us to recalibrate our unconscious models according to Scripture’s own example.

Loving Unity, Treasuring Truth

How will we know if we are growing to weigh doctrines as God himself does?

Those who tend toward theological maximalism will find themselves enduring disagreements when they would have broken fellowship beforehand; those who tend toward theological minimalism will find themselves ruffling more feathers than none. Maximalists will not treat second- and third-tier doctrines as unimportant, but they will learn to lower their voice when they talk about them; minimalists, meanwhile, will not roll their eyes when they see a brother or sister contending for precious truth. Minimalists will learn to fight more; maximalists will learn to fight themselves more.

And all of us, wherever we naturally tend, will hear ourselves praying more often, “Father, make us one” — then, in the next breath, “and bind us by your truth.”

What is Look at the Book?

You look at a Bible text on the screen. You listen to John Piper. You watch his pen “draw out” meaning. You see for yourself whether the meaning is really there. And (we pray!) all that God is for you in Christ explodes with faith, and joy, and love.