It never ceases to amaze me what crazy stuff Christians will buy. Apparently the hottest new Christian romance novels tend to be set among the Amish. Sometimes the characters even share passionate kisses.
Something about this pisses me off in a deep way that kind of puzzles me. Do we have to turn the life of the Amish community into a commodity? And even if we do, do we have to rape the whole thing by making it a setting for bullshit romance stories?
To continue with the theme of voluntarism, let us examine a claim often made against advocates of believers’ baptism. It is generally argued that to require the subject of baptism to be professing believers is to make the grace of God contingent upon an act of the human will (voluntas). That is, by insisting that the baptized be believers, the church places human volition above God’s divine initiative. The act of the will to believe in Christ is prior to and more determinative than God’s baptismal grace. So the argument goes as I understand it. I trust my interlocutors will correct me if I have stated this in an unbalanced way.
The problem with this argument lies in its hidden premise, namely that believing and wanting to follow Jesus as some sort of self-asserting act of willpower. Biblically and theologically this is simply wrong. No one comes to Christ unless drawn by the Father (John 6:44; 65). To respond to Christ’s call to discipleship is not the act of human self-assertion, but rather of submission to God’s own initiative which has taken hold the person called. Following Christ is not an act of heroic effort that we chose, rather it is something that we cannot do other than choose on the basis of God’s action towards us in Christ: “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68).
As such, believers’ baptism does not rest on any sort of enshrining of human voluntas. Conversion to Christ, commitment to discipleship—none of this is a heroic act of the will. Rather it is simply the response of evoked love that is manifest whenever the Father draws people to the Son through the Spirit. An advocacy of believers’ baptism simply reflects a commitment to respond to God’s action in human beings with a Yes. Baptism is merely our agreement with what God has done, our recognition of the truth of how God has drawn a person into the Triune life.
According the free church tradition, only those who believe in Christ as Lord should be baptized into the church as members of his body. As such, for this tradition membership in the body of Christ is voluntary. It is not imposed, but rather is given to those who come to baptism out of a desire to follow Christ.
The majority tradition of the Christian faith labels this an unacceptable form of modern voluntarism, claiming that it places the priority on the self-determining autonomy of the human subject rather on the free grace of God. Now, clearly a whole discussion could be had about the nature of grace and how it draws human beings toward the church. Let us leave that aside for the moment.
If we cut through the fog generated by the scare word of “voluntarism,” it seems to me that there are only two possible construes of how baptism ought to go down. If the voluntary baptism of believers is illicit as the normative practice, what is the alternative? The only alternative to voluntary baptism is involuntary baptism, is it not?
Now, everyone agrees that voluntary baptism is acceptable and right. No on is opposed to converts being baptized upon profession of faith. The question, as I see it, must rest on what theological reasons we have for baptizing those who do not believe in Christ and do not have the ability to consent or dissent from baptism? What theological reasons are there for involuntary baptism? That seems to me to be a reasonable question. I have yet to see, theologically, why involuntary baptism should be the norm of the church’s practice.
I have another post up at the Ekklesia Project blog, bLogos, reflecting on the Epistle reading for this week’s lectionary.
Jason shares a pretty incisive creedal formulation for the modern church from Andrew Bradstock:
We believe in one Market, the Almighty,
Maker of heaven on Earth,
Of all that is, priced and branded,
True growth from true growth,
Of one being with the Economy.
From this, all value is added.We believe in Deregulation, once and for all,
The only way to prosperity.
For us and for our salvation,
Reagan and Thatcher were elected
And were made gods.
In their decade they legislated
To take away our economic sins.
They were crucified by the Liberal Media,
But rose again, in accordance with their manifestos.
They ascended in the polls
And are seated at the right hand of Milton Friedman.We believe in the Invisible Hand,
The giver of economic life.
It has spoken through our profits.
It proceeds from the Law of the Deregulated Market,
And with the Market is worshipped and glorified.We believe in one Globalised Economy.
We believe in one key business driver
For the increase in Gross Domestic Product.
We acknowledge one bottom line
For the measurement of wealth.
We look for the resurgence of executive compensation packages
And the life of the financial years to come.Amen.
John Howard Yoder often gets critiqued (the work of Oliver O’Donovan is a good example) for his alleged “voluntarism.” Yoder, being an Anabaptist is, of course, opposed to infant baptism and insists that membership in the church must always be a voluntary, free, and uncoerced reality. Thus, the baptism of children is suspect for Yoder as it is an act totally void of active participation on the part of the baptized.
Now, whatever we might think of this I just want to make one point. Yoder is not guilty of voluntarism in any sort of modern sense. Yoder and Anabaptism as a whole does not emphasize the voluntary nature of the church for the sake of enshrining the freedom of the individual to be self-determining. Indeed, this is impossible on the basis of the Anabaptist vision of ecclesial discipleship which always involves strong communal commitments and mutual submission.
The only point Yoder makes in emphasizing the voluntary nature of the church is that membership in the body of Christ cannot be coercively imposed. That is all. The church is voluntary in Anabaptist theology, not because the modern self requires it, but because unilateral coercion cannot be used to make disciples. The one and only point of speaking of the church as a voluntary community is to say that no one is either forced into it or born into it. Rather persons are drawn into it through Christ’s to discipleship.
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