CHURCH UNION

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 73, 19 December 1929, Page 13

CHURCH UNION

Sir, —Your correspondent W. M. Garner has made rather a hasty conclusion. He writes you that in my consideration of the vital theme of church, union I propose to ignore baptism. • That is not so. In the terms of the Great Commission I would teach it, but I would not coerce the conscience of a fellow Christian in the matter, and demand his submission to it, on pain of rejection from a local Christian church. That would be a quite un-Christian proceeding. What more could one do to ‘the openly profane? During the dark years since the formation of the early Christian Church there has been much error concerning baptism. Even as early as Paul’s day he had to admonish misguided disciples who were being baptised for the dead. This practice indicated gross ignorance as to the character of baptism. It even suggests that these early/ Christians belieyed that it had in itself some saving efficacy, or that it was a necessary initiatory ordinance into a state of salvation, and therefore logically into a local Christian Church. As a matter of fact water baptism is declaratory, not initiatory. Through the years other errors have developed both as to the form and proper, subjects of baptism. This being so, W. M.’Garner must perforce consider the vast majority of Christians as unbaptised, this because they have substituted infant sprinkling for the New Testament method of believers’ baptism. What then would be his attitude to those good Christian folk “who had received the Holy Ghost the same as we,” but who had what he, and I, for that matter, would regard as erroneous doctrine? That is the question. Mr. Garner for one would not receive them. I only wrote to point out that this was really the great problem of Christian union, and asked how our friends would get over the difficulty. That was all. Mr. Garner, thinking as he does, would not recognise a Presbyterian, Methodist, Quaker or Anglican, however godly or full, of the Spirit they may be, as worthy of membership in the local Church of his choice. This because they’had misunderstood baptism, which to him is not a secondary truth. With such an attitude Christian union will be long delayed.- \ As to my authority for receiving Christians who misunderstood baptism as believers’ immersion, I follow Paul’s advice to the local assembly at Rome when he said, Rom. xiv. 1: “Him that is weak in the faith receive ye,” and “Receive ye one another, as Christ has received us, to the glory of God” (Rom. xv, 7). That was the gpirit of the early Christian Chureh. ’Christianity to them was a religion of inclusion, not exclusion. It was a religion of love. —I am, etc., JOHN OPENHEART. Wellington, December 7.