# Baptismal Efficacy



## Romans922 (Oct 23, 2006)

I am still trying to understand what the 'correct' reformed view is on this given the FV controversy and all. Could someone or people explain to me the reformed or current typical reformed view on Baptismal Efficacy (what does it mean, implications, etc.)? Thanks.


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## Semper Fidelis (Oct 23, 2006)

Anything I would type would pale in comparison to the language of the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Heidelberg Catechism on the subject.

Also, R. Scott Clark gave a lecture at a conference on this subject. I just checked and it's still available for download:
http://www.wscal.edu/resources/audio/clarkfacultyconf2006.mp3


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## Romans922 (Oct 23, 2006)

Well that is kind of the problem, I don't understand what they are talking about either. I just don't get exactly what the word 'efficacy' means truly. Or at least what it is supposed to mean.


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## tewilder (Oct 23, 2006)

Romans922 said:


> I am still trying to understand what the 'correct' reformed view is on this given the FV controversy and all. Could someone or people explain to me the reformed or current typical reformed view on Baptismal Efficacy (what does it mean, implications, etc.)? Thanks.



Allow me to recommend this:

G. W. Bromiley, 
Sacramental Teaching and Practice in the Reformation Churches
http://www.contra-mundum.org/books/Sacramental.pdf

It's a big download, 1.8 megabytes, but actually a short book. You can also buy a reprint from Wipf & Stock Publishers, through places such as Amazon.

Brief, clear and judicious.


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## R. Scott Clark (Oct 23, 2006)

Andrew,

It depends upon who is using the word "efficacy" as to what it means. For the the FV folk it means:

"effects necessarily a temporary election, union with Christ, justification, and adoption to be retained by grace and cooperation with grace."

For confessional Reformed folk "efficacy" means:

"Recognizes external membership in the covenant of grace and promises certainly all the benefits symbolized by baptism to all who believe and guarantees the reception of them to those who do actually believe." 

As a means of grace, as a sign and seal of the gospel, as the gospel made visible, God the Spirit has promised to use it to strengthen faith, to encourage, to build assurance, and to sanctify believers.

Better?

rsc



Romans922 said:


> Well that is kind of the problem, I don't understand what they are talking about either. I just don't get exactly what the word 'efficacy' means truly. Or at least what it is supposed to mean.


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## Romans922 (Oct 23, 2006)

Thank you guys, that was very helpful. Tim, I will read that pdf asap, which may be this next summer...hehe! Seminary has a lot of demands.


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## johnny_redeemed (Oct 23, 2006)

Romans922 said:


> Thank you guys, that was very helpful. Tim, I will read that pdf asap, which may be this next summer...hehe! Seminary has a lot of demands.


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## Civbert (Oct 23, 2006)

Romans922 said:


> I am still trying to understand what the 'correct' reformed view is on this given the FV controversy and all. Could someone or people explain to me the reformed or current typical reformed view on Baptismal Efficacy (what does it mean, implications, etc.)? Thanks.



According to FV, the act of baptism is the effective cause of regeneration, justification, salvation, etc. I.e. - if you're baptized, you're saved. 

This makes God like a gum-ball machine - put in your quarter and turn the knob - and you are guaranteed to get a gum-ball. 

That's my take on it.


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## tewilder (Oct 24, 2006)

Civbert said:


> According to FV, the act of baptism is the effective cause of regeneration, justification, salvation, etc. I.e. - if you're baptized, you're saved.
> 
> This makes God like a gum-ball machine - put in your quarter and turn the knob - and you are guaranteed to get a gum-ball.
> 
> That's my take on it.



It's controlled by the clergy, though. You get in the covenant when the priest performs baptism on you, and you stay in the covenant as long as the priest agrees to keep feeding you sacraments. Thus assurance of salvation depends on sucking up to the clergy. 

But then, on the other hand, it also depends on your faithfulness. You will hear one view or the other depending on the mood and preferences of the spokesman.


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## Civbert (Oct 24, 2006)

tewilder said:


> It's controlled by the clergy, though. You get in the covenant when the priest performs baptism on you, and you stay in the covenant as long as the priest agrees to keep feeding you sacraments. Thus assurance of salvation depends on sucking up to the clergy.
> 
> But then, on the other hand, it also depends on your faithfulness. You will hear one view or the other depending on the mood and preferences of the spokesman.



Good points. So that means the "efficacy" of baptism determined by the clergy. Is it the clergy who decided if you lose your salvation in FV? I think FV says your baptism guarantees your salvation (like a "grade-A" stamp on a side of beef guarantees it has passed inspection and is high quality). 

I'm trying to work this back to the FV view of efficacy. It seems there is a contradiction in the FV view of efficacy - since baptism is only sort-of effective at saving you at the same time as it is certainly effective at saving you.


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## tewilder (Oct 24, 2006)

Civbert said:


> Good points. So that means the "efficacy" of baptism determined by the clergy. Is it the clergy who decided if you lose your salvation in FV? I think FV says your baptism guarantees your salvation (like a "grade-A" stamp on a side of beef guarantees it has passed inspection and is high quality).
> 
> I'm trying to work this back to the FV view of efficacy. It seems there is a contradiction in the FV view of efficacy - since baptism is only sort-of effective at saving you at the same time as it is certainly effective at saving you.



The bottom line in the FV is the centrality of the clergy. Your salvation is in their hands. Also worship has to be made of up their expert ceremonies. As priests they stand between God and the congregation. Every week you need to return to them for a remission of sins and a covenant renewal. The FV theology makes the clergy the center and channel of what God is doing, and that is its real attraction. 

The doctrine of justification is not at the center of the FV. It is at the center of the attacks by the critics, but not of the FV. The center of the FV is clerical activity in symbol manipulation (robes, rituals, etc.), mediation (a priesthood that stands between God and the people in prayer, sacraments, etc.), control of salvation (as custodians of the institutions that frame the covenant, and thus that are the boundary makers of who is in and who is out, who gets sacraments, etc.)

So there are a lot of people who go along with some of the FV ideas, but can't buy the clericalism and institutionalism. These other people include Shepherd, Sandlin, and Schlissel.

Now, back to the "efficacy" question. The FV people want to make themselves the gate keepers of salvation. They want the keys of the kingdom. But they have to hedge what they say, because they could get into trouble with the institutions within which they operate. More than that, every turn in the road here has been travelled many times. The FV can't really come up with something new. So it is one step forward two steps back. Advance an idea, pull back when you come under fire. Throw a tantrum when the old proposals are criticized instead of today's new variation only. 

Also many resources are drawn on, but each only up to a point, Schilder, the Mercersburg Theology, N.T. Wright's version of the New Perspectives, and Shepherd. But this material is not harmonized. There seem to be two doctrines about everything, with a lot of lithe leaping back and forth between them. So we have two doctrines of assurance, two defintions of the covenant, etc.

Also there is an enabling methodology. The FVs are either Vantillians or post-modernists (or they may claim to be both at once). As such they hold that truth does not coincide at at point with what is in the mind of man. If they affirm the Confessions and also things contrary to them, that is a virtue. If paradox is a mark of truth, you should worry if you don't have contradictions.

The FV will claim to be Confessional (and are now embarrased by the recommendation from one of their heros, Shepherd, that the OPC drop the Westminster Confession), and they say more or less and most of the time that they hold to confesional doctrine. At the same time they say that the confessions are unbiblical in their terminology and form of reasoning, and do not correspond with the biblical meaning of the terms that the confessions have in common with the Bible. 

It gets worse. The Federal Vision people are given to expressing themselves in ways that almost beg to be misunderstood. No more so than in sacramentology. When most people think of sacramental efficacy they think of the Roman view that the saraments bring about an infusion of grace (i.e. a real change in the being of the person, producing a degree of actual righteousness), or maybe the Lutheran view that they work a mircle of faith in an infant. The FV people can sound like that, at at times seem to mean that. 

But at other times the FV view is that sacraments are like wedding ceremony. In their clergy-centric view, a marriage comes into existence when a cleric pronounces it to be so. No change in the being of the persons takes place. But a very real and objective convenant relationship comes into being.

Similarly, sacraments bring about a covenant status. They are efficatious, not by infusing with grace (changing the being) but by instituting a real covenant relationship with God. But what is that real covenant relationship? Here the lithe dancing between positions starts up.

So, you are not going to find a clear and consistently held Federal Vision teaching on the efficacy of baptism. But you will find many specific statements. But what do these statements mean? Are they couched in theological terms that mean what they mean in the confessions? Are they in the biblical theological sense, which the FV people don't feel obligated to define? 

Then, what are the biblical meanings? Here we get into the problem that the FV uses the symbolic theology of Kline. So we are chased back into the OT to study the history of the symbols. How many justifications or resurrections are there? Well what symbolizes this in the OT, and how are the symbols used? Did the law specify two purifications after touching a dead body? Then there must be two justifications, and we just have to map them onto our NT terminology and church usage.


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