Well, greetings to all and welcome to Theology in Particular, a podcast of International Reformed Baptist Seminary. I'm your host, Joe Annity, pastor of Emmaus Reformed Baptist Church in Hemet, California. And today I'm joined by Dr. Jeffrey Riddle, pastor of Christ Reformed Baptist Church in Louisa, Virginia, and adjunct professor of New Testament at IRBS. Jeff, it's a pleasure to speak with you again. Joe, thank you for having me on as a guest again. I'm happy to be here. I always enjoy talking with you, Jeff, and it's been a while, so I've been looking forward to this. Today we're going to be talking about an article that Jeff has written entitled The Administration and the Administrators of Baptism, written quite a long time ago, Jeff. I don't know, well, that's a relative little phrase there, right? But back in 2019, is that right, 2018? Well, I think I wrote it, actually, the first version of it, I wrote back in 2015 for a newsletter that goes to some churches and ministers here in Virginia. But then I sort of expanded it. And it appeared in the book, A Workman Not Ashamed, Essays in Honor of Albert N. Martin, that that was put together for him. And that was just published in 2021. So sort of the seed for the article was done a decade ago, but this published expanded version of it just came out in 2021. Good, I really appreciated the article, and it addresses a subject that comes up, for me at least, pretty regularly, and here's how I'll introduce the question. I'm just going to read the first paragraph of your article, because that's what you do there, you state the question. Where and in what context should baptism be administered? Can Christian baptism be conducted as a private event outside of the oversight of the local visible church? Who should administer the sacrament or ordinance of baptism? Can it be administered by any person or any baptized Christian, or must it be administered only by a minister or elder who has been set apart to office in the church? So, there's the question stated in many different ways. I think people can understand what you're getting at here. But as I said, this does come up pretty frequently for me as we're interviewing prospective members, you know, and talking about the issue of baptism, have you been baptized, by whom, where, under what circumstances? It's not uncommon for us to find people who have had unusual baptisms, and then the question becomes, is it valid? It's something we have to wrestle with as elders. So brother, I wonder if you would answer this question for us, maybe first of all in a brief way. What is your perspective on this? Yeah, well, let me just say, as you mentioned, I think for anybody who's been in ministry in a Baptistic church, I mean, you have to administer baptism, and you're doing, you know, interviews with prospective members and attendees, and you're learning about their spiritual background and so forth, and these questions do come up. and just the practical question of who should administer baptism in the church. I was thinking about this, one of the times this came on my radar screen, I remember when I was still in Southern Baptist ministry, I had a guy in the church and he and his family moved to New England and he had a daughter and we were communicating or I think on a phone call, he was telling me, you know, which I was very glad to hear that his daughter had professed the faith. And then he said they had gone to kind of one of these family friendly churches, family integrated churches. And he said that the pastor of the church had asked him to perform the baptism. And so he had baptized his daughter even though he wasn't an officer in the church and older in the church. And I didn't, you know, in the moment, I didn't try to correct him or argue with him about it. But it made me think about it, you know, who should be administering the baptism? Is it the father? Or should it have been the pastor of the church? And then as a Reformed Baptist pastor in our church plant, when the church was beginning, we had a family start attending that were a homeschooling family, you know, in many ways, a wonderful Christian family, but they had been caught up in that, you know, the homeschool movement and kind of doing some home churching, I think. And they had a teenage son and they said, oh, our son has become a Christian. We want to have a baptism in the creek behind our house. you know, the dad's going to perform the baptism. And by that time, of course, my, you know, I, I had the, uh, you know, our church was operating under the confession and I know I knew what the confession teaches. And, you know, you asked me, what is my view on this? And, you know, as a confessional Christian, uh, my view is based on the teaching of scripture, that the person who should administer the ordinance or the sacrament of baptism should be the officers of the church, and most notably the pastor or elder is the proper person to administer the ordinance or sacrament of baptism. And I know we'll probably get to this, but I mean, if you look at in the confession at chapter 28, in paragraph two, chapter 28 is of baptism in the Lord's Supper, and paragraph two says, these holy appointments are to be administered by those who are qualified and thereunto called according to the commission of Christ. And then as Jim Ranahan is fond of saying, we always read one chapter in comparison to others, And you go to chapter 26 on the church, and you look at the descriptions that are given there for the role of the officers. And part of their duty is the administration of the ordinances. And so these two things dovetail together. And so my answer is, the persons who should administer baptism are the officers of the church. And again, it's not just because the confession says that, the confession says that because it's based on a framework for interpreting and understanding the teachings of scripture, for understanding the teachings of the New Testament. So I guess that would be my response. Right, and in the first section of your article, you address modern questions and challenges, and I'd like you to walk us through this section, Jeff. Really, it's not surprising that this is an issue, given the way that the Christian faith has become such an individual thing, you know? It's about my personal relationship with Jesus, and it's a private faith that I have, and there is this kind of distaste for authority and all of that in our modern day. So, it shouldn't be surprising that we see people taking these sacraments into their own hands and administering baptism and the Lord's Supper in private. That's something else we've had to correct at our church early on. People, you know, if they couldn't make it to church, they'd partake of the Lord's Supper on their own at home. I don't know if you've ever encountered that, brother, but it's not uncommon around here for people to do that, to think that, you know what, we're having family devotions, can't make it to church today, we're sick, so we'll partake of the Lord's Supper in private. I haven't experienced that one, but I do remember, again, I think most of us, because we're, if you're a pastor, Reformed Baptist Church, we're conservative churches, we're Bible-believing churches, we preach Christ and Him crucified, and we attract people who are interested in that sort of traditional biblical ministry. But sometimes, again, that that means people who are coming out of a broader evangelicalism where there have been many kinds of different teachings they've been exposed to or lack of teaching they've been exposed to. And I was thinking about it with respect to like homeschooling families, you know, a conservative homeschooling family. I remember a few years back, there was a prominent fellow in homeschooling circles who taught at different conferences and whatnot, And he was a pastor of a church. But I remember a video he had out where he was encouraging same sort of thing, like my friend who baptizes his daughter in the church. When they served the Lord's Supper in that church, they would serve it to the families. They would give the elements to the families. And then they would ask the fathers to administer it to the wife and the children. And again, I think there might be some laudable aspects to wanting to encourage men in the church to be spiritual leaders in the home, but the Lord's Supper is not an ordinance of the family. It's an ordinance of the church. And there's, again, been a lot of lack of clarity about that. Like you said, we're dealing with cultural shifts and changes. I mean, you're in California. And I think actually in the article, I tried to trace a little bit. I traced it, you know, talked about the 1960s in the United States and other Western places, there began to be a lot of skepticism, cynicism about authority. You know, don't trust anybody over 30, you know, trust the man, don't trust the man, question authority and so forth. And then I was thinking when you get to the 1970s, you had the Jesus movement. There was a film that came out just a couple years ago, if you saw it, The Jesus Revolution. It's not a bad film in some ways, but it's all about Chuck Smith and the Calvary Chapel and that's, you know, in California. And I saw that film and, you know, they had the scenes where they're out there in the ocean baptizing people and they're just kind of, anybody could just walk out there on the spur of the moment and be baptized in the ocean and So there was this very much an emphasis on egalitarianism. It's loose, it's free, and baptism is sort of separated from the church. It's not a churchly ordinance. It's sort of a private Christian act. Interestingly enough, and I haven't listened to it, but I noticed that on the Broken Wharf podcast, they just started a series with, with Oliver Ullman Smith talking about John Bunyan. And he was talking about, I just briefly heard one clip from it, but he was talking about, although we admire so many things about John Bunyan, we love Pilgrim's Progress, but he had a sort of a privatized view of baptism. He didn't see it as a churchly ordinance. And so it's not just something that happened in 20th century America. or the 20th century Western world, but it's the question of, right, is baptism an ordinance of the church? And if it's an ordinance of the church, then who should be administering it? And in the article, I talked a little bit about how, you know, we're at the 1970s and the Jesus movement, then you get into the 1980s, 1990s, We've got the beginning of the homeschool movement, and there are baby boomers who are opting out of government schools. And my family homeschooled, and I certainly, to some degree, was a participant in that. I love homeschooling, by the way. But it does sort of, once you release yourself from that commitment to traditional schooling, government schooling, people lose themselves from other things. And there began to be people who would say, let's meet as a home church, or let's un-church, people un-school, people un-church. And And I think even in these days, we've experienced it maybe even more, because now we're dealing with kind of the post-pandemic, post-COVID. And for two years, a lot of people didn't go to church, or they were fearful of going to church. And they did church at home, or they watched church on a video. And there were some churches, I think, during COVID, yeah, that said, kind of what you were talking about maybe earlier, we're going to have the Lord's Supper today at church, and we want you at home to get your own, you know, bread and wine and serve yourselves at home. Oh, I'm sure it happened, yeah. Yeah. So that's kind of, you know, part, I think, of the backdrop that makes this a relevant question. But like I said, in some ways, As I talked about in the article, it's nothing new. This has been a sort of an issue that's come up across, I think, Christian history. Well, in the article, you first make an argument from Scripture that baptism and the Lord's Supper are church ordinances, church-centered ordinances. You also talk about, well, you draw attention to a post-apostolic view and then look at the Reformed and confessional understandings. You've already begun to do that a little bit by pointing to 1689, and that's good. But I wonder if you could take us back and make a case from Scripture for what it is that you and I believe, brother. Yeah. Well, in the article, I just started off talking about, you know, what are the biblical patterns? And, you know, I noted the fact that in the churches, as they're described in the New Testament, they're not merely informal, egalitarian hangouts, but they are churches that are ordered They have officers, I mean, we could even think, and I gave a list of verses, kind of basic verses, but if you think about the opening of Paul's letter to the church at Philippi, Philippians 1.1, Paul and Timothy write to all the saints in Christ Jesus, which are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons. So there's the whole church, there are the saints, the holy ones, They're also there, the Episcopali, the bishops, the pastors, the elders, and the deacons. And so there are leaders there. There are officers there who are leading the church. And in 1 Timothy 5, 17, Paul says, let the elders that rule well, be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the word and doctrine? Well, there are elders who are administering rule, who are governing, administering the church's worship, administering the church's financial dealings, doing the rule and administration of and pastoral care with the membership and so forth. So we could list a number of other verses that many of our listeners would be familiar with, even places where in Hebrews, Hebrews 13, 7, remember them which have the rule over you, or Hebrews 13, 17, obey them which have the rule over you, submit yourselves. So it's hard for us to come up with this egalitarian view of the early churches, I think it was recently you had Tom Hicks on talking about what is a reformed Baptist. And he said that he thought many evangelicals today, when you talk about church, they think of it as a meeting. The church is a meeting that you attend with other Christians, as opposed to an organism, the body of Christ, God's building, God's field, you know, a family, the family of God. And so, again, we have a lot of, I think, cultural influences to think individualistically about the church. rather than in a way that we would think about the church if our thoughts were purely formed by what we read, say, in Paul's epistles, where there's this emphasis on, again, Philippians 1.1, the saints being there, and also the bishops and the deacons. And then I was, in the article, I make mention of the fact that, you know, when there's the description of the qualifications for an elder in 1 Timothy 3.2, it's that he be apt to teach. Well, what does that indicate? I mean, in part, it indicates to us that not everyone was allowed to teach, but only those who were apt to teach and those who were approved by the church to teach Or when we think about Titus being appointed by the Apostle Paul, commissioned by Paul to appoint elders in every city in Titus 1.5, and he says this is to be done, Titus 1.9, so that the elders can hold fast the fateful word as he hath been taught. that he may be able by sound doctrine, both to exhort and to convince the gainsayer. Or in 2 Timothy 2.2, when Paul says, the things that you have heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also. So there's the stewardship of teaching, the stewardship of the ministry of the church is placed in the hands of these men. Of course, that responsibility is held by the church collectively, but these officers, they have these gifts that are acknowledged and they are appointed and approved for these duties. James 3.1, not many of you should be masters or teachers the Greek word is didoscaloi, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation. And then I made the point that as soon as we actually got in discussion recently in our church, we were doing a book study. We don't have Sunday school, we do book studies of Ryan Davidson's little book, Green Pastures, on the ordinary means of grace. And we got into a discussion of what is our biblical justification for the elders serving the Lord's Supper. And we were talking about the fact that The Lord's Supper as an ordinance is described as taking place when the church comes together in 1 Corinthians 11. So, the Lord's Supper wasn't an individual event, a private event, a family ordinance, but again, it happens in the church, in ecclesia, as Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 11 and verse 18. Well, if the Lord's Supper was administered in the church, we would assume the officers were the leaders of that, and we can also apply this to what would have happened with baptism, that it too would have been in ecclesia, and with the guidance, the government, the oversight of the officers of the church, the bishops, the episcopal, the elders. And then there's that mention also in 1 Corinthians 4, 1, where Paul says that as ministers of Christ, he and others as ministers of Christ were stewards of the mysteries of God. And I think that verse, 1 Corinthians 4.1, was an important verse, I think, for the Protestant Orthodox, for the particular Baptists. They saw that as speaking to the duties of the ministers for the administration of baptism and the Lord's Supper. So, stewards of the mysteries of God, the apostles and the elders are household managers, as it were, servants within God's house of the mysteries of God. I know there is an interpretation that really views that as a reference to the sacraments. Is that your view, Jeff? Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, they're in 1 Corinthians 4, 1. I mean, first of all, it's an important passage because it is the proof text that was used to justify the teaching that I read earlier. That would be sort of the basic teaching that would justify the officers, I think, as the administrators of both baptism and the Lord's Supper. But in, again, looking back at chapter 28 of the Confession, these holy appointments are to be administered by those only who are qualified and thereunto called according to the commission of Christ. And that's paragraph two of chapter 28 of baptism and Lord's Supper. And there are two verses that are listed as proof texts. One is Matthew 28, 19 from the Great Commission. where the apostles were told, you know, to go and teach all nations or to make disciples of all nations and to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, to teach all the things that Christ had commanded us. And then the second proof text is 1 Corinthians 4.1. And 1 Corinthians 4.1 is to read the entirety of it. Paul says, let a man so account of us as the ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. And so you mentioned that, well, let me just say this, the proof texts obviously are carefully chosen. And in the little preamble to the confession, that to the judicious and impartial reader, it discusses the proof texts. And it says, we have also taken care to affix texts of scripture at the bottom for the confirmation of each article in our confession, in which work we have studiously endeavored to select such as are most clear and pertinent for the proof of what is asserted by us. So when they have that proof text there, 1 Corinthians 4.1, it hasn't just haphazardly been placed there. It's because it's out of a context of study, they had come to the conclusion that 1 Corinthians 4.1, that the ministers of Christ are stewards of the mysteries of God, that this somehow related to baptism in the Lord's Supper. Stewards, and you mentioned in Greek it's oikonomoi, and there's a word oikonomia, which is often translated, well, in the Authorized Version it's translated dispensation or administration, Just ran across it last Sunday when I was preaching from Ephesians 1 And there's a mention in Ephesians 1 10 of the dispensation of the fullness of times So it's oikonomia and then and then there's Oikonomos is a steward the plural oikonomoi stewards so Paul says that the servants of Christ and ministers of Christ are stewards in the household of God. And they're stewards of the mysteries. And although I didn't do this in the article, knowing that we were gonna talk about this, I pulled down from the shelf my copy of Matthew Poole's commentary, my go-to commentary, I love Matthew Poole. and I had just read over what he said about 1 Corinthians 4.1, and let me just read a little part of what he said. He said, the word mystery signifieth anything that is secret, but more especially it signifieth a divine secret represented by signs and figures, or a religious secret not obvious to every capacity or understanding. And then he gives some examples of this in places where the term mystery is used in the New Testament. And then he says, ministers are the stewards of the mysterious doctrines and institutions of Christ. which we usually comprehend under the terms of the word and sacraments. So, I think Matthew Poole, you know, Puritan exegete commentator is probably giving us the mind of the men of that era and the mysteries, those are the figures and Most importantly, ministers are given the responsibility of preaching the word, rightly dividing the word of truth. And then they also administer these figures that are given these visual dramas, visual sermons of baptism in the Lord's Supper. And so they are the proper stewards of them so that they're not done inappropriately. disorderly, in a disorderly manner. And so, I think that's part of the biblical argument for the elders as the administrators of the ordinances or sacraments. I think 1 Corinthians 4.1 is a great proof text. I also love the fact that Matthew 28 is the Great Commission passage. People sometimes forget that this Great Commission was given to the apostles. It belongs to the church, but it was given specifically to the apostles, and these were to preach the gospel, these were then to baptize, these were to teach people to observe all that Christ has commanded, which must include the Lord's Supper, the observance of the Lord's Supper. So, the Great Commission does belong to the church, but not to every member of the church equally, if we could speak in that way. Apostles and elders, pastors have a particular obligation to preach and teach and administer the sacraments, in our view. So, really fascinating. Brother, I think some who would want to push back on this might point to those texts in the Book of Acts where lots of people are baptized you know, all at once and out in public. I think of the text involving the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch by Philip. How are we to understand these passages, you know, in relation to this whole concept that baptism is a church ordinance? Yeah. Well, I think, as you said, I think if we were to have a conversation with someone that would hold a contrary view, they would almost invariably bring up the Book of Acts. And they would say, well, wait a second, there are, you know, immediate baptisms by people in the book, in the book of Acts, and, you know, various people are administering these baptisms. And sometimes I've run into this with the question of, should there be a time of waiting once someone has professed the faith? Do you have a period of time in which you catechize you teach, and some people say, well, wait a second, in the book of Acts, people were immediately baptized. If you've ever run into anybody who's been part of the Campbellite or the Churches of Christ movement, of course, they believe that baptism is literally necessary for salvation. And if someone professes faith, if they're true Campbellites, they'll often immediately, if they profess faith in the morning, they'll baptize them that afternoon. But whereas we are more likely to say if someone professes faith, wonderful, let's have a period of catechism. Let's have a period of teaching, learning, discipleship. And we would point to places like in the Gospel of Luke, where Christ teaches that we should count the costs and don't, you know, don't be like the man who started to build a tower. And, you know, got it halfway built and had to had to leave off or don't be like a man who goes off to face an army of superior numbers with inadequate resources, but but count the cost. So, but anyway, someone say all these passages. being very quickly baptized and maybe baptism administered by various people. And a couple of responses to that. One is with the book of Acts, and this is an old, you know, hermeneutical principle with Acts. When we approach Acts, we have to approach it as being descriptive. of the church in apostolic times, in extraordinary times. The church was being established. There weren't multiple churches. The gospel was going out for the first time. People were hearing it, people were being converted, churches were being formed, and they had living apostles. So Acts is an extraordinary, and it's descriptive, But some of the things that are recorded there are not prescriptive or normative for the church in all ages, because we're now in the post-apostolic age. We're living in the in-between times. We're in this present evil world, as Paul calls it in Galatians 1. between the first advent of Christ and the second. We no longer have living apostles. We have ordinary officers. We no longer have extraordinary officers. And so we've got to operate in ways that are fitting for our times. And so that's one response I would have as to why we don't perhaps practice baptism the way it was practiced as recorded in the book of Acts. I mean, the heart of it, we do. We preach the gospel. Think about the Ethiopian eunuch. He's reading the scriptures, he's asking, what does this mean? How can I understand this unless I have a guide, an interpreter? And Philip preaches Jesus to him, and he's converted, he's baptized. But the other thing I would say is sometimes people jump to conclusions. If you read carefully through the book of Acts, you actually find, I think, the pattern of officers in general performing baptisms. Think about at Pentecost, there are myriads who come to Christ. Well, who performs the baptisms? Peter and the other apostles who are officers, extraordinary officers. They are the ones who do the baptizing. Even when you think about the Ethiopian unit, in Acts 8, who baptizes the Ethiopian eunuch? The same man who preached to him And it's Philip, who was one of the seven, who was appointed to minister to the church, the saints at the church in Jerusalem. So he's an officer of the church. He's an apostolic associate. Even when you have Saul, who will later be Paul, baptized after his conversion on the Damascus Road, we have the name of the person who came to him and the person who, I think, baptized him and that's Ananias, he's described simply as a disciple, but I think we can surmise that he was an officer of the church in Damascus. He was the elder of the church in Damascus. When Cornelius in Acts 10 and 11 is converted, who's there to baptize him? Peter? aided by six men from the church at Joppa. And who would have been the men who would have been there? Most likely, it would have been the elders who would have been there. In Acts 16, when Lydia is converted, and later the Philippian jailer, who baptizes them? Paul is there. and Silas, an apostle, apostolic associate, are there to do the baptizing. Or when Paul is in Corinth, And the church is formed there in Acts 18. Who does the baptizing? Well, Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 1.14 and 1 Corinthians 1.16 that he baptized only Crispus Gaius and the household of Stephanus. But I think we can surmise that there were other officers of the church who were baptizing. When he goes to Ephesus, he baptizes the around 12 disciples who had formerly been the disciples of John the Baptist. So actually, when you read through Acts, as far as this question of who should administer baptism, you find that when it's reported to us who did the baptisms, they're church officers. Most often apostles. In fact, I made the statement in the article A survey of Acts reveals that there is not a single explicit narrative description of a believer being baptized by anyone other than a church officer. In the case of Philip, he is in Acts 21.8 called Philip the Evangelist. I like the idea that evangelists were those who were sent out by the apostles and with apostolic authority. I don't know if you agree with that, but certainly he had an office within the church. He was one of the seven, as you already mentioned, but he's called Philip. the evangelist in Acts 21.8. And there that Ethiopian eunuch is baptized without, not in an established church, but out in the open country on the way back home. But it's frontier missions, isn't it? I mean, there was no church in that place. And so, as you say, this is descriptive, not necessarily prescriptive. This isn't the ordinary way. But given the circumstances, it was right. If I could add one more thing about the spontaneous baptisms of the Book of Acts, and I can't remember if I've said this on the podcast before, but I think we need to realize that these early baptisms where thousands were baptized in one day, these were these were Jewish people who had already been catechized, right? Or sometimes Gentiles were amongst them, but they were God-fearing Gentiles. And when I say they'd already been catechized, I mean, they were familiar with the Old Testament scriptures, they were awaiting the promised Messiah, and He came, and they were ready to go. It's not like they needed to be taught about the God of the Bible, and his plan for redemption, etc. I was meeting with a young man who is interested in the Christian faith, and he was telling me that he attended another church in our community, and he could have been baptized at this church. He wants to be baptized. He could have just gone up and been baptized. No questions would be asked of him. But as I continued to meet with him, it became very clear he had no clue about the doctrine of the Trinity. And I even said to him, I said, friend, just think of this. It's important you take your time and learn these doctrines, because if you would have gone up and been baptized on that day, you would have been baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and you would not have had a clue as to what that meant. not a clue. It was just such a moment, right? And he agreed. He said, yeah, it didn't feel right. I'm glad I didn't do it. And so we're continuing to meet together and to work through the catechism together, but no clue as to who the God of the Bible was. He would have been baptized in the name of the triune God and had no idea that God is triune. And I just wonder how many times that happens. Yeah. I had a recently had a situation of a sort of a similar parallel thing that happened. There was a young man that I met who had actually become a Roman Catholic and he had been in the military and he had been a very traditional Latin mass attending Roman Catholic fellow soldier had converted him to Catholicism. But I was talking with him because someone in our church is related to him and wanted me to talk with him. And I was asking him about his previous spiritual experiences. And he told me that He hadn't attended church, even though his family was nominally Christian, but they hadn't regularly attended church. But when he was in high school, he had wanted to be baptized. And his parents took him to an evangelical church, which I won't name, and they baptized him on the spot with no conversation about what it meant to be a Christian, no discipleship, and then he went off into the military and this trad catholic bunkmate invites him to the roman catholic church and he's you know a roman catholic now um but it was it i i just it it i thought to myself how the evangelical church failed this young man by not He was a young man who wanted to be baptized, who was seeking something. And I'm still holding out hope that he will come to his senses later on. But anyway, it was another example of just how our ecclesiological weakness leads to these sort of missteps and errant administration of ordinances. to, you know, maybe sometimes to people who really aren't believers, or to people who, again, might profit from instruction and teaching and pastoral care under the officers of the church. Yeah. I'm sure a lot of these people who do this have good intentions, I'm not questioning that, but I don't think we're really loving these folks, or even honoring God, ultimately, when we just ignore what the scriptures say about these things. Brother, I wonder if we could jump to the Reformed and Confessional Understandings section of your article and speak to that just briefly. You make a case that this is the common Reformed and Confessional view, not just as reflected in the London Baptist Confession, but in other confessions, too. Yeah. Well, you know, it's a relatively short article, and A lot of things that I touched on here were more suggestive than certainly exhaustive. But I just went back and did a little bit of a survey, and I went back to Calvin and looked at the institutes and some of his commentaries. And one of the interesting things that I saw in this was that there was a debate you know, back in Calvin's day and in Roman Catholicism, there was and actually still is a practice of what are called emergency baptisms. Because of their belief that in baptismal regeneration that you need to be baptized to be saved, in the Roman Catholic Church, going back to, you know, the time of the Reformers, they allowed these emergency baptisms so that, let's say, a woman is in childbirth and gives birth to a child that is in poor health, they would allow anyone to administer baptism to that person. In fact, somewhere in here, I have a quote from the present catechism of the Roman Catholic Church. If you were to look at it, it says, the ordinary ministers of baptism are the bishop and priest, and in the Latin Church, also the deacon, in case of necessity, anyone, even a non-baptized person with the required intention can baptize by using the Trinitarian baptismal formula. So, apparently, even somebody who's not a believer in the Roman Catholic Church, if they have the right intention, whatever that is, can do the baptism. So, Calvin was dealing with that in his day, One of the proof texts apparently the Roman Catholics used was Zipporah's circumcision of Moses. And he has an interesting discussion in which he, you know, rebukes that and, you know, argues from scripture that no, as he puts it, no one in the church takes the honor upon himself except one which has been called. And then I just went to the Reformed Confessions, obviously the Westminster Confession of Faith, the prototype for our confession in chapter 27 of the sacraments. It says, there be only two sacraments ordained by Christ our Lord in the gospel, that is to say, baptism and the supper of the Lord, neither of which may be dispensed by any but a minister of the word lawfully ordained. So that's the Westminster Confession of Faith. We already talked about the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, and I was fumbling a little bit earlier looking for the proper passage, paragraph to read. But let me just, if you don't mind, double back on that. And it is in chapter 26 and paragraph 8, where it talks, first of all, about the fact that a particular church gathered and completely organized according to the mind of Christ consists of officers and members and the officers appointed by Christ to be chosen and set apart by the church so-called and gathered for the peculiar administration of ordinances. and execution of power or duty, which he entrusts them with or calls them to, to be continued to the end of the world are bishops or elders and deacons." So there it says it's the officers of the church, primarily the elders, who are the administrators of these peculiar ordinances. So that's, you know, in continuity with Westminster Confession of Faith, the teaching of Calvin, and then I just I went forward and I just took two little window look-ins at confessional theologians of the 19th century And I looked at one Baptist, John Dagg, a Baptist in the South, and his Manual of Church Order that came out in 1858 was very influential among Calvinistic Baptists in the South. And he has a section on the administration of baptism in his Manual of Church Order. And it's interesting, he rejects not only the Roman Catholic arguments for so-called emergency baptisms, But he also, you see already the individualistic interpretations beginning to arise, and he speaks pretty forcibly against that, that it's the ministers who have the authority to administer baptism. And then finally, I looked at the 19th century Presbyterian, A. A. Hodge, And I looked at his discussion of this very thing in his outlines of theology, and he says in his outline of theology, Protestants regard the sacraments both as a preaching of the word and as authoritative seals and badges of church membership. Their administration, consequently, must be confined to those church officers who possess, by divine commission, the office of teaching and ruling. So, if we were to ask what is the classic confessional perspective, it is that the officers of the church, most notably the bishops or elders, they are the administers of these ordinances because they are the stewards of the mysteries of God. Yeah, it's all very helpful, Jeff. There's another question that I've been wrestling with that I know some of our churches are wrestling with, and that is this. In those unusual circumstances where there is not an elder present in the church, but where there is a gifted brother, you know, someone who has been approved by the church to preach the Word of God, If the church is without an elder, is that gifted brother permitted to administer baptism and the Lord's Supper? I don't think we're going to solve that problem right now together, Jeff, but it is a really interesting question, and some churches do find themselves in those situations. I know this has happened historically, and even to this present day. Any thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, that is a difficult situation. And, you know, we could go back to chapter 26. It's the church that holds, you know, that holds power that's been given it by Christ. And, you know, we could say if the church approves a man to preach a gifted brother, might he also in extraordinary circumstances also approve and bless this brother to administer the ordinances. But that would only happen in a church that's not wholly formed according to the mind of Christ, because such a church would have officers. And I think that question, I pulled down Dr. Renahan's commentary on the Second Lenten Baptist Confession to the judicious and impartial reader. And if you look on pages 542 to 544, he has a discussion of this question in his exposition of Chapter 28, the Confession of Baptism and the Lord's Supper. And it's under the heading of the administrators of the ordinance. So this is discussion of Chapter 28 in paragraph two. And he points out that the confession is teaching that the administration of both ordinances is limited to those who are qualified and called according to the commission of Christ. But then he does point out that there were some of the early churches, he makes particular Baptist churches that did allow for, in extreme circumstances, unusual circumstances for those who weren't officers to administer these ordinances. He says baptism was less important than preaching and therefore those who are approved as preachers could be administrators. And then he says in every case only authorized men could administer the sacraments. They are not to be dispensed by anyone except those who meet these qualifications. And so what I got the sense in reading through this is he was saying that among the particular Baptists, if we think about the ordinances consisting of preaching, baptizing, and administering the Lord's Supper, that the highest calling is preaching. the most foundational is preaching the gospel. And if there's a gifted brother, then he might also administer baptism, which would sort of be the second in that line. And then finally, in extreme circumstance, the Lord's Supper. Let me read what Jim Renan said, page 544. He says, this reflects the particular Baptist argument that moved from the greater to the lesser. If a man was called to preach the word, he was called to administer baptism, and perhaps, in rare circumstances, the supper. So, maybe you can ask Dr. Renahan if you have him on as a guest. Yeah, perhaps. If he would agree with that. Yeah, I'm not sure if it's his view. I'm not sure it's his view, but he might be reporting on the argument that was made in history. You know, yeah, real interesting. But yeah, churches have to face perplexing questions like this. It does happen. And so, may the Lord help us and give us wisdom to do all things according to the mind of Christ as expressed in Holy Scripture. Jeff, this has been fun. Really, I appreciate you writing this article. It's not a long article. You already said that. People can find it and read it for themselves. But yeah, it's an important question, and we should care about these things. We should care deeply about the proper administration of the ordinances. Well, thank you, brother. It's been a joy. Joe, thank you so much for allowing me to be a guest. I've enjoyed it. To our audience, I do hope this conversation has been helpful to you. If it has, please consider sharing it with others. And lastly, don't forget to check back with us next Monday for a new episode. Until then, abide in Christ. Thank you for listening to Theology in Particular. If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions for future podcasts, please email tip at irbsseminary.org. For more information about the seminary, go to irbsseminary.org. IRBS is a confessional seminary committed to the inerrant and infallible Word of God as summarized in the Second London Confession of Faith. Since our podcast sometimes addresses issues outside the confession, please understand that the views and opinions expressed on theology in particular are not necessarily those of IRBS, its trustees, or every faculty member.