that David will “go to” his son (thereby affirming the son’s innocence), or Deut 1:37–40 in which the children of the rebellious Israelites are not subjected to judgment because they “do not yet know right from wrong.”35
The age of accountability is an attempt to reign in runaway repercussions of the doctrine of original sin. However, it is precisely in its tentative formalization that it creates irresolvable pastoral dilemmas. One cannot help but wonder at precisely what age one is actually accountable before God. Would it not be fairer if accountability was linked to developmental progress instead of age? Might there then be a quantitative test to determine when a child qualifies as one accountable before God for her sin? The doctrine of the age of accountability is at best built on marginal biblical references. Furthermore, it fails to provide the clarification it suggests. In Anabaptist circles it is further undermined by the implications of the term “accountability,” which implies a specifically forensic understanding of the atonement. According to Thomas Finger’s analysis of the roots of Anabaptism this was not the dominant view. Finger claims that the primary soteriological model for early Anabaptists was more akin to divinization, involving a gradual ontological transformation intrinsically patterned by the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.36 This does not dismiss the need for the process of conversion, but it does downplay any sort of legal necessity for quickly baptizing children out of fear for their eternal destiny. It undercuts the assumption that children must be baptized as soon as possible to avoid divine judgment.
In his book Believers Baptism for Children of the Church Marlin Jeschke argues convincingly that significant confusion around the status of children has arisen from the assumption of a false dichotomy, that all of humanity falls into one of two neat categories: they are either saved or reprobate. As a result child evangelism has taken the place of Christian nurture. Jeschke’s recommendation is that Anabaptists recover an understanding of the innocence of childhood.37 This does not avoid the difficulty of giving definition to the process of nurture but it does, in the face of revivalist assumptions, begin to put the discussion of the initiation of the children of Christians on the right field. It also gestures toward a way of understanding the life of the church that can take into account those with developmental or cognitive impediments. Space does not permit the development of an alternative to the notion of the age of accountability and the false dichotomy Jeschke names; nevertheless, it is definitely the case that we can question the assumption that children are objects of divine judgment in need of conversion. The baptism of children has been challenged before in Anabaptist circles, and my argument is that because of its theological incoherence it should continue to be critiqued. It should not be allowed to become normative, for in doing so I fear it would reshape Anabaptist theology in destructive ways.
Locating the Problem in Denominational Theologies
In O’Connor’s presentation of baptism the passion of the central characters—the young boy, the sitter, and the preacher—is juxtaposed to a detached, empty cosmopolitanism represented by the boy’s parents and their friends. This aspect of the story calls into question the sentimentality and triumphalism inherent in many religious practices. A well-known anecdote about O’Connor makes her view clear. The story is told that once at a dinner party in which a writer-sophisticate proclaimed that the sacraments were still useful—as literary symbols—O’Connor is said to have bluntly responded: “Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.”38 For O’Connor a sacrament implies much more than symbolism. Likewise, the central characters in her story are more than merely open to the possibility of God acting in their world. They expect it. If the Christian faith is to have any of the serious sort of impact to which baptism portends we should wonder how the life of the church could be characterized in any other way. Indeed, this question arises from the very history of Anabaptism itself. Arnold Snyder has stated that the closest analogue early Anabaptists had to the medieval eucharistic sacrament and its concept of the real presence of Jesus was the life of the church itself.39 Nevertheless, for many contemporary Anabaptists the rite of initiation does not participate in the divine nearness of sacramentality. To both support this claim and to explain more clearly how believers’ baptism is understood today it will be helpful to look to the way some Anabaptist denominations present their beliefs and practices.
The category is hard to define, but conservative estimates are that more than 1.6 million people participate in Anabaptist-affiliated congregations in the world. Only slightly more than 0.5 million of those reside in the United States and Canada.40 These congregations, though, make up more than fifty denominations or independently affiliated Anabaptist groups.41 They range from very acculturated denominations with high levels of education and professional training to culturally distinct groups who see little use for formal education. They include highly mobile individuals as well as those who have decided not to ride in airplanes or even drive cars.42 Giving a theologically significant and succinct description of the beliefs that these groups hold to be true about baptism is challenging. It is a job that threatens to slowly and laboriously swamp this project with detail. Rowing through extended quotations varying only slightly one from the other would tire even the most committed reader. Nevertheless, a sketch of how some prominent self-identifying Anabaptist groups describe the practice will provide helpful context for the discussion that follows. It will also advance the thesis of this project by displaying the theology of baptism and opening it for critique. I will describe key features of the current statements of five Anabaptist denominations: (1) The Conservative Mennonite Conference (Conservative Conference), which includes about 110 congregations in North America. The Conservative Conference is rooted in the Amish Mennonite expression of Anabaptism. With its denominational origins traceable to 1910, this group formed from congregations that sought a middle ground between more assimilated Amish Mennonites and the traditional and distinct Old Order Amish. (2) The Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren (Mennonite Brethren), which includes some 250 congregations in Canada. The Mennonite Brethren trace their origin to revival movements among Russian Mennonite settlements in the 1860s. Today the Mennonite Brethren describe themselves as both Anabaptist and Evangelical. (3) The Brethren in Christ of North America (Brethren in Christ), which includes about 295 congregations in both the United States and Canada. The Brethren in Christ count both Pietism and Wesleyanism as formative theological traditions alongside their older Anabaptist roots. The final two denominations under examination currently use the same confession of faith, the “Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective” (“Confession of Faith”), affirmed in 1995. These two denominations are (4) Mennonite Church USA, which includes roughly 940 congregations in the US, and (5) Mennonite Church Canada, which includes close to 230 congregations in Canada. These two denominations are the result of the recent merger of the General Conference Mennonite Church and the Mennonite Church and include some of the oldest Anabaptist conferences, groups of mutually accountable congregations, in North America.
The statements described below are the way in which these groups publicly articulate their beliefs in the form of a confession of faith or a doctrinal statement. These denominations have each taken a variety of steps in formulating these documents, which themselves hold differing levels of confessional and teaching authority within each denomination and its affiliated organizations. Formal statements of belief and practice are not new in the Anabaptist tradition even though the proper status of central Christian statements like the Apostles Creed and the Nicean Creed is debated.43 Classic statements such as the sixteenth-century Schleitheim Articles and the seventeenth-century Dordrecht Confession have served as gathering points for Anabaptists throughout history. In what follows I will first consider the doctrine of baptism and then provide a further description of the ways in which it is dogmatically related to the doctrines of
