Episode Details

Episode 7 of the Christ for Us Bible Study Podcast on what the early church taught concerning infant baptism. You can follow along to the outline at Christforus.org. 

#infantbaptism #earlychurch #churchfathers #Augustine #Jerome #Ambrose #Cyprian #Theology

In our first episode, where I discussed how Lutherans interpret the Bible, I explained that the formal principle, that is, the source of all our teaching concerning faith and living a moral life is Holy Scripture. Holy Scripture alone determines what we ought to believe regarding salvation and how to live a godly life. I quoted from the Lutheran Confessions, Formula of Concord, Summary of Rules and Norms:

“1. We believe, teach, and confess that the sole rule and standard according to which all dogmas together with [all] teachers should be estimated and judged are the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures of the Old and of the New Testament alone, as it is written Ps. 119:105: Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. And St. Paul: Though an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you, let him be accursed, Gal. 1:8. (Source: https://bookofconcord.org/epitome/#ep-rule-and-norm-0001 )”

And we stand by this. This what Lutherans means when we say: Scripture alone. We cannot bind consciences to what councils, bishops, and popes say, if what they say is not first established in Holy Scripture. So, the question arises. What use then is tradition? Do Lutherans follow traditions? How do we treat the early church fathers and their writings? And what difference does it make what the early church fathers taught about Baptism, if our only rule and norm is Holy Scripture?

Lutherans value traditions, councils, and the writings of the early church fathers. But we do not base our teaching on their writings or accept their teachings without the witness of Scripture. Jerome (circa 342-420) writes, “What has no authority from Scriptures is rejected as easily as it is approved.”[1] This is one of the problems with how the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church deal with tradition. They will claim that a tradition is apostolic, meaning, it was taught by the Apostles, but there is no testimony in Scripture backing this up. Later, it is discovered that some of their so-called apostolic traditions were really traditions started by heretical sects like the Montanists.

So, Lutherans use traditions and the writings of the early church fathers as witnesses of the teachings of Scripture. Martin Chemnitz writes of the Church fathers, “They do not bring forward or prove any other dogma of faith from tradition beside those which are contained in the Scripture; but they set forth and prove also from tradition those very same dogmas which are found in Scripture.”[2] So, for example, the Apostles’ Creed is not found word for word in Scripture, but was compiled by the church fathers. Yet, Chemnitz writes of the Apostles’ Creed, “This is the true and ancient tradition of the apostles which does not hand down anything outside of and beyond the Scripture but embraces the summary of the whole Scripture.”[3] The Apostles’ Creed is helpful to the Church, because it summarizes the doctrine of all of Scripture.

And this way of treating the church fathers was not invented by the Lutherans. St. Augustine (354-430) writes concerning the church father Cyprian (210-258) in his Contra Cresconium, Bk. 2, ch. 31, “We do Cyprian no wrong when we distinguish any and all of his writings from the canonical authority of the divine Scriptures. For it is not without cause th