Winston Churchill once famously said, ‘History will be kind to me for I intend to write it’. Winners write the history. And in this broken world, rarely is the evangelical who holds to ‘faith alone’ the winner. He or she must bear all sorts of invectives and malicious calumnies.
Consider Tertullian, who wrote between 196 and 212AD. Tertullian is one of the few Christian writers of this period whose voluminous works have come down to us. He seems to have been a layman not a cleric, and so was quite liberal with his critiques[1].
Tertullian was a rigorist. He rejected infant water baptism, because he thought it was unfair on the child. If that child sinned after water baptism, only martyrdom could return the child to a state of purity[2]. Tertullian is scathing in his criticism of the ‘Cainite heresy’, which did not believe that water baptism is necessary for salvation.
The consequence is, that a viper of the Cainite heresy, lately conversant in this quarter, has carried away a great number with her most venomous doctrine, making it her first aim to destroy baptism. Which is quite in accordance with nature; for vipers and asps and basilisks themselves generally do affect arid and waterless places. But we, little fishes, after the example of our Icthus Jesus Christ, are born in water, nor have we safety in any other way than by permanently abiding in water; so that most monstrous creature, who had no right to teach even sound doctrine, knew full well how to kill the little fishes, by taking them away from the water![3]
Tertullian holds that water baptism is necessary to salvation. ‘Without baptism no man can obtain salvation’[4]. Little fishies love the water! Tertullian didn’t believe that the Holy Spirit was given to the baptisand in the water. Rather, in the water the baptisand is made clean by the action of the angel and made ready for the Holy Spirit, who is received at the laying on of hands after the actual water baptism[5].
Tertullian calls the (perhaps) female preacher who says that baptism is not necessary for salvation, a snake, viper and basilisk. Perhaps Tertullian’s invective is more vicious because of the success of her message… for a great number accepted it.
The appellation ‘Cainite’ seems to refer to a gnostic sect that upheld Cain, Ishmael and Korah, who withstood the evil god of the Old Testament[6]. In this, they seemed analogous to Marcion’s false teaching. However, the preacher may have been as much a Cainite as she was a snake! We don't know, because winners write history.
What is interesting to note is that others contemporary with Tertullian, but whose views or writings have not come down to us, viewed that water baptism was not necessary for salvation because faith alone is sufficient for salvation. This includes the ‘great number’ who were persuaded by the ‘snake’. They are also ‘miscreants’:
‘Here, then, those miscreants provoke questions. And so they say, “Baptism is not necessary for them to whom faith is sufficient; for withal, Abraham pleased God by a sacrament of no water, but of faith.’[7]
Through the lens of Tertullian, with all his invective and spite, we spy the ancient adherents of ‘sola fide’, those who hold to justification by faith alone, and who say that baptism is not of absolute necessity for salvation. No one can deny that these believers were there, the ‘miscreants’, the ‘Cainites’, and there were enough of them to draw Tertullian’s ire. Moreover, it is clear that behind these ‘miscreants’ objections to Tertullian’s sacramentalism stood the type and example of the unbaptized believer Abraham, argued by Paul in Romans 4 and Galatians 3. Abraham was never baptized, yet he was saved by his faith in the promise of God.
These ‘miscreants’ come in for further criticism because they have ‘scrupulous, nay rather audacious, doubts’ that baptism is not absolutely necessary for salvation because the Apostles except Paul were not baptized by the Lord[8]. Tertullian ultimately responds that they probably were baptised. He likewise discounts 1 Corinthians 1:17[9].
Tertullian included baptism in his definition of faith. So baptism becomes ‘the clothing, in some sense, of the faith which before was bare, and which cannot exist now without its proper law. For the law of baptizing has been imposed…’[10].
The legalist always has the same modus operandi with regard to justification by faith alone. The legalist will broaden out the aspect of faith that justifies from ‘bare’ trust in God’s promise and the provision of Christ’s death and resurrection to include all manner of acts of obedience, including love (the ‘formed faith’ of Roman Catholicism), repentance, good works, and water baptism. So they do not in reality believe in justification by faith alone.
In contrast, our articles point out that the efficacy of baptism comes from faith, for it is those who have faith who ‘worthily receive’ or ‘receive rightly’ the sacrament (Article XXV, XXVII). Justification is by faith only (Article XXI). It is therefore not by water baptism.
But winners write the history. So to Tertullian, those who believe that the aspect of faith which justifies is the ‘bare’ trust and confidence in God’s promise alone, are ‘miscreant Cainites’, snakes, vipers and basilisks, who have ‘scrupulous, nay rather audacious, doubts’ about the efficacy of baptism. Let us wear such cavils with pride.
[1] Gerald Bray, ‘Tertullian’ in Bradley G Green (ed), Shapers of Christian Orthodoxy: Engaging With Early and Medieval Theologians (Downers Grove: IVP, 2010), 65
[2] On Baptism, 16; Bray, 69; Oyvind Norderval, ‘Simplicity and Power: Tertullian’s de Baptismo’, in David Hellholm, Tor Vegge, Oyvind Noderval, Christe Hellholm, Ablution, Initiation and Baptism: Late Antiquity, Early Judaism and Early Christianity (Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2011), 947-966 at 962
[3] Tertullian, On Baptism, 1. Tertullian's treatise can be found at http://www.tertullian.org/articles/evans_bapt/evans_bapt_text_trans.htm. Contrast Article XVI, ‘Of Sin After Baptism’ which stipulates after the reception of the Holy Ghost, someone who has committed serious sin can ‘truly repent’ and rise again and amend their lives and receive pardon, and seems to condemn Tertullian for his view that only martyrdom can save from post-baptismal sin.
[4] On Baptism, 12
[5] Tertullian, On Baptism, 6, 8; Oyvind Norderval, 955-6
[6] Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2nd Rev Ed, 218
[7] Tertullian, On Baptism, 13
[8] Tertullian, On Baptism, 12
[9] Tertullian, On Baptism, 14
[10] Tertullian, On Baptism, 12