Rebaptism and the Promise That Does Not Repeat

An issue has arisen regarding the request to be rebaptized in the Northern Michigan Classis of the Christian Reformed Church of North America. If a communicant member of a church requests to be rebaptized, can CRC churches accommodate this request?

The answer is no. We should not rebaptize communicant or baptized members of Christian Reformed Churches. What follows is an explanation of why.

Biblical Guidance

Ephesians 4:1–6 says:

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit — just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call — one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

The key phrase that directly addresses rebaptism is Paul's words: "just as you were called to…one baptism." To become a communicant or baptized member of a Christian Reformed Church, a person must have been baptized — either as an infant by their parents, or as a believer upon their profession of faith. Every member of a CRC has been baptized. Paul's statement is clear: there is one baptism. This is rooted in the reality that there is one church, one faith, and one God and Father. The intent of this passage is the maintenance of the unity of the Spirit. Rebaptism undermines that unity.

Historical Background

The question of rebaptism is not new. The church has wrestled with it for nearly two millennia, and the consistent testimony of the historic, catholic, and Reformed church is that baptism is once-for-all. The modern practice of rebaptism does not arise from Scripture or from historic Christianity; it emerges from specific movements that departed from the church's understanding of the sacrament.

1. The Early Church: One Baptism as the Apostolic Teaching

From the earliest centuries, Christians understood baptism as an unrepeatable sacrament because it signified God's once-for-all act of cleansing, regeneration, and incorporation into the church. No orthodox church father taught that baptism should be repeated.¹

In the 4th century, the Donatist controversy made rebaptism a major issue.² The Donatists argued that baptisms performed by morally compromised clergy were invalid and needed to be done again. The wider church rejected this, insisting that the validity of baptism rests not on the holiness of the minister but on Christ himself.³

Augustine articulated the principle that became standard Christian doctrine: "The efficacy of the sacrament depends on Christ, not on the one administering it."⁴ If a baptism was done with water in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, it was valid and never to be repeated.

This conviction is embedded in the Nicene Creed (AD 381): "We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins."⁵ This line didn't arise in a vacuum — it was written specifically to reject the idea of rebaptism.

2. The Medieval Church: Continuity of the One-Baptism Practice

Even through the doctrinal confusion of the medieval period, the church maintained the ancient consensus: baptism is administered once,⁶ and a valid Trinitarian baptism is never repeated.⁷ The medieval church may have erred in many areas, but it never abandoned the catholic teaching of one baptism.

3. The Magisterial Reformation: Calvin, Luther, and the Reformed Confessions

The Protestant Reformers did not introduce a new doctrine of baptism; they recovered the biblical and ancient one. Both Luther and Calvin rejected rebaptism because it undermines the nature of baptism as God's act and God's promise.⁸

Calvin argued that baptism is a sign and seal of God's covenant; that God's covenant promises are not repealed, redone, or repeated; and therefore that baptism cannot be repeated without accusing God of insufficiency.

The Reformed confessions codify this clearly. The Belgic Confession, Article 34, rejects rebaptism and insists on the once-for-all nature of the sacrament.⁹ The Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A 69–74, frames baptism as God's covenant promise to us and our children — a promise that does not expire or require renewal through a second baptism.¹⁰ The CRC stands squarely within this magisterial, catholic tradition.

4. The Radical Reformation: The Origin of Modern Rebaptism

The first significant Christian movement to embrace rebaptism was the Anabaptist movement in the 16th century.¹¹ The Anabaptists rejected infant baptism entirely, declared all infant baptisms invalid, and insisted that every person must be baptized again as a believer. The Reformed churches rejected this movement because it denied God's initiative in salvation and covenant, treated baptism as the believer's testimony rather than God's promise, severed continuity with the church's historic teaching, and fractured the unity of the visible church by rejecting valid Christian baptisms.¹²

Modern evangelical rebaptism is a direct descendant of this radical movement, not of Scripture or historic Christianity.

5. The Baptist Tradition and Contemporary Evangelicalism

Later Baptist traditions kept the Anabaptist logic while softening its rhetoric. They argue that infant baptism is "ineffective," not sinful, and therefore insist on baptizing again upon profession of faith. This practice — now common in much of American evangelicalism — arises from a theological system that defines baptism primarily as the believer's personal declaration, not God's covenantal act.¹³ But this view remains outside the historic consensus of the early church, the global church, and the Reformed tradition.

6. The CRCNA's Place in This History

As a confessional Reformed denomination, the Christian Reformed Church stands firmly in the line of the early church fathers, the Nicene Creed, Augustine, the magisterial Reformers, and the Three Forms of Unity.¹⁴

The CRC recognizes any baptism performed with water in the Triune name as valid. Because baptism is God's act, not ours, it is not repeated. To rebaptize someone who was already Trinitarianly baptized would imply that God's first promise was insufficient, ineffective, or void — a conclusion at odds with Scripture, with history, and with our confessions.¹⁵

A Place for Christian Charity

We gladly affirm that many of our Baptist brothers and sisters are faithful Christians who love the Lord, honor Scripture, and seek to obey Christ in all things. They have a different understanding of when baptism should take place and what it primarily signifies, and we should be charitable and patient in those disagreements. We do not question their sincerity, their faith, or the fruit of the Holy Spirit in their congregations. Our disagreement on baptism is real, but it is not a question of orthodoxy or fidelity to Christ. It is a matter where faithful believers, reading the same Scriptures, draw different conclusions.

Yet this is not the core issue confronting our churches today. The real pastoral and theological problem arises when individuals who themselves accept the legitimacy of their first baptism — whether administered in infancy or upon profession of faith — seek to be baptized again, or when churches actively encourage such repetition. At that point, we are no longer dealing with a denominational difference of interpretation. We are dealing with a practice that implicitly denies what Scripture, the early church, and the Reformed tradition all affirm: that baptism is a once-for-all act, grounded in God's promise, not in the quality or intensity of our spiritual experience.

When a person says, "Yes, my first baptism was real and biblical," and then requests a second baptism because they feel they were not sincere enough, committed enough, or emotionally ready the first time, the underlying assumption is that baptism is chiefly a testimony of personal authenticity. This is precisely where the Reformed tradition must speak with clarity. Baptism is not a barometer of spiritual fervor; it is not a ceremonial reset button; it is not a symbolic recommitment of our faith. Baptism is God's act, God's promise, God's name placed upon His child. To repeat that sign is to imply that God's first promise was either defective or dependent on the maturity, clarity, or sincerity of the one receiving it. And such an implication contradicts the very nature of the covenantal God we proclaim at Prosper CRC — one who speaks, promises, seals, and sustains His people not on the basis of their performance, but on the basis of His steadfast faithfulness.

Furthermore, when churches promote or allow rebaptism for those already baptized in the Triune name, they unintentionally cultivate a pastoral environment where spiritual assurance becomes tied to repeated external acts. In that system, baptism becomes a diagnostic tool for evaluating one's internal state rather than a sacrament God uses to anchor His people in His unchanging grace. The sacraments exist to assure weak believers, not to be repeated every time those believers feel weak.

So yes — we must extend grace and honor to our Baptist neighbors. But charity cannot mean silence when God's promises are unintentionally diminished. Unity cannot mean permitting a practice that undermines both the catholic and Reformed understanding of one baptism. And humility does not require us to treat rebaptism as a harmless expression of personal piety when Scripture calls the church to guard its sacraments with clarity and conviction.

If Christ, through His church, has placed His name on a person once, we dare not suggest — either through our words or our practices — that He needs to do it again.

Paedobaptism and the God Who Always Initiates

At the heart of the Reformed understanding of baptism is a simple but profound conviction: God always makes the first move. He calls before we respond, He loves before we love, and He lays hold of His people long before they can lay hold of Him. Infant baptism, therefore, is not a sentimental tradition or a convenience of church life; it is a visible proclamation of the gospel's central truth that salvation begins with God, not us. It is a sign that God's promises are anchored in His character, not in our maturity, understanding, or ability to choose Him.

When we place the sign of the covenant on the child of believing parents, we are confessing that God's grace is prior, prevenient, and foundational. The child contributes nothing; the child understands nothing; the child cannot yet express love, obedience, or faith. And this is precisely the point: baptism is not first a declaration of human commitment — it is first a declaration of divine initiative. Paedobaptism dramatizes the truth that God binds Himself to His people before they can respond, and that our response — when it comes — is itself the fruit of His prior work. To baptize our children, then, is to say explicitly what Scripture teaches implicitly from cover to cover: "We love because He first loved us."

Moreover, infant baptism guards the church from reducing baptism to a testimony of personal authenticity or a symbolic expression of spiritual readiness. If baptism is fundamentally about my decision, then it is fragile — because my decisions change, my zeal ebbs and flows, and my spiritual experiences rise and fall. But if baptism is fundamentally about God's decision, then it is stable, enduring, and trustworthy. This is why the Reformed tradition has always opposed rebaptism: to repeat the sign is to suggest that God's initial action was incomplete or contingent upon later spiritual performance. At Prosper CRC, where we affirm the confessions and hold tightly to the biblical truth of God's sovereign initiative, paedobaptism is not simply permitted — it is the natural and necessary expression of our theology of grace.

Finally, the practice of infant baptism strengthens the unity of the covenant community. It proclaims that the children of believers are not spiritual outsiders waiting to prove themselves, but members of the visible church from the beginning, nurtured in the promises of God and called to later personally embrace those same promises. The entire congregation participates in that call, promising to instruct, guide, and pray for the baptized child so that they might one day publicly profess the very faith symbolized at the font. In this way, paedobaptism forms a community shaped by grace rather than performance, defined by God's initiative rather than human accomplishment. It teaches our people — young and old — that the Christian life is always a response to a God who has already moved toward us in covenant love.

Notes

¹ Hippolytus of Rome, Apostolic Tradition, in Paul F. Bradshaw, Maxwell E. Johnson, and L. Edward Phillips, The Apostolic Tradition: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002), 1–15; Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 857–860.

² Henry Bettenson and Chris Maunder, eds., Documents of the Christian Church, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 64–66 (Council of Arles, Canon 8).

³ J. Stevenson and W.H.C. Frend, eds., Creeds, Councils and Controversies, 3rd ed. (London: SPCK, 2011), 72–73 (Council of Nicaea, Canon 19).

⁴ Augustine, On Baptism, Against the Donatists, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Vol. 4, ed. Philip Schaff (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), 420–425; W.H.C. Frend, The Donatist Church: A Movement of Protest in Roman North Africa (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), 231–250.

⁵ Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, Vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983), 57–59 (Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, 381).

⁶ Gratian, Decretum, Distinction 4, Canon 95, in Augustine Thompson and James Gordley, trans., The Decretum of Gratian (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, forthcoming).

⁷ Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III, Q. 66, Art. 9, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947); Gary Macy, The Theologies of the Early Medieval Eucharist and Sacraments (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 88–90.

⁸ Martin Luther, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), in Three Treatises (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970), 148–150; John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), 4.15.16–18.

⁹ Belgic Confession, Article 34, in The Three Forms of Unity (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2011), 48–51.

¹⁰ Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A 69–74, in The Three Forms of Unity (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2011), 112–114.

¹¹ Conrad Grebel, "Letter to Thomas Müntzer," in Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers, ed. George H. Williams and Angel M. Mergal (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1957), 62–64; Schleitheim Confession (1527), in George H. Williams, The Radical Reformation (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962), 907–915.

¹² William R. Estep, The Anabaptist Story: An Introduction to Sixteenth-Century Anabaptism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 32–48; John Smyth, The Character of the Beast (1609), in The Works of John Smyth, ed. W.T. Whitley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915), 228–232.

¹³ The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), Chapter 29, in James M. Renihan, Edification and Beauty: The Practical Ecclesiology of the English Particular Baptists, 1675–1705 (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2008), 224–227.

¹⁴ Lyle D. Bierma, The Theology of the Heidelberg Catechism: A Reformation Synthesis (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 96–115.

¹⁵ Howard J. Vanderwell, ed., The Church Order Commentary (Grand Rapids: CRC Publications, 2011), 187–190; Christian Reformed Church in North America, Church Order and Its Supplements (Grand Rapids: CRC Publications, 2023), Articles 56–57.