Against Landmarkism

Introduction

Text: Ephesians 4:5 “One Lord, one faith, one baptism,”

Back in the mid 1800’s right around the time of the Civil War, a lot of debates arose around the topic of baptism in the Baptist churches. It was during this time that Alexander Campbell a baptist preacher began to teach that baptism was required for salvation and split off to form the disciples of Christ and the churches of Christ. In reaction to Campbelism, a man by the name of James R Graves came up with a theology of Baptism to combat Campbellism (Explain connection). Graves, Amos Dayton and to a lesser degree James Pendleton spurred a new movement on called Landmarkism. Graves was concerned that Baptist churches were allowing non-baptists to full their pulpits, cooperated with non-baptists in certain church meetings and accepting what he called alien immersion.

According to Fred Mortiz,

Alien immersion” is the practice of a Baptist church receiving members who have been immersed upon their profession of faith in Christ, but that immersion would have been administered by a Presbyterian, Methodist, or clergy from some other non-Baptist denomination.

Graves had observed a paedobaptist, probably a presbyterian, who immersed believers in one service, then poured on others while sprinkling those on the bank of the river. He questioned how these different acts could constitute the one baptism in Ephesians 4:5 “One Lord, one faith, one baptism,” He also questioned how a person who wasn’t baptized biblically could baptize others. His conclusion: Only Baptist immersion constitutes a valid baptism- only immersion by a baptist.

Tenets of Landmarkism

Baptist Churches are the only true churches in the world.

The true church is only a local, visible assembly.

Only a church can do churchly acts.

Baptist churches have existed in every age.

e. Since Baptist local churches are the only legitimate church and the Bride of Christ is the local church, only baptists are part of the Bride of Christ.

The concepts of Landmarkism were also promoted in Baptist Histories such as the Trail of Blood and James Carrol’s Baptist History Vol 1 and 2 both of which were used as a textbook at my Alma Mater. There are serious issues with claiming a succession of Baptist churches from the beginnings largely because of the groups that have to be included to do so. The Trail of blood includes groups like the Montanists, the Paulicans, and the Novations in our heritage. The Montanists would rather be included in the line of Pentecostalism as they were condemned as heretics for their ecstatic prophesies which contradicted scripture. The Paulicans held gnostic views that the physical world was evil and the spiritual good, rejected the entire OT, believed the sacraments of baptism and the Lord supper were just allegories and not actual rites of the church. Novatianism held to an episcopal polity and possibly baptized infants. Just because a group practiced baptism by immersion and rebaptized those who were not biblically baptized does not mean they were baptists.

What matters is not a succession of baptist churches, but the continuance of the truths that we hold. Groups held these truths in part here and in part there but the biblical truths that baptists hold to have been held by since the beginning. No one of those groups held them perfectly as we do today.

I have found many churches who would hold to the first four points of these views but are afraid to claim the last tenet though it is the only logical conclusion of their beliefs. So they would deny being a Baptist Brider, while holding all the beliefs of a baptist brider. The honest truth is that this view is held by most IFB churches here in Oklahoma because of its influence in the churches of Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas which were ground zero for Landmarkism.

This doctrinal position has impacted church practice here in Oklahoma because some churches will only accept you into membership if you were baptized by a baptist. So even if you were saved by repentance and faith, baptized by immersion but if it was in another denomination, you would have to be rebaptized to join the church. So is this what we should be doing as a church? When I sit down with someone about church membership should I question who did their baptism to determine it was legitimate? What I hope to show tonight is that Bad theology breeds bad polity. If we believe the wrong things, our church will practice the wrong things. You might think that this is an insignificant doctrine, but it is just as important as baptism is itself. If it is important to be baptized, then wouldn’t it be a serious evil to tell someone their baptism isn’t legitimate when it is or to make them believe their baptism is fine when it isn’t. Either way, we must know what scripture says about this issue.

What is the One baptism?

Ephesians 4:5 “One Lord, one faith, one baptism,”

What is this one baptism? As I have mentioned in previous sermons, there are two types of baptism. Baptism in water and Baptism in the Spirit. The book of Ephesians is largely about our inclusion into the body of Christ. The body of Christ is all believers everywhere. In Ephesians 1:22–23 Paul defines the body of Christ as the church “And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.” This cannot be the physical local church that he is speaking of. So when we get to Ephesian 4, Paul is emphasizing the unity that believers have. There is only one body. There is only one Holy Spirit that we all share. THere is only one hope of salvation and there is only one Baptism. All of these truths apply to every Christian.

Let me ask you a simple question: do all Christians get baptized? The answer is no. They should, they are commanded to but they don’t. So how can we all share this one baptism if some have never been baptized. Are we to conclude they aren’t saved. The baptism in this passage is not water baptism, but spirit baptism.

Notice how Paul joins the idea of baptism and being put into the body of Christ in.

1 Corinthians 12:13 “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.”

This body again refers to all believers. Notice Paul’s use of we in the text. Paul was a member of the church of Antioch not the church of Corinth. So what is this body that we all are part of? It is the body of Christ. How are we baptized into this one body? by one Spirit according to Paul. So the administrator of this one baptism is God Himself through a spiritual baptism by which we are placed into the body of Christ.

This is where landmarkists often go astray because they define this baptism as water baptism and the body as only local churches.

What does Baptism Represent?

In the last two messages, we have taken a stand against infant baptism because only for those who have been saved by repentance and faith alone in the gospel of Jesus Christ and against sprinkling and affusion because the clear example of scripture is that baptism is only by immersion into water.

When we are talking about rebaptizing those who were saved and baptized by immersion in another denomination it is important to remember what baptism is intended to symbolize. Baptist symbolizes our union with Christ in his death, burial and resurrection. We hit on this last week but I want us to make sure we understand the implications of that.

Romans 6:3–4 “Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”

So if Baptism is a symbol of our union with Christ in his death burial and resurrection, let me ask you a few questions to draw the connection here:

How many times did Jesus die?

How many times did you need to get saved?

Does it matter if you were led to the Lord by someone who isn’t a Baptist?

Can you lose your salvation?

Is baptism merely a symbol of your dedication to God?

Jesus died according to Hebrews 10:10 “By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” Jesus only had to die one time. If baptism is a picture of Jesus death, burial and resurrection what message am I sending when I get baptized more than once. Obviously this is assuming you were baptized by immersion after placing your faith in Jesus. Rebaptism for any other reason is a lie being told to the people.

How many times did you need to be united with Christ? The language of death in Romans 6 is permanent. While the flesh remains, the old man is dead and he ain’t coming back again. You do not need to be reunited with Christ. Romans 8:38–39 “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Does it matter if you were led to the Lord by someone else who isn’t a Baptist? If it does, this adds an extra qualification to salvation. It is no longer by grace through faith alone in Christ alone. So if your salvation can’t be made illegitimate by the person leading you to the lord, can you baptism which represents that salvation. Imagine this scenario:

What if you were saved in a baptist church and baptized by immersion by your pastor for the last ten years. Later on you find out that he has been living in homosexuality and he has walked away from the faith and is now an atheist. Does that make your salvation or your baptism illegitimate? Is there some power in the man that was necessary or is the power in God?

4. Can you lose your salvation? This ties in with the question how many times did you need to be saved. But if baptism pictures our salvation, getting rebaptised says that I must have lost it and just recently got it back. We know that is not the case. John 3:15–16 “That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

5. Is baptism merely a symbol of your dedication to God? We did say that according to scripture baptism is a pledge of our allegiance to Christ, but that is not the primary picture of baptism. This allegiance is ultimately something you said when you got saved. While you may need to rededicate your life to Christ, you do not need to rechange you allegiance to Christ. In Romans 6:17–18 “But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.” your salvation settled that for you, now you just have to live it out.

Does the person doing the baptizing matter?

Those who hold to landmarkism would say that it is important who does the baptism because only those who are authorized to do baptism can perform that baptism. They would argue that there has been an unbroken line of pure churches since the apostles. As I have mentioned in order to do so they have had to include heretics into their lineage. Men whose doctrine by far was not pure doctrine. Listen to the words of Thomas Armitage a Baptist preacher around the same time as Graves was promoting Landmarkism:

“The attempt to show that any religious body has come down from the Apostles an unchanged people is of itself an assumption of infallibility, and contradicts the facts of history. Truth only is changeless, and only as any people have held to the truth in its purity and primitive simplicity has the world had an unchanging religion. The truth has been held by individual men and scattered companies, but never in unbroken continuity by any sect as such. Sect after sect has appeared and held it for a time, then has destroyed itself by mixing error with the truth; again, the truth has evinced its divinity by rising afresh in the hands of a newly organized people, to perpetuate its diffusion in the earth. “It is enough to show that what Christ’s churches were in the days of the Apostles, that the Baptist churches of today find themselves. The truths held by them have never died since Christ gave them, and in the exact proportion that any people have maintained these truths they have been the true Baptists of the world. The writer, therefore, refused to be bound in his investigations by an iron obligation to show a succession of people who have held all the principles, great and small, of any sect now existing--no more and no less.”

I believe that the truth has been preserved by God, but that does not imply that pure churches have always existed. It is impossible to prove connection to the apostles directly accept through very muddy waters, but we know that we have the aposltes traditions in our hands. So for the same reasons I reject Catholic apostolic successionism, I reject Baptist successionism.

Does it matter who baptized you? Paul in addressing the divisions in Corinth argues against such thinking in 1 Corinthians 1:13–14 “Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you, but Crispus and Gaius;” The Church of Corinth clearly thought it was important who baptized you, but Paul feels the need to correct this thinking. Notice how Paul corrects it.

Is Christ divided? Is there any division in the body of Christ spiritually? while there may be divisions between baptists and presbyterians and methodists here on earth, the body of Christ is not divided.

Was Paul crucified for you? Here he drives home the connection between baptism and its meaning. Was it the man who baptized you who died for your sins.

Were you baptized in the name of Paul? Is your baptism about being brought under the authority of the man baptizing or under the authority of Christ?

Paul did not baptize most of his converts personally. vs 14 If it was important that they be able to trace their apostolic connection, then he wouldn’t have delegated that job to his partners like Silas, Timothy and Titus.

As a bonus point here: notice in vs 17 Paul says God sent him to preach the gospel, but he does not include baptism in the gospel.

Conclusion

So let’s talk about what would actually constitute an alien baptism. The idea of an alien immersion did exist in the early church and church fathers were against it, but what did they mean by alien immersion. If you go back through the writings of Tertullian, Neander, and Cyprian, alien immersion to them meant the baptism of heretics. A heretic it must be remembered was someone who was excommunicated; thereby declaring that they were not truly born again. So alien immersion did not have to do with other denominational groups in the ancient church. So to reject the baptism of other evangelical denominations would be to declare that they are not saved. Biblically, the only baptisms that could be considered alien would be those that were performed on an unbeliever which would include infant baptism, baptisms in a church that didn’t preach the gospel or someone who was baptized but not saved. This form of alien baptism unfortunately happens even in our independent baptist churches because of easy believism and high pressure on children to make a profession before they are ready to be saved.

The other form of alien baptism would be someone who was baptized in the wrong way. This would include sprinkling and affusion. The pouring of water itself does not make one baptized and as we have seen sprinkling does not either.

it is only alien when it is the symbol of an alien gospel, is for an alien purpose, or is administered to an alien subject (unbeliever)- Ross

Should you get rebaptized to join another baptist church? I would say no. You should refuse because to do so would be to demean and devalue the baptism you have already received. Should you get rebaptized because you took a trip to the Jordan and wanted to be baptized in the Jordan? The answer is again no for the same reasons. Should you get rebaptized because you walked away from the Lord for a period of time and now you want to rededicate your life to the Lord? The answer is still no because rededication is not the primary picture of baptism.

While Baptists and Anabaptists have often rebaptized those who came to faith from another denomination or were only sprinkled as an infant; we should not be rebaptizing for any other reasons since to do so tears down the importance and the picture of our baptism.