Does God Play Dice?

What is this page about?

Most arguments about baptism and the Lord’s Supper are about Bible verses. This page asks something different: how big is the claim?

Christians everywhere believed three things for a very long time.

1. Babies are baptized. About the year 200 a writer speaks of it as a known practice. In the year 253 a meeting of sixty-six bishops spoke about it.
2. Baptism is “for the forgiveness of sins”. It gives something. It is not only a picture. These words were put into the creed in the year 381.
3. The bread and the cup of the Lord’s Supper are Christ’s body and blood. They are not only a picture. A Christian leader wrote this about the year 107. It is in every old service book in every language.

Many churches today teach the opposite. They say that the baptism of a baby is not a real baptism. They say that baptism is an outside sign of a decision already made. They say that the Lord’s Supper is only a remembrance and nothing is given.

That may be right. But see what it means for history. Jesus told his followers to do two things: to baptize and to keep his Supper. On these two things, every church on earth was wrong, in the same way, until the 1520s. And no lasting group anywhere did it differently.

This meets some very clear promises.

on this rock I will build my assembly [church], and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it

Matthew 16:18 · World English Bible

In simple words: On this rock I will build my church. The power of death will not win against it.

Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit… Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Matthew 28:19–20 · World English Bible

In simple words: Go and make people of all nations my followers. Baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And remember: I am with you always, to the end of time.

Notice where the promise is. It is in the same sentence as the command to baptize.

So did God keep his promise? Or did he leave his church to chance, and things went badly for 1,500 years? There are four possible answers.

The short answer

1. The promise is smaller than people sometimes say. But it is not nothing. Jesus never promised a church without sin. He never promised that every pastor would teach the truth. He did promise that his church would not be destroyed, that it would be there in every age, and that he would be with it in its baptizing. We can compare that promise with the record.

2. The evidence for the three teachings begins as early as the evidence for anything. About the year 107, a bishop on his way to be killed complained about false teachers who did not agree that the Lord’s Supper is “the flesh of our Saviour”. About 155, a Christian described Sunday worship to the emperor. He said that the bread and wine are “not common bread and common drink”. In 253, sixty-six bishops answered a question about babies. The question was not “Should we baptize them?” It was “Should we wait one week?”

3. The churches that agreed about this had separated from each other and did not speak to each other. This is the heart of this page. See Part 2.

4. Some people disagreed, but they left no lasting church. A man in North Africa about the year 203 wanted children to wait for baptism. His reason was that baptism is so powerful that it should not be used too early. A Frenchman in the 1000s argued about how Christ is present in the Supper. He took it back and died in the church. One group in France in the 1100s did say that the baptism of babies is nothing. It lasted about thirty years.

Other groups that truly disagreed with the church about other things kept their own churches alive for three or four hundred years, in hard times. Real disagreement in those days was loud, written down, and lasted long.

5. Both opposite ideas began in the same ten years, in one Swiss city. The first baptism of believers only, in a group that still exists, was in Zurich on 21 January 1525. The idea that the Lord’s Supper is only a remembrance was printed there in the same year. The man who printed it, Huldrych Zwingli, wrote openly: “I can only conclude that all the doctors have been in error from the time of the apostles.” In simple words: I must say that all the church teachers have been wrong since the time of the apostles. He did not pretend that anyone before him agreed.

6. The Reformers heard both ideas and said no. Luther and Zwingli argued hard about the Lord’s Supper in 1529. But both signed a sentence that says: “baptism of infants is right”. The Scottish Reformers wrote strongly against people who call the sacraments “naked and bare signs”. That means empty signs.

7. The argument of this page is Luther’s argument. Nobody cared less about tradition than Luther. He told the emperor that popes and church meetings had often been wrong. But in 1528 he wrote:

If the first, or child, baptism were not right, it would follow that for more than a thousand years there was no baptism or any Christendom - which is impossible.

Martin Luther, 1528

In simple words: Suppose the baptism of children was not right. Then for more than a thousand years there was no baptism and no Christian church. That is impossible.

Luther did not say that the church is right because it is old. He said this: Christ promised that the church would not die. So an idea that needs the church to have died must be wrong.

8. Each of the three other answers has a cost. See Part 3.

9. This page does not argue that old things are true. It uses four tests. How early is the teaching? Do the separated churches share it? Did anyone disagree for a long time? And does the supposed mistake mean that the church lacked something Christ gave, or only that it added something?

By these tests, the pope’s authority over all churches fails badly. So does the teaching about a place of cleaning after death. The churches divided over exactly these things. The same test that supports the baptism of babies shows that those teachings are local and late.

Churches that did not speak to each other

Suppose the argument was only this: “The Catholic church of the Middle Ages believed it for a long time.” That would be weak. One organisation can carry one mistake for hundreds of years. But the real argument is different.

The old church did not stay one organisation. It broke three times, and the breaks never healed.

• Year 431: the Church of the East. The Christians of the Persian Empire lived outside the Roman Empire. They went their own way. For a thousand years they were the most widely spread church on earth, from Iraq to India and China.
• Year 451: the Coptic, Syriac, Armenian and Ethiopian churches. They did not accept the words of a church meeting about Christ. Christian emperors treated them badly for it. Later they lived for hundreds of years under Muslim rulers.
• Year 1054: Greek and Latin. The churches of Rome and Constantinople put each other out. They disagreed about the pope’s authority, about some words in the creed, and about smaller things.

These churches wrote long books against each other. They liked to list each other’s faults. If one of them had baptized only adults, or had seen the Supper as only a remembrance, the others would have said so loudly. Not one ever did.

Here is a teacher of the Church of the East, in Persia, about the year 500. He writes about how Jesus spoke of the bread and the cup.

He did not style them a type or a similitude, but Body in reality and Blood in verity.

Narsai, a teacher of the Church of the East, about the year 500

In simple words: He did not call them a picture or a sign. He called them truly his body and truly his blood.

And the priests of the Coptic church of Egypt, separated since 451, still say before the Lord’s Supper that they believe that this is the life-giving flesh of Christ.

Someone may answer, “This only proves that the mistake is older than 431.” Yes. But see where that leads. The Church of the East lived outside the emperor’s power. The sixty-six bishops met in 253. That was sixty years before any emperor was a Christian. Every step back brings the supposed mistake closer to the apostles.

And here is something strange. The church of the 200s fought loudly about the date of Easter and about other things. Each fight left letters, meetings and divisions. But the beginning of the baptism of babies left nothing. Nobody protests. If it was a change, it was the biggest change in Christian history. And the only argument on record is whether to wait until the eighth day.

The three other answers, and what each costs

“The church fell away, and God restored it”

This answer is the most honest about the evidence. It agrees that the record all says the same. It says that the record is the record of a fallen church.

It has three costs.

1. It goes against “I am with you always” (Matthew 28:20).
2. It has almost no time to happen. The apostle John died about the year 100. His student Polycarp was killed about 155. Polycarp’s student Irenaeus wrote about 180 that the bread of the Supper is “no longer common bread”.
3. A real loss needs a real restoring. So this answer always comes with a person who restores. There are several such people, and they restore different things. Two of them brought back baptism for the forgiveness of sins. But that is one of the three teachings that this page says was never lost.

“The true church was hidden”

This answer is the most attractive. A person can keep his idea of baptism and also keep Christ’s promises. But it can be checked, and it fails the check.

People give a list of “hidden” groups from history. Ask one question about each group. If these people walked into the church that claims them today and explained their beliefs, could they join?

• One group was so sound in its teaching that a great church meeting in 325 accepted its ministers.
• One group baptized babies and had bishops. It separated for another reason.
• Two groups did not use water baptism at all. They believed that an evil god made the world of things. They also said no to marriage, to meat and to the Old Testament.
• One group, the Waldensians, was condemned for preaching without permission. No record says that they baptized anyone a second time. They joined the Reformation in 1532, and they baptize babies today.

Not one of them could join. Baptist historians have said this themselves since 1896.

People defend this answer by saying, “The winners wrote the history and burned the books of the losers.” But we do have writings of those groups. And we have thousands of pages of court records that carefully wrote down what the accused people said. An argument that explains missing evidence by saying “it was all destroyed” can prove anything.

“Only the Gospel was promised”

This is the strongest answer. Most careful people who disagree with this page believe it. It says: “Nobody thinks that the church disappeared. True believers lived in every century, inside the church. They were wrong about baptism, as many good Christians are wrong about things today.”

Three things can be said back.

1. Jesus did not say, “I will keep my believers.” He said, “I will build my church.” A church is a body of people who meet.
2. Churches that say “a baby’s baptism is no baptism” usually also say “a true church is a group of baptized believers”. Put these two together. Then for a thousand years there were no true churches anywhere. There is a way out: say that those were true churches with an imperfect baptism. But then the baptism was a baptism, and there is no reason to baptize anyone again.
3. Ask what this reading of the promise would not allow. It allows baptism to be lost for 1,300 years. It allows the whole church to be wrong about the Supper. A promise that fits any history gives nobody comfort.

Fair arguments against this page

“The truth is the truth, even if many people got it wrong.” Agreed. If the Bible clearly said that a baby’s baptism is nothing, 1,500 years of practice would not change that. But no verse says that babies must not be baptized. That is a conclusion that people draw, in the same way as the baptism of babies is a conclusion. And here the conclusion goes against a clear promise.

“Does this argument also prove the pope and the place of cleaning after death?” No. The churches that separated in 431, 451 and 1054 never held either of them. The East and the West divided over the pope’s authority.

“The church allowed slavery and killed false teachers for centuries. Long agreement proves nothing.” True, and this page says so. But those are sins of behaviour. Jesus never promised a church that behaves well. He promised a church that would keep what he gave it. And these things were never written into a creed or a service book.

“The Reformers said that the church had been wrong for centuries about being saved by faith. Why can I not say the same about baptism?” This is the best argument. The short answer is that the two claims are of different kinds. About baptism, there was one practice everywhere, and the man who disagreed in 1525 stood against all of it. About being saved by faith, there was no fixed teaching to stand against. The teachers of the Middle Ages disagreed among themselves. And the Reformers never said that Christians of the Middle Ages were not saved. They said that the matter had been badly explained. “Badly explained” and “never there at all” are claims of different size.

“God’s people have lost things before. The book of God’s law was lost until King Josiah found it.” That is a good point. But look at what Josiah did. He brought back a feast that people had forgotten, and he destroyed false gods. He did not say that every circumcision in Israel for six hundred years was nothing.

Check it yourself

1. Read Matthew 16:13-20, Matthew 28:16-20 and 1 Corinthians 11:23-26. What is promised, and to whom?
2. Read the letter of Cyprian and the sixty-six bishops from the year 253. It is free online. What is the question? What does nobody argue about?
3. Do this one. Were you taught that the baptism of babies is not baptism, or that the Lord’s Supper is only a symbol? Then ask your teacher politely, as a real question: “Where was the church that believed this between the years 200 and 1500?” You will get one of the three answers in Part 3. Now you can check it.