In John Bunyan’s Confession of my Faith and Reason for My Practice in Worship (1672),
34he provides at least eight reasons why he will not participate in communion with any but visible saints,
35by which he means professing believers who demonstrate piety.
36Following this limitation of the meal he defends his practice of open communion with several arguments. First, although circumcision was an initiating ordinance, baptism is not presented as “a token of the covenant” or “an entry marker” in the New Testament because “Baptism [in water] makes thee no member of the church, neither particular or universal: neither doth it make thee a visible saint; it therefore gives thee neither right to nor being of membership at all.”
37Second, the edification of the
34 John Bunyan is best known for his classic Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) and his vivid use of allegory and poetry. He was raised among the poor working class of England with little formal education.
After his conversion, he was baptized by immersion (ca. early 1650s) by John Gifford. Bunyan joined the Independent congregation at Bedford, which he later pastored from 1672 until his death. As a Calvinist Nonconformist, Bunyan held to the supreme authority of Scripture and landed in prison in two stints from 1660 to 1672 (at the Restoration of Charles II) and in 1676. Bunyan published over sixty books, dealing with issues such as grace, antinomianism, atonement, rejecting Quaker inner light, the relationship of the law to grace, and justification. According to James Leo Garrett Jr., Bunyan’s chief contribution to Baptist theology is his case for open communion and open membership, surveyed in this section. See James Leo Garrett Jr., Baptist Theology: A Four-Century Study (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2009), 70;
William H. Brackney, A Genetic History of Baptist Thought (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2004), 107–14; Harry L. Poe, “John Bunyan,” in Baptist Theologians, ed. Timothy. George and David S. Dockery (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1990), 26–48; Christopher Hill, A Tinker and a Poor Man: John Bunyan and His Church, 1628-1688 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989). Historians have debated Bunyan’s status as a Baptist, given his open communion views. This dissertation, along with the aforementioned sources, assumes that Bunyan’s affirmation of believer’s baptism by immersion as being consistent with the NT is sufficient to consider him as part of the Baptist tradition. For one look at Bunyan’s Baptist status, see Harry L. Poe, “John Bunyan’s Controversy with the Baptists,” Baptist History and Heritage 23, no. 2 (1988): 25–
26.The fascinating context of Bunyan’s debate with Henry Danvers, Thomas Paul, and William Kiffin is outlined by Duesing, Henry Jessey, 219–32. Naylor covers the debate in Naylor, Calvinism, Communion, and the Baptists, 94–106.
35 Hilburn has ten arguments from Bunyan. This section combines two of the arguments.
Hilburn, “The Lord’s Supper,” 83–84.
36 John Bunyan, “A Reason of My Practice in Worship,” in Works of John Bunyan, ed. George Offor (London: Blackie and Son, 1862), 2:602–3.
37 Bunyan, “A Reason of My Practice in Worship,” 2:605–6. Given Bunyan’s arguments, several clarifications are in order on the purpose of baptism and the Lord’s Supper in Bunyan’s thought.
Baptism, he maintains, is for the believer a means of having God’s promises confirmed and visibly
confessing faith. Although believers in the New Testament were presumably all baptized, this was owing to their clarity on baptism. Following the precedent is not required today (608-9). After William Kiffin responded to Bunyan, Bunyan responded with "Differences in Water Baptism No Bar to Communion"
(1673). In that defense, Bunyan further explains the relationship between the believer, baptism, and the church with three points: (1) the believer’s faith is the door to the church rather than faith with baptism or the mutual consent of the church being required for joining a church (2:619); (2) Christ never commanded baptism; and (3) baptism is nowhere revealed to be a church ordinance or a practiced required by primitive
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church should be preserved before the institution of water baptism. If baptism divides, then the duty of the church is to maintain unity on grounds of visible sainthood.
38Third, one may have the doctrine of baptism without the practice. It is the doctrine of baptism—
the heart circumcision—that grounds unity.
39Fourth, the church should commune with and receive those God communes with and receives (Rom 15:1-7).
40Fifth, baptism is an indifferent matter of “outward circumstance,” entailing that failure to participate in it cannot “unchristian” a person.
41Sixth, Love is too important to break over baptism, because love is that which lets the world know Christians belong to Christ (John 13:34- 35).
42Seventh, Paul called the church at Corinth carnal for dividing over things of more
churches for inclusion. To this third point, Bunyan writes, "If baptism respect believers, as particular persons only; if it respects their own conscience only; if it make a man no visible believer to me, then it hath nothing to do with church-membership" (2:629). Furthermore, although a community which fails to celebrate the Lord’s Supper is not a church due to the meal’s constitutive function, a community that fails to celebrate baptism loses nothing corporately because baptism is not constitutive of the local church. John Bunyan, “Differences in Judgment about Water Baptism, No Bar to Communion,” in Works of John Bunyan, ed. George Offor (London: Blackie and Son, 1862), 2:638–39.
38 Bunyan, “A Reason of My Practice in Worship,” 2:609.
39 Bunyan explains, “I am bold therefore to have communion with such (Heb 6:1-2), because they also have the doctrine of baptisms. . . . I distinguish between the doctrine and practice of water baptism; the doctrine being that which by the outward sign is presented to us, or which by the outward circumstance of the act is preached to the believer: viz. The death of Christ; My death with Christ; also his resurrection from the dead, and mine with him to newness of life.” Bunyan, “A Reason of My Practice in Worship,” 2:609.
40 Bunyan, “A Reason of My Practice in Worship,” 2:610. Bunyan’s citation of Rom 15 is interesting given the predominance of citations from Rom 14:1-7 from Jessey, Hall, and Spurgeon.
41 Bunyan, “A Reason of My Practice in Worship,” 2:611. Harry Poe claims that Bunyan saw strict/close communion as a “functional distortion of the gospel.” By the end of the essay, Poe presents Bunyan as a pastoral example of one who did not let secondary matters get in the way of evangelism. See Poe “John Bunyan’s Controversy with the Baptists,” 25, 33–34.
42 The tinker’s passion is evident: He writes, “Strange! Take two Christians equal in all points but this, nay, let one go beyond the other far, for grace and holiness; yet this circumstance of water shall drown and sweep away all his excellencies, not counting him worthy of that reception, that with hand and heart shall be given to a novice in religion, because he consents to water.” Bunyan, “A Reason of My Practice in Worship,” 2:612–13.
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importance than baptism (e.g., which teacher they followed).
43Eighth, it is wrong to separate from visible saints or to treat them with contempt.
44Turning to the offensive, Bunyan claims that strict communion is
uncharitable, it denies the validity of the (mistaken) consciences of others, and it shuts those with whom some disagree out of churches. For this dissertation, Bunyan’s most significant argument for allowing the conscience of others to weigh on the execution of circumstantial laws regards Hezekiah’s Passover (2 Chr 30:13-27). Hezekiah did not forbid uncircumcised Israelites from participating in Passover. Then, as Bunyan interprets the story, God evidenced his approval of Hezekiah’s actions in providing forgiveness when Hezekiah prayed for it.
45Bunyan read the celebration of Passover in Joshua 5 along similar lines. He writes, the “church in the wilderness received members, the way which not prescribed by, but directly against the revealed mind of God.”
46He presumes
throughout the explanation that the Israelites held Passover in the wilderness with uncircumcised Israelites. Thus, Bunyan thinks the legislative prohibition against the uncircumcised receiving communion in the Old Testament was not pecuniary.
Nevertheless, he calls on strict communion advocates to produce a text—with the force of Exodus 12:48— that legislates baptism as prerequisite to communion in the New
Testament.
43 Bunyan thinks Paul discounted the importance of baptism based on Paul’s claim that the Lord did not send him to baptize but to preach the gospel (cf. 1 Cor 1:17). Bunyan, “A Reason of My Practice in Worship,” 2:613.
44 Bunyan, “A Reason of My Practice in Worship,” 2:614–15. The substance of these arguments are outlined by Naylor in Calvinism, Communion, and the Baptists, 98–100.
45 Bunyan, “A Reason of My Practice in Worship,” 2:611. Elsewhere, Bunyan adds, “That if laws and ordinances of old have been broken, and the breach of them born with, when yet the observation of outward things was more strictly commanded than now, if the profit and edification of the church come in competition; how much more, may not we have communion, church communion, when no law of God is transgressed thereby. And note, that all this while I plead not, as you, for persons unprepared, but godly, and such as walk with God.” See Bunyan, “Differences in Judgment about Water Baptism,” 2:631.
46 Bunyan, “Differences in Judgment about Water Baptism,” 2:625. When explaining how the Hezekiah example relates to strict communion, Bunyan claims that, contra William Kiffin, Passover was not a type of the Lord’s Supper; it was a “type of the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Cor 5:7; 2:630).
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Response to objections. Bunyan also responds to several of his opponents’
objections. To the argument that Matthew 28:18-20 requires baptism before learning all else Christ commanded, Bunyan claims that this view would require the convert to do nothing until after baptism, “which is absurd.”
47To the pattern of the early church to receive the baptized believers into the church (Acts 2:41), Bunyan answers that the passages merely describes what happened. Even if the example is prescriptive, he appeals to the communion of the uncircumcised in the wilderness as evidence that God would overlook the lack of baptism.
48To the claim that baptism is a first step of obedience and fruit of faith, Bunyan claims that true faith acts according to its light and “is not bound to any outward circumstance.”
49To the claim that baptism is a foundational doctrine
according to Hebrews 6:1-2, he claims that this Scripture refers to the doctrine of baptism but not the act of water.
50To the argument that Paul recognized the Galatians as
Christians in part because they were baptized (Gal 3:28), Bunyan claims that Paul’s knowledge of the church is unusual and fails to provide sufficient warrant for excluding the unbaptized from communion.
51To the argument that baptism is assumed to be understood and practiced by the recipients of Paul’s and Peter’s epistles, Bunyan retorts that even if this is true, it does not ground strict communion.
5247 Bunyan, “Differences in Judgment about Water Baptism,” 2:635.
48 Bunyan, “Differences in Judgment about Water Baptism,” 2:636. On this point, see Duesing, Henry Jessey, 240–41.
49 Bunyan, “Differences in Judgment about Water Baptism,” 2:637. Poe argues that Bunyan could not approve of what he viewed as an elevation of religious ceremonies as a nonconformist. The strict Baptists argued too similarly to those who demanded subscription to the Book of Common Prayer. See Poe,
“John Bunyan’s Controversy with the Baptists,” 30–31.
50 Bunyan, “Differences in Judgment about Water Baptism,” 2:637.
51 Bunyan, “Differences in Judgment about Water Baptism,” 2:638.
52 Bunyan, “Differences in Judgment about Water Baptism,” 2:638.