While the previous section surveys the arguments propounded by the open communion advocates without critique, this section takes a first step toward evaluation by briefly listing the strongest arguments for the view.
97Those arguments that appeal most strongly to Scripture and sound reason are given privilege in this section and subsequent summaries.
The strongest argument for open communion is the appeal to the lack of an explicit New Testament command that baptism precede communion. Open communion advocates have uniformly conceded their willingness to adopt close communion if they could be shown that Scripture requires it.
98Secondly, most of the authors appealed to Romans 14-15 for the arguments that Christians should receive all those Christ has received and to bear with the weak.
99If Paul intends this command to require local churches to receive Christians from outside their membership to the Lord’s Supper despite issues of conscience regarding the ordinances, then this argument has weight.
97 Several other contemporary proponents of open communion include Robert L. Saucy, The Church in God’s Program (Chicago: Moody Press, 1972), 231; Ray Van Neste, “The Lord’s Supper in the Context of the Local Church,” in The Lord’s Supper: Remembering and Proclaiming Christ until He Comes, ed. Thomas R. Schreiner and Matthew R. Crawford, NAC Studies in Bible and Theology, vol. 10 (Nashville: B & H, 2010), 379–86; G. R. Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1973), 392; Tyler, Baptism: We’ve Got It Right and Wrong, 137; G. Todd Wilson, “Why Baptists Should Not Rebaptize Christians from Other Denominations,” in Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, ed. Walter B. Shurden, Proclaiming the Baptist Vision 5 (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 1999), 40–47;
Thomas Clifton, “Fencing the Table,” in Shurden, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, 70–71; Freeman, Contesting Catholicity, 377–78; I. Howard Marshall, Last Supper and Lord’s Supper (Vancouver, Canada:
Regent College Publishing, 1980), 156. For a thoughtful paedobaptist perspective that claims to require baptism (of any mode) yet allows celebration of the Lord’s Supper outside the gathered church, see J. Todd Billings, Remembrance, Communion, and Hope: Rediscovering the Gospel at the Lord’s Table (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 153–54. While not a proponent of open communion, Allison provides his own list of strongest arguments for open communion in Gregg R. Allison, Sojourners and Strangers: The Doctrine of the Church, Foundations of Evangelical Theology (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012), 403–4. Though this section was developed without consultation of Allison’s list, significant overlap exists.
98 For a contemporary appeal to this point, see Van Neste, “The Lord’s Supper in the Context of the Local Church,” 381.
99 For a contemporary expression of this argument, see Van Neste, "The Lord's Supper in the Context of the Local Church," 384–85. Subsumed in this argument is the first of the strong arguments for open communion that Allison mentions. He writes, “Because baptism is not necessary for salvation, non- baptized Christians may participate in the Lord’s Supper.” Allison, Sojourners and Strangers, 403. Allison also refers to Hall’s argument that “no man or set of men, are entitled to prescribe as an indispensable condition of communion what the New Testament has not enjoined as a condition of salvation.” Hall Jr., Terms of Communion, v.
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Third, if the Lord’s Supper is given primarily to demonstrate unity amongst all Christians, open communion has a strong case. Fourth, the claim that to exclude a professing Christian from the Lord’s Supper is to unchristian, or effectively to excommunicate the Christian, is a significant argument for open communion. Open communion advocates have generally seen a direct connection between one’s ability to receive the Lord’s Supper and the sincerity of profession of faith in Christ, despite various views on baptism.
100Two other arguments deserve mention, though most of the advocates of open communion have not espoused them. John Bunyan’s claim that baptism is a personal matter rather than an initiating ordinance into the church, if true, should lead churches to practice open communion. If baptism has no connection to the local church and may be dismissed by those who do not feel compelled to be baptized without error or sin, no more debate would be required. Finally, Robert Hall’s argument that the New Testament principles, practices, and patterns are no longer applicable is significant. Hall admits that the New Testament presents new believers being baptized in Acts and assumes baptized believers compose the churches in the epistles. Yet, due to the incursion of error in the Patristic era, he is willing to tolerate paedobaptism, while claiming that the New Testament explicitly teaches believer’s baptism by immersion.
101The irony of Hall’s position stems from the fact that his methodology would render moot any explicit New Testament commands for close communion—if one did exist—even while he appeals to the lack of such a command to justify his views. The fact that other open communion
100 For a contemporary expression of this argument, see Van Neste, “The Lord’s Supper in the Context of the Local Church,” 385.
101 Van Neste makes a similar point, when he claims “The passage [Acts 2:41-42] does not speak to the issue where some believers understand baptism differently.” Van Neste, “The Lord’s Supper in the Context of the Local Church,” 382.
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advocates have not generally followed either pastor’s line of thought reveals that both arguments require caution.
Arguments for Close Communion
Close communion enjoys a long heritage in Baptist thought. This section surveys the writings of several of the early proponents of close communion, including William Kiffin (1616-1701), Abraham Booth (1734-1806), Andrew Fuller (1754-1815), Joseph Kinghorn (1766-1832), and Thomas Baldwin (1753-1825).
102Similar to the section on open communion, this section surveys a greater number of proponents in order to give voice to their distinctive emphases. Due to the number of advocates surveyed in this section, each section focuses on those aspects of the proponent’s thought that are distinctive in order to avoid redundancy where possible. Each of these theologians’
arguments overlap with the constructive proposal of this dissertation. However, what follows helps to elucidate the unique contribution of the thesis of this dissertation, because none of the authors surveyed here develop the biblical-theological argument for close communion based on the relationship between the old covenant and new covenant signs. In fact, whenever the close communion proponents surveyed here assert the necessity of baptism for participation in the Lord’s Supper based on the necessity of circumcision for participation in Passover, they merely assert the point without argumentation. This dissertation seeks to supply what these Baptist forbears have believed but have not argued.
Several distinctive emphases appear in the following survey of close
communion arguments. Kiffin emphasizes that baptism serves as the pledge of covenant entry and initiating sign of identification with Christ, which by nature should precede the
102 Naylor’s seminal survey of communion among the English Baptists echoes the fact that the close communionists were largely Particular Baptists. Naylor claims “evidence fails to show that Arminian Baptists [General Baptists] entered into debate on this subject.” Naylor, Calvinism, Communion, and the Baptists, 106.
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Lord’s Supper. Booth emphasizes the regulative role of Scripture over all of the church’s worship practices and seeks to demonstrate hermeneutical and methodological
faithfulness requires close communion. Baldwin emphasizes that distinctions between the old covenant people of God and new covenant people of God lead to the close
communion position. Fuller emphasizes that Christ instituted the ordinances to occur together in connection to each other as positive institutions. Kinghorn emphasizes that if the ordinances are mishandled, as is the case with a mixed communion of the baptized with the unbaptized, the constitution of the local church changes from that which Christ instituted.
William Kiffin
The title page of the 1681 edition of Sober Discourse carries a lengthy subtitle:
103“Wherein is proved by Scripture, the example of the primitive times, and the practice of all that have professed the Christian religion: that no unbaptized person may be regularly admitted to the Lord’s Supper.”
104In a short forward to Kiffin’s Sober Discourse entitled, “To the Christian Reader,” Kiffin presents his primary argument:
103 Pastor, leather merchant, and respected statesman, William Kiffin, found favor in the eyes of four English kings, during whose reigns he lived. He pastored the Particular Baptist church at
Devonshire Square for near sixty years as a Dissenter. Although converted under Puritan preaching, his debates over infant baptism with Daniel Featley (1582-1645) solidified his Baptist theology. The shift in theology resulted in Kiffin joining the Jacob-Lanthrop-Jessey church in 1638 and later aligning with the Baptists, as pastor of the Devonshire congregation in 1644. His lucrative career and magisterial influence afforded him freedoms that other Baptists did not enjoy. He was appointed assessor of taxes for Middlesex in 1647 by Parliament, member of Parliament by Lord Cromwell from 1656-1658, and unofficial economic adviser for England by Charles II in 1660, and Alderman by James II in 1687. Yet, Kiffin suffered his own share of losses, being predeceased by three children, his wife, and two grandchildren. Kiffin is one of the noted primary authors of the First and Second London Confessions (1644 and 1677/89 respectively). Tom J. Nettles, The Baptists: Key People Involved in Forming a Baptist Identity, vol. 1, Beginnings in Britain (Fearn, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2005), 129–45; B. A. Ramsbottom, Stranger than Fiction: The Life of William Kiffin (Harpenden, England: Gospel Standard Trust, 1989); B. R. White, “William Kiffin: Baptist Pioneer and Citizen of London,” Baptist History and Heritage 2, no. 2 (1967): 91–103; Ronald Angelo Johnson, “The Peculiar Ventures of Particular Baptist Pastor William Kiffin and King Charles II of
England,” Baptist History and Heritage 44, no. 1 (2009): 60–71. Kiffin’s longest writing is that surveyed in this section. Garrett Jr., Baptist Theology, 65–67. Daniel Featley is the “former official of the High
Commission and an Anglican clergyman,” who in 1645 submitted to British Parliament a work entitled The Dippers Dipt in opposition to the First London Confession. In this work, Featley identified all Baptists as revolutionary Anabaptists, in order to convince Parliament not to tolerate Baptists. See Hilburn, “The Lord’s Supper,” 43–44.
104 See Thomas Paul and William Kiffin, Some Serious Reflections on That Part of Bunion’s
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If this ordinance of baptism be the pledge of our entrance into covenant with God, and of the giving up our selves unto him in the solemn bond of religion, and we are hereby dedicated unto the service of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, then must it of necessity be the first ordinance, before that of the Lord’s Supper.
105He follows this helpful statement with a summary of the significance of baptism. He calls baptism “the first foundation of our visible profession of Christ; for as repentance is the visible initiating grace; so baptism is called baptism of repentance as the first initiating ordinance.”
106With these matters in place, Kiffin begins the body of his work.
Kiffin opens his Sober Discourse with several arguments for close communion. He initially focuses on 2 Thessalonians 3:6, where Paul commends the church for keeping the ordinances as he delivered them.
107Applied to the case at hand, this verse commends regulating the worship of God by Scripture, which Kiffin aims to do.
108The author then provides four truths that ground strict communion. They are (1) believers are duty-bound to be baptized in water upon confession of their faith;
109(2)
Confession of Faith Touching Communion with Unbaptized Persons, 2nd ed. (London: Printed for Francis Smith, 1673), 5. What exactly Kiffin intends by his emphasis of “regularly admitted” remains unclear.
Before his more substantial Sober Discourse (1681), William Kiffin had already written the preface to Thomas Paul’s Some Serious Reflections (1673), which was a brief answer to Bunyan’s Confession of My Faith and Reason for My Practice (1672). In the preface to Paul’s work, Kiffin acknowledges that he has greater respect for paedobaptists who follow the ordinances as they see them than for those who allow baptism to remain undone—advocates of open communion. By the time Kiffin took up his pen to write a full length defense of strict communion Bunyan had also published Differences in Water Baptism No Bar to Communion (1673).
105 William Kiffin, A Sober Discourse of the Right to Church-Communion: Wherein Is Proved by Scripture, the Example of the Primitive Times, and the Practice of All That Have Professed the Christian Religion: That No Unbaptized Person May Be Regularly Admitted to the Lord’s Supper (London: George Larkin, 1681), vi. The first pages of text in the section “To the Christian Reader” are not numbered. This statement is found on vi when counting the pages with text.
106 This quote is found in the forward, “To the Christian Reader” in Kiffin, Sober Discourse, viii. Kiffin also clearly affirms both divine and human action occurring in baptism by stating “we are sacredly initiated, and consecrated, or dedicated unto the service and worship of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; this we take upon us in our baptism” (5). T. Paul adds that the doctrine of baptism includes right administration, right subject, right manner of dipping, and the right end. See Paul and Kiffin, Serious Reflections, 19. Elsewhere, Kiffin explains that Baptism functions to represent the preached word to the eye by a symbol, testify to repentance (Matt 3:6; Acts 2:38), evidence regeneration (Titus 3:5), symbolize death to sin and life anew in Christ (Rom 6:4), signify incorporation into the visible church; and sealing up one’s invisible union with Christ. See Kiffin, A Sober Discourse, 31–32, 39.
107 On this point, see Hilburn, “The Lord’s Supper,” 95–96.
108 Kiffin, A Sober Discourse, 5.
109 This point refutes Bunyan’s claim that one can possess the doctrine of baptism without the practice. However, Kiffin never directly addresses Bunyan’s argument. Thomas Paul addressed it in the
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only those meeting these criteria are to be baptized; (3) any other practice of baptism deviates from the rule of the gospel and precedent of Scripture;
110and (4) deviating is disorderly and will tend to introduce the unregenerate into church membership.
111Kiffin advocates unity with all true saints so far as possible. However, when disagreement over Scripture requires separation, Christians should “hold communion as far as we agree.”
112Then, he defines unbaptized persons as “all persons that either were never baptized at all, or such as have been (as they call it) christened . . . or sprinkled . . . in their infancy.”
113These foundations set the stage for arguments against open communion. Baptist churches should not allow unbaptized believers to join them in communion because the practice (1) has a tendency of diminishing the role of baptism toward its discontinuation;
114(2) removes sufficient grounds to separate from the Church of England; (3) rejects the order
work Kiffin endorsed from 1673. There, Paul explained that while baptism does symbolize spiritual truths, a fundamental part of the doctrine of baptism is the command to “be baptized.” See Paul, Serious
Reflections, 16.
110 Thus, introducing the unbaptized to the Lord’s Supper is novel. See Naylor, Calvinism, Communion, and the Baptists, 102.
111 Naylor points out that, similar to Andrew Fuller later, Kiffin held that believers in the NT were not baptized into any particular church but into Christ’s people. For Fuller’s affirmation of the relationship between baptism and the universal church, actualized through the administration of local churches, see Andrew Gunton Fuller, The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller: Expositions - Miscellaneous, ed. Joseph Belcher (Harrisburg, PA: Sprinkle, 1988), 3:512. A baptized believer could belong to a local church only by consent or covenant. Naylor, Calvinism, Communion, and the Baptists, 102. Naylor cites Paul, Serious Reflections, 3–4. On another note, although Kiffin sought to preserve regenerate church membership by his doctrine of baptism, Poe claims that Kiffin and his allies distorted the gospel. Poe argues, “The Baptists made a functional change in their concept of the gospel by making baptism the logical qualification of faith. Though they did not attribute soteriological significance to baptism as a sacrament, they did attribute to it the test of gospel obedience and the proof of faith.” Poe, “John Bunyan’s Controversy with the Baptists,” 33.
112 Kiffin, A Sober Discourse, 6–7.
113 Kiffin, A Sober Discourse, 9.
114 Kiffin, A Sober Discourse, 10–13. Indeed, Thomas Paul references John Bunyan’s identification of baptism as a pest and plague because it was the subject of contention between Christians.
Whereas Bunyan’s answer was to discontinue the ordinance if the debate reached the point of dividing Christians, Paul asks who gives Bunyan the right to disparage new covenant blessings. Paul, Serious Reflections, 10–11.
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of the primitive church;
115and (4) removes the right to require even regeneration as prerequisite to communion.
116Response to objections. Next, Kiffin addresses several methodological objections to strict communion. To the charge that strict communionists lack express warrant from Scripture, his answer is three-fold: (1) Jesus’ and the apostles’ baptism proves that they did not regard holiness as the sole qualification for the Last Supper; (2) unless it can be proven that baptism was only a duty required of the New Testament era, it is still in force;
117and (3) “this objection supposes that whatever is not forbidden is lawful.”
118To the argument that open communionists allow people to communion who think themselves baptized as infants, Kiffin responds that his fellow Baptists cannot have it both ways. They cannot consistently maintain that infant baptism is not baptism and yet allow a paedobaptist to commune with them on account of the supposed legitimacy of the infant baptism.
119To the claim that what happened in the church’s infant stages is not binding on the contemporary church, Kiffin urges, “Let it be shown where there is
115 Kiffin, A Sober Discourse, 16.
116 Kiffin, A Sober Discourse, 21.
117 Kiffin, A Sober Discourse, 118.
118 Kiffin, A Sober Discourse, 120. Poe claims that Kiffin misunderstands Bunyan’s
hermeneutic at this point. Rather than arguing for the church’s ability to establish innovations in worship, Bunyan argued that “making baptism a bar to communion” was an innovation. Thus, Poe claims, Kiffin and Bunyan disagreed over what Christ commanded. Poe, “John Bunyan’s Controversy with the Baptists,” 31.
119 Kiffin, A Sober Discourse, 126. This is a common argument. Abraham Booth adds that his opponents admit their inconsistency when they baptize as believers those in their communion who were formerly baptized as infants, whenever the paedobaptist has a change of heart. The act of baptizing paedobaptists after years of communion with them is an admission that the infant baptism was not actually baptism. See Abraham Booth, An Apology for the Baptists (Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson, 1788), 61.
Booth appeals to other inconsistencies in the open communion position stemming from the same argument:
(1) they could not reasonably object to receiving a visible Christian who conscientiously objects to taking the Lord’s Supper unless they made the same arguments that close communionists make (64), and (2) if an individual Christian’s definition of baptism is allowed to be determinative, the Baptists lose their scriptural grounds of dissent from the Church of England (66). As Oliver points out, Booth was concerned that, ironically, “Baptists would become the only branch of the church which did not insist on baptism.” See Oliver, History of the English Calvinistic Baptists, 73.
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another rule.”
120In 1 Corinthians 14:40, Paul grounds the church’s edification in their obedience to the apostle’s prescribed order. To the claim that union with Christ is the only requirement for participating in the ordinances of Christ, Kiffin makes a lengthy and clear response:
It is readily granted that union with Christ, signified by a visible profession of faith gives a man right to baptism, and having this union and being baptized, they have right to church fellowship, and the Lord’s Supper. . . . But that by virtue of union with Christ they have a right to the Lord’s Supper; and accordingly to partake of the same before they are baptized is denied.
121Finally, to the claim that love and holiness are the disciple’s identity marker, Kiffin exclaims, “All true gospel love [is] regulated by gospel rule.”
122Because Christ designed baptism to identify his people, the church should uphold his rule.
Kiffin also addresses several objections based upon specific biblical texts. To the objection that Paul calls believers to receive the weak in faith (Rom 14:1),
123Kiffin responds, “the weakness involves things of an indifferent nature rather than gospel ordinances.”
124Furthermore, the “receiving here cannot be meant to receive into the church as members, because the Apostle writes this epistle to the church, and these weak members as a part of that church; but the receiving here intended is into the affections of each other.”
125To the charge that 1 Corinthians 12:13 presents only the baptism with the
120 Kiffin, A Sober Discourse, 149.
121 Kiffin, A Sober Discourse, 151. The similitude Kiffin provides is worth citing in full. He writes, “A child, by being the eldest son of his father, has a right to his Father’s estate as heir thereof, as soon as his father is dead, but yet for the actual possession thereof, there is required his coming to age, till which time he cannot possess that right; the law requiring this as the order by which he is to come to the enjoyment thereof. So though union with Christ gives a man a right to all the ordinances of Christ, yet are they to be enjoyed in that order which the law prescribeth.”
122 Kiffin, A Sober Discourse, 160. Kiffin writes, “That cannot be called love, which is exercised in opposition to the order prescribed in the Word.” Thomas Paul turned this objection around by claiming that obedience in the matter of baptism constitutes part of the believer’s holiness. Neglecting baptism in consideration of holiness is too weak a view of holiness. Paul, Serious Reflections, 3.
123 For a similar take on Kiffin’s treatment of Rom 14, see Duesing, Henry Jessey, 231.
124 Kiffin, A Sober Discourse, 130.
125 Kiffin, A Sober Discourse, 131. On the same point, Fuller writes, "It is not just to argue from Jewish customs, which though once binding had ceased to be so, to Christian ordinances which