Voluntary Principle

Is it the mission of the church to lead those who are within its fold to accept Christ, or is the church a body of believers whose mission field is the world? Shall the church and the world be united or separated? Is the church essentially a hierarchy, or is it a body of believers? These are the questions which lay at the bottom of the great controversy on infant baptism.

Bucer, upon the suggestion of Schwenckfeld, decided that Confirmation should be practised. In connection with this rite the young people should confess their faith and make the vow which others were supposed to have made for them when baptism was administered to them in their infancy. Later Confirmation was generally practised among the Lutherans and Zwinglians. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a number of religious denominations arose which retained infant baptism but advanced the new idea that baptism is not the rite of initiation into the Christian church and does not convey the right of membership, a thought that is foreign to Scripture teaching.

The Anabaptists desired a public debate in which they would have permission to present their arguments and speak freely without being interrupted and hindered by their opponents. They complained that they were refused the right to publish books or tracts and in the public discussions Zwingli had all liberty to interrupt them and prevent the full presentation of their argument.

While Zwingli was for a time of the opinion that it were better to abandon the baptism of infants, he became in the course of a few years, as pointed out elsewhere, one of the foremost opponents of the practice of believers’ baptism.

They decided that the battle of the church should be largely fought by the state and an exclusive state-church be established; hence they forsook their former position on the points of religious liberty and infant baptism.

He held that baptism should be considered “free,” hence the baptism of infants would not be invalid. “But if someone would desire to put off baptism [instead of baptizing the infants] and if he could do this without destroying the love and unity of those among whom he lives, we would not for this cause withdraw from him or condemn him.”

“I do not know, what to make of it,” says Hans Hottinger concerning Zwingli, “today he preaches one thing and tomorrow he recants it. And particularly he has preached years ago that the infants should not be baptized, but now he says, they should be baptized.”

We baptize infants and we also baptize adults. We comply with the wishes of those who do not desire to have their infants baptized, but we present them to Christ our Mediator and Redeemer by the laying on of hands and the prayer of the church. The Council of Carthage [in the fifth century] has decided that it shall be left to the liberty of every one whether or not he would have infants baptized. This is also our position.