Author: Jack Kilcrease

Jack Kilcrease is a Lutheran lay theologian and member of Our Savior Lutheran Church (LCMS). He is currently a member of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod’s Commission on Theology and Church Relations. Jack was born in Texas, but grew up in Oregon. He went on to receive a B.A. from Luther College and an M.A. from Luther Seminary. He earned his Ph.D. in Systematic Theology and Ethics from Marquette University in 2009. Jack’s theological work explores the gift of God’s self-donation in Jesus Christ. He is the author of several books including the most recent volume of the Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics series on Holy Scripture and the forthcoming Justification by the Word (Lexham Press). Jack is currently Associate Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at the Institute of Lutheran Theology’s Christ School of Theology. He is also an Assistant Adjunct Professor teaching philosophy at Aquinas College. Jack lives in beautiful West Michigan with his lovely wife, Bethany, and his two energetic daughters, Miriam and Ruth. When he’s not thinking about theology—and even when he is—Jack enjoys running, hiking, and hanging out with his family and cat. He’s passionate about BBQ, whiskey, jazz, movies, and theological discussion.
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Baptize Your Babies: The Bible Tells You So

When considering infant baptism, we must remember that baptism is an effective visible Word of God.  Indeed, St. Paul tells us that baptism objectively kills and resurrects us in Christ (Rom. 6:2-10).  Sin is fundamentally unbelief (Rom. 14:23), and faith is new life (Gal. 2:20).1  In other words, just as the preaching office does, baptism enacts the law and gospel on our old person.2  It is the visible form of the word of law and the gospel, which, as Paul reminds us elsewhere, objectively works death and life: “For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor. 3:6). 

Hence, the argument that infants cannot repent and believe makes little sense since repentance and faith are not natural capacities in human after the Fall. Rather, they are the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit operating through baptism.3  Moreover, we have a very concrete biblical example of the Holy Spirit working faith even in fetuses. St. John the Baptizer recognized the Christ while still in the womb of Elizabeth (Lk 1:44).4  Jesus himself states that it is not by active and conscious decision that one becomes a Christian, but rather by receiving faith and the kingdom as a “little child” (Mk. 10:15).  

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Why Do They Fall Away? The Problem of Post-Baptismal Apostasy

Both Anabaptist/Baptist and Reformed Christians generally argue that baptismal regeneration and justification directly contradicts the principle of sola fide.  According to many Protestants, baptismal regeneration and justification makes no sense given that not everyone who is baptized is ultimately saved.  To Anabaptists and Baptists, this suggests that baptism is only a symbolic gesture designed to publicly affirm regeneration and justification through other means. For the Reformed, on the other hand, baptism is a meaningful sign for the elect. The Spirit then regenerates the elect by working alongside baptism, but not through baptism as an instrument.

Baptismal Regeneration and Sola Fide

But is it true that baptismal regeneration and justification contradicts the biblical and reformational principle of sola fide? In fact, Lutherans and other Protestants conceptualize the doctrine of sola fide in a fundamentally different way.  As noted in a previous chapter, Luther and the subsequent Lutheran tradition’s conceptualization of justification might be better characterized by the slogan “justification by the word” rather than “justification by faith.”  In other words, most Protestants discern salvation based on a reflective faith that affirms the certainty of salvation through the certainty of saving faith. Lutherans, however, turn the individual away from inner resources and focus him on the external Word of God. 

Seen in this light, baptism is a visible Word of God. The Holy Spirit works with the same power in, under, and through the Word in the water, the absolution, the preaching office, and the Supper.  God in Christ directs us away from our subjective disposition, which is, of course, always tainted by sin. Instead he orients us towards his justifying promise of salvation actually present in baptism.  If a person receives that baptismal promise, then he has justifying faith.  

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Power in the Blood: Grace Flowing from the Five Wounds

The Church is the People of God, the mystical Body of Christ, and Temple of the Holy Spirit as constituted by the means of grace.  The means of grace create and sustain the Church because they contain the promise of the gospel. This gospel, then, creates and maintains faith.  The means of grace create faith because Jesus Christ, who is the living and eternal Word of God, is present in there in the power of the Spirit.  Just as in the beginning the Word of God in the power of the Spirit called the original creation into existence (Gen. 1), so too, the same Word of God and Holy Spirit bring about a new creation in the life and person of Jesus (Jn. 1, 2 Cor. 5:17).

Lutherans have historically divided the means of grace into the categories of the Word and the Sacraments.  For example, Lutheran theologian Robert Kolb suggests essentially four distinct forms of the Word of God: Christ, Scripture, the proclamation of the Church, and the sacraments.1 Nevertheless, there are certain difficulties with the two-fold division between Word and Sacrament. First, the risen Jesus is equally present in the power of the Spirit in both the Word and the Sacraments.  Therefore, the same word of the gospel spoken through the preaching office is also spoken in the sacraments, although in a different manner [as discussed later]. 

Secondly, God addresses humans through both visible words and auditory words.  As Hermann Sasse observed: “The sacrament is the verbum visibile (visible Word); the Word is the sacramentum audibile, the audible and heard sacrament.”2 All creatures are God’s visible words.  No visible word lacks an auditory word attached to it by God. At minimum, God has attached the word “very good” to all his creatures.  Likewise, God never gives an auditory word apart from a visible word. The auditory word either refers to the visible word or is attached to it as law or promise.  Hence, the strict division of proclamation and teaching as bare auditory words, and sacraments as auditory words united with physical objects is not fully possible.  

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Catholicity and Fellowship in the One True Church

One of the key marks of the Church mentioned in the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds is catholicity: “I believe in one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.”1  This reflects the New Testament’s emphasis on the Church’s universality, unity, and harmony as delivered by the Holy Spirit.  Humans are sinful and remain so even after being converted to the faith. As a result, resistance to the Spirit can disrupt this unity. However, sin can never ultimately shatter the fundamental unity of the catholic Church.  Hence, in his high priestly prayer, Jesus famously prays that “they [the Church] may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (Jn. 17:21).  Similarly, Paul spends most of 1 Corinthians advising the congregation at Corinth to humbly put aside their differences under the cross and engage in practices that will promote unity, as opposed to division, in the body of Christ.

Modern Christian theologians treat many of these calls for unity in the New Testament as carte blanche orders to impose institutional unity on the Church.2  However, these passages must be counterbalanced by calls for members of the Church to separate themselves from the wicked (Matt. 18:17, 1 Cor. 5, 2 Cor. 6:14, 1 Jn. 2:19, Rev. 18:4).  We often think of sin primarily in terms of individual actions that violate the commands to love our neighbor in the second table of the Ten Commandments. Yet, we just as frequently violate the commands of the first table of the law. This occurs when Christians spread or embrace false teachings about God and fail to honor and love him above all things. Sins against the first table of the law also constitute “wickedness.”  Heresy, therefore, cannot be tolerated in the body of Christ, and separation must occur on an individual or corporate scale when false teaching occurs. 

The New Testament admonishes believers not to have fellowship with those in grave moral error. It follows that Christians cannot have fellowship with groups or individuals who error in the fundamental articles of the faith.  For example, St. Paul is quite clear that Christians should not participate in pagan worship or have fellowship with those who engage in such worship (1 Cor. 10:18-22).  Participation in sacrifice to an idol and the consumption of sacrificed meat in an idolatrous setting is an act of fellowship with those who worship false gods and through them have unwitting fellowship with demons.  Paul also compares the false fellowship of pagan worship with real communion with the true God conveyed by the sacrifices of the old covenantal order (1 Cor. 10:18), as well as the Christian Eucharist (1 Cor. 10:14-17).3  

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For You: Certain Salvation In The Sacraments

The connection between the Word of God and something physical and tangible does not necessarily differentiate the ministry of the Word and the Sacrament for Martin Luther. But perhaps the function of the sacraments in the Christian life does differentiate them.  The difficulty in most Protestant accounts of justification is a kind of monism of the auditory Word of God.1  The believer hears the Word of God and appropriates it by faith.  Luther would not disagree with this, but he extends the principle to the sacraments as well.  Sacraments are visible promises, and promises must be believed.

Christians retain their sinful nature, which tempts them into unbelief. As a result, when believers rely upon the ministry of the Word of God alone without the complement of the sacraments, doubts about individual appropriation of the gospel can creep in.  How does one know with certainty that the divine Word was meant for him or that he has actually received it? 

The typical Protestant response has been to attempt to demonstrate faith’s authenticity through supplementary signs of the Spirit’s interior work.  The problem is that all these alleged signs of the Spirit’s work can be easily faked, either consciously or unconsciously.  By contrast, Luther sees the sacraments as ways of redirecting the sinner away from his own subjective doubt and into the objectivity of the Gospel promise in the tangible means of grace.  In one fascinating passage in The Sacrament: Against the Fanatics of 1526, Luther writes:

When I preach his [Christ’s] death, it is in a public sermon in the congregation, in which I am addressing myself to no one individually; who grasp it, grasps it.  But when I distribute the sacrament, I designate it for the individual who is receiving it; I give him Christ’s body and blood that he may have forgiveness, obtained through his death and preached in the congregation.  This is something more than the congregational sermon; for although the same thing is present in the sermon as in the sacrament, here there is the advantage that it is directed at definite individuals.  In the sermon one does not point out or portray any particular person, but in the sacrament it is given to you and to me in particular, so that the sermon comes to be our own.  For when I say: “This is the body, which is given for you, this is the blood which is poured out for you for he forgiveness of sins,” I am therefore commemorating him; I proclaim and announce his death.  Only it is not done publicly in the congregation but is directed at you alone.2

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