348 Dimensions of Baptism
church concerned. Their acceptance will be based on the same concern
articulated by that meeting of Baptists in Taunton in 1654—evidence of
faith and the work of God in the person's life. Similarly, those who have
not received any baptism may also be received into membership on the
same evidence. This inevitably raises questions concerning a Baptist theol-
ogy of baptism, but what is clear is that a living personal faith is even
more important to Baptist ecclesiology than believer's baptism itself.
This is a fundamental concern of contemporary Faith and Order debates
where there is a growing consensus to identify 'our common baptism' as
the basis for closer unity between churches.^37 Baptists have attempted to
argue that the basis of unity is not to be found in such a problematic
notion, with its acceptance of infant baptism and its implicit theological
assumptions, but in the saving work of the Triune God.^38 This manifests
itself in a recognition of the work of the Spirit in others which leads to a
recognition of them as fellow believers.^39 What this ecumenical debate
highlights is the way in which Baptists place a higher ecclesiological value
on the evidence of experiential faith than they do on the due admini-
stration of the sacraments. This is not seen by Baptists as anarchic, but as a
recognition that the Church is made up of believers. We can also see this
stance as a natural development of those Calvinistic distinctions in the
confessions of faith between the elect, who are members of the invisible
Church, and those believers who are members of a visible society, or a
local congregation. Such a distinction does not depend upon a notion of
election but on the distinction between being a believer and being the
recipient of a sacramental action.
This can be illustrated by the way in which in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries many Baptists have preferred the word ordinance to
the word sacrament. We have seen how the notion of ordinance was very
important at a time when Baptists were explaining why they were commit-
- See for example Janet Crawford, 'Becoming a Christian: The Ecumenical Chal-
lenge of our Common Baptism' in T.F. Best and D. Heller (eds.), Becoming a Chris-
tian: The Ecumenical Implications of our Common Baptism, (F&O Paper, 184; Geneva:
WCC, 1999), pp. 8-12. - See Believing and Being Baptized, pp. 36-38
- See 'A Response to the Papal Evangelical Ut Unum Sint from the Faith and
Unity Executive Committee of the Baptist Union of Great Britain April 1997'
(unpublished; Didcot: BUGB, 1997), Clarifications 1-2, and Christopher J. Ellis, 'A
View from the Pool: Baptists, Sacraments and the Basis of Unity', BQ 39 (2001), pp.
107-20, especially p. 118.