John Smyth, and self-baptism

[GladTidings]

Baptists, and anyone else who wants to answer, my question is this: Who gave John Smyth the authority to baptize himself, in approximately 1609 or 1611? Was it found in scripture, (the only rule of faith he had) anywhere? Did Jesus do it this way? Did John the Baptist do it this way?

To me, this is just another way the non-Catholic christians feel they have a right to self-interpret scripture to make it mean what they want it to mean. Absolutely no authority at all, except for themselves.

 

[OddBird]

I don’t condone self-baptism in any way, and such practices seem strange to me.

I don’t see indeed what authority could legitimate it, including from a Reformed perspective. I don’t know either of any church which actually practices self-baptism; I view those cases as historical oddities.

this is just another way the non-Catholic christians feel they have a right to self-interpret scripture

I have to point out, though, that self-baptism probably happened from time to time throughout Church history, including well before the Protestant Reformation.

There is for example an apocryphal text called the Acts of Paul and Thecla, which was already extant in 190. We know that because that’s about when Tertullian wrote a scathing evaluation of the narrative in On Baptism (interestingly enough, what bothers Tertullian is not as much the fact that the text seems to promote self-baptism as the fact it seems to promote baptism by women). The text narrates how Thecla, condemned to be martyred, self-baptises in the arena by jumping in a water tank containing ferocious seals, who are struck by lightning and die before they could harm her.

Although this episode is certainly legendary (Thecla was removed from the calendar of saints by the Catholic Church for lack of historical evidence, but she still has a feast day in Eastern churches), it still shows that self-baptism was not a completely unheard-of concept in the early Church.

Absolutely no authority at all, except for themselves.

To be fair, Smyth himself came to recognize that and repudiated his attempted self-(re)baptism in later life.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

St. Thecla and similar saints who wished to be baptized, but died before another person could baptize them, would be considered in the Catholic Church to have had baptism of desire, not self-baptism.

 

[OddBird]

Doesn’t baptism of desire refer to people who were baptized, so to speak, by their blood shed for Christ? This is not what happened to st Thecla.

The text says this :

Then they send in many wild beasts, she standing and stretching forth her hands, and praying. And when she had finished her prayer, she turned and saw a ditch full of water, and said: Now it is time to wash myself. And she threw herself in, saying: In the name of Jesus Christ I am baptized on my last day.

The way it is narrated, there is an immersion in water and a formula pronounced by Thecla herself.

St. Thecla and similar saints who wished to be baptized, but died before another person could baptize them

That’s the catch. Thecla was saved and she didn’t die on that day, but much later, as an ascetic 90-year old living in a cave. Even so, never, in her Acts, is she shown as receiving any other baptism. Not only that, but on her next meeting with saint Paul, she tells him :

I have received the baptism, Paul; for He that wrought along with thee for the Gospel has wrought in me also for baptism.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Doesn’t baptism of desire refer to people who were baptized, so to speak, by their blood shed for Christ?

No, that’s baptism of blood.
Baptism of desire is when a person wishes to be baptized, but dies before it can actually happen.

3 kinds of baptism: 1) water (must be done by another Christian, you can’t baptize yourself), 2) desire, 3) blood.

In Thecla’s case, I would think even if she somehow went about it wrong and didn’t get a baptism of water due to confusion about how it was done, or whatever, then she would have still been considered baptized because her intent was to receive baptism.

 

[OddBird]

Thank you for the precisions, @Tis_Bearself.

even if she somehow went about it wrong and didn’t get a baptism of water due to confusion about how it was done, or whatever, then she would have still been considered baptized because her intent was to receive baptism.

So what would you say differs between Thecla and Smyth (except from the fact that Smyth had been baptized, confirmed and ordained before his attempted self-baptism) ? Is is the intent of doing what the Church does ?

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Assuming for a moment that Thecla was a real person, as this seems to be in some doubt, Thecla lived in the very early Church in a confused situation. She did not have the benefit of a developed Church with developed theology and established procedures for the right way of going about things, vs the wrong way. Nor does it seem like she had ready access to the guidance of apostles, bishops etc. A similar situation might occur for a Catholic living in the “underground Church” period of Japan, or in the New World during a time when one lived in the wilderness and saw a priest maybe once every year.

John Smyth on the other hand lived 1500 years later when there was an established Catholic Church and an established procedure for proper Baptism. He did not live in any sort of remote area and he had all kinds of access to priests and bishops to catechize him properly. His self-baptism was due to his own convoluted interpretations that he had convinced himself were correct and that obviously dissented from the Catholic Church. It’s not the same situation. Now I don’t know how God in his mercy would regard John Smyth and I’m not going to speculate, but it’s certainly not the same situation as an early Christian.

 

[GladTidings]

From what I read somewhere, Smyth decided there weren’t any other Christian faiths with correct baptism, and since there weren’t any other ministers with his same views, he deemed it necessary to baptize himself. And, it seems to have been more of a baptism into the new theology, as if he had discovered the correct form of Christianity, in my opinion.

He was called a self-baptizer by some one and the name stayed with that group of people.

There is for example an apocryphal text called the Acts of Paul and Thecla , which was already extant in 190. We know that because that’s about when Tertullian wrote a scathing evaluation of the narrative in On Baptism (interestingly enough, what bothers Tertullian is not as much the fact that the text seems to promote self-baptism as the fact it seems to promote baptism by women). The text narrates how Thecla, condemned to be martyred, self-baptises in the arena by jumping in a water tank containing ferocious seals, who are struck by lightning and die before they could harm her.

This was interesting, I had never heard that legend.

repudiated his attempted self-(re)baptism in later life.

Yes, he became Mennonite eventually and realized his mistake of self-baptizing. He really seemed lost, without knowing where to go.