Authority to baptize

As explained in a prior chapter, priesthood authority comes through obtaining and living information about and from God. The qualification for authority to baptize is knowing about and living more like Jesus than those you baptize. The authority to baptize consists of a willingness to live up to the character of Christ beyond those you baptize.

The stark contrast between this assertion and what is taught by today’s churches is acknowledged. To help bridge the gap, consider the following question: What is being offered through baptism? When performed validly, the baptizing priest is certifying to God that the candidate is true and faithful to everything they could presently know about the character of Christ. That witness requires someone who a) knows at least as much about the Lord as the baptismal candidate, and b) lives what he knows about him. To seek baptism is essentially to persuade someone that you are living up to everything you mutually believe about God. Optionally and ideally, that person will know more about God than you. Not optionally, they live those beliefs themselves.

What about ordination? John the Baptist was purportedly ordained at eight days old with the authority to baptize.² By lineage, he also possessed the right to baptize, as his father was the High Priest. However, he would have had all the rights and privileges he exercised without these factors based solely on the fact that while all of his contemporaries knew the gospel, he actually lived it. Thus, he was more like Jesus Christ than his contemporaries.

While there are scriptural examples of people being given authority to baptize, there are also examples of people who conducted valid baptisms without ever being ordained. For example, the Lord not only commended Alma Sr.’s ministry, but made particular mention of those he had baptized, a ministry he had embarked upon based solely on his hearing the sermon delivered by Abinadi.³ Paul was as much an apostle as any other in his time, and yet there is no record of his ordination by Peter, James, and John. Instead, he cited as his authority his personal knowledge of Jesus Christ, who had called him directly.⁴

This teaching presents a paradigm shift in the interpretation of the Lord’s ending invitation in the gospel of Matthew:

19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen. (Matthew 28)

The Lord’s instruction wasn’t just to his eleven apostles—or his several hundred remaining disciples—but to anyone who knows anything about him to go and teach others to live the same, in whatever scope of life they occupy, conveying upon them the authority to baptize based on the information they have received about Jesus and their willingness to live it.

If the authority to baptize is based only on having learned and lived some dispensation of information about the Lord, why were there instances where Jesus gave particular authority to particular people? The primary purpose was to provide a mechanism to resolve disagreements. The Lord identified a hierarchy for the purpose of indicating whose perspective was to be accepted as his own in the event of a disagreement.⁸¹⁴ It is sad to reflect upon how much the idea of religious authority has been abused while simultaneously ignoring the purpose for which it was given.