Address by Rev. Dr. David Noe at the conference “Justification by Faith Alone: Recovering Law and Gospel” in Cape Town, South Africa, on 20 June 2025.
Since 381 AD, the church universal has with one voice confessed our belief in “one baptism for the remission of sins”. Like virtually all aspects of Christian faith and practice, the relationship between the ordinance of baptism and the cancellation of the debt of sin came under close scrutiny during the 16th century Reformation. Rev. Noe explains how Genevan reformer Theodore Beza (1519-1605) excavated the thought of the Church Fathers generally, and the ecumenical creeds in particular, to teach pilgrim and refugee Christians how they belonged to Christ and his church, and how they were to view their baptism.
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Rev. Noe is an adjunct of Puritan Reformed Seminary with a PhD in Classics from the University of Iowa, having served on the faculty of Calvin University, where he chaired the philosophy department. He currently pastors Reformation Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Grand Rapids and serves on various ecclesiastical committees. Rev. Noe is the translator of numerous works from the 16th and 17th centuries, is Latin editor for the Confessional Presbyterian Journal, and supplies online resources in Latin, Greek, and Classics.