The Voice Of One Crying Out In Suburbia

Dunkin' babies...


I stumbled across an article by Bill Shisko defending infant/household baptism. Bill Shisko is an Orthodox Presbyterian Church pastor and recently debated James White on the issue of who should (or should not) be baptized. I think White kicked him around in the debate, given that Dr. White is an accomplished debater and Bill Shisko doesn't have (as far as I know) the same extensive experience in formal debate. Well after the fact Shisko ran a post-debate editorial where he attempts to reaffirm the accuracy of the infant baptizer position. Shisko listed six points where he believes Baptists are missing the boat. While I certainly can't hold a candle to Dr. Shisko as applied to education and Biblical knowledge, his points ran rather hollow in my mind (in much the same way as R.C. Sproul did in his "defense" of infant baptism). This is obviously not a scholarly rebuttal, but I don't find any of Shisko's arguments to be terribly strong.

1. We have not helped ourselves by beginning with the Old Testament covenants, and then working to the new covenant. It is far better to start with the New Testament data and then go back to the Old Testament roots. This puts us on the same "turf" as the Baptists. We are too defensive about the New Testament! We should stop using the term "paedobaptism" (baptism of infants) and use the more biblical expression "oikobaptism" (baptism of households). The point is not that infants were baptized in the New Testament, but that whole households were baptized.

I would say that this argument also doesn't help his argument! If an adult joins an OPC church, does everyone in the immediate family get baptized? I assume not, but that would be consistent. After all, if we assume that the household includes infants, we must also assume it includes people of all sorts of ages and apparently belief plays no part. If it isn't required for an infant to show signs of belief, what about a middle-school kid? A teen? An adult child living at home? Is the church based on your mailing address? If a person who lives in a household is a obvious non-Christian, do they still get baptized even if they show just the opposite of faith? Or is it reserved to those who show faith and the undecided members?

2. It is not the case that the New Testament always speaks of a person believing before he or she is baptized. Lydia is baptized with her household, but there is no mention of each member of that household exercising faith prior to baptism (Acts 16:14-15). And in the case of the Philippian jailer and his family, the text clearly speaks only of the faith of the jailer himself. Acts 16:34b literally reads, "And he rejoiced with all his household, he having believed in God." If the discontinuity of the new covenant is that only those who personally repent and believe in Christ are to be baptized and received as part of the church, why is that not clearly indicated in a text like this?

The same idea as before. If household holds such an important thing, then we should baptize every family member of every person who converts to Christ, not just infants but everyone. The household idea, taken to it's logical extreme would seem to require this. But household/infant baptizers are horribly inconsistent on who should or should not get baptized. Again, if a married couple joined Pastor Shisko's church, would he automatically baptize everyone in the family, or just the parents or just the parents and infants? If you are little and cute, you get dribbled but surly teens don't? And it really is the case that every person specifically detailed in the Bible who is baptized believed first. Coincidence? What we don't know shouldn't be the basis for what we believe. We don't know if Lydia or the Phillipian jailer went home and told their household of the Gospel and they believed. A household of Jews would hardly rejoice with a new Christian if they were not Christians as well.

3. All of God's covenants have included families. Even the major prophecies of the new covenant clearly indicate the continuance of the household as the basic unit of the people of God... In response to the use of the new covenant passages made by our Baptist friends, we must show that in those very passages the household principle remains as an aspect of the new covenant. If noble Christians "searched the Scriptures" (i.e., the Old Testament) to find out whether the things taught by the apostles were so (Acts 17:11), where would they have found warrant to abrogate the household principle?

Who is the family, who are the heirs? The elect. Christ came to not to unite families (emphasis mine) "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person's enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. ".(Matthew 10:34-37) That hardly sounds like temporal family relationships play a huge role in the New Covenant. A person's enemies will be those of his what? His household. The idea of family togetherness is sentimental and sweet, but so is the mormon doctrine of eternal families.

4. Baptist views cannot account for the language used of children in the New Testament. While it is true that Jesus did not baptize little children, what did he mean when he took little children and said, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 19:13-15; Mark 10:13-16; Luke 18:15-17)? If, as our Baptist friends say, Jesus was simply speaking of childlike faith, he could have (would have?) used an adult with childlike faith as an object lesson, but he did not. On a Baptist model, how are children regarded as part of the kingdom of heaven (the visible representation of which is the church)?

Uh, well sure they can. Children appear in the Bible (although not specifically by age as far as I can see). Jesus is compassionate toward them, He speaks of their simple faith. Why would he use an adult with child like faith as an example? He was speaking to adults and using a child as an example of child like faith. Doesn't that make more sense? He doesn't say that only simpletons get into heaven. But our faith is not exclusively an intellectual one, one where people are reasoned into faith and become Christians based on the strength of our arguments. People come into saving knowledge of Christ through simple faith in something, in someone, that none of us has ever seen. And yet we still believe with a faith like a child. He goes on...

On a Baptist model, how is it that children are included among "the saints" in Ephesians 6:1-3 and Colossians 3:20 (cf. Eph. 1:1; Col. 1:2)? Paul gives specific instructions to husbands, wives, children, and servants because these were the basic constituents of a household in the first century. How can our Baptist friends instruct the children of their believing adults to "obey your parents in the Lord" (Eph. 6:1)? "In the Lord" does not mean that children should only obey "Christian" parents. Rather, it indicates that children should obey their parents in the context of their covenantal connection to Jesus Christ—which is signified and sealed in baptism. On a "household baptism" model, all of this makes sense. Baptist responses in any of the standard treatments are lame, at best.

Now Shisko includes servants in the household. True enough, but again does that mean that they should be baptized? Do wealthy Presbyterians have housekeepers and au pairs baptized? They should based on this model of household baptism. There seems to be differing standards of baptism for different people based on age and relationship, and then in Prebyterian circles a whole different standard for communion. All based on a few references to households being baptized with no further details. Talk about lame!

Let me flip this around. What the infant baptizer cannot account for is the lack of explicit or even implicit commands to baptize infants. Anywhere. That is the paedobaptist Achilles Heel, and it is a real one, unlike the imagined Achilles Heel we see below. If we were supposed to baptize these little ones based on family relationships, based on households, wouldn't we see some sort of more explicit instruction to do so? Or at least an obvious example of it? The debate is really almost over before it begins because the explicit evidence all points to believers being baptized and never to infants. Then the burden falls on to the paedobaptist to make a case where the Bible does not. That is tough sledding indeed.

5. Can our Baptist friends point to one church that is composed only of the regenerate? This is the Achilles heel of any Baptist view. In the new heavens and the new earth, when the new covenant will be consummated, only the elect will compose the church. Until then, even the best of Baptist churches and any other Christian church will be composed of both regenerate and unregenerate people.

An Achilles heel? I certainly can point to a church that is composed only of the regenerate, the church of Jesus Christ made up of the elect. The Church is not based on the building or the name on the sign, but the Lord of each believer's life. It is true that we can never be absolutely sure that anyone professing faith is truly a Christian, but there is a world of difference between baptism someone who has made a profession of faith and baptizing an infant. No Baptist would knowingly baptize someone who showed no signs of being a Christian, but Presbyterians baptize infants all the time for absolutely no reason other than one or both parents is a Christian. I liken this, flippantly but seriously at the same time, to sneaking up to people on the street, throwing water on them and hoping they become a Christian later on.

6. What exactly is a Baptist theology of children, and how can it be aligned with the specific passages of the New Testament that deal with children? On a household baptism view, we can develop a coherent view of children and the church that does justice to all of the material of the Old and New Testaments. It is the inability of our Baptist friends (including Reformed Baptists) to present such a view that has caused many Baptists who have gotten a taste of covenant theology to abandon the so-called credobaptist (believer's baptism) view and become believers in household baptism.

I would hazard that the cause of Baptists to convert to paedobaptism has more to do with conformity than conviction. It is frankly a lot easier to find a Reformed church that baptizes infants than it is to find a Baptist church that is Reformed. That is hopefully changing, but above all we gauge the truth based not on the number of conversion from one way of thinking to another, but on the fidelity of a position to the entire Biblical message. Joel Osteen is plenty popular, but that hardly is an argument in favor of his heretical views. As far as how we deal with children, we evangelize them, we raise them up in prayer, we teach them the Scriptures not because they are in some amorphous household of faith but because they are sinners and combined with our parental responsibility to teach them, we want them to come to Christ as we do any sinner. Children of believers do not get a free pass because of their last name.

Plenty of children of believers end up not being believers themselves. Plenty of children of atheistic parents become Christians. We ought to be thankful that our salvation is not dependent on our earthly family tree, but rather on the sovereign election and grace shown to us by our Lord. William Shisko is a wonderful Christian from what I have read. He and my Presbyterian brothers are wonderful, and in many, many areas we are in agreement. But when it comes to intentionally baptizing people who show no signs of being a Christian, they are unfortunately flat wrong. Let the Bible speak for itself, especially in areas where by command and example it speaks so clearly.