The fruits of hyper-confessionalism

I have been reading through a particularly painful series of blog posts this morning by Dr. R. Scott Clark at the Heidelblog. His series "On Churchless Evangelicals" is full of unwarranted assumptions and false equivalencies. The sort of equivalence that assumes that any mention of "church", "congregation", "fellowship" must by implication mean the institutionalized church. I am slowly picking apart what he has written because it is a great example of the prevailing thought in some circles that the early church had services that resembled modern, confessional, Reformed, institutional church services. It is taking me some time because there is so much that is wrong to unpack.

But then I ran across this little blurb and had to interrupt what I was doing to point it out...

On the Christological and soteriological issues alone the Reformed were warranted in describing the 16th-century Anabaptists as “sects.” There was, however, another issue which the Reformed mentioned consistently as providing grounds for such a label, i.e. the Anabaptist denial of infant baptism.

However orthodox modern Baptists are on the other issues, they continue to share with the Anabaptists this fundamental conviction that however valid infant circumcision was prior to the incarnation, the New Covenant is such that there is no place for infant baptism as a proper recognition that the children of believers are members of the covenant of grace just as much today as they were in Abraham’s day.

This rejection of the status of Christian children as such introduced (and continues to perpetuate) a principle of radical discontinuity between Abraham and the Christian, i.e. a radical principle of discontinuity in the history of redemption and in the covenant of grace. This principle of radical discontinuity, this denial of the fundamental unity of the covenant of grace as symbolized in the administration of the sign and seal of the covenant of grace to covenant children, is serious enough to warrant saying that any congregation that will not practice infant initiation (baptism) into the administration of the covenant of grace is not a church. The Protestants criticized the Anabaptists on these very grounds. Denial of infant initiation is a denial of the catholicity of the church stretching back to Abraham and it is too much like the Gnostic denial of the unity of the covenant of grace in the 2nd and 3rd centuries.

Did you catch that? If you won't baptize infants, you are not only not "Reformed" in the eyes of the self-appointed arbiter of all things "Reformed", you are not even a real church. I knew that Dr. Clark would be unable to avoid taking potshots about baptism. So now not only are you unworthy in Dr. Clark's eyes to carry the label "Reformed" if you don't baptize infants, now if you are in a church and it doesn't baptize infants, it isn't even really a church at all. That takes his flawed premise to it's logical conclusion. I made the opposite argument some time ago in this post Maybe Landmarkism has some of it right? and I stand by that today. The Scripture is plain in both example and command that baptism is reserved for professing believers. What is old (infant circumcision, the Old Covenant, temple sacrifice) is fading away, replaced by what is new. Infant baptism is a misapplication of an Old Covenant sign in a New Covenant church, and is unwarranted.

That is only one place where Dr. Clark's premise is flawed. There are so many places where I disagree with him, which is why I am working on a separate post to deal with it. I would agree however in part with his assessment here:

What happened to me in 1961 was, for them, nothing than mere magic or sentiment but it was not baptism. Therefore, I and all such persons are, in their view, unbaptized. For most of Christian history to say that someone was unbaptized was to unchurch them. In other words, to call me unbaptized is to say that I am not really a Christian.

On the one hand, I would agree with part of his statement above. Whatever the ceremony he went through in 1961, I assume as an infant, it was not baptism which can only rightly by Scriptural command and example follow profession of faith. So in that he is "unbaptized". I would say that at worst he is a Christian who, in this very vital area, is being disobedient to the plain commands of Scripture. He needs to repent and submit to baptism. But does that mean he isn't a Christian? Does any rational Baptist suggest that he is not a Christian? I have doubts about the validity of a church that holds to infant baptism, but I have never suggested that those baptized as infants are not Christians. He is being a bit hysterical here and indulging in more than a little hyperbole. I don't equate church membership with being a Christian, so I can recognize Dr. Clark as a brother in Christ even if he is a member of a church that engages in a unBiblical practice.

This is what happens when you become hyper-confessional (not sure if that is a word, or if I just made it up but it fits). The confession becomes the end in and of itself, practically speaking. I love the great confessions, the Westminster and the London Baptist Confession. They are great tools and can help lead to greater understanding of the Word, but they are just tools. I have the confessions on my shelf, and I have expositions of the confessions. All great stuff. But you can know the confessions forward and backward and not know Christ. It is in His Word, and His Word alone, that He is found. The Word is more than a series of footnotes in the Reformed confessions, it is the lifeblood of the church.

(I am working through the rest of his three post series, but that comment required an immediate response.)