On This Day In Church History: The First Anabaptist Baptism

On January 21st, 1525 Conrad Grebel baptized George Blaurock. Blaurock then baptized the other men present including Felix Manz and Grebel. This followed the disputation in Zurich where Zwingli disputed with Grebel and Manz over the subject of baptism. Although Zwingli was unsurprisingly declared the victor in support of "infant baptism", the brethren still chose to be baptized a few days later. This would start them on a path that would lead many Anabaptists to being murdered by the hands of the state at the urging of the religious authorities.

You might wonder why you should care if you are not part of an Anabaptist heritage group like the Amish, Mennonites or Hutterites. If you are someone who cares about religious liberty, this is a critical moment in the church when a handful of men risked their lives to take the rite of baptism out of state hands. The religious liberty we cherish and that is enshrined in our Constitution can be traced in part back to this courageous act of defiance almost 500 years ago. May God raise up more men in this day with the courage to stand fast on the Word of God against those who would seek to pervert it or use it to gain worldly power.

On this day in 1528

482 years ago on March 10, 1528 Balthasar Hubmaier was martyred by burning in Vienna. His crime? Advocating against the baptism of infants. His executors likewise martyred his wife Elisabeth by tying a stone around her neck and tossing her from a bridge three days later, an incredibly cowardly act. Balthasar Hubmaier, like so many of the Anabaptists, was killed by the unholy union of the church and the state for a practice that we take for granted in America. We still read about our brothers and sisters being martyred today in far off lands but what makes this event and others like it so tragic is that Hubmaier was killed by people who claimed to be Christians over a doctrinal disagreement.

(Thanks for the reminder to Tom Ascol)

Inconsistency in hermeneutic

OK, I wasn't going to post on baptism anymore but I saw this on the MCTS Blog from an interview of Dr. W. Gary Crampton by Richard Barcellos. The interview pertains to Dr. Crampton's new book on why he moved from a padeobaptist position to a credo position. What I found interesting was this exchange regarding the inconsistency in the paedo hermeneutic:

Q3: What are some of the main problems you encountered with paedobaptism that caused you to keep studying?

A3: There were several issues that bothered me about the doctrine of paedobaptism. I will mention only one, and that is there is simply no text in the New Testament (NT) wherein there is any mention of the baptism of infants. This is admitted by some of the finest paedobaptist theologians that have written on the subject. This means, as admitted and taught by these same paedobaptist theologians, that we must go back to the Old Testament (OT) to establish the doctrine. When it comes to the other NT sacrament of the Lord’s supper, however, the paedobaptist theologians do not apply the same hermeneutic principle. That is, the recipients of the Lord’s supper are determined by the NT teaching rather than the OT teaching. The inconsistency here is glaring. Another problem here is that the OT does not mention baptism of infants at all. What this hermeneutic assumes is that the Abrahamic covenant, wherein the male infants were circumcised, is still binding on the NT church on virtually a one-to-one basis, and therefore the infants of believers should be baptized. There are so many difficulties here (which I write about in my book) that they are far too numerous to deal with in an interview like this. The most serious error committed here is that of overstressing the continuity of the Old and New Covenant to the detriment of the discontinuity between the two. The Reformed Baptist doctrine is not in any sense dispensational; rather, it is fully covenantal. It recognizes that there is most certainly a continuity between the two covenants, but there is also a discontinuity that must be seen (see Jeremiah 31:31-34; compare Hebrews 8:6-13).

I think that is dead on especially regarding forcing a one to one correlation between circumcision and baptism.

OK, no more posts on baptism (for now)

Be careful who you declare to be cut off

Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in again…

Ah, my old friend paedobaptism. I try, I really do try, to let sleeping dogs (or infants who are suddenly dribbled with water) lie. Then all of a sudden, minding my own business, I run across something and just have to speak out. Les Prouty posted two essays on baptism, one from Dagg on the Baptist perspective and one from Benjamin Shaw of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary on the paedobaptist perspective. Mr. Shaw’s essay, Thoughts on Infant Baptism, ponders the question of what value is there in baptizing an infant

A question often asked of those who argue for infant baptism is, “What good does it do the infant?” Those who ask this question generally think they have nailed the defender, as there is no obvious benefit to the infant. The infant hardly seems to be aware of what is transpiring, let alone being aware of any benefit. Many who were baptized as infants, coming to faith as adults, desire to be baptized as adults, rationalizing that their baptism didn’t mean anything to them.

Mr. Shaw then launches into an explanation of why that perfectly valid question misses the “true meaning” of baptism. The truly disturbing part of the essay comes a few paragraphs later and it was this doctrinal stance that prompted me to write this post.

God takes the covenant sign seriously. Thus a child, who would otherwise be a member of the covenant people, God considers him to be no part of the covenant people if he does not have the sign of the covenant. So a child of believing parents who is not baptized is considered by God to be none of his. It matters not how much care the parents may lavish on the child, or how much they may teach him the Bible. They have disobeyed God on one point, and their children are cut off.

Wow. Isn’t that a dangerous line of reasoning? God cuts them off based on the action or rather inaction of their parents? It seems that Mr. Shaw is creating a division here between the elect and the covenant community. In other words, you can be elect and not be part of the covenant community one the one hand and on the other hand one can be part of the covenant community and not be in the elect. I really don’t understand how you can seriously say that someone is part of the New Covenant community and yet that person will spend an eternity in hell.

I have to wonder though, if a child is one of God’s elect, is that child elect based on receiving baptism as an infant? If an infant that is born of believing parents is not baptized, are they “cut off” from the covenant community regardless of being born-again later? The language Mr. Shaw uses sounds very sound and reasonable but when you start to dig into it, you find that there are troubling implications when faced with the stark reality of the New Covenant.

The argument is that circumcision is the sign of membership in the Abrahamic covenant and baptism is the sign of membership in the New Covenant. Mr. Shaw points to Colossians 2: 11-12 as evidence of the linkage between circumcision and baptism. There is of course a problem with that argument as evidenced by what the text actually says.

In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. (Col 2: 11-12)

Now a cursory examination of this text might give one the impression that circumcision=baptism more or less. Is that what is going on here? Certainly not. I would argue that there is a linkage here that is unwarranted. It is pretty clear that even when the New Testament is speaking of circumcision, when it comes to the New Covenant community it is speaking of the circumcision of the heart. That is Paul’s point in Colossians 2, not that we should treat physical circumcision and baptism as one and the same. Physical circumcision was a type and shadow of the inward change that would be wrought in believers. In fact, physical circumcision is spoken of in an almost negative light (see Galatians). Likewise, we were “raised with him through faith”. That is not indicative of water baptism at all but rather baptism of the Spirit. Water baptism does not correspond neatly to circumcision as the paedobaptist would argue, instead physical circumcision corresponds to circumcision of the heart (see Ezekiel 36: 26-27).

What is the basis for covenant membership in the New Covenant (you know, the one that is called “New” and “not like the old” for a reason)? It is not water baptism. We need to of course look at the New Covenant, originally prophesied in Jeremiah 31 and affirmed as being mediated by Christ in Hebrews 8:

But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31: 33-34)

The overall error here is failing to recognize that while the covenants have many similarities, they are not the same in purpose, mediation and administration simply by virtue of being a covenant. The covenant with Adam is not the same as the covenant with Abram. The covenant with Moses is not the same as the New Covenant. They are all part of the grand scope of redemption but they cannot be viewed as being virtually indistinguishable other than name. The heart of the New Covenant is the forgiveness of sins. There are none who are still in their sins who are in the New Covenant community and there are none who are forgiven of their sins who are outside of that community, water baptism not withstanding. The defining mark of the New Covenant community is not parentage or physical signs, it is faith that stems from an internal change. What is really ironic is that infant baptism flies smack in the face of the core fundamentals of Reformed theology, the idea of election, monergistic regenerations and effectual calling. My Reformed paedobaptist brothers will stand firmly for the core doctrines of Reformed theology on the one hand and then essentially sidestep them in defending infant baptism. When Christ “instituted” the Lord’s Supper, He was quite specific about this:

Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. (Matthew 26: 26-28)

The New Covenant is in His blood, a blood that is poured out for the forgiveness of the sins of His elect. There are clearly non-elect children of believers and if you follow Reformed theology, especially particular or limited atonement, it naturally follows that His blood was not shed for them. As such, they are not beneficiaries of the New Covenant promise and in no way should be given the sign of that very covenant. Galatians 4: 21-31 seems applicable here as well regarding the idea of two covenants, one physical and one spiritual. Paul is directly dealing with the Jewish influence in the churches in Galatia who are insisting on applying the sign of physical circumcision to Christians. Paul is adamant about this:

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. (Galatians 5:6)

If you are saying that water baptism corresponds to circumcision, then you might as well say neither baptism nor unbaptism counts for anything. In Christ Jesus, the Savior and the mediator of the New Covenant, what counts is faith. Not water baptism, not physical circumcision, not parentage, not church membership.

This is so pivotal. I would not argue that this should be a point of separation between brothers at all, but baptism is an important and hotly contested doctrine. What is being described here by Mr. Shaw seems to be, taken to its logical extreme, a cutting off of people from the covenant community of God not based on their status as one of the elect or based on being born-again, but instead based on the action or inaction of their parents. That certainly was true in the Old Testament (see Genesis 17:14) but it has no warrant in command or example in the New. Those who are, following the admonition of Genesis 17: 14, not circumcised will be cutoff but again, the defining characteristic of the New Covenant is that we are circumcised in the heart, not a circumcision made with hands and baptized by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, not by water baptism.

We are not saved by water baptism nor are we in or out of the New Covenant community of Christ based on being water baptized either as an adult or as an infant. This idea of two churches, one a “visible” church with people in the covenant community who are not elect and another, “invisible” church, is an error and has no place under the New Covenant administration. I remain convinced, ever more so the more I study it, that infant baptism is a holdover from Rome, one of the areas that the magisterial Reformers left “unreformed”. Taken as a series of unrelated proof texts, infant baptism can be marginally defended but when you examine the role of water baptism in the grand scope of Scripture, especially in light of the New Covenant and the contrast between the external “types and shadows” that prefigured the New Covenant and the New Covenant internal changes (circumcised hearts and baptism of the Spirit), there simply is no Scriptural justification for “baptizing” infants.

Ruh roh!

There are a couple of very interesting articles on Church Matters, the 9 Marks Blog (Mark Dever’s ministry) that caught my eye. Normally the blog posts are pretty innocuous but when the titles of the posts read: “"The Sin of Infant Baptism", written by a sinning Baptist”and “The unintentional yet damaging institutional sin of infant baptism.”, you know that is going to cause a stink. When I go off about baptism, it can be dismissed as the rantings of a loony. When Mark Dever, of Together for the Gospel and 9 Marks Ministry does, ruh roh!

From the first post by Mark Dever…

Nevertheless, as I understand the words of Christ in Matt. 28:18-20 Christians are commanded to baptize and to be baptized, and the practice of infant baptism inhibits the obedience of what I take to be a quite straightforward command. I understand explanations that have been given about the practice of infant baptism (Orthodox/Roman, Lutheran and Reformed) but am sincerely persuaded that none of them line up with God's own Word. This does not cause me to doubt the sincerity of my reformed paedobaptist brethren, nor even their judgment in general. It is simply that on this point they've got it wrong, and their error, involving as it does a requiring of something Scripture does not require (infant baptism), and the consequence of a denying of an action Scripture does require (believers baptism) is sinful (though unintentionally so).

I have made it no secret that I consider paedobaotism to be a serious error and I agree with Mark that Scripture does not command or imply the baptism of infants. But is it a sin, even an unintentional one? Those who baptize infants, by and large, are sincerely doing what they believe the Bible teaches. But being sincere and believing in what you are doing is never the measure for truth, otherwise an awful lot of errant teaching would be considered orthodox. Infant baptism is applying a command to something the Bible does not command, and so does that qualify as a sin? I think it does (ducking my head).

The second blog post by Mike Gilbart-Smith links infant baptism with a lack of church discipline, using the example of the Church of England.

The problems are multiple:

1) baptism is seen as having nothing to do with church membership. And when there is no church membership, church discipline becomes impossible.

2) infant baptism itself tends to separate baptism from church membership and discipline. One doesn't want to publicly disicpline a 2 year old for poking his sister in the eye and showing no signs of repentance. All paedobaptists I know rightly recognise that such matters are better dealt with within the family.

The problem there of course is that a) there is no command for formal church membership in the Bible and b) credobaptist churches have many of the same problems when it comes to discipline that paedobaptist churches endure. I am not sure that poking your sister in the eye as a baby would be grounds for church discipline in any church setting anyway. You kind of have to read both posts in their entirety to get a flavor for the full argument.

I am certain that this is going to reignite the firestorm over baptism on the blogosphere. The comments on the posts themselves are already getting snippy. Baptism is kind of the elephant in the Reformed room, and whenever it comes up people get wound up. I may have to wear a disguise next weekend at the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology in Grand Rapids so as not to be attacked by angry mobs of Presbyterians and Dutch Reformed types.

So what say you: whichever side of the baptism debate you come down on, is the giving of the sign of baptism to an infant or the denying of that sign to an infant on the level of a sinful act?

Acts 2, necessary inference and infant baptism

OK, so I am back on this kick again. Infant baptism just gets under my skin. It used to be something I just shrugged off for the sake of peace among Reformed, confessional brothers but baptism is so important for the body of Christ and when it is misapplied, especially to infants, it seems to me to be an issue we need to really get some clarity on. I recognize that this is an issue that has divided the church over the years, in fact it may be the issue that is the most divisive in terms of fellowship among Christians and that the ground I am covering has been covered thousands of times before.

Let’s look again at the “proof text” offered for infant baptism in Acts 2, verse 39:

Acts 2: 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.”

This is the most inexplicable verse used to defend infant baptism. Taking that verse from a paedo worldview, it says that the promise is for these men and their offspring, i.e. their children, so in response they should be baptized and so should their infants. The problem is two fold. First, it doesn’t say or even imply that. Second, the surrounding context before and after doesn’t support that view. You can’t get to “…your children” and stop reading. Let’s look at the verse itself, taken in a vacuum before we look at the surrounding context.

What does verse 39 say? It says that the promise, fulfilled in the cross and described in Peter’s sermon in verses 14-36 was for them (those listening), and also for succeeding generations and for people in far away lands. Indeed the promise is for, and this is important, “everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself”. So the recipient of the promise are these men, succeeding generations, people in far away countries, all of whom are united by one thing: they have been called by Christ. It is no longer just a Jewish faith, it is a faith that is universal in the sense of being for all people, Jews and Gentiles, rich and poor, free and slave. What unites them under this promise is their election and effectual calling. Just as Peter is not saying that people are saved merely by being in far away lands, he is not in any way saying that infants are saved or that they should be baptized because of who their parents are. We shouldn’t take Acts 2:39 to mean that we should baptize people in Thailand just because they are far away from Jerusalem nor should we baptize infants just because of having Christian parents.

Let’s look now at the preceding and successive verses that add light to verse 39 and demonstrate even more fully that Peter did not intend his statement in what we know as Acts 2:39 to advocate infant baptism. First the verses immediately preceding verse 39.

Acts 2:37 Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” 38 And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

These men were cut to the heart by Peter’s preaching of the Gospel. In response to that Peter tells them to repent and be baptized. So we have here the first of many examples of proper baptism: the preaching of the Gospel accompanied by a changed and penitent heart, a call for repentance and finally baptism. Contrast that with the paedo view: start with baptism, preach the Gospel through church and catechism and hope that they are elect. Kind of like growing into their baptism, even though countless numbers of infants that are baptized end up never being regenerate. This is the problem of making the argument of “necessary inference”. There is no need for inference here because we are already given explicit command and example of the proper recipients of baptism. Infant baptism is not a “necessary inference”, it is a reversal of the clear teaching of Scripture which tells us and shows us that the proper recipients of baptism are people who profess Christ. Not only is there no example or command to the contrary, but the writers of Scriptures go to pains to demonstrate just the opposite.

What of the verses immediately following verse 39?

Acts 2:40-41 And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.

So who was baptized that day? See again verse 41: “So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.” (Acts 2: 41)

Not those who received his word and their infant children. Those who received his word were baptized. It is a statement that is inclusive of those who received his word and exclusive of anyone else. This is where infant baptism falls apart in my eyes, you can go so far but no further. It is like the missing link or the lack of transitional forms in evolution. You have fossil A and current creature B, but there is no link between the two so you just make one up. Again, it certainly seems that the Scripture writers go out of their way to point out who is being baptized. Those who received his word were baptized.

There is simply no teachings at all in Scripture, NONE, that refers to, describes, commands or even infers that infants were or that infants should be baptized. So proponents of infant baptism are left with arguments of silence (well it doesn’t say we shouldn’t baptize infants) and invalid continuities between the Old Covenant community and the New. Given the importance of baptism, I will take the explicit commands and examples of Scripture over tradition and the Westminster Confession any day of the week.

(Up next, there is an online article on Jeremiah 31: 31-34 from a paedo perspective I am going to address.)

Connecting all of the dots

(This is my final post dealing with Dr. R. Scott Clark's On Churchless Evangelicals )

So let’s put these pieces together.

First we are told that if you do not practice infant baptism, you are not in a valid church.

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.

As such, wouldn’t your “membership” in a non-infant baptizing church be an invalid church membership (assuming for a second that “membership” per se is valid at all)? How can you have a valid church membership in an invalid church? That would be no different than being a member of the mormon church in good standing. It is a valid church membership, just not in a valid church.

Then we are told that if you are not in membership in a church congregation, you are not part of the visible body and therefore not part of the church invisible.

By analogy, the church invisible is composed of those who are, have been, or shall be, members of a visible church. if you’ve never sworn membership vows and confessed a common faith with a congregation, you are not a member of the visible church and if you’re not a member of the church visible, by definition, you are not a member of the church invisible. The former is a prerequisite for the latter.

If you are not part of the invisible church, well then you might be in trouble. Let’s look at Dr. Clark’s definition of the invisible church:

“When we speak of the church invisible, we’re speaking of that great congregation of the elect considered across time and space. It’s a way of speaking of the holy catholic church, that church in all times and places... It transcends congregations and denominations but is composed of elect who are members of congregations. It includes people from every tongue, tribe, and nation.”

I happen to agree in substance with that definition. The invisible church is comprised of all of the elect in all time, and all of the elect by nature will be regenerate and come to faith in Christ as part of the body of Christ. No one who is a Christian is not also elect, and no one who is elect fails to be a Christian. So let’s stop and very carefully put these two pieces together. If you aren’t in the visible church (defined by sworn membership vows in a congregation), you are not in the invisible church and you cannot be in the valid, visible church with a valid “sworn membership” in a church that doesn’t baptize infants. So it is logical to assume that since Dr. Clark considers non-paedobaptist churches to be invalid churches, we can assume that membership in those invalid churches is invalid as well. Therefore if you don't baptize infants you are not part of a legitimate visible church, and not part of the invisible church and therefore not part of the Body of Christ.

So is Dr. Clark stating in a roundabout fashion that if you are not a member in a paedobaptist church, you are not a Christian? That seems to be the argument taken to its logical extreme. All Christians are part of the elect. All of the elect are part of the invisible church. Only members of the visible church are also members of the invisible….

I really can’t believe that is what Dr. Clark is suggesting. I would assume that he considers people like Ken Jones, one of the hosts of the White Horse Inn and a Baptist, people like Al Mohler, people like John Piper to all be Christians. But when you lay out an argument you need to think through the implications, especially when you are teaching in a Christian seminary, and the implications here are troubling when you connect the dots. If you aren’t in an infant baptizing church, you are not in a real church and if you aren’t a member of a real church, you aren’t counted by Dr. Clark among the elect throughout the ages.

Fortunately I rely on the Word of God in matters like these. What matters is having your name in the Book of Life (Revelation 20: 12-15; Revelation 21:27; Philippians 4:3), and not whether you have your name on the membership rolls of a Presbyterian church.

The sum of his argument is taking church traditions of the Reformed flavor and trying to cram Scripture into those traditions. Not all church traditions are terrible things and many of them are not found in Scripture explicitly or even implicitly. But to imply that this particular brand of church tradition is the only possible expression of the church and that this claim is supported by Scripture, when often it is not, is arrogant and damaging to the Body of Christ. To paraphrase Dr. Clark, he can have his church traditions as he desires, and I don’t want them, but he shouldn’t declare himself free to state that only those who subscribe to his traditions are legitimately Reformed or even taken to an extreme that only those who follow his church traditions are even in the Body of Christ.

I have issues with much of evangelicalism, but to assume that the problems we see are limited to those “evangelicals” that Dr. Clark scoffs at and that by being more “Reformed” in church practice those problems are mitigated is both foolish and has in practice not been borne out. The problems that have decimated “real” churches like the Christian Reformed Church and the various Presbyterian groups like the PC-USA had less to do with not affirming the Belgic or Westminster Confessions strongly enough, but instead stems from the church becoming more and more institutionalized, more of an organization and less of a church. In fact, I would and have argued in the past that the reason that the PC-USA and the CRC have gone down the path of liberalism irreversibly and the Southern Baptist Convention recovered is precisely because the PC-USA and the CRC are highly organized, hierarchical organizations. While the Southern Baptist have a myriad of problems and are primarily “evangelical” instead of “confessional” Christians, at least they are not ordaining women and homosexuals and the Bible is still sort of preached in most of their churches.

So let’s see who this sounds like: Highly liturgical. Focus is on the institution. Stringently authoritarian and hierarchical. Formal membership in the visible church a requisite for being an in the invisible church. Infant baptism a prerequisite for being a “real” church. Appeals to traditional confessions.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: Roman Catholicism!

Funny that the guy who claims to be the true blue Reformed guy (and arbiter of who is allowed in the Reformed club) espouses a series of beliefs that sound a lot more like institutionalized Roman Catholicism than like New Testament ecclesiology. Kind of makes you wonder what they Reformed themselves from? In essence we have Roman ecclesiology coupled with New Testament soteriology (maybe not really, but since we are making grand, sweeping generalizations I wanted to get in on the action).

Now I don’t really think that what Dr. Clark is espousing is tantamount to Roman Catholicism. I don’t think we would see Dr. Clark declaring himself to be Cardinal Clark and wearing a mitre. But the slavish adherence to confessions and institutional Christianity, and rigid self-imposed definitions on who is or is not Reformed, from a group that has failed to reform it’s ecclesiology, hardly makes one the champion of being Reformed or reformational. If you buy into the narrow definition of Dr. Clark’s hyperconfessionalism, I guess I don’t qualify as “Reformed” nor would I want to. But since being Reformed is defined by more than Dr. Clark’s checklist, I will gladly claim and retain the title of “Reformed”, a “Reformed” theology that is Biblical and not traditional, a theology grounded in Scripture and not in empty formalism.

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.)

More from Piper on baptism

The second sermon from Dr. Piper on baptism and church membership is available online here. It is a good summary of the biblical doctrine of believer's baptism, but he still ends with a question about admitting people into church membership who have not been Biblically baptized.

So now after two sermons, we have two things that are important. Baptism is important. And the nature of the local church as a sacred expression of the universal body of Christ is important.

Failing to be baptized is serious. Excluding genuine believers from the local church is serious.

There are godly, Bible-believing, Christ-exalting, God-centered followers of Jesus who fail to see the dreadfulness of not being baptized as a believer. And there are godly, Bible-believing, Christ-exalting, God-centered followers of Jesus who fail to see the dreadfulness of excluding such people from church membership.

The question we should ask is not only hard to answer, but it is hard to formulate. Perhaps the Lord in his mercy will show us how to do both in a way that will cut this knot for his glory. May the Lord grant a wisdom like Solomon’s or, even better, a wisdom like the One who is greater than Solomon.

To his credit, Piper does reject categorically infant bapstism. A good summary of his points were published on the Desiring God blog...

The drama of baptism gets its meaning from the gospel.

It pictures the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. It's not mainly about ritual or tradition but Jesus and his magnificent saving work of dying for sinners and rising again in triumph.

Baptism is:

a command of Jesus,
that expresses union with him,
by immersion in water,
in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit,
for believers only.

A sense of the continuity of the old and new covenants leads some people to baptize infants. But the argument for infant baptism doesn't work textually or covenantally.

Textually, the apostle Paul makes plain that baptism is for those who have been raised with Jesus through faith (Col. 2:12) and are sons of God through faith (Gal. 3:26–27). Baptism is not for those who don't have faith in Jesus—whether adult unbelievers or infants.

Covenantally, while the old-covenant sign of circumcision was administered to males after their physical birth into the national people of God, the new-covenant sign of baptism is to be administered to both males and females after their spiritual birth into the international people of God. New birth by the gospel now provides entrance into the people of God, not physical birth, and is marked by believer baptism, not circumcision.

I pray that the elders of Bethlehem Bapist continue to insist on obedience to the Gospel command and admit into the body only those who submit to Biblical baptism.

Why bother being a Baptist anyway?

The news from Minnesota, not Lake Woebegone but Bethlehem Baptist, is that they are revisiting the issue that caused so much controversy a few years ago: will they admit into membership people who were baptized as infants but don't want to be properly and Biblically baptized as adults. Traditionally, in most conservative Baptist churches, that was the case. If you were baptized as an infant and now wanted to join a Baptist church you had to undergo baptism. Not be rebaptized as infant baptism is rightly seen as illegitimate and not a true baptism anyway, but to be Biblically baptize after repentance and a public profession of faith in Christ. Now Bethlehem Baptist is questioning that practice.

The Issue: Church Membership
The issue was: How should our church relate to those who are born again, and deeply committed to the Bible and to Christ, but are not yet persuaded that their infant baptism is unbiblical and invalid? Should such believers be admitted in some cases to membership at Bethlehem? Or to put the question in the larger general way: Should the front door of the local church be roughly the same size as the door to the universal body of Christ? In other words, should we say to any person: We know you have truly entered into membership in the universal body of Christ, but you may not enter into membership in this local expression of the body of Christ?

How Important Is Membership?
Or another way to put the issue is: How does the seriousness of exclusion from local church membership compare with the seriousness of not being baptized even though, after studying the Scriptures and trying to be obedient, the unbaptized person believes that he is baptized? In the real world where genuine, Bible-believing, gospel-loving, Christ-exalting, missions-minded Christians do not agree on the meaning of baptism in the New Testament, how should we relate to each other?

Piper states that Bethlehem Baptist is concerned not with baptism per se, that they hold to an orthodox Baptist position on believers baptism. Their statement of faith certainly does. They claim this is a separate issue, an issue of membership not baptism.

But if you believe so strongly in believers baptism as Biblical, why would you admit into membership someone in rebellion against the Word, who refuses to submit to the authority of the Bible and be baptized as professing faith? Someone who apparently is relying on the act of getting sprinkled as a baby, before conversion to fulfill a very specific Biblical command? I think not and I am not sure what would motivate this.

On the other hand. what is the motivation of those seeking to join a Baptist church and not hold to Baptist theology? I fear it is based on a desire to be a member of Piper’s church, a name brand pastor. Why else would you seek to fellowship and join in covenant membership with a Baptist church if you refuse to follow one of the key distinctives of a Baptist church? I would hope that people would not join a church for such self-serving reasons, but I am cynical enough to assume that it does happen.

Should this be a conversation we should have? Certainly. We should be clear on what Biblical baptism looks like and what cchurch membership entails. But should a Baptist church abandon one of it's core convictions to bring in more members, to make rebellious Christians more comfortable, to allow some who refuse to be Biblically baptized to say "I belong to John Piper's church? I don't think so and I hope that the elders of Bethlehem Baptist agree.

(HT: Voice of the Sheep)

Are unregenerate church members in the SBC validation for infant baptism?

In response to a statement that it is troubling that paedobaptists baptize people with absolutely no indication of them being regenerate, the response was made on Voice of the Sheep that Baptist church rolls have a number of names on them of clearly unregenerate people. There are two ways to approach this issue, the problem of unregenerate church membership.

One, is the method espoused by Les Prouty. In a comment response on Voice of the Sheep, Les makes the following statement in response to my concern for paedobaptists intentionally baptizing people who are not believers (for some reason you can't copy text in the comment section of VOTS, some quirk in Wordpress):

Witness: Southern Baptists for example, where millions on the rolls of SBC churches, baptized and members, cannot be found!

That statement is silly on it's face. There is an enormous difference between baptizing people who have made a confession of faith and baptizing infants. Every faithful, Bible believing Baptist church I know of makes a sincere effort to ascertain whether or not conversion has taken place. It is not perfect, but the effort is prayerfully made. No effort is made in paedobaptist churches. Mom and dad are members of the church (and believe me that paedobaptist churches baptize infants of unregenerate members, thus nullifying the promise), so you get sprinkled with water. That is the extent of their examination. Your kid has Christian parents, so he/she gets baptized.

So, the logic seems to go, if there are SBC members who are not regenerate but are still on the rolls, heck we might as well baptize infants. Indeed this brings us to my point that by the logic of infant baptism we might as well sneak up on people on the street and throw some water on them in the hopes that they might eventually become regenerate.

The second way to deal with that issue, the Biblical one, is to do as Dr. Tom Ascol at Founders Ministries has done, and introduce resolutions calling on the SBC to repent and clean up it's rolls and membership process.

Resolution on Integrity in Church Membership

Whereas the Baptist Faith and Message states that the Scriptures are "the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried" (Article 1); and

Whereas life in a local church should be characterized by loving discipline as the Bible teaches in passages like Matthew 18:15-18, 1 Corinthians 5 and Titus 3:10-11; and

Whereas the 2007 Southern Baptist Convention Annual Church Profiles indicate that there are 16,266,920 members in Southern Baptist churches; and

Whereas those same profiles indicate that only 6,148,868 of those members attend a primary worship service of their church in a typical week; and

Whereas the ideal of a regenerate church membership has long been and remains a cherished Baptist principle as described in Article VI of the Baptist Faith and Message; and

Whereas the significance of believers' baptism tends to be lost when churches that practice it fail to exercise loving care for all their members; therefore, be it

RESOLVED that the messengers of the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana, June 10-11, 2008, urge Southern Baptists to repent of our failure to maintain responsible church membership, and be it further

RESOLVED that we urge the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention to repent of the widespread failure among us to obey Jesus Christ in the practice of lovingly correcting wayward church members (Matthew 18:15-18), and be it further

RESOLVED that we plead with pastors and church leaders to lead their churches to study and implement our Lord's teachings on this essential church practice, and be it further

RESOLVED that we encourage denominational servants to support and encourage churches that seek to recover and implement our Savior's teachings on church discipline, especially when such efforts result in the reduction in the number of members that are reported in those churches, and be it finally

RESOLVED that we commit to pray for our churches as they seek to honor the Lord Jesus Christ through reestablishing integrity to church membership and to the reporting of statistics in the Annual Church Profile.

I am not sure what chance this resolution has of passing, but the recognition by Dr. Ascol and many others is there that there is a problem. All churches, ALL CHURCHES, have membership problems. The difference is that Dr. Ascol recognizes the problem in the SBC. Les Prouty doesn't even see that there is a problem in paedobaptist churches. I think I like Dr. Ascol's method better.

Baptize 'em all

Let God sort 'em out!

The infant baptism debate rages on over at Voice of the Sheep. It is pretty frustrating on both sides and doesn't seem to be going anywhere, but it is a good exercise in digging deeper in the text. On more that one occasion I have gotten up from the laptop, grabbed a study Bible or commentary to make sure I was on with what I was saying. I doubt that anyone is going to change their minds, but it still is a good challenge.

I get some of where they are coming from as far as the covenant argument. Taking in a vacuum some of those make sense, at least until you run into Jeremiah 31 and the clear teaching on the subject of baptism in the New Testament.

What is disturbing is the arguments that basically say we baptize our kids and assume they are believers until the prove otherwise. That flies in the face of the New Testament and the New Covenant, and I would say it flies in the face of Calvinism even though Calvin baptized infants. The "L" in the TULIP stands for Limited Atonement, which is described as: The doctrine of definite atonement (or more commonly, limited atonement) addresses the purpose of the atoning death of Christ. It maintains that God's design and intent in sending Christ to die on the cross was to pay for the sins and secure the redemption of those whom God has predetermined to save, namely the elect. Therefore the primary benefits of his death (especially as an atonement) were designed for and accrue only to believers. (from Theopedia)

So Christ atoned only for the elect, by His shed blood and yet we are supposed to knowingly baptize people for whom Christ did not make atonement and for whom His blood has no value? And these are the people who have claimed the exclusive mantle of "Truly Reformed"? Dare I say that infant Baptism fits better into an Arminian theology, baptize all infants and hope for the best? It is an odd display and combination of sentimentality, tradition and pride that drives paedobaptism: sentimentality where our children are concerned, because who wants to think of their children as not being elect even though the evidence shows that plenty of children raised by Christian parents grow up to not be Christians. Tradition because paedo's cling to the way their church has always done things and in some of the reformed confessions that must not be questioned or challenged. Pride because we assume that God is a respecter of persons, at least where our kids are concerned.

I have been trying to work through Fred Malone's A String of Pearls Unstrung in my spare time. It is a great little booklet that lays to rest many of the paedo arguments, by a guy who went paedo because it seemed like only paedo's got Reformed theology so they must be right on baptism too, only to come to realize how wrong on that subject our Presbyterians brethren are. When you lay out the paedo position, it seems like a great argument until you start picking off the arguments one pearl at a time and find that there is simply no Biblical justification for infant baptism. Not by commandment. Not by example. Not by inference. You can read A String of Pearls Unstrung online at Founders website here.

Baptism


We had the wondrous blessing today on seeing two more of our children baptized. It has been something we have needed to do for some time, but circumstances have prevented us from being able to do so. Providentially we find ourselves in a new area but at a Bible preaching church where a man of God, who understands what the Bible teaches about baptism, presided over the sacrament of baptism for my children.


What a wonderful experience to speak with your child, talk about the significance of baptism and hug your child who has come to faith in Christ and welcome them into the church. To have them understand what baptism is, what Christ has done and what being a member of the church means.

A thorough yet succinct refutation of infant baptism

Brian Thornton at Voice of the Sheep, has been hashing over the whole credo vs. paedo baptism debate over the last week or so. It seems to be the topic of conversation among the Reformed in the blogosphere, and while it has led to a number of heated exchanges and some downright ugliness, it is a debate that needs to happen.

Brian's most recent post is a great compilation, very briefly, of all of the problems of infants baptizing. Titled My Problem with Infant Baptism, he manages to compile most of the arguments against infant baptism in one list. When you cut through all the obfuscation of the padeo position, you are left with a couple of obvious point from Brian's list:

• 
  The only explicit examples we have in Scripture of those being baptized are ones who have first expressed repentance and faith. This one requires no other commentary as it clearly speaks for itself.
• 
  The only command in Scripture we have telling us who to baptize says it is to be those who have first become disciples, which requires repentance and faith prior to the ordinance of baptism.

Right on target. There is no command and there are no examples of infant baptism anywhere in the NT, and that is the most damaging Achilles heel of the paedo position. Kudos to Brian for a well thought out post.

What do you see?

A baby?

Yet another Sido?

A blessing from God?

All of the above are true, but what we really see when we strip everything away is this:

A sinner

The picture is of our youngest daughter, Victoria, at a few hours of age last October. She is cute as a button, smiles and grins all the time, loves her mom and dad and her brothers and sisters. But she is at heart no different than any other person (save Christ) who has every walked on this earth, even though she isn't walking yet, in that she is lost in her sins and although full of physical life she is spiritually dead.

Not every child who is born to Christian parents is elect and grows up to be a Christian. Not every Christian is born of Christian parents. So why in the world would we give the sign of the remission of sins to a person who we have no idea whether or not is elect? Some say this is not an issue of parentage but of obedience. Two questions there: 1)Why not baptize all infants at the hospital? and 2) More importantly, where does God's Word command us to baptize infants? If it is a direct commandment of God, should the commandment show up somewhere? We are left with trying to explain a New Covenant sign with Old Testament text. Infant Baptism only makes sense when viewing the New Testament through the lens of the Old, rather than the proper method of interpreting the Old Testament in light of the New.

Together for the Gospel

(But apparently only to a certain point...)

I posted a brief question on the Heidelblog:

So does someone who does not hold to every point of doctrine in the Reformed confessions be considered “Reformed”. More to the point, can a credobaptist not be truly Reformed?

The question led to a full response from R. Scott Clark titled: Who or What Defines “Reformed?” (Updated)

The posting itself was pretty gracious. The comments that followed, not so much. Scott did say this which I found amusing:

Thus, the short answer to Arthur’s question is that yes, one must hold to every point of doctrine in the Reformed confessions in order to be Reformed. One might have Reformed sympathies or predestinarian sympathies or covenantal sympathies and the like and not be Reformed. I don’t know what Baptists who sympathize with us on certain points should call themselves. I wouldn’t presume to tell them.

So in the same paragraph he says he wouldn't presume to tell us what we should call ourselves, and yet says that we cannot, or at least should not, refer to ourselves as Reformed. Many of the following commenter's exhibited a incredibly graceless lack of charity and maturity in the responses, including the virtual outright labelling of Baptists as heretics. See comments from ZRIM and from dvopilgrim. What is glaringly lacking in any of these comments is any sort of Biblical defense of their position. These two commenter's use the blog equivalent of mudslinging to avoid a substantive discussion.

In other words, to be considered "truly Reformed" we can Reform the church this far (i.e justification and soteriology), but no further. The same sort of attitudes that prevailed in Romanism (Shut up Luther, these questions are settled!) show up in those who insist that we dare not question infant Baptism because to do so negates our Reformed credentials. To that I say: "Hooey!"

It is NOT blindly holding to the Reformed confessions without question that makes one Reformed, whether one holds to the Three Forms of Unity or the 2nd London Confession. I mean let's get past "My confession is more Reformed than yours". Being Reformed ought to be about getting back to the basics of the Reformation, and the Reformation was not about infant baptism (although it probably should have been since they left that doctrine un-reformed). Being Reformed is about the Gospel. That is what he Reformation was really about, was it not? The recovery of the Gospel of justification by faith alone and the authority of Scripture alone? The Five Solas of the Reformation are just that. Sola infante baptizo and Sola presbyterio ecclesio are not the sixth and seventh Solas, unless I missed the memo.

So what are we allowed to call ourselves? I guess we could call ourselves Calvinistic Baptists. But Calvin baptized infants (he also burned heretics at the stake but that is another story!) Or we could go old school and call ourselves Particular Baptists. Hey, tell you what, I am going to call myself a Reformed Baptist and I don't much care if some paedobaptists think that my holding to the Biblical doctrine of believer's baptism sets me outside of the Reformed circle of trust. With all of the assaults on the Gospel from all quarters, we should spend a little less time labelling each other as un-Reformed.

Baptizing Unbelievers

I was skimming along the blogosphere and came across this line in a Pulpit Magazine posting:

"Here at Grace Community Church, we are firmly committed to believers’ baptism — meaning that we do not see Scriptural precedent for the baptism of unbelievers, including infants."

What a clear description of paedobaptism, which really amounts to the baptism of unbelievers. You would never baptize an adult, even the adult child of a believer, who showed no signs of regeneration, but that is precisely what happens with untold numbers of infants every year. My argument still is that by the logic of paedobaptism you ought to sneak up on people on the streets, throw water on them from behind and hope they turn into believers.

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.

Covenant Children Today

There is a new book out from Reformed Baptist Academic Press, and it looks like a solid addition to the defense of credobaptism, baptism of believers alone, from a Reformed persepctive. The title is Covenant Children Today, written by Alan Conner. I am not familiar with Alan, but he seems very well versed in the topic and quite serious about his scholarship and exegesis. He was recently interviewed on The Narrow Mind with Gene Cook Jr., and the interview itself was quite informative without even reading the book.

Sometimes we avoid talking about baptism because it is such a divider among Reformed folks. Better perhaps to focus on the Five Points and let everything else slide. But there of course are a few problems with that. First, the fact that our paedobaptist brethren assume that Reformed Baptists are not "TR", Truly Reformed. Secondly, the doctrine of whether to baptize infants or just believers impacts the very nature of the visible church body, and as such is too important to let slide. Certainly we should embrace (and attend!) events like Together for the Gospel, where we focus on the big issues of our faith and celebrate our common roots in Christ, but that doesn't mean we should ignore

There is a great deal of sentimentality among the normally sober minded Reformed regarding infant baptism, and why not? They are our children, little lives in our care and who wants to think of them being not part of the elect of God? It is easy to assume that babies of believers are automatically believers. It is also wrong. It is, like Pastor Gene says, so very obvious in Scripture that baptism is, under the New Covenant administration, an ordinance reserved, just like the Lord’s Supper, strictly for believers. Not for infants who quite frankly we have no idea based on their parentage if they are elect. Merely having elect parents is no guarantee of being elect, any more than being the child of non-elect parents precludes an possibility of being elect.

The issue of who is to be baptized in the church is one that is decided not by skills of debate (Gene Cook lost handily to Paul Manata and James White beat down Bill Shisko, so that was a draw) but rather on the plain teaching of the Word of God. That Word demonstrates openly that only those who are believers in Christ should enter the waters of baptism. We are not saved by baptism, so we ought to reserve that ordinance of the church for those who have expressed faith in Him.

Good stuff on baptism!

Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega ministries and Dr. Gregg Strawbridge, author of The Case for Covenental Infant Baptism had an online debate, sort of a follow-up to the earlier debate between Dr. White and Bill Shisko. I have only listened to bits and pieces, but I am sure of two things: a) it will be very charitable, well-thought out and interesting and b) Dr. White will win because he is on the right side! I downloaded the mp3 for later review...

The audio is available to listen to or download for free by clicking here.