Why I am not a Baptist IV

Here’s the next installment.

Previous posts in the series:

Why I am not a Baptist I

Why I am not a Baptist II

Why I am not a Baptist III

8. The symbolism of infant baptism is most consistent with the sovereignty of God in salvation

It is, I know, a matter of personal opinion and bald assertion rather than scriptural evidence, but when I came to understand the sovereignty of God in my salvation, my own utter inability to come to him, and my complete dependence on the quickening agency of his Spirit for cleansing and new birth, the oft repeated baptistic objection that as a baby I did not understand what was happening to me melted away, to be replaced with wonder at the wisdom and mercy of God, who saw fit, in his vast covenant love, to have the sign of saving grace placed upon me while I was as yet ignorant and unable to do anything but cry out for a mother’s milk. For that was exactly my state when he saved me: unable, helpless, dependant, crying out like a baby for the mercy of another. That picture moved me, and moves me still, to adoration and praise.

9. The meaning of the baptizo word-group cannot be narrowed to mean ‘dip or immerse’ only.

The battle has raged, and continues to rage among Greek scholars over this. Suffice it to say that the evidence is sufficiently clear that baptizo and synonyms cannot be pressed to mean “dipping” exclusively.

10. The spiritual reality (the work of the Spirit in new birth, cleansing, and filling)  is always poured out or sprinkled.  We are not dipped into the Spirit.

There are no instances of the spiritual reality signified in baptism being spoken of as an immersion. There are the ‘baptism in, with, or by the Spirit’ passages (Matt 3:11; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16; John 1:33; Cor. 12:13), but they rely on a disputed interpretation of baptizo. When we turn to those texts that actually tell us about how Spirit-baptism took place in the New Testament (Acts 1:8; 2:4; 2:17,18; 2:33; 9:17; 10:44,45; 19:6;) we find that the Spirit is poured out upon, or falls on, or fills, or is received by believers. People are not plunged into Him. He comes upon them. They are never immersed in Him. Where does this leave the view of baptizo as ‘to dip’ one wonders?

Why I am not a Baptist III

6. The enlarging rather than narrowing of the scope of New Covenant membership

In Acts 2:38-39 Peter responds to the cries of the sin convicted crowd at Pentecost in language redolent of the covenant promise made to Abraham but tying baptism to it as the new sign of covenant membership,

“Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children and to all who afar off, as many as the Lord our God shall call.”

Peter here connects the fullness of the Spirit’s blessing with the fullness inaugurated with the coming of the New Covenant and explains the terms upon which the crowds might come to participate in that covenant blessing. They must repent and believe, signified in baptism. The warrant for his offer to them of covenant membership is the covenant promise itself, “the promise is to you and to your children” just as it was in the Old Covenant. But now the covenant has been enlarged to take in not only the people of Israel but “all who afar off, as many as the Lord our God shall call”, that is, the promise is now offered to believing Jews and their children, and to Gentiles too.

So Peter’s statements here make clear that the covenant is enlarged both in terms of the spiritual inheritance given to God’s people (the gift of the Holy Spirit) and in terms of covenant membership (you and your children and those who are afar off). Children are explicitly included, not excluded, and the scope widened to embrace non Jews as well as Jews.

Children were included in the Old Covenant. Why we might ask our Baptist brothers, are they excluded in the wider, fuller, deeper, richer, New Covenant?  

7. Household baptisms imply that corporate solidarity rather than individualism is operative in the New Covenant as in the Old

We agree that household baptisms alone offer inconclusive evidence that infant were in fact baptized in the New Covenant. But we do assert that the principle of household solidarity found in the Old Covenant is perpetuated in the New so that the administration of the covenant sign of baptism to infants along with newly converted parents is entirely natural and fitting.

Anniversary Interviews on Calvin’s significance

Derek Thomas interviewed Phil Ryken and Bob Godfrey on the significance of Calvin for Ref 21. Have a listen!

Bavinck, the Imago, and Two Kingdoms

How far was Herman Bavinck an exponent of two kingdoms/spirituality of the church theory?

“In Lutheran theology the image of God is restricted to original righteousness and was therefore totally lost when the latter was lost. In this theology the lines of demarcation between the spiritual and the worldly, between the heavenly and the earthly, are so sharply drawn that the result is two hemispheres, and the connection between nature and grace, between creation and re-creation is totally denied… Reformed theology, on the other hand, by its distinction between the image of God in a broader and a narrower sense, has most soundly maintained the connection between substance and quality, nature and grace, creation and re-creation… The whole being, therefore, and not something in man but man himself, is the image of God. Further, sin, which precipitated the loss of the image of God in the narrower sense and spoiled and ruined the image of God in the broader sense, has profoundly affected the whole person, so that, consequently, also the grace of God in Christ restores the whole person, and is of the greatest significance for his or her whole life and labor, also in the family, society, the state, art science, and so forth.”

Reformed Dogmatics Vol. 2, p553-4,

Doug Kelly sermons on the Trinity

Martin Downes links to these important sermons over at the EMW Audio page. 

Do yourself a favor and go listen already!

Why I am not a Baptist II

As promised, I’ve begun to fill out my reasons for paedobaptist convictions  below….

1. The continuity of the Old and New Covenants in redemptive history

As passages like Galatians 3, for example, make clear, the New Testament understands salvation in Christ to be the fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant.

Why I am not a Baptist

I saw this post at Justin Taylor’s blog from a while back on what’s new in the New Covenant, which he gave as (doubtless only one) reason for his credo-baptist convictions.

I got me thinking about my reasons for my paedobaptist convictions. Let me simply list them here and then I’ll go back in future posts and elaborate on some of them a little in turn…

You get Him better!

We celebrated the Lord’s Supper last night and I addressed the congregation from the table with a few quotations from Bruce’s magnificent volume. (Mine is the 1901 Edinburgh edition with the preface by John Laidlaw, so apologies if the page numbers don’t match the Torrance edition pictured above)

First, concerning what we receive from the Supper, Bruce affirms that we get nothing in the Supper that we do not receive from the Word. But does this not render the Supper superfluous? If I get from the Supper the same thing I get in the preaching of the Word why do I need the Supper? What new thing is there is the Supper that renders it necessary?

“Then wilt thou ask what new thing we get? I say, we get this new thing: we get Christ better than we did before; we get the thing which we had, more fully, that is, with a surer apprehension than we had of it before; we get a greater hold of Christ now. For by the sacrament my faith is nourished, the bounds of my soul are enlarged: and so, whereas I had but a little hold of Christ before, as it were between my finger and my thumb, now I get Him in my whole hand; and still the more that my faith grows, the better hold I get of Christ Jesus. So the sacrament is very necessary, if it were no more but to get Christ better, and to get a closer apprehension of Him, by the Sacrament than we could have before.” (p64)

Secondly, Bruce has these wonderful exhortations for us as we sit at the table together,

“Look what thou seest the minister doing outwardly, whatever it be; is he breaking that Bread? Is he dealing that Bread? Is he pouring out that Wine and distributing that Wine? Think assuredly with thyself, that Christ is as busy doing all these things spiritually to thy soul. He is as busy giving to thee His own body with His own hand: He is as busy giving to thee His own blood with the virtue and efficacy of it. Likewise, in this action, (if thou be a faithful communicant) look what the mouth is doing and how the mouth of the body is occupied outwardly: so is the hand and mouth of the soul (which is faith) occupied inwardly. As the mouth takes that Bread and that Wine; so the mouth of thy soul takes the body and blood of Christ, and that by faith. ” (p55)

For those who care for ‘Mother Kirk’

My friend Red Robbo has an excellent piece reflecting on the recent fall of the Church of Scotland into institutionalized apostacy here

Are we really ‘Seeking a Better Country’?

As a Scot recently landed in the States Seeking a Better Country was invaluable in navigating the complex history of American Presbyterianism from its earliest days to the present. What has stuck with me is the abiding legacy of the Old Side/New Side and Old School/New School divisions in contemporary conservative presbyterian denominations.

The Old School and New School continue to delineate the faultlines, in the PCA at least. I wonder what, if anything, the PCA can learn from the past on these matters? Is the Old School doomed to smug obscurity and the New School doomed to a pragmatic slide into cultural compromise?