I’m a
Baptist of a Reformed bent. I love high-church services, but there’s something
about the dunking of converts in vats of water which apparently renders such
practitioners incapable of practicing high-church. I prefer Bach to praise
choruses; were I a paedobaptist I would find myself much more comfortable on
Sunday mornings. Alas, I am not, though I long to be. I’m not alone—many
Reformed Baptists feel a little out of place and, having already been properly
baptized, make the plunge to a Presbyterian or Episcopalian church of their
liking, particularly if their children are grown. My child’s about two, which
means this isn’t an option for me.
Nevertheless,
the desire to be convinced of the merit of the paedobaptist view lingers in my
mind and heart. So it was with great anticipation I cracked open a book about a
credo-baptist’s journey to being a paedobaptist. The book was given to me by
its author, who is a good and kind man. His thinking on the issue of baptism,
however, is illogical, incomplete, and tinctured by haughtiness, which is to
say that it is typical of a paedobaptist’s arguments about baptism. But I write
this, my response, not as an attack on the author’s intelligence—his name will
not be mentioned, nor will the title of his book. Instead, as I note that his
book is typical of the arguments I’ve heard from credo-turned-paedo-baptists, I
take it upon myself to rebut the ideas contained therein. You’ll read quotes
from the book as I use them to display the thinking, and wrong-headedness of
its underlying logic. As I said, I’ll not use the name of the book, but in the
spirit of Lewis I shall call it the Blue Book, and I’ll refer to its author as
Justus. It is only right that I not refer to the author by name, not only
because of my desire not to embarrass him, but because the thinking reflected
in the book is not really his own. Justus didn’t lock himself in a room with a
lamp and a Bible until he came away with a “proper” understanding of baptism.
He adopted the thinking of others, and is now in the Blue Book trying to hook
new converts to an idea he finds intellectually appealing.
Anytime
baptism is discussed with a paedobaptist two things become clear: he wants to
put off the discussion of baptism as long as possible, and he wants to cloak
his error in a system which he says unlocks the key as to how God has
interacted with people throughout the ages. Justus does this as well, punting
his discussion of baptism until you get a few chapters into his book, which
putatively is about baptism.
The
system which is the key to the paedobaptist’s view is called covenantal
theology. Justus ably explains that God interacts with people by way of
covenant. The following covenants are then listed: Adamic, Noahic, Abrahamic,
Mosaic, Davidic, and the New Covenant. Justus, in typical paedobaptist form, declares
that these covenants are always made with promises of concomitant blessings,
not only with the immediate party to the covenant, but also with his family.
Justus’s
revelation on this last point comes quickly, and thankfully. For Justus, the
idea that the object of the New Covenant is the numerous physical families
rather than the untold number of individuals who make up the Church is
foundational. Justus comes to this conclusion from his erroneous reading of the
Old Testament, so that when he comes to the Gospels he has a fully formed
presupposition that will necessarily lead to his error regarding baptism.
Justus
begins by recounting a conversation he had after a service while he was still
an elder at a Baptist church. The dialogue concludes with Justus asking, “Would
you like to see my reasons for thinking that the Bible supports including our
children in God’s gracious covenant?” BB at 2.
Justus
then provides his readers with the focus of his book: “Baptists maintain that
baptism is for believers only. Others
say that baptism is for believers and for
their children. Holding to the latter view are Reformed paedobaptists.” BB at
2. Here we see the beginnings of the self-deception in which our author is
engaged. For what unfolds in his tome is a defense of paedobaptism that would
suggest, no, demand, that it is not
only the children of believers who should be baptized, but a believer’s whole household should be baptized, yet Justus
lacks the courage of his conviction, or at least in the end he distrusts his
own hermeneutic. If Justus’s argument is true for the infant, it is just as
true for the recalcitrant teenager, the unbelieving spouse, even the
mother-in-law who lives at the home of a new convert and his unbelieving wife. We must note, then, at the outset one of the
problems with the term paedobaptist:
It is at once both too broad and too narrow. No paedobaptist would argue that
the church is called upon to baptize all infants, thereby making the term too
broad. But the term is too narrow, because the paedobaptist does not argue for
the forced baptism of the twelve-year-old son of a new convert, or the mother-in-law
in the above-example. The term credo-baptist, in contrast, is crystal:
baptize all those who believe, and only those who believe. The problems with
Justus’s focus-statement continue when he creates a false-dichotomy: there are
the Baptists, he says, and the Reformed paedobaptists. What is a Reformed
paedobaptist? A thorough reading of the book reveals that he is an
infant-sprinkler unsullied by the soot of Rome.
So
sensitive is Justus to this last issue that he makes a point to direct the
reader’s attention away from Roman Catholicism on page 3—“Some . . . argue that
Reformed paedobaptists baptize infants because of the influence of the old
Roman Catholic sacerdotal practice. But that is a fallacy of guilt by
association. While some people may practice infant baptism because of Roman
Catholic influence, it is not fair to presume that all paedobaptists do so for
the same reason.” BB at 3. But no one argues that John Calvin or B.B. Warfield
practiced paedobaptism because they were sympathetic to Roman Catholicism or
because they were fettered to the pope. Yet somehow Justus has found people who
do make that outlandish claim: “It would be a fantastic claim to suggest, as I
have heard it said, that these men [John Calvin, Charles Hodge, B.B. Warfield,
J. Gresham Machen, John Murray, and Cornelius Van Til] hold their position on
baptism because they have mindlessly
followed Rome.” BB at 3-4 (emphasis added). If Justus “heard it said” that
John Calvin “mindlessly followed Rome,” then he must have been reciting this
line in front of the mirror just for the sake of being able to say he’s heard
the phrase uttered.
You
can tell a lot about a writer by the straw-men he bundles together. This
scarecrow scatters before one finishes processing the punctuation at the end
the sentence about those said to have “mindlessly followed Rome.” To say that
paedobaptism is a vestige of Rome is not to say that Charles Hodge mindlessly
followed the pope. More importantly, Justus knows this is the case. Moreover,
while I’m sure Calvin wasn’t tied to Rome, I’m sure Hodge, Warfield, Machen,
Murray, and Van Til were tied to Calvin, and were ardent defenders of Calvin’s
clear and beautiful teaching on grace. But Justus also knows that the point of
theology where each of the above-cited theologians is weakest, particularly
Hodge, is on the issue of baptism. The recent convert to Reformed theology will
pour into Calvin’s Institutes and Hodge’s Systematic Theology and be blessed
beyond measure by their observations about grace. But when they get to baptism
they’ll surely be disappointed by their lack of a convincing defense of the
practice of infant baptism. So overwhelming were paedobaptists as opposed to
credobaptists in terms of number in the days of Calvin that he does little more
than call Anabaptists buffoons and heretics. Hodge’s defense of infant baptism
is circuitous and dissatisfying for anyone looking for something beyond
confirmation of a pre-existing belief.
Though
Justus takes liberties in mischaracterizing his theological opponents in
certain spaces, he is gracious to show in the conclusion of his first chapter
the foundation for his view on infant baptism: (1) Covenant theology; (2)
continuity of the covenant of grace; (3) continuity of the people of God; (4)
continuity of the covenant signs; (5) continuity of households. BB at 8. I’ll
share below how Justus pours the five footings of his foundation. For now,
though, it is sufficient briefly to make some general observations about these
pillars.
First
regarding what’s there. The list obviously is tautological. Everything after
“covenant theology” is superfluous, and is a necessary outflow of covenant
theology. It’s rather like a Dispensationalist listing his five pillars as: (1)
God has two people, Israel and the Church; (2) God has a special plan for
Israel; (3) God is not done with Israel; (4) God will fulfill all of his
promises to Israel; and (5) God will return to Israel all of the land of
Palestine. The primary pillar is covenant theology, and by this Justus means
that “throughout the Bible, God relates to his people by way of a covenant of
grace.” BB at 8. Surely such a statement is one with which no Christian could
disagree. But Justus may as well have written a very nice open letter to all
Baptists asking them to read a primer on covenant theology, for that is
ultimately what Justus attempts to provide, and if one adopts all of the
underlying assumptions of covenant theology one will certainly come to their
designed conclusion. For covenant theology is not simply the idea that “God
relates to his people by way of a covenant of grace,” but a distinct
theological system, developed over the past three hundred years, which holds to
Justus’s pillars two through four.
If I
were going to craft “five pillars” of any commandment or ordinance in
Scripture, one of my pillars would be the examples the Bible gives of that
commandment or ordinance being carried out, and another would be the Hebrew or
Greek for language used to prescribe that commandment or ordinance. While I
appreciate Justus’s global view of the Bible, seeking to find “continuity”
throughout the Scriptures in order to observe a theme that leads him to the
shallow font, I think he goes too far in trying not to fall victim of failing
to see the forest for the trees. He views the woodlands from so far above that
he cannot make out a single oak, much less a copse here or there. He just sees
a mass of green and brown.
Consider
the covenantal syncretism that occurs here: “To be included in this gracious
covenant meant to be an heir of the promise (i.e., one who should lay claim to
the Redeemer). A child of the covenant had available all the benefits and
privileges of this covenant, including salvation. Yet this same child of the
covenant, failing to appropriate these benefits by faith, became a covenant
breaker and received God’s covenant judgment instead of his covenant blessing.”
BB at 9. This statement was in the context of a discussion of God’s covenant
with Abraham, whereby God commanded him to circumcise “all those in his
household, including his children.” BB at 9. Justus tells us that this didn’t
mean all those people who were circumcised would be regenerated, only that they
had the opportunity to “appropriate” all of God’s blessings by faith. BB at 9. Who,
pray tell, has the benefit of being able to “lay claim to the Redeemer?” The
children of believing parents alone? In the New Covenant God has not made a
deal with an ethnic group of people, or various families of diverging origin,
saying to them, “Do this and I will give you blessing; do that and I will curse
you.” God has said to the world, “Jesus Christ gave his life as a remission for
sin.” The world stands condemned already, but a merciful blessing of grace is
offered and given to all who believe. The case of Israel was far different. God
called Abraham and Abraham alone. God said he would make a nation out of
Abraham, and he set Abraham and his descendants (with notable exceptions) apart
from the rest of the world with a sign—the sign of circumcision. Abraham’s
spiritual children are set aside with a circumcision not performed by hands—a
circumcision of the heart.
Circumcision,
says Justus, was just one of the “older administrations of the covenant of
grace” and has now been replaced by water baptism. BB at 10 (“water baptism has
replaced circumcision as the sign of covenant admission”). If that were true,
that “water baptism has replaced circumcision,” then one might expect such a
statement to be found in the New Testament, particularly in Paul’s epistles.
Alas, it is glaringly absent. Not only do the Gospel writers and Apostles fail
to tell us that water baptism has replaced circumcision, we see that in the
controversies addressed regarding baptism, circumcision is never discussed, and
likewise in the controversies addressed regarding circumcision, baptism is
absent. And when circumcision is discussed in the epistles it is done so by way
of showing that it was a metaphor for faith. Baptism is not a metaphor for
faith that rests within the heart of man, but a symbol of the work of Christ
and his resurrection from the dead.
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