Posted on 10/05/2001 11:02:13 PM PDT by Uriel1975
I have completed the primary reading..but have things to do..when I get back I will read the rest of your argument...I have a few things from the first article I have general agreement with and some things I do not...
Thanks for your work
terry
You are so thoughtful:>)
What of children or adults who are severely mentally retarded and cannot make such a decision? Would you hold that they should not be baptized? And if so, would you then say that for similar reasons - because they cannot choose - they cannot be saved?
On the one hand, I find myself at variance with a brother-in-Christ (you), while on the other I find myself on the same side of this issue with a wolf in sheep's clothing (GWB).
Yes, I am a Baptist, yes I believe in the practice of "believer's baptism" by immersion administered only to those who have already professed faith in Christ. However, the fact that a "fellow" Baptist would bring this up and use it as a tool for divisive schism is troubling. What is interesting is the fact that you see very little Baptist condemnation of paedobaptists. This is primarily due to the fact that Baptists do not see baptism as essential to salvation, but view it as a symbolic remembrance of what has already occured in the believer's life. To try to use this issue as a stumbling block between Christians is an abomination.
You will excuse me if I choose not to participate in this discussion.
But this is a secondary argument. Uriel's points make the convenant argument well enough.
Baptism can become works. You cannot tell true elected saints from those that are not. So baptism becomes the sign of our covenant with Christ. My children bear that name. If they prove to be covenant breakers later, their punishment is worse. Why?
Because they bear the name of Christ already. Not less because they were never really christians.
Like Noah, I bring my children into the ark. I consider and treat them as covenant members till they prove themselves disobedient. Even then they will be disobedient covenant members, not heathen.
Excuse the intrusion, but I wanted to respond to your logical and (quite common) question regarding infant baptism although I have no desire to enter a tedious debate over infant baptism, as I find it divisive and unproductive with little bearing on anyone's salvation.
God is perfection and his justice is therefore perfect. If a person is incapable of understanding the path to salvation due to youth or retardation or whatever other reason beyond their ability to change or overcome, I don't see how there can be any doubt that these persons would be saved through their innocence (of knowing of sin) and their inability to obtain salvation by repenting and receiving Christ due to their handicap or in the case of infants and small children, immaturity.
To put it bluntly; our God does not play games with his creation. If a human being is allowed to be born with a mental handicap that prevents them from ever understanding God, Christ or anything else, that person's creator is not going to then send them to a spiritual death (hell) based on a condition they had no control over in any way and could not change. That would not be just; and God is just.
I agree that infant baptism 'does no harm' to the child. Assuming that the child grows up to understand that he or she must come to Christ on their own, repent, believe and accept the Holy Spirit as well as be baptised and confess themselves 'before men', as scripture states. The only harm I could see with infant baptism would be if that infant grows up believing they have been saved and so, they do nothing spiritual their entire life, based on a false assumption that some water sprinkled on them at a few weeks old gave them a ticket to heaven with no other spiritual responsibility on their part for the rest of their life. I doubt that happens very often, but it could be a risk and about the only one I can see for infant baptism.
In most fundamental Protestant churches, including mine, baptism is important and not done unless the person seeking to make their confession of Christ has been questioned and the Elders or minister is fairly sure that they understand what they are confessing and what baptism actually represents. This is especially important with younger, pre-teen children. I've not seen any child under 11 baptised in my church and only a few under 14 years old. This makes sense to me. I was 13 at the time of my baptism and although I did understand what I was doing, it took some years for me to get a real grasp of my Christianity.
Final point; baptism in and of itself cannot 'save' anyone, in my opinion, but it is a stong sign of salvation obtained through the acceptance of Christ and - most important - it's scriptural.
Infant baptism strikes me as similar to a eulogy at a funeral; the person being baptised/eulogized is not the real beneficiary, the audience is.
In most fundamental Protestant churches, including mine, baptism is important and not done unless the person seeking to make their confession of Christ has been questioned and the Elders or minister is fairly sure that they understand what they are confessing and what baptism actually represents. This is especially important with younger, pre-teen children. I've not seen any child under 11 baptised in my church and only a few under 14 years old. This makes sense to me. I was 13 at the time of my baptism and although I did understand what I was doing, it took some years for me to get a real grasp of my Christianity.We routinely see very young children baptized in Baptist churches. I've seen them as young as five. I have a few questions about the practice but do not object. Like you, I trust in God's justice and mercy to those who die in infancy or those who never heard the Gospel preached or the developmentally disabled.
That was basically my thought. My post was mostly to try to find out what sort of level of intelligence the other poster thought was required for baptism (and, I thought that could imply salvation). Your points are valid and I think I disgree only on minor issues.
John Piper
I recall a beautiful day in 1973. Prof. Leonhard Goppelt had invited his university seminar on baptism to a retreat south of Munich in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps. He was Lutheran and I was the lone American - and a Baptist. We met in a monastery and for several hours debated the issue of infant baptism vs. Believer baptism. It was a two-man show: sort of a David and Goliath affair. Only there were no Baptist Israelites cheering me on. Nor did Professor Goppelt fall. But to this day I believe the flight of my stones was true and that only the impervious power of a 17-century tradition protected the bastion of pedobaptism.
But now I have come to see that the "battle of Bavaria" was fought at the wrong level. Since coming to Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, I have taught about ten four-week membership classes. Almost every time, there have been Lutherans or Catholics or Presbyterians or Covenanters or the like who were "baptized" as infants but want to join our church. Month by month my understanding of why I accept believer baptism has increased. And now I see that I never got to the root in Bavaria.
Here's the way my thought has progressed. There have been three stages (not unlike childhood, adolescence and maturity).
First I saw that every baptism recorded in the Bible was the baptism of an adult who had professed faith in Christ. Nowhere in Scripture is there any instance of an infant being baptized. The "household baptisms" (mentioned in Acts 16:15, 33 and 1 Corinthians 1:16 are exceptions to this only if one assumes that the "household" included infants. But, in fact, Luke steers us away from this assumption in Act 16:32 by saying that Paul first "spoke the word of the Lord. . .to all that were in his [the jailer's] house," and then baptized them.
Besides the absence of infant baptism in Scripture, I also notice (as every Baptist schoolboy knows) that the order of Peter's command was "Repent, and be baptized" (Acts 2:38). I saw no reason ever to reverse the order.
But I gradually came to see that these observations were only suggestive, not compelling. That no infant baptism are recorded does not prove there weren't any. And that Peter said, "Repent, and be baptized," to an adult audience does not rule out the possibility of his saying something different about infants. So I grew up to my second stage and decided, "I had better turn away from the examples of baptism to the teaching about baptism." Perhaps the meaning of Luke's narrative would be clarified by the exposition of Paul and Peter.
Of course Romans 6:1-11 came to mind. But this was Professor Goppelt's favorite weapon, because it contains not a word about faith or about any conscious response to God until verse 11; and there the response came after baptism. So he uses Roman 6 as the classic defense of infant baptism. To me it goes either way in isolation.
But Colossians 2:12 and 1 Peter 3:21 seemed to me to be devastating to the pedobaptist viewpoint. Paul compares baptism with circumcision and says, "You were buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead." This says clearly: in baptism we are raised through faith. Baptism is effectual as an expression of faith. I did not see how an infant could properly accept this sign of faith.
Then 1 Peter 3:21 said, "Baptism. . . saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ." This text frightens many Baptists away because it seems to come close to the Catholic, Lutheran and Anglican notion that the rite in and of itself saves. But in fleeing from this text we throw away a powerful argument for believer baptism. For as J.D.G. Dunn says, this is the closest thing we have to a definition which includes faith. Baptism is "an appeal to God." That is, baptism is the cry of faith to God. In that senses and to that degree, it is part of God's means of salvation. This should not scare us off any more than the sentence, "If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord. . . you will be saved." The movement of the lips in the air and the movement of the body in water save only in the sense that they express the appeal and faith of the heart toward God.
So it seemed to me that Colossians 2:12 and 1 Peter 3:21 sewed up the case against baptizing infants who could not yet believe in Christ or appeal to God.
But that is where my Bavarian battle stopped. Since then I have been shown by a long succession of arguments in my membership classes that even these texts leave open the [remote!] possibility that an infant can be baptized on the strength of its parents' faith and in hope of its own eventual "confirmation." It is just as possible that these passages have relevance only for the missionary setting where adults are being converted and baptized. If Paul and Peter had addressed the issue of new infants in Christian homes, maybe they would have come off as good Presbyterians.
I doubt it. For there is now a third stage of reasoning in favor of believer baptism. There is a grand biblical and Baptist response to the Heidelberg Catechism, which says that infants of Christian parent "belong to the covenant and people of God . . . they also are to be baptized as a sign of the covenant, to be ingrafted into the Christian church and distinguished from the children of unbelievers, as was done in the Old Testament by circumcision, in place of which in the New Testament baptism is appointed." In other words, the justification of infant baptism in the Reformed churches hangs on the fact that baptism is the New Testament counterpart of circumcision.
There is in fact an important continuity between the signs of circumcision and baptism, but the Presbyterian representatives of Reformed theology have undervalued the discontinuity. This is the root difference between Baptists and Presbyterians on baptism. I am a Baptist because I believe that on this score we honor both the continuity and discontinuity between Israel and the church and between their respective covenant signs.
The continuity is expressed like this: Just as circumcision was administered to all the physical sons of Abraham who made up the physical Israel, so baptism should be administered to all the spiritual sons of Abraham who make up the spiritual Israel, the church. But who are these spiritual sons of Abraham who constitute the people of God in our age?
Galatians 3:7 says, "So you see that it is men of faith who are the sons of Abraham." The new thing, since Jesus has come, is that the covenant people of God are no longer a political, ethnic nation, but a body of believers.
John the Baptist inaugurated this change and introduced the new sign of baptism. By calling all Jews to repent and be baptized, John declared powerfully and offensively that physical descent does not make one part of God's family and that circumcision, which signifies a physical relationship, will now be replaced by baptism, which signifies a spiritual relationship. The apostle Paul picks up this new emphasis, especially in Romans 9, and says, "Not all are children of Abraham because they are his descendants. . . it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God" (vs. 7-8).
Therefore a very important change has occurred in redemptive history. There is discontinuity as well as continuity.
Zwingli and Calvin and their heirs have treated signs of the covenant as if no significant changes happened with the coming of Christ. But God is forming His people today differently than when He strove with an ethnic people called Israel. The people of God are no longer formed through natural kinship, but through supernatural conversion to faith in Christ.
With the coming of John the Baptist and Jesus and the apostles, the emphasis now is that the spiritual status of your parents does not determine your membership in the covenant community. The beneficiaries of the blessings of Abraham are those who have the faith of Abraham. These are the ones who belong to the covenant community.
And these are the ones who should receive the sign of the covenant: believer baptism. So if I could go back and do Bavaria again, I would get to the root in a hurry. This is where our "defense and confirmation" will be won or lost. But the Lord brings us through childhood, adolescence and maturity for a reason. Every stage of reasoning is useful. Know your audience, brothers, and magnify the meaning of baptism.
DGM's toll-free number (888/346-4700) and web site address (www.desiringGOD.org)
Male or female? *grin*....
See Ezek 37 and Jer.31:31 and Heb.8:8.
There are three groups of people, not two, Jew, Gentile and Church (1Cor.10.32), and the Church today is a combination of the two (Gal.3:28,Eph.2:11-22). But when the Church is called home (1Thess.4:16-17,1Cor.15:51-54) the groups will go back to two, Jew and Gentile.
Infant baptism is nothing but Roman Catholic nonsense that the Reformers never shook themselves free of. It does not even makes sense on the basis of the Reformed view of election. You are baptising both 'elect' and 'non-elect' infants so what good is it. Can baptism make one part of the elect (without faith?).Can the non-elect be part of the Covenant?
To claim Lk.18:15 as a basis for infant baptism is really straining the verse.
Even so, come Lord Jesus
Maybe you should have kept reading.
The Essay (article + first 9 posts) argues for the validity of infant baptism.
Thanks for the posts I've been wanting more info on this subject for some time 18 Posted on 10/06/2001 06:06:47 PDT by winslow
Most welcome.
I generally don't get into this fight, as my own Orthodox Presbyterian teaching elder is pleased to, several times a year, leave his flock under the care of a Reformed Baptist pastor when he is travelling. And, as this pastor is a duly-ordained presbyter of the church of Jesus Christ (albeit one with a slightly different view of sacramental practice), the congregation treats him with all the respect and consideration which is rightly due an Elder. We even feed him 'n stuff.
I generally do not address the matter unless Presbyterian sacamental practice is termed a "silly superstition". In that instance, I shall respond.
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