Church planter and brother in Christ Kip Chelashaw passes on this question for Baptists:
Here’s a way to summarize the historical issues the Baptist faces if he wants to argue the apostolic and early church practiced professor’s baptism only:
He has to explain why discontinuity in the NT did not create a controversy. Children had always been included in God’s covenants, they are suddenly excluded, and there is not a trace of discussion or controversy about it in the NT. Is that plausible? Not a single apostle thought to make a defense of this change? Jewish Christians never questioned it?
(Actually Kip has two questions, but, one thing at a time!). I’m a Reformed Baptist, and happy to oblige. I’m glad the question is asked; it should be answered. So, here goes.
We need to have this debate, and really have it
Firstly, a preliminary aside before any answer to the question. It’s curious to me as a Reformed Baptist that both Kip and the man who’s question he forwards are today, in 2025, asking this question. They are both ordained ministers, convinced paedobaptists and highly educated men. As such, they must be aware that Reformed Baptists have been giving answers to this question for many decades. (Well, centuries of course – but let’s stick to the debate in the days of the modern publishing industry when you can quickly search for all sorts of books at all sorts of levels of detail, in large supply). They may not find these answers at all convincing, as is their right. But that’s quite a different thing from writing and arguing as if responses are not out there. If the attempts are found to be totally unconvincing, then you can explain why. Reformed Baptists have explained their view of what they see as your mistakes; now you can counter-refute them. The argument has been advanced; now you can respond. But why does this so rarely happen? Why do we so often seem to return to step 1 and are drowned in people simply asserting the paedobaptist view into the void?
Paul K. Jewett’s “Infant Baptism and the Covenant of Grace”, published in 1978, is an excellent and detailed analysis of the structure and subtle mis-moves in the Reformed paedobaptist argument. No self-respecting evangelical paedobaptist should be without it if he wants to know why their Baptist brethren are convinced they’re very wrong. Also around 5 decades ago, David Kingdon wrote “Children of Abraham”, which Don Carson called “The best brief treatment of the topic from a Reformed Baptist perspective”. The list could go on and on. As I say, one can with complete honour hold that their arguments are terribly mistaken. But that being so, rather than repeating the initial question, why not interact with the responses? Where are they wrong? When I was making my mind up on the debate, I was leaning towards the paedobaptist position, and bought more books by Reformed paedobaptists than by Baptists. I wanted to understand the arguments, from their best exponents and not be dependent upon just one man’s possible mistakes or eccentricities. I discussed with both paedobaptists and Baptists, and came away convinced that the Reformed paedobaptist argument had been soundly refuted. This wasn’t an entirely comfortable conclusion, because Reformed Presbyterians such as Calvin, Warfield, Murray, et al had become theological heroes whose works I did (and do) hugely admire. It was sad to have to part company with them on an important issue and “go outside the camp”. I am today, many years later, sad that it’s still so rare for paedobaptist brethren to interact with real-world critiques of their position instead of with “Baptists say…” straw-men that aren’t recognisable in the literature (or which just stick to critiquing 1980s Dallas Seminary dispensationalism as a chosen foil).
Perhaps Kip asks the question only for rhetorical effect. Maybe he well knows that people have tried to answer it, and does find their answers unconvincing. That’s great. But please can we be told why that is, in detail, at least as often as we hear the original paedobaptist argument/question stated?
Understanding the question
So, on to the question itself. It is stated with commendable clarity, and in my view, without undue prejudice. Like any polemical assertion, of course, it contains its own assumptions – but they’re not disguised or difficult to understand. The writer asserts that God’s covenants, prior to the New Testament, had always “included children”, and so asks, if we assume the Baptist position that the New Covenant does not include them, why is there then no trace of discussion and controversy arising from this? Where is the push-back against this radically new idea, and why do the apostles never have to address it? We do see plenty of controversies in the New Testament as the new wine began to be poured, and those who hadn’t understood that new wineskins were required for it needed the apostles to correct them. Why not here too? With such a new thing, why has it left no trace?
The logical conclusion – it is being asserted – is that there was no controversy at all because in fact, there was no change at all. Children were included under all previous covenants, and so they were under this one too. No arguments or explanations were needed because there was nothing to argue about or clarify. Usual service continued, uninterrupted, and everyone was happy. The silence is telling: just as the sons of Jews were circumcised, so the children of Christians should be baptised.
We could choose to quibble over the precision of this or that. For example, the chosen term “children”. Praise be to God’s grace, most of my children are at this point baptised, and this is unremarkable in Baptist churches. They are baptised for the same reason that I am baptised: they have repented of their sins, believed in Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit has come into their life. They are born again; they have died with Christ and risen with him. And as such, who can forbid that they should receive water, who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have? What our paedobaptist friends mean, of course, is that they baptise infants, and do so for some other reason (the precise reasons vary from one to another, as anyone who has read different arguments from different paedobaptist authors knows) than that all those concerned are saying “as so-and-so is baptised today, we rejoice to see and hear the reality of a New Creation in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit’s work in this life being seen by us”. As such, a more precise phraseology might be “infants, born to covenant members, had always been included automatically, with no other considerations needed”. Note that this in turn would not actually logically entail baptism. Daughters of Abraham did not undergo any outward sign or ceremony of their inheritance of the promises. The Bible nowhere directly tells us that things are being extended to include infant daughters as well as infant sons. Other arguments are made by paedobaptists for this extension. But as I say, these things are quibbles. They do not touch the heart of the argument. We will leave them for now, and pass on to the things which do.
A relevant concession
One thing that should not be bypassed as we head towards the centre is the implicit concession made, that infant baptism is nowhere discussed in the New Testament. Whatever your view, this is certainly something to remark upon. After all, if Christ and his apostles intended all Christian parents, in all nations and places, in all times and circumstances, to baptise their new-borns (and perhaps some others in other cultural or clan relationships), then the fact that this doctrine nowhere was thought worthy of expression to anyone, anywhere is at the very least, interesting. Of course, we have the paedobaptist answer already in the question posed: it was already so deeply embedded and universally understood, that it never needed to be mentioned. The silence is the very thing that proves the point.
One is tempted here to respond “so, silence is a compelling argument for thee, but not for me”. No controversy over infant baptism proves that it was universally accepted; whereas no actual mention at all of infant baptism also proves that it was universally accepted. What exactly would we find in the New Testament if infant baptism was a completely unknown doctrine? It would seem likely that we’d find the same complete silence. When I studied logic, evidence that doesn’t do anything whatsoever (supposing were to accept for the sake of this argument that the silence is truly good evidence for infant baptism) to distinguish between an assertion and its complete negation, doesn’t have any value. If Mrs. Muggins always leaves her house at 9am on Tuesday to go shopping, and if Mrs. Smith was murdered a mile away at 9.20 on Tuesday down a dark alleyway, then it doesn’t seem that Mrs. Muggins’ departure from her house at that exact hour, even if caught on all of 24 CCTV cameras, is actually positive evidence of her purpose in passing through her doors that day. If the prosecutor sarcastically implies “well well, what a coincidence!” whilst playing all the two-dozen pieces of opening-and-exiting-the-door footage to the court, then it is still not at all compelling. She did what she always did, which means nothing either way.
What to make of the silence?
I am a little amused by the idea of all New Testament churches and their members being such excellent covenant theologians, in the mould of John Calvin, that they would never need an apostle to clarify infant baptism to them. They did, after all, have trouble with holding onto justification by faith alone (Galatians), the resurrection of the dead (Corinthians), understanding that Christians can’t fornicate with harlots (1 Corinthians again), shouldn’t turn away from Christ back to the abolished ceremonies of the law (Hebrews), and that we worship only God, not angels (Colossians). But hey ho, not one of them failed to fully grasp an argument which didn’t really even appear in church history until the 16th century (beyond merely asserting a simile that as Jewish babies were circumcised, so Christian babies are baptised). I’ve never met a paedobaptist brother who came to his view in any other way than deep and concentrated study of other paedobaptist writers (or debaters), little-by-little learning their arguments and rebuttals piece-by-piece as if by rote, but never directly from the Scriptures. Nonetheless, we’re supposed to believe that the early Jews were never in danger of being less than spot-on in their understanding of the covenant continuity and all the nuances required to get from circumcising Abraham’s male descendants on the 8th day, to sprinkling our new-born daughters in church today. They may, like Peter, have thought that the Messiah had come to reign and not to suffer, and been misled even as apostles into separating themselves from meals with Gentile brethren (Galatians 2) – but it was impossible that any Jew should not reproduce even the details of John Calvin’s doctrine of how the relationship between the covenants carries over into application with infant baptism. This is a fantastic thing – but as you suspect, I mean that in the old English sense of the word.
Arguments from silence
We’ll let that assertion about things that all New Testament believers could not fail to understand rest for now. The Reformed Baptist argument does not rest upon constructing a precise doctrine of how to evaluate silences in different parts of the Biblical record. I have never read a paedobaptist-written schema of how to determine when silence is, and isn’t, significant, and then been shown how it applies to their beliefs; but we can leave it aside. The heart is still elsewhere, and we now want to go directly to it. Whatever we make of the silence, noticing it does help clarify the paedobaptist argument. That is a thing to be grateful for. The positive argument for paedobaptism is not based upon positive statements found in the New Testament. It is conceded that there aren’t any. Rather, the positive argument comes from what has already been stated, before. The argument is all made in the Old Testament. The argument is about what is fixed, without possibility of change, by that prior revelation.
Continuity, discontinuity …. in what?
So, the heart of the question, all sides are glad to state without reservation, is that of the continuity of God’s dealings in the New Covenant with what went before. It is a question of what is continuous, and what isn’t: continuity, and discontinuity. What carries over, and what doesn’t? And the heart of the issue is that if something of importance (and what believer’s infants aren’t important to them?) radically changes, if the discontinuity is deep and wide, then we’d expect that to leave an imprint. Before, infants were included; afterwards, they (for the Baptist) weren’t. This huge bomb, dropped upon the early church (which at the beginning was of course entirely Jewish – Acts 2:5-11) should have left a giant bomb crater, visible from the Moon, upon the pages of the New Testament.
Did it? Yes, it did. It really did. It’s all over it. It’s visible from the Moon, and we have many photos to examine.
That is to say, I forcefully deny the premise of Kip’s argument. The controversy that he is looking for is staring him in the face, in book after book. The problem isn’t that it’s not there. The problem is that he has a problem that means he can’t see it. He has glasses in front of his eyes which have blinded him to it. Like a man with filter glasses that someone handed him, he, and other Reformed paedobaptist brethren, have learned a form and pattern of presenting their argument and understanding their doctrine which subtly renders them unable to see what would otherwise be very clear. The dispute is addressed by Jesus, and by his apostles, many times, directly.
What are we looking for?
Did I just contradict myself? After all, not long ago I was violently agreeing that infant baptism is not discussed in the New Testament – whether in controversy, or teaching. And yet now I think it is?
Well, not quite. I asserted already that Kip, and those with him, have made a subtle move. I do not say that it is intentional; in my experience, paedobaptist apologists don’t seem to really be aware of doing it – at least, if you study their books you won’t find a rationale or justification for it. (It is, as I say, all in Paul K. Jewett and elsewhere). Take a step back. What is the argument about? It’s about who is, and who is not, a member of God’s covenants; and specifically, what is already fixed, inviolable, in that before the New Testament begins and the New Covenant dawns. Even more specifically, it is about how ancestry and descent are related to this. To what extent does one’s ancestry fix one’s membership, even from birth, irrespective of any work of conversion or second birth? How does the coming of Christ cut across, or not cut across, families and descent, and expectations about families and descent?
Now that I’ve put the question that way, do you see? This controversy, as I say, rages not nowhere, not just in a few obscure corners, but everywhere. Kip, as all paedobaptist apologists do, frames this in terms of a Christian and their immediate children (infants) – which would seem natural if we’re talking about what Christian parents should do regarding their baptisms. But this move actually brings in a subtle change of focus and at a stroke rules out, as irrelevant, huge swathes of important material. Why focus upon the abstract Christian believer, viewed in isolation, just in his nuclear family with his infants? Why are we focussing upon the link of one-generation descent? Is that focus, the natural, birth link from parent to child, actually the thing that the Old Testament covenant theology focuses upon? Is it what “children of Abraham” was fundamentally about? It may indeed by a deep concern of ours, living as we generally do in the modern nuclear family – but is it possible that by focussing so narrowly upon it, we have failed to notice that the New Testament touches upon relevant teaching time and time again?
You can tell that my answer to that question is “yes”; and I will now try to substantiate it by examining some relevant passages.
Who belongs to God’s people?
Once we look at the question from this slightly (but really barely) different angle, of “how does physical descent relate to membership of God’s people?” and search the New Testament, we find that the debate begins early. Leaving aside Matthew’s frequent prior hints, in keeping with his overall concern, that the Messiah has come for all nations and not only for Jews, we begin with John son of Zacharias. He was, if you’ll allow me to mention it, known as The Baptist:
Matthew 3:7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, 9 and do not think to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. 10 And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 11 I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
John, seeing the Pharisees coming to his baptism (presumably drawn by the popularity of the thing, and moved in some way by a desire to not be thought by the crowds to be people who didn’t repent, or who were not present when God was at work, for the people counted John as a prophet, Matthew 21:26), immediately rebukes them, in stunning terms. They are not sons: they are snakes! Their evil fruits identify them not as belonging to the ancient seed of the woman, but of the serpent. They, their lives declared, had nothing to do with the godly tree planted by the living waters of God’s Word and Spirit (Psalm 1:1-3); they were the ungodly, ready to be blown away in the judgment – like the chaff (Psalm 1:4, Matthew 3:12). The Messiah was ready to appear – but they were not, as they thought, amongst those whom he had come to honour, but to violently chop down and remove, and be blown away by the wind. They were, John clearly identified with this choice of terms, not children of Abraham. They were not covenant members.
Paedobaptists like to focus upon the phrase “believers and their children”. But that move is a very similar subtle change of direction. The question is not ultimately about who is a child of a believer. It is about who is the child of the archetypal believer, Abraham. Who is, and who is not, a child of Abraham? (Hence the title of David Kingdon’s book). The covenant was made with Abraham, the father of the faithful. It is not a fresh covenant in each generation. The question is always the same: are you one of Abraham’s children? As John’s father sang, God’s mercy is “to Abraham and to his offspring forever” (Luke 1:55). And John tells the Pharisees: they were not part of this offspring.
It’s key here to note that John was not, and would not have dreamed of, denying that the Pharisees were under covenant to God, obligated under the Old Covenant and under the Abrahamic covenant which it had further developed. He was not debating their ancestry, suggesting that they could not trace their line back to the nation of Israel which God had covenanted with (whether, like Paul, through being a Hebrew born of Hebrews right back to one of the original 12 tribes, Philippians 3:5; or whether those who came in as proselytes – Matthew 23:15). John was not announcing that they were already excommunicated from (Old) covenant membership – that would have to wait, until Jesus himself enacted the “covenant divorce” when he destroyed the temple and scattered the people (Matthew 24:15-28: note all the Jewish identity markers and closing reference to the Roman eagle). No: the Pharisees were all “proper Jews” in terms of being under the bond of the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants. What John was announcing was that, however, they had no part in the covenant renewal about to take place with the imminent appearance of the Messiah.
And why not? Because they had no fruits of repentance. Without repentance, it was useless to claim that Abraham was their father. And God is not tied to physical descent; he can raise up dead stones (here representing the spiritually dead Gentiles) to be part of Abraham’s family. All those without it, would be thrown into the fire. Specifically, those with the correct physical descent going back to Abraham would be thrown into the fire.
This, then, right at the start of the New Testament, is an explicit and intentional announcement of a change in how physical descent will relate to covenant membership, with the coming of the Messiah. It is the subject that John directly, deliberately, addresses, to tell certain people that physical descent will no longer be a qualification for membership. My paedobaptist friends may wish to present an argument that it does not apply to their concern, that the people being told are the wrong people; but regardless, they cannot deny that this is what it is a direct discussion of. The fact that such passages are only very rarely discussed in paedobaptist argumentation is an artefact of having put on the glasses. Routinely they do not even seem to notice that they need to make such an argument; they entirely skip it. We are just asked sans cesse why such controversies never appear; but in fact, they appear everywhere. The New Covenant era, the Messianic epoque, John asserts, is an era of radical discontinuity, which will shock all those who think along the lines of the old patterns. It is a time of fire and burning, of cutting off and replacing, of branches being burned and stones coming to life. Do not assume that things work as before. It’s all changing. My paedobaptist brethren preach these things when they preach on these passages. But for some reason, they don’t see that they’re declaring the very things which they, when they turn to the narrow focus of baptismal polemics, say don’t exist anywhere in the New Testament. Why is it, we might ask, that esteemed (and even less-esteemed!) Reformed writers will declare with great dogmatism that Jesus’ proclamation “let the children come to me” is clearly a rejection of Baptist theology (as if Baptists forget and omit to seek to lead their children to Christ), whilst such much more relevant passages are arbitrarily excluded from all consideration? How does one, which requires the most indirect, roundabout association of Christ with the baptismal font get read off as a clear meaning of Matthew 19, whilst passages which directly discuss who is, and who isn’t, part of the people of God and the discontinuity in this across the testaments, are overlooked?
John tells people that physical descent was not enough. This was controversial. It is arbitrary to insist, without argument, that simply because there was no anachronistic question about baptising infants, that John’s description of the New Covenant should not be factored into our doctrine of New Covenant membership with reference to infants as well as to adults.
Who belongs to God’s people, again?
The New Covenant is an era of accomplishment and fulfilment (one of Matthew’s favourite ideas – 1:22, 2:15, 2:17, 2:23, 3:15, 4:14, 5:17 – and so on, and on). There is deep continuity (Matthew 5:17-20). The question is still, “who is Abraham’s child?” John did not announce that God was cutting off Abraham, and replacing him with Morduch or Shamash-eriba as the father of his people (thanks, ChatGPT). The great aim is still to sit down at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Matthew 8:11), and to be resurrected with them (22:32). And the proper response to God’s promises is still, as it was in Abraham’s day and every day since (Hebrews 11), faith in God’s revealed promises, not focussing upon nor being motivated by outward success in this life (whether good or bad), but looking ultimately to the eternal city to come. There is just one people of God, and that is Abraham’s family – and all who believe, whether Jew or Gentile are part of it. But there are also many announcements of radical discontinuity, and this discontinuity can cut straight across family lines.
If we choose, we can describe that discontinuity which cuts across family ties as a move towards a certain individualism (a theological swear word for many, but please do pardon me). People are, in the end, born again one-by-one, and cannot inherit life as a group property. The state of being “in Christ” or “not in Christ” is a binary one, and you do travel from one state to another along a continuous curve with various in-between places.
This “individualism”, this possibility of dividing even the most intimate earthly bond, is one that Jesus explicitly taught about in the gospels.
Luke 14:25-27
25 Now great multitudes went with Him. And He turned and said to them, 26 “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. 27 And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.
Here, Jesus surely chose all of the closest earthly bonds to make his point. If these bonds must be (when necessary) decisively and completely rejected (and we thank God that that is often not required, but rather that our duties are regularly towards our families – Ephesians 5:21ff, etc.), then how much more every other possible lesser tie, of employment, friendship, and so on? When it comes down to it, you must put your own most cherished earthly desires to death, crucifying them as things worth only putting to open shame and torture, for the sake of obeying Jesus. You yourself must die to your own things. And those who gave you life, those to whom you gave life, and the one with whom you are one flesh: all must bow completely before what Jesus demands of you. If you don’t, then it’s not that you’re a worse sort of disciple: rather, Jesus disclaims you entirely. You’re not a disciple at all!
Matthew 10:34-38
34 “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. 35 For I have come to ‘set[ a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law’; 36 and ‘a man’s enemies will be those of his own household.’ 37 He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. 38 And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. 39 He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.
Christianity, you see, means death. The new birth supersedes and drastically revitalises the old. All the things that you might assume are permanent are disrupted by it. Old things pass away, and all things become new. This cross-driven individualism of following Jesus in the Old Covenant cuts right through even the household unit. You must not think otherwise. Rather, enemies can be expected to arise in your household. That’s not a mistake: that’s part of what Jesus came to do.
We are told that to the Jews, all was done in units of households. That, if one joined to follow a new teacher, then all would follow. It may be so, or it may not be so. The fact, though, is that Jesus said all that he possibly could to explain that in his kingdom, the lines of “in” and “out” would regularly cut straight through households. If my paedobaptist friends think that the New Testament ought to say this somewhere if it is so, then what kind of verses are they actually looking for if they find fault with these? How exactly do they want Jesus to tell them that the household is not an automatic unit of inclusion? Must the Scriptures actually state that Paul recommends the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession to us? To be sure, whether a believer should sprinkle his infants is not directly discussed in this verse – which would be a gross anachronism, if we’re requiring that sort of precise terminology – but the thing itself, of a radical disruption, across family lines, in covenant membership, is the explicit and direct subject.
Matthew 12:46-50
46 While He was still talking to the multitudes, behold, His mother and brothers stood outside, seeking to speak with Him. 47 Then one said to Him, “Look, Your mother and Your brothers are standing outside, seeking to speak with You.” 48 But He answered and said to the one who told Him, “Who is My mother and who are My brothers?” 49 And He stretched out His hand toward His disciples and said, “Here are My mother and My brothers! 50 For whoever does the will of My Father in heaven is My brother and sister and mother.”
Jesus himself put his own teaching about family, and the radical disruption of it brought about by the coming of his kingdom, into practice. On several occasions (there being examples in all the gospels), his natural family disapproved of or sought to intervene in his ministry, and pull him back. They had heard of the controversies arising, and of the divisions that had opened. They feared for their son; they sought to restrain him, or at least to talk to him.
And what could be more harmless than just a little pause, to allay the concerns of one’s family members? Surely any reasonable person would respond to this? Yet, in this portion, Jesus would have none of it. Not only did he refuse to cease or pause or clarify his ministry, but he virtually disowned his family. He who rebuked the Pharisees (Matthew 15:4-6) for making the 5th commandment, which requires life-long honour to one’s parents, void by their hypocrisy, here announced that his disciples, sat around him, were his mother, his brothers and sisters – in distinction to Mary and his half-brothers who had just asked for a word, who were not (for he would carry on talking to one, and not go to speak to the other). Why did he deny them? Because the Son of God’s work must not be interrupted, even by one’s nearest and dearest in merely human relationships.
This was truly radical, and surely counter-cultural in every culture of this world that has ever been. It is shocking to us today, and must have been to the people who experienced it then too. It is not just appearing to be, but actually is, provocative – and surely deliberately so. Jesus makes a sharp point, and we must allow it to go through us and change us. How, then, can we be told that we find no trace in the New Testament of the idea that the Messianic coming and Covenant would cut across dearly-held assumptions about grace and families? Surely we are not merely going to be told that in this passage Jesus has not directly used the words “infant baptism” and that that is sufficient reason to bypass it? For, it has been ignored in every book and article arguing for infant baptism that I can recall reading.
Are you born again?
John Wesley (who belongs on the paedobaptist side – though strictly you can only have him if you’re willing as he was to perform triple immersions on the poor infant, and carry on with the practice even after one dies from it) was asked why he preached so many times on the text “you must be born again”. His answer was, and you might already have seen this one coming, “because you must be born again.”
Nicodemus, in John 3, was quite staggered by this idea. As an intelligent man I’m sure that his question about entering again into his mother’s womb was simply a way of expressing non-comprehension and asking for more information, rather than something that anyone hearing him would have taken literally. I do not understand preachers who say that he really was asking for details on how this could anatomically be accomplished. We, though, even if we understand and have hopefully experienced the reality of the new birth, need often to be reminded of how large a concept this is. To be born is to start a new life (and end an old one). It is a new life into a new family. You have a new Father, a new Elder Brother, and new brothers and sisters. It, as we have already seen, radically disrupts and can even completely annihilate, your former allegiances. It relativises and transcends the previous relationships. Even if you are married, one flesh, then this precious relationship will be left behind at the resurrection (Mark 12:25), whilst the membership in God’s new family is permanent, everlasting.
Nicodemus asked “how can these things be?” This idea was a revolution in his thinking. Jesus did not, from there, back down or explain that things weren’t really so different after all – because they really were. Nicodemus was a deeply religious man, a studied man, a respected man in high office in the Jewish nation as a teacher – and yet he did not even belong to the people of God, and had never seen the kingdom, because he had not experienced the New Birth. He was actually a stranger and foreigner, on the outside. Jesus had many things to say, and the implications are many. I am not pretending that John 3 is a discourse on infant baptism directly – for after all, as we already agreed, no apostle ever saw a need for such a thing. But it certainly is a radical announcement that the basis of membership in God’s family, in the family of Abraham, does not work like what went before. Again, Jesus did not by any means dispute that Nicodemus was an Israelite, a real member of the covenant made with Abraham according to the terms of the Old Covenant, and so in that sense one of the people of God. He does, however, directly, clearly tell him that natural descent does not make one belong to the New.
Didn’t John himself say that somewhere? Yes, he did, at the heart of his introductory explanation of what his gospel was all about (John 1:12-13), and in explicit terms: “12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: 13 who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” You’re not a member of the people of God by being born of blood, nor by human will my friends. Your covenant membership, now that the Messiah has come, is not established by examining your birth certificate and the credentials of your earthly father. You must be born again in order to belong: it’s a fundamental part of the apostolic proclamation.
Again, I ask, why do my paedobaptist friends rule out such texts as so irrelevant, that they do not seem to feel an impulse to discuss them? Is not such an outlook something that can only happen when particular forms of argument have blinded you and taught you carefully to overlook them by absorbing various presuppositions that do not come from the text? Jesus keeps telling the people in the gospel that physical descent from Abraham is insufficient. The Jews say “we are Abraham’s descendants” (John 8:33, 39); he tells them that they are not (in the following), but are actually the children of Satan. Again, there is not the slightest hint that he held that it was wrong for them to be circumcised, or to circumcised their children. The contention (again, it’s in Jewett) that circumcision and baptism work just the same way, only comes from a radical mis-handling of the various elements of continuity and discontinuity. Those children of Satan really were also “children of Abraham” – but they really weren’t, in the final, ultimate, fulfilled definition which was now, with Jesus’ coming being revealed…. a definition which doesn’t “replace” the previous, but fulfils it. In fulfilment, the scaffolding which supported the building during its construction is taken away; the reality now stands out. This is how the Reformed handle continuity and fulfilment in all other places. The requirement that when dealing with baptism it should instead mean “expanded privileges” is an external concept. It is not taught in the texts where Jesus speaks about covenant membership. Jesus taught the removal of privileges. That’s how types and shadows work. The heart of a concept is revealed: and the externals that previously supported that concept are removed.
Who belongs to God’s people: a never-stopping source of apostolic teaching
The time would fail us to go through all the passages in which Jesus or the apostles are speaking about the identity of the people of God, and explaining that the New Covenant is the long-awaited era of fulfilment, in which types and shadows fall away, and the reality is exhibited. To be sure, it is not the state of glory – we are not promoting an over-realised eschatology. Nor are we claiming that human eyes cannot make mistakes in identifying whether someone is or isn’t born-again. That is a problem which applies just as much to evangelical paedobaptists as to Baptists, since if they baptise on the basis of the parents’ faith, or if they ever baptise an adult, then the same questions are being asked about the genuineness of the faith. But we are claiming that with the coming of the Messiah, it is the age in which we are children of Abraham and children of God solely by faith, and not by natural descent – and the Bible says so.
Children of Abraham, again
Amongst other places, who is or is not a child of Abraham was the subject of explicit teaching and controversy in the book of Galatians. Since it as an explicit controversy, Paul addresses it head-on. We do not have any of the writings of his opponents, the “Judaizers”, but can reconstruct the main points of their teaching from Paul’s response. Paul viewed their teaching as “a different gospel” (1:6), but there is really one one gospel (1:8), and so their teaching was a perversion, a false gospel; it and they were to be considered as accursed. Since being (or not being) a child of Abraham is an explicit concern of the debate and book, all considerations of infant baptism should discuss the book of Galatians to explain its consistency with their position. It will not do to merely assert that one’s position is assumed by default, unless explicitly contradicted by a discussion which includes infants. Galatians has things to say about just how the connection to Abraham works, and things to say about the nature of circumcision, and if nothing that is found in there positively helps to substantiate the paedobaptist position, then that is a significant point against it.
The Galatians being uncircumcised Gentiles, and not Jews (1:16, 5:2), they themselves had no physical descent from Abraham to either appeal to, pass on, or lose the benefit of. The Judaizers, though, sought to make them proselytes, persuading them that their faith in Christ was good, but not enough. To be true children of Abraham, they must add to their faith the works of the law. Effectively, they were not children of Abraham unless they not only began with Abraham’s faith, but then passed on to to Mosaic obedience. The argument shows us that both Paul and his opponents saw circumcision, which was given some years after Abraham first believed, but given to Abraham and not first through Moses, as initiatory to and symbolic of the national covenant at Sinai. Or put otherwise: it’s not enough to believe, but you must also become a Jew, an Israelite under the law. Circumcision was not simply the sign of an eternal covenant; it had specific, “localised” and “nationalised” meaning. Paedobaptist claims about what was the “real heart” of circumcision, and that it is then stripping away everything else to focus only upon this claimed “real heart”, are arbitrary. It is not a procedure which comes from detailed study of what Paul actually teaches about circumcision and how to relate it to baptism.
In Galatians, to be a child of Abraham, and to be justified, are freely spoken of as the same destination. Not that they mean the same concept from an analytical point of view; rather, that those who have one status have the other, and those who don’t have one, fail at the other also (e.g. 3:6-9). Paul asserts that it is not those who perform the works of the law who are children of Abraham but those who have faith. And faith is all that is needed. If blessing comes by the law (to which the entrance door is circumcision – 5:3), then it cannot be obtained, because the law declares a curse on all those who fail to completely comply. Christ came to liberate people from the law’s curse, by bearing that curse himself; the Galatians then became children of Abraham, simply by trusting in him (3:13-14).
Paul proceeds to explain how the Sinaitic covenant was a limited and temporary, slave-like stage in God’s purpose, corresponding to the immaturity of God’s people, before maturity came in the Son and heir (4:1-20). He even proceeds to discuss the “other” son of Abraham, Ishmael – he who was not the inheritor of the promise (which was Isaac), but who symbolises continuing bondage and eventually being cast out. He was a physical descendant, and indeed the first: but did not inherit the promise. Symbolically, he presented the flesh, works, human effort and the law: not faith, the promise, divine grace and the Messiah.
It should be noticed here that Paul has transformed the meaning of covenant sonship. The Galatians, who were foreigners and strangers, are sons of Abraham; whereas his Jewish opponents, were not. Gentile believers, having no circumcision (which as we note, has specifically become the mark of the Sinaitic covenant even though first given to Abraham), no ceremonial obedience, no works of the law, are yet Abraham’s children: and those who do have all those things were not.
It is true, as ever, that Paul has not discussed infant baptism – but why would he, even if we supposed that such a concept might come across his consciousness? What he has done has radically refined the concept and qualifications of a son. It is no longer tied to physical descent – in any detectable way. To interrupt and say “but everyone would just assume that it does unless he explicitly contradicts our precise formula” cuts across all that he does say. Paul has not left us with two alternative routes to sonship of Abraham in his explanation: one through faith, and the other through being descended from those who have faith. He had plenty of opportunity to do so. But that whole idea is a confusion, a foreign import into Paul’s argument. If he believed that “circumcision’s fundamental meaning is that it is the sign of the covenant of grace, and baptism replaces it”, then he had ample opportunity to say so. It would have made his argument a lot simpler. “Galatians, why are you tempted to be circumcised? You already have the same thing, in baptism!” To say that it must be assumed that he believed because of his silence is completely arbitrary as well as cutting across what he actually does say. Paul’s opponents assumed and argued that Law-keeping, beginning with circumcision, is the way into Abraham’s family, as it has always been. Paul countered that faith, without circumcision or other works, is the way into Abraham’s family, as it has always been (and whilst he believes that believers are baptised, this only has minimal mention, and is not connected at all to circumcision – 3:27). The fact is that neither side in the Galatians debate was focussed upon descent into the next-by-one generation. The next generation might be circumcised and law-keeping itself, or might be believing in Christ itself, but the mere fact of physical descent was not the direct concern for anyone. Paul did not need to talk about the next generation, because having explained that we are saved by faith, the important thing for that generation had already been said: it needed to believe in Christ. There is no legal covenant back-door for them to become members of God’s people on some other, even if only preliminary, basis.
Identifying the fundamental error
Paedobaptist thought effectively looks at each new set of Christian parents as if they were themselves Abraham. Then, the covenant passes down automatically to their children, who become the children of Abraham because they are the children of these parents. But their grandchildren are not guaranteed to also be children of Abraham, unless the covenant is renewed by the children’s faith, placing those children into the position of being new Abrahams, such that the children now become “children of Abraham”. This is a mix-up of different concepts, a blend that, given Paul’s extensive discussion of the covenant, we would expect to be able to justify from what he said, were it one that he himself held to. As it is, though, the only thing he did write is that those who have faith in Christ are children of Abraham. That applies to parents, and to children, and to grandchildren, and however many generations may come after. Do you have faith? Then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise (3:29). Do you not have faith? Then you cannot claim the promise, and even if Abraham himself is your physical father, unfortunately as far as the New Covenant goes, you are Ishmael: privileged and blessed, yes, to have such a physical father; but you are not in the church of God.
The assumption that children were always included?
As we have been arguing, the New Testament does have much to say about how belonging to Abraham’s family relates to our earthly family memberships. This was, we agree, a matter of deep significance that required apostolic discussion to give us a sufficient understanding. After Jacob inherited the birthright and promise, the family of Abraham became the family of Jacob, i.e. of Israel (Genesis 32:28), which developed into the nation of Israel. As such, the discussion of whether the physical descendants of Abraham are guaranteed a perpetual covenant membership in the apostolic age was just the same thing (only changing some of the labels) as the discussion of the relationship between the people of God and the nation of Israel. And that is one that Paul addresses again in Romans chapter 9.
As Romans chapter 9 begins, Paul had just asserted that nothing could separate God’s chosen people from his love (Romans 8:31-39). The church in Rome was a mixed church of Jews and Gentiles, shown by how careful Paul is to show that there is only one way of salvation – faith in the crucified Christ – for both (chapters 1-3), as well as by the issues addressed in chapter 14. He shows too that this way of salvation by faith, was that known by Israel’s father Abraham, and her greatest king, David (a principal type of the Messiah). But the gospel goes all the way back, declaring Jesus as the new Adam, the seed of the woman (5:12-21). It truly resolves the real problem, the final problem – that of sin and death (chapters 6-8); for those in Christ, nothing can separate them from God’s love. But this raises a problem. Hasn’t Israel been separated from God’s love? Have not, in fact, God’s promises failed? Were not the Jews of Paul’s day largely unsaved, having rejected the Messiah and continued in that rejection?
In Romans 9, Paul acknowledges the problem. He does so as an evangelist: their separation from Christ grieved his heart at the deepest level (v1). They had had immense, real privileges, but were now outside of Christ. Like the enacted parable of the fig tree in the gospels (Mark 11:13-21), there should have been fruit: but they were now visited, judged, and withered. So again, had God’s promises failed? Had he forsaken his people?
Again, we note, the question of membership of God’s people, of relationship to Abraham, and of natural descent, is here the thing being directly discussed. To be sure, Paul is not discussing either whether a 19th century American Presbyterian should baptise those he has enslaved as well as his infants, or whether a modern urban Kenyan should baptise his nuclear family, but to require a framing that precisely matches details of our own situation and preferred focus is impossibly anachronistic. Paul is discussing how hereditary interacts with relationship to the promises, and so this passage also should be covered and demonstrated to be consistent; not simply through what is asserted to be in the gaps, but also through what it does actually say.
The children, differentiated from the seed
What Paul does say is that the thought that God had either failed or abandoned his people was quite wrong (v6). God’s word had taken its intended effect. And how? Because, not all of those who are “of” Israel are Israel. That is, there is a distinction between being in Israel, a true Israelite, and merely being “of” Israel. This is clarified: there are some who are the “children” of Abraham, and others who are only the “seed”. He puts it again another way: some are “children of the flesh” only, and others are “children of the promise”. All this is to say: physical descent was never sufficient to have a claim upon the promise. Again, Ishmael and Isaac are in view: Ishmael was passed over, but the promise came to Sarah’s son, Isaac. Ishmael was a child of Abraham: but did not belong to the covenant.
This was not a one-off event: it happened again in the next generation, in an even more stark way (v10-13). Rebecca, wife of Isaac, had twins – conceived in one act, with one father, and born as close together as possible. If there were distinctions between Sarah and Hagar, Abraham’s scheme and God’s promise, then that did not apply here. To make it even clearer, God chose the younger twin to inherit, whilst the older (the natural heir) was passed over. And all this was announced before either was born, so that it might be clear that it was not based upon anything they had done (Genesis 25:23 – philosophical theories about God seeing in advance what someone might do, and making his choice based upon that, apparently being unknown to the apostle!).
We should note the significance of what has happened here. Though from the next generation after Jacob, all sons were received into God’s covenant, and that pattern continued until the time of Christ, yet God did quite differently at the beginning, with the first two generations. And he tells us directly here in Romans 9 why he did so: so that we might learn that all depends on God’s sovereign grace, and that none have a divine right merely by birth. Though God did, later, welcome all the offspring of Israelites, yet at the beginning, he deliberately did otherwise, excluding two natural sons in a very explicit way, in order to prepare people for what would later happen when Christ came. It was no new thing: it was there, by design, from the start.
How, then, is it that the paedobaptist tells us that “children had always been included in God’s covenants”, when Paul carefully and deliberately demonstrates that this is a mistaken belief, leading to false conclusions? How can it be that we are assured that such a thing ought to be discussed, and never is, when that is precisely the thing that Paul is discussing? “Not a single apostle”, we are assured, sought to explain God’s dealings in excluding children: and yet, they did. The real thing going on that needs noticing is how paedobaptist argumentation arbitrarily chops and dices what its concerns are, in order to render all the sorts of passages that it demands so irrelevant that it usually fails to even notice their existence, much less discuss them. Those glasses are powerful.
Transformed realities
The wonder of Christ’s rising again from the grave, in this present age, and the “gap” before his judging of the nations, is the basis of the New Testament state. It provides the essential backdrop to our situation as Christians. We are already justified in Christ: God has raised him from the dead (Romans 4:25). But as yet, the sons of God are not fully revealed, and as we await for that revelation, we groan with longing and expectancy, and in the painful reality whilst the co-existence of the flesh and the Spirit within us (Romans 8:18-27). Christ has conquered, but his enemies are not yet all judged. The New Creation has dawned, but the old remains. The Spirit is here, but so is the old body of death. As is often said, “the already and the not yet” define the Christian’s existence.
This reality defines the Christian’s proper attitude to many things, transforming his previous attitude. Even when a creation institution – like marriage – remains, yet Paul says that “even those who have wives should be as though they had none … For the form of this world is passing away” (1 Corinthians 7:29-31); a teaching which seems easiest to harmonise with his other teachings (e.g. in Ephesians 5) if we combine various of the things that Jesus taught already discussed above, anticipating the future resurrection in which we shall be married only, in our corporate capacity as his church, his bride, to Christ.
Transforming such a fundamental part of creation as marriage, there is little that Christ’s resurrection and coming return do not transform. The Christian is like a someone who awakes before dawn, and must decisively abandon the things of the night, knowing that the full light is about to arise (Romans 13:11-14). We no longer look at anything from a fleshly way – according to the principles of this life outside of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:16). The church, for example is the new nation, the new kingdom (Revelation 5:10, 1 Peter 2:9). The nations and kingdoms to which we previously belonged are seen to be old, fading – out-moded and relativised. They may still impact our daily lives very much – but they are passing away. Work is changed: no longer do we labour just whilst our employer is watching, but even the lowliest slave serves the Lord Christ and looks for his true reward from him (Ephesians 6:6-8). All our money and possessions are seen to be simply on loan from the master who has gone to a far country to claim a kingdom: we deploy them as those looking for friends in another kingdom, and seeking for a reward from him at his return (Luke 16:1-13, 19:11-27). In short, we set our minds on things above, not upon the earth, waiting for his return in glory (Colossians 3:1-4).
The relevance of this and key point here is that the family is explicitly included within this transformation. The whole concept of family is taken on a journey, and through Jesus Christ, given a whole new meaning, in the New Testament. Yes, of course, our duties to earthly family remain, and even are heightened (Ephesians 5:21-6:4). We have not entirely left this present creation. But the radical nature of the transformation makes it simply illegitimate to assert that, before the New Testament begins, the Old Testament has already settled how God’s New Covenant and earthly families will interact. We are born again, into an eternal and Spiritual family that cuts across all previous family lines. It is simply an empty assertion to say that, since in the Old Testament God’s covenants always included the children (an assertion that is in itself already demonstrated to be untrue), therefore in the “overlap of the ages”, as Christians look back on Christ’s resurrection and await his return, that earthly relationships must work in just the same way in God’s covenantal outworkings.
Part of me regrets broadening out the discussion, but I cannot help noticing that some evangelicals who find paedobaptism attractive today are also drawn to another cluster of doctrines that flatten out and reduce the radical nature of fulfilment and inaugurated reality in the New Covenant age. Their conceptions of how Christianity relates to the nations, and how Christians exercise their dominion, and how the earthly, natural family is, allegedly, at the heart of God’s plans for dominion, keep getting squeezed back into old wineskins, to the church’s great hurt. From such circles we hear less and less about taking up the cross to die with Jesus Christ each day, and more and more about building generational institutions that will out-do anything that the world can produce. We are assured that this is all through the gospel. But when we leave aside the fine words of theory, in practice, the gospel looks very like it is being reduced to being presented as a superior political tool, in order to achieve the same dominance which the Gentiles long for (Matthew 20:25). The triumph of the gospel and victory of Christ, in such circles, are increasingly seen as something for the future, when an army of Christian lawyers, businessmen, law-makers, educationalists and patriarchs have multiplied and filled the earth. Talk of living in the light of Christ’s return more-or-less disappears from the output of these circles, making it plain that their thought-world, their conceptual reality, is different to that of the apostles, who spoke of it all the time as the default driving motivation for living in this present world today, and did not make this hope and motivation contingent upon exactly what had been built before it happened.
I have written on this subject elsewhere, and we must come back to the main point. The New Testament world-view is one of radical transformation in the light of Christ’s past resurrection and future return, and specifically it relativises and redefines various institutions. One of those is the family. There is a comprehensive New Testament doctrine of the family in relation to the New Covenant. The silence supposed in Kip’s question is, ultimately, imaginary and relies upon cutting out large swathes of material.
The 21st century, the nuclear family, and John Calvin
I was intrigued recently to learn that John Calvin, who deserves the credit for developing the evangelical/Presbyterian argument for infant baptism, did not teach that baptism was for believers and their children. In a letter to John Knox (which you can find quoted in many places via your preferred search engine), he wrote:
“To us then it is by no means doubtful that an offspring descended from holy and pious ancestors, belong to the body of the church, though their fathers and grandfathers may have been apostates. . . . Each person is not admitted to baptism from respect or regard to one of his parents alone, but on account of the perpetual covenant of God”
This quotation goes beyond the “half-way covenant” of Jonathan Edwards and 18th century Presbyterian debate, in which the matter under discussion was whether an infant was qualified for baptism if its parents were not converted members, if it yet had pious grandparents who could sponsor it (https://www.britannica.com/event/Half-Way-Covenant). Calvin explicit allows that the “grandfathers” (as well as the fathers) may not just be merely church-going outward adherents with no real evidence of a saving work of the Spirit, but actually apostates. He directly denies that the parents’ faith is determinative but appeals instead to “the perpetual covenant of God”, apparently approving of baptism at any number of generations.
This move was probably a lot easier for Calvin to make than a modern paedobaptist because did not live in the modern Western world in which the nuclear family has come to dominate and all-but-extinguish all other conceptions of family. Our unit is the household: father, mother, children. This, not at all coincidentally, is also the narrow focus of today’s paedobaptist polemics. But this societal focus has not always been so dominant, and indeed is not today so dominant outside of the West and places that are gradually being Westernised or at least urbanised. In other parts of the world and other parts of history, there are many other possibilities of tribal structure and clan structure. As such, whilst “should the immediate offspring in the next generation of believers” is pretty much the only question that someone in the “modern” world needs to think about, it has not been so for plenty of others.
If we reflect upon this, then we can wonder again about the assertion that it would be entirely natural for the New Testament to be silent because everybody already knew exactly how infant baptism would work out. Were there, indeed, in no parts of the Jewish or Gentile world to which the gospel came, any clan structures in which there were any difficult questions to be resolved? Jonathan Edwards and the Northampton church had to debate their “half-way covenant”, Calvin would write to Knox about his multi-generational views, and 19th century Southern Presbyterians had to discuss the situations of those whom they’d enslaved, but on the other hand the world of the New Testament, from Judah round to Spain, from Rome to Galatia, from Greece to wherever, was so uniform that no difficult questions could ever arise, and no teaching could ever be required? Is that a plausible interpretation, given our knowledge of the huge variety in human society? And if we take a canonical view, then are we really saying that God clearly intended all people, in all societies, in all situations, in all the world, to practice infant baptism, but that the Scriptures are fully sufficient whilst containing precisely zero instruction on how to apply this to all the confusing and contradictory structures of human families and clans?
Rather, it seems plain to me that there are clear situational and practical reasons why paedobaptist literature, with very limited exceptions, focuses so monomaniacally upon the nuclear family, two parents, one generation of offspring. Firstly, those who write such literature live in a very specific time and cultural setting, and the wider possibilities rarely occur to them. Secondly, if they did, then discussing them would expose and blow apart the empty assumption that the Jews thought about families in just the same way that modern nuclear-family urbanites do, and that everyone else in the New Testament assumed exactly the same situation too, and even God in his infinite wisdom saw no need in a sufficient Bible to touch upon any larger range of situations to help us.
Ironically, then, the common paedobaptist claim to be standing for a covenantal, corporate, anti-modern-individualist position, turns out to have some unexamined difficulties. The focus on “the believer and his infants”, one generation only, is ultimately an arbitrary choice which muddies the waters, and is itself a modern cultural-bound artefact. There is no real evidence – and none is ever actually offered by paedobaptists – that Old Covenant members had this nuclear-family-centred outlook. It is simply assumed. The real point was not the nuclear family, but was always their relationship to Abraham, and though in the nature of physical descent under the Old Covenant this was mediated to them by each successive generational link, yet that chain of individual successions was never itself in focus.
Hence, a switch now to a nuclear-family focus cannot be justified under the rubric of “strict continuity”. It is very much a smuggled-in discontinuity (I can only recommend Jewett to you again for further examples). “Strict continuity”, if that term has real substance, is arguably a feature of the Reformed Baptist view. Whether Jew or Gentile, we partake of the covenant blessings by being ourselves children of Abraham, which is by faith. We do not need to bring in the strange chimera of fleshly infants of spiritual children. The Old Covenant foreshadowed what was to come through physical descent, through the first birth. This foreshadowing has its meaning wonderfully fulfilled in spiritual descent, through the second birth. Again, mixing beast with fowl by having the second birth in one generation and then the first birth in the next, is nothing like “strict continuity”. It is a new invention from the modern world of the nuclear family, that no Old Testament Jew would recognise.
The paedobaptist case, as presented typically in the question which we’re responding to, then, does just what I said it does. It subtly mis-states important things, drawing our eyes away from key facts, and ruling out of court (usually simply by the method if ignoring them) whole swathes of texts and considerations, in the drive towards the conclusion. But it cannot do so in a way that has any consistency, either with the Old Testament, or with the New.
How many baptisms?
Ultimately, paedobaptism invents a second kind of baptism, running parallel to the Biblical kind. The Biblical one is a celebration and declaration of fulfilment and accomplishment in the now-come, now-resurrected Messiah, who has given new life to this person, this repentant sinner, who is rejoicing in the Holy Spirit. The paedobaptist one is something else, and what exactly it is varies from one paedobaptist to another – often quite wildly. Since, after all, the New Testament, by general concession, has nothing to say about paedobaptism, something has to come in to fill the void, and every man and every movement have their own proposals. Some feel the impetus to close this gap between the two baptisms by ramping up the sacramentalism, and emphasising what baptism “does” (leading amongst other things to having to discuss what doctrinal, moral and practical conditions must prevail for these things to be “done”, and conversely when it fails – another area for which, as again all concede, the New Testament gives no guidance whatsoever). For those who happily want to be clear about the need to be born again, and confess Christ from a converted heart, a second ritual, some variant on “confirmation” must be introduced – and again, the New Testament has nothing to say, since no controversy ever arose. Every man and his movement in the paedobaptist world has their own variations, which does seem rather like a controversy and something that needs addressing. Yet we’re told that the thing at the root of this, infant baptism, by its nature is so clear from the Old Testament that addressing it is something that the early churches would never need to do (and so they were able to address more subtle and obscure matters like whether or not Christians could partake of table-fellowship with demons in their temples, 1 Corinthians 8:10, 10:21).
Drawing to a close
Martin Luther famously inserted the word “alone” into his translation of Romans 3:28, arguing that he was only bringing out explicitly what was entirely clear already to anyone closely following the argument: “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith (alone) apart from the deeds of the law.” I am sure that my evangelical paedobaptist colleagues are nodding along with me that really Luther’s addition made no change to the import. Leaving aside questions and scruples of how to translate, we can all see that the meaning remains unaltered, in the context. No man is justified by anything other than faith; there are no possible works; justification is by faith, and by nothing else, that is so say, by faith alone.
Baptism, though, is no less by faith alone. We do not have the scope here to go into the fact that the man Kip quotes has written a book arguing that infants themselves do have so-called “paedofaith”. I find it interesting that he felt the need to make this move – another implicit concession amongst the many and varied controversies which infant baptism inevitably introduces and yet which we supposedly have no New Testament data to help resolve. But let us leave it aside. Let us consider actual New Testament baptisms.
This book, “Believer’s Baptism”, has a very valuable study of all the New Testament baptisms. There is a variety of things associated with baptism, but also a connecting thread throughout the selection, whatever is mentioned. Whether the coming of the Holy Spirit, whether profession of Jesus as the Messiah, whether repentance for the remission of sins, whether even the coming of the Spirit in unlearned languages, there is a dominant note of fulfilment, accomplishment and reality. This is never in some sacramental sense, of a declaration or sacramental promise of something hoped for in the future life of the baptisee – it is always, without variation, in the sense of a known reality for which God is being praised. Sign and thing signified have met: and any distinctions or lines we draw between them are only on the analytical side, not the experiential.
This being so, infant baptism has to effectively invent a second type of baptism. Both believer-baptism and infant baptism get called “baptism”; but they are actually radically different. Everything on the “infant” side has to be in some sacramental, someone-other-than-the-baptisee looking with rejoicing faith to the Saviour, sense. If you go down the route of saying that baptism “does” something for infant and professor alike, then you still have something different to New Testament baptism, where baptism recognised a thing already, previously done. In infant baptism, however configured, promise and accomplishment have not met; it is not a glorious celebration of New Covenant fulfilment and reality meeting with promises in this person’s life, something that is already existing prior to approaching the water. Everything has to be realigned and given some new, other, meaning. Is it right to call this new thing by the same name, “baptism”? Is that not confusion? No such confusion existed with circumcision. Whether man or boy, the person circumcised received a sign that he was in the chosen nation, in the family of the coming Messiah, a descendant of Abraham, and now (once the Sinai covenant was given) bound to a life of obedience to the law. There is no tension between two different kinds of circumcision with two different meanings.
The New Testament note of fulfilment is essential and changes everything. The nature of the New Covenant – and this means that all texts describing the New Covenant as a time of radical, old-wineskin-shattering fulfilment-and-reality are in play – simply does not allow for baptisms to be given to those where the reality has not yet dawned. Christ has come for his bride: are you part of that bride? The answer “in a covenantal or sacramental sense, yes – and that’s all we need for baptism” simply does not comport with what the apostles had to say. In the past (Hebrews 1:1-3), God made partial revelations, through indirect means, at different times and places to different of his prophets. But in the New Covenant, he has said all that he wishes to say, by revealing his Son. And the covenant made in him exactly fits with this pattern: Christ has once-and-for-all accomplished atonement, and is now sat down at God’s right hand. Fulfilment, reality, accomplishment, finality. Models of “inner rings” and “outer rings” in the covenant, of “visible, but non-elect” members, do not comport with this. The fact that the apostles are entirely silent about a second, other kind of baptism, beyond the one that they did write about, or about these multiple layers in New Covenant membership, is indeed a telling omission; but not at all in the way that Kip imagines.
Children and the final covenant
Ultimately, the assertion that God’s covenants must all work in the same way can only logically imply universal child salvation – at least, of the offspring of Christians. I don’t just mean children who die in infancy. If all God’s covenants must include the offspring of their members, then this must ultimately include any final, eternal covenant believed to lie behind those enacted in history. The Reformed have debated the concepts of a covenant of redemption, an intra-Trinitarian compact prior to the creation of the world, and an over-riding Covenant of Grace which is not identified with the New Covenant (for those who aren’t Reformed Baptists). If all of God’s covenants which include believers also include children, then what about these? Do they include them too? Are those children ultimately saved in the eschaton? If not, then the radical discontinuity that paedobaptists say can’t be allowed, still exists: it is just pushed back one era further, until, presumably, the return of Christ. But, if that is so, are there not any passages in the Bible that discuss it? Would not such a thing create a controversy? Why would children be included, and then suddenly excluded? Is it plausible that there would be no trace of such a thing in the pages of the New Testament? Not a single apostle thought to make a defence of this change? Jewish Christians never questioned it?
That is to say: we may throw these questions back upon the questioner. Unless he believes in universal – universal, no exceptions – salvation of all children of all Christians, then the discontinuity must still come in somewhere. And if it does come in somewhere, then where are the passages where this is taught about? Under his own terms, this teaching must create a controversy, and that controversy must be discussed. For after all, most of us care much more about whether our children will finally be saved, than whether they were correctly baptised, if we have to make a choice. If it is not being discussed in the passages which I have discussed, or analogous ones, then which ones is it taught in? Please can they be brought out, so that we can look at what they say specifically about a change in how physical descent relates to covenant membership, and how we should navigate this controversy?
And so, the close
“Children had always been included in God’s covenants”, it is asserted. Paul, in Romans 9, would like to have a few words about this idea of automatic inclusion: not even Abraham or Isaac themselves experienced this asserted all-pervasive reality. Under Baptist teaching, it is then asserted, “they are suddenly excluded… and there is not a single trace of discussion or controversy about it in the NT”. This, we have seen, is a mind-boggling and outlandish assertion, so wrong that it requires an investigation into how it could come about. For on page after page, Jesus and his apostles shock and surprise their hearers by explaining the newness of the New Covenant, and how it overturns expectations that people might have about inherited birth membership. The New Testament has a theology of the new family, transformed in Christ: a new birth, and a whole set of brothers and sisters whose claim upon us transcends and relativises even that of those who first gave us physical life. Christians should explicitly not expect that under the gospel, the family unit remains together: Christ actually came to bring division to it. Belonging to Abraham through the flesh was good and valid as part of God’s plan for the immature people of God; but it merely shadowed the intended final reality, of becoming his child by faith, alone. The paedobaptist invention of a two-stage membership of Abraham’s family (the parents are born again, and the infant is merely born) is not continuous with either the Old Testament or the New, but corrupts what actually happened in both. There is no “silence” on these topics of how God’s family works under the New Covenant, but they are the subject of continuous and explicit teaching. The Bible has a continuously developing theology of family and covenant, which reaches a fulfilment in Christ under the New Covenant, and it is a serious mistake to flatten it out by an arbitrary focus upon the modern, one-generation-step nuclear family.
Well Kip, I hope that satisfies your concerns. You can probably see why I decided to take only one question at a time! We shall begin preparing the baptistry for you shortly. Welcome outside the camp. It’s uncomfortable, because that beautiful, so so attractive (to the flesh….) paedobaptist aesthetic of the whole family in Christ, of the littlest ones already in Christ, is most enticing. I won’t pretend that I don’t admire it. And of course, one can’t build a Christian society under the Christian prince without everyone being sacramentally bound together by a shared baptism. It’s just that we Baptists think that Jesus taught the polar opposite – not by silence, not in the gaps, but in plain speech and direct words which also told us that these truths would be hard for people to accept because of their consequences. So, come and be crucified with us Baptist simpletons. We are allegedly deceived modern individualists…. but actually, I assert, we are people who understand that following Jesus is, irreducibly, a personal act… and one which sometimes divides us even from our nearest and dearest.
And finally – Greg Welty’s “A Critical Evaluation of Paedobaptism” is still online, and still very good. It is some years since I read it, but I was interested to see both overlap and separate content in our arguments, and our mutual appreciation for Paul K. Jewett’s work (it’s quite possible that I first heard of it in Greg’s piece). Welty also addresses various paedobaptist “proof texts” offered from the New Testament, which I, since it was already conceded that the New Testament is not where infant baptism is taught, felt unnecessary to include.
Footnote: I later further developed some of the observations above in this blog post.
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