A friend left the following comment on my earlier post about baptizing babies.
Robin, you said, "presumption can be made on the basis of the parents’ faith because of the myriad promises God has given to believing parents concerning the status of their children." What are these promises of which you speak? Are they truly promises of God that a believer's children will not fall away? If so, then is it really presumption? Is it not simply faith in the word of God? If not, then are they promises at all? And if not promises, then there is no basis for this presumption in the first place, as would be present in the case of a professing believer.
I am replying to Wayne's questions here because my response had too many characters to publish as another comment.
Great questions Wayne. The promises God has given to Christian parents which provide them with confidence that their children are part of the visible covenant and are presumptively part of the invisible covenant are manifold. After articulating the glories of the new covenant in his wonderful sermon in Acts 3, Peter ends by declaring, “The promise is to you and to your children.” (Acts 3:39) In his epistle to the Corinthians Paul makes the point that if even one of the parents is a believer then the children are sanctified (1 Corinthians 7:14). Speaking of small children Jesus Himself declares that “of such is the kingdom of God” (Luke 18:16). Then there are all the wonderful promises given to the descendents of Abraham which are addressed “to you and your children” and these can be applied to Gentiles because Gentile believers have now been grafted in to God’s covenant family by faith (Rom. 11:17). The result of Gentiles coming into the covenant is that they are heirs of the covenantal laws and promises of the Old Covenant, including the Abrahamic blessing which always included the children born into covenant families. Paul seems to assume this by quoting promises from the Sinai law and applying them to Gentile children in his letter to the Ephesians (6:1-3). And then, finally, there are the great promises of the Psalms that faithful covenantal parenting will result in faithful children. See Psalm 128, for example, where we are told that he who fears the Lord and walks in His ways will be blessed and that this blessing will extend to his children.
So those are some of the promises of which I speak. These promises do not guarantee that a believer’s children will not fall away, just as the promises of salvation given to individuals do not guarantee that an individual will not fall away. Rather, these promises assume that one is taking and applying these promises by faith, which means faithful covenantal parenting, just as the promises of salvation assume that one is applying and appropriating scripture’s promises by faith which means faithful living. Of course, believing parents can fail to pass on the covenantal blessings, like the generation that followed Joshua (Judges 2:10), and they can raise their children to worship idols (Ezekiel 16:20), but the normal pattern that scripture assumes is that believing parents will be faithful in parenting, which is why Paul makes faithful children a qualification for church leadership (1 Timothy 3:4-5).
So God’s normal instrumental means for bringing children to himself is faithful parenting, which is why it is so unhelpful to expect children of believers to have a conversion experience which is essentially to take a conversion model which applies to those who are not God’s people and apply it to those who are. A baby from a Christian home belongs to God from the moment he or she is born, and if the parents raise the child faithfully (rather than sending them off to be educated by Amorites and Moabites), that child will never be able to remember a time when they didn’t know the Lord. The idea that children of believers have to have a conversion experience is objectionable to me, because it sets the children up for a lifetime of doubt. Of course, they’re going to struggle with doubting their salvation if during the formative years of their life their parents have addressed them as unbelievers, essentially saying, “The verdict is still out on you until you are old enough to decide for yourself.” I have witnessed this in Baptist families and sometimes teenagers feel they need to continually repeat their salvation experience because it wasn’t good enough. Is it really surprising that they doubt their salvation throughout the rest of their life when their parents doubted their salvation for the first 5 or 6 years of their life?
So it is really presumptive, to answer your question. Just as baptize faith-professing adults on the assumption that they will continue faithful and not apostatize, so when we baptize babies we do so on the assumption that their parents will shepherd them faithfully with the consequence that those children will not fall away when older. The promises are not static predictions that can be detached from the presumed life of faith and faithfulness. You are quite right to suggest that it involves “simply faith in the word of God.”
I would agree with you that the chidren of believers are to be treated, in a sense, as Christians, and that they should not be "led in a prayer of salvation," as though somehow this prayer were what brought them from spiritual death to life. Instead, it is through the instrumentality of the parents' witness that these children might be brought to saving faith and regenerate life in Christ. It is in this way that children are to be trained to be Christians. Christianity is not a "choice," as much as it is truth or reality. Parents are to train their children to think and live in light of this truth. The child will be moved from death to life at the time and occasion God so wills.
ReplyDeleteHowever, there is a discontinuity between Israel and the Church that you do not seem to keeping in mind. The New Covenant is entered into only when the Spirit indwells a person and grants to him forgiveness of sins. This was not the case for Israel under the Mosaic Covenant. There, the child was brought into the covenant as a child, prior to any cognitive faith, by lineage to Abraham, and through circumcision as a sign.
If, therefore, baptism is the sign that we have entered into the New Covenant, then it is only appropriate after one has been changed inwardly by the Spirit. Granted, we must of necessity baptize people based upon their profession, and not upon any true knowledge of the heart. Yet, there is a necessary fruit that comes in a person's life when they are truly saved. If a person's life does not reflect this change, then, it would not be appropriate to baptize him, even if he claims to believe.
Practically speaking, I will not baptize my own children, until I see some substantive evidence of a heart that has been changed, which delights in the things of God.
Judging from your response, it seems that there is quite a lot that we agree on. To help clarify these areas of agreement and divergence, it would be helpful if you could tell me which of the following premises you disagree with.
ReplyDelete1) The Old Covenant was always meant to include faith.
2) God uses the instrumentality of believing parents’ witness to bring children of believers to himself.
3) We can never know whether a person is truly regenerate.
4) If parents’ fulfil their responsibly to nurture their children in the covenant, then God will be faithful to the covenantal promises He has given parents and the child will be regenerate.
5) The church contains both wheat and tares.
6) Children of believers should be treated as Christians.
7) It is possible for a person to fall away from the church.
8) When we baptize a person, we do so on the presumption that they are truly regenerate.
9) Babies can be members of the kingdom of God.
1) Yes. God required faith in the Old Covenant.
ReplyDelete2) Yes. God works by means. One means He works by is parents. I'm not sure I am comfortable with the language of "promise" here, however. For even in your discussion you acknowledge that we can not count on the fulfillment of these promises, as we must receive these promises presumptively. Rather, a promise of God, I would see, as binding upon Him and reliable for us. Yet I do not believe that God is bound to work through the means of believing parents to bring about saving faith. Instead, these "promises" have a proverbial nature; they are general truths.
3)I'm not sure whether I agree with you here, or not. If, by "know," you mean absolute knowledge, then I suppose that others can not know if a man is saved. If, by "know," there is room for the highly probable, then others can know. This answer says nothing about whether a man himself can be confident of his own salvation. I believe, based upon the language of the John, that we can know. But the evidence of a changed heart is not some "prayer of salvation," but rather a changed life.
4)Answered above, in QUESTION 2.
5)Visible church, that is. Yes.
6)There is a sense in which the parents should treat their children like believers. There is another sense in which they should not. The child is not regenerate, does not have the Spirit, and does not possess saving faith. So, the parent should not be surprised when he acts as he does. The parent should address the child's sinful heart in discipline, pointing to Christ as the Ultimate Help. But the expectation upon the child must always be to live God's way, not the child's. It is God's way that is held out before the child as the standard.
7)It is possible for a person to fall away from the VISIBLE church, but it is not possible for a person who is truly regenerate to cease to be so.
8)Yes, based upon their profession and what evidence is visible in their life as fruit.
9)Babies are without the Spirit, without regeneration, without saving faith.
OK, I pretty much agree with you on most of these points, but one thing stood out like a sore thumb, namely your comment that, “The child is not regenerate, does not have the Spirit, and does not possess saving faith.... Babies are without the Spirit, without regeneration, without saving faith.” This position seems difficult to square with the various statement’s scripture makes about children that I cited earlier. For example, speaking of nursing infants, Jesus specifically said, “Of such is the kingdom of God.”
ReplyDeleteWhat is your position about children who die in infancy? If, as you say, “The child is not regenerate, does not have the Spirit” then does the child go to hell? If so, this would seem hard to reconcile with Paul’s statement that the child of believers are sanctified through their parents.
I can acknowledge that babies are without faith, but to say that they can’t be regenerate leads to a number of problems. First, when the child does become old enough to exercise saving faith, is it then that they suddenly become regenerate? If so, then faith precedes regeneration, which a good Calvinist like yourself would rightly deny. But if, as the Bible and the reformed faith teach, regeneration precedes faith, then there is no problem in principle with affirming that babies can be regenerate prior to faith, and even presumptively assuming such is indeed the case based on the “promises” (or whatever you want to call them) that I cited earlier.
Finally, if the visible church contains both regenerate and unregenerate (wheat and tares), as you acknowledge, and if baptism initiates one into the visible church community, as I assume you would also affirm, then because the children of believers are part of that visible covenant community, why not baptize them whether or not they are truly regenerate? After all, you have already acknowledged that in the case of a faith-professing adult you cannot know for sure if they are regenerate (as you said, “granted, we must of necessity baptize people based...not upon any true knowledge of the heart.”) Just take that principle and apply it to babies.
Calvin wrote, "I must again repeat, what I have so often remarked, that the doctrine of the gospel is the incorruptible seed for our regeneration if indeed we are capable of comprehending it; but that where, by reason of age, there is not yet any capacity for learning, God has his different steps for regenerating his own."
ReplyDeleteAnother quote from Calvin:
ReplyDelete“...it is reasonable that a person, who at an adult age is admitted to the fellowship of a covenant, to which he had hitherto been a stranger, should first learn the conditions of it; but an infant born from him is not the same case, who, by hereditary right, according to the terms of the promise, is already included in the covenant from his mother’s womb. Or, to express it with greater clarity and brevity, if the children of believers, without the aid of understanding, are partakers of the covenant, there is no reason why they should be excluded from the sign because they are not capable of expressing their allegiance to the stipulation of the covenant... For to whose seed he has promised to be a Father. This whole thing, if I mistake not may be clearly and briefly stated in the following position: that persons of adult age, who embrace the faith of Christ, having been hitherto aliens from the covenant, are not to receive the sign of baptism except upon the profession of faith and repentance which alone open to them an entrance to the fellowship of the covenant; but the infant children of Christian parents, since they are received by God into the inheritance of the covenant as oon as they are born, are also to be received in baptism.”
In order to show the absurdity among those who take the passages about believing before being baptized and apply them to children, Calvin calls our attention to the statement of the Apostle “if any would not work, neither should he eat." Calvin then writes, “Now if any man should captiously reason from this that infants ought to be deprived of food, because the apostle permits only those who labor to eat, would he not deserve to be utterly despised? Why so? Because it would be a forced application to all men, indiscriminately, of what was spoken of men of a certain class and a certain age.”
This is a wonderful dialogue of two Calvinists - one Reformed, one Baptist.
ReplyDeleteSetting aside the timing of baptism for a moment, there are only three possible outcomes regarding babies and salvation:
1) All babies are saved.
2) No babies are saved.
3) Some babies are saved.
Outcome #1 - All babies are saved. This is the most emotionally satisfying position to hold. Regardless of whether they are in a Christian household (baptized as infants or not), a Muslim household, a Buddhist household, Wiccan, Atheist, etc. - the babies are saved. There are many verses in the Scriptures that support Jesus love of children. Infants are the "purest" forms of humans, in the sense they are extremely vulnerable, incapable of surviving on their own, and have not exhibited the "sinful nature" that probably begins at about 18 months of age (the "Me!" and "No!" stage). Infants are totally dependent on their parents for all things. The child who dies at this early stage is elect, and received into everlasting life.
This outcome is the most desirable, emotionally speaking, as even the heathen's children are saved. Scripturally, this does not have a bedrock feel to it - in the Old Testament, in many instances, God did not show mercy to the heathen - men, women, children, and babies were not spared. God also did not spare some of the Covenant children whose parents sinned (Korah - Num 16:1-25).
Deut. 24:16 says, "Fathers shall not be put to death for their sons, nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers; everyone shall be put to death for their own sin". This almost seems contradictory - in the case of Korah, "innocents" were killed along with the rebellious leaders of the household. Is God inconsistent? Absolutely not! God was being consistent in a spiritual sense - though the household of Korah was "in the covenant", they were not "of the covenant". Therefore, all of Korah was in sin, including the children.
The other problem is that "all babies are saved" does not extrapolate, logically, to "all children", which then becomes "all adults" - you are headed to a Universalist belief, which goes against the truth of Scripture and defeats the whole premise of salvation and limited atonement. To believe that all babies are saved, and to then hold that "none are saved" (requiring a baptism, a confession of faith, a "prayer of salvation"), you would have to apply Arminian logic: somewhere along the way, you "lose" your salvation and have to be "saved again" - which can lead to a mindset of works in order to "keep" your salvation (extreme Arminianism).
With the paradox of babies are all saved but adults are not, the "Age of Accountability" doctrine has risen as a compromise that many churches and creeds hold to. The big problem is, when is this age? Ten? Eleven? Thirteen? Forty-seven? (just kidding on that last one). There is no agreement that I know of, just some squishy guidelines to apply.
Outcome #1 has some problems, doctrinally speaking, after the emotions are set aside. This leads to...
Outcome #2 - No babies are saved. Jesus' own saying about how the Kingdom is made up of little children is figurative (proverbial), not literal. As believers, we must be "born again" (apologies to Robin and one of his previous writings that implies Jesus' reply to Nicodemas referred to physical Israel and not the common evangelical understanding) and assume the role of infants toward God - that we are completely dependent on Him and unable to live a Godly life on our own (via works, legalism, etc.). The sinful nature, as I expressed in Outcome #1, begins to rear its ugly head at about 18 months. This sinful nature is just that - sinful nature. We are all born with it - it is inevitable and unequivocal for all persons. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God - including children. "All" is pretty inclusive! If we hold literally to the scripture that says we have to confess Jesus as our Lord and Savior, then we have to accept that babies are not able to do this, and thus they are not saved.
ReplyDeleteBabies dying and going to eternal hell is untenable for many Christians, and probably helped to spawn the infant-baptism movement that began in the Catholic/Orthodox churches and continued into Covenant doctrine in the Reformed church.
This belief seems harsh, in the light of a God who defines Love, but it is more logically consistent than the "all babies are saved" doctrine (which leads to Universalism or Arminianism), as it does incorporate the universal sinful nature of man and need for a redeemer. Yet still, the thought that all babies who die suffer eternal damnation? You must count all aborted babies in these numbers as well. Neither #1 nor #2 seem to be bulletproof from a Calvinist, much less a Christian, point of view. Which leads us to...
Outcome #3 - Some babies are saved. God knows us from the womb and calls us (Jeremiah, for example). This position is consistent with all being born into sin, unable to save themselves, and the workings of God's election in SOME individuals. For all that we know, every infant who dies MAY be one of God's elect! We will never know on this side of eternity. However, it would not be unjust (as God is the Creator of justice) to have SOME infants elect, and SOME who are not. The unregenerate follow their sinful nature regardless of their age, and if allowed to live to the fulness of days, they would live unregenerate lives. It is possible that in having an unregenerate infant die in infancy, He is sparing the world from a tyrant along the lines of Nero, Hitler, Stalin, or a milder tyrant such as those who brutally rape, murder, and torture people, making the headlines of our local news. God is sovereign, and asserts His sovereignty in choosing His elect.
As "post-infant elect", our salvation is realized at some point during our lives, but it is irrevocable. He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy. As long as we can accept that our ways are not His ways, we realize that He is just in his election, whether we are adults or infants.
Outcome #3 is not likely to be acceptable to adherents of the Outcome #1 and #2 camps, but it is logically consistent with the doctrine of election, and much more so than either #1 or #2. Outcome #3 is certainly the minority view, since you have a large number of Arminian-inclined Christians who reject election as the Calvinists define it (and would therefore reject #3, as well as #2 on the grounds that it is totally unjust, based on their view of God's nature), and even within the Calvinist camp, the credobaptists and paedobaptists are divided on how God handles infants and children.
So where do you cast your lot? #1? #2? Or #3?
Mark (it is my friend Mark Ohlstrom, isn’t it?), my position would be Option #3.
ReplyDeleteI am uncomfortable with your statement that infants have not exhibited the ‘sinful nature’ and I would stress that we sin because we are sinners rather than the other way round.
Interestingly, reformed thinkers have generally stressed the election of all children dying in the womb, regardless of whether their parents are in the covenant.
Hello Robin, and yes I am "that Mark."
ReplyDeleteMy point about "sinful nature" is that sin resides in all people first and foremost, yet people hesitate to ascribe sinfulness to infants until they reach the age of about 18 months, when the child begins to "rebel", if you will. We can still consider a toddler's noisome behavior cute, but we also begin to accept the loss of "innocence" that the infant child possesses.
Robin, The reference you made to the kingdom belonging to "such as these" is not talking about the young age of the kingdom-participants, but about their humble character.
ReplyDeleteMy position on infant salvation is not worked out very well. There are problems with any position, as I see it. Thankfully, there is a good and sovereign God who does not have a problem with His position on this issue.
As far as Paul's statement about the children being sanctified, if one parent is sanctified, I do not have a problem. In this context, I do not believe Paul is saying that these children are saved. Otherwise, the same would be true with an unbelieving spouse. Instead, Paul argues in this context that the Lord might use the testimony of the believing spouse to bring salvation to the other. Paul is speaking of sanctification, or being set apart, in a more general sense in that context. Indeed, it is not difficult to imagine from our own experience, that when there is a believer in an otherwise unbelieving family, there is some kind of special, though not salvific, mark upon the entire home.
Regarding faith's relationship to regeneration, I find it strange that you would feel so comfortable separating the two temporally as you do. Theoretically, I have no problem saying that regeneration - or at least some effective drawing work of God - comes first, before faith. But Scripture also teaches that faith is the instrumental means of salvation. Temporally, then, the two seem to be nearly simultaneous. There seems to be in your written "tone of voice" a bit of surprise that I would suggest that regeneration comes suddenly at some point in life. Yet this is just what Scripture depicts (i.e., the wind goes where it wishes...).
With regard to your final point, your argument makes sense only if you assume a particular belief about the essence of what baptism is. I believe baptism is first-of-all a pledge to God to maintain a clear conscience (1Pt.3). This, a baby can not do. I do not believe it is first-of-all an initiatory rite into the covenant. I do believe that baptism is to take place as soon as a man comes to faith, and so it has the effect of "initiating" him into the believing community. But this is not its essence. More importantly is the identification that it pictures between the believer and the Christ in whom He now lives.
Upon further reflection, I think you’re right to object to the way I was separating faith from regeneration. When regeneration happens it gives rise to faith. The question is whether babies can have a form of faith appropriate to their age. On this point, I would join Calvin in saying “I would beg [you] to inform me, what danger that can be if they [infants] are said to receive already some part of that grace, the full abundance of which they shall a little later enjoy...I should not like thoughtlessly to affirm that they are endued with the same faith which we experience in ourselves, or at all to possess a similar conception of faith, which I would prefer leaving in suspense.”
ReplyDeleteJesus had already addressed the issue of humble and “child like” disciples earlier in chapter 10 – whoever causes one of these little one who believe in me to stumble. In that section, Jesus places a little child in front of the disciples to make his point clear. However, when Jesus blesses the children, it makes absolutely no sense to say he is talking metaphorically because Jesus was explicitly upset that the disciples are withholding children, babies, infants from Him (and remember, some of them were nursing infants). He is not upset because they are keeping back “child like adults,” rather, Jesus rebukes the disciples because “of such as these” is the Kingdom then he blesses them – the little children themselves not adults who are like little children.
I don’t have time to address the Corinthians passage right now. However, a hermeneutical principle to keep in mind is that our interpretation of these passages must not be isolated from the overall architecture of the Biblical narrative. Since children were always included in the Abrahamic Covenant, our prima facia understanding should be that such is the case in the New Covenant, since the New Covenant fulfils all the earlier covenants. The burden of proof is on those who maintain that at the coming of Christ meant the children of God’s people are suddenly outside the family of God. Derek Carlsen had a very interesting article on this very subject in the last ‘Christianity & Society.’ Just download the last edition of 'Christianity & Society' (I give links to it at http://robinphillips.blogspot.com/2009/05/is-beauty-in-eye-of-beholder.html) and look for Derek Carlsen's article titled 'Baptism, Continuity and Individualism."
Finally, I would dispute that a baby cannot have the pledge of a clear conscience. Our clear conscience is based, not on our own works or our subjective state, but on our objective standing in the covenant. It follows that everyone who is in Christ – even babies – can have a clear conscience before God. The passage goes on to make the point that our clear conscience is because of Christ’s resurrection – again emphasizing the fact that it is because of Christ and nothing to do with our own works or subjective state. Your view could lead to sensitive children to doubt the efficacy of their baptisms. Our clear conscience goes up and down as we struggle with sin, and we don’t want to set children up for a lifetime of struggles with security by telling them that their clear conscience and therefore their baptism is dependent on anything other than Christ.
I have just a couple more comments here, and then I'm done...
ReplyDeleteMatthew 28:19-20 (the Great Commission) has as its main verb, to make disciples. Everything else in this sentence is subordinate to that. Baptism is to be carried out on those who have been made to be disciples or followers of our Lord Jesus Christ. This seems to fit best with a "believers' baptism."
1 Peter 3:16 says, "and keep a good conscience so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame." This clearly links the conscience to good behavior. It is verse 21 in this same chapter that describes baptism as the appeal/pledge to God of a good conscience. Of course, the way we are able to maintain this clear conscience is based upon the resurrection power in life that he says this appeal/pledge is through.
Indeed, Paul says something similar in Romans 6. When we are joined to Christ, we are joined to Him in His death, so as to have the power of sin destroyed in us (vs. 7), and to Him in His resurrection, so as to have the power of life given to us (vss. 4-5). This is not saying that the Christian will not sin any more, but that the power of sin is destroyed, so that we no longer must sin. With the new heart we have in Christ, we are now free to follow Him. Previous to the work of God in conversion this would have been impossible.
Your concern that "sensitive children" might "doubt" the "efficacy of their baptisms" is troubling. You yourself said that baby-baptism is presumptive, meaning that some of these children end up not actually being saved in the end. Yet here you imply that baby-baptism is effective. Effective for what, if not for salvation? Is there some status between non-saved and saved, which baptism is effective at producing, without being effective of completing the work of salvation? I think that you would say that it is effective at bringing the child into the covenant community. Therefore, if membership in this covenant is not equal to being eternally secure, then wouldn't we want to upset the consciences of our children, if they are walking in sin? On the other hand, if baptism truly is effective at producing salvation, then we have another problem. But I don't think you're saying that, even though you seem to have said that...
Actually Mark, I think I will actually opt for Option#1, in order to be in good company. As Dr. Warfield put it in his book The Development of the Doctrine of Infant Salvation (p. 44): “the agnostic view of the fate of the uncoveanted infants, dying such, has given place to an ever-growing universality of conviction that these infants too are included in the election of grace; so that today few Calvinists can be found who do not hold with Toplady, and Doddridge, and Thomas Scott, and John Newton, and James P. Wilson, and N.L. Rice, and R.J. Breckinridge, and R.S. Candlish, and Charles Hodge, and the wholly body of those of recent years whom Calvinist Church delight to honor, that all who die in infancy are the children of God and enter at once into his glory, - not because original sin is not deserving of eternal punishment (for all are born children of wrath), nor because they are less guilty than others (for relative innocence would merit only relatively light punishment), nor because they die in infancy -, but simply because God in his infinite love has chosen them in Christ, before the foundation of the world, by a loving foreordination of them unto adoption as sons in Jesus Christ.”
ReplyDeleteDr. N.L. Rice concurred similarly: “I never head a Presbyterian minister, nor read a Presbyterian author, who expressed the opinion, that infants dying in infancy are lost.”