Untangling Webs of Assumptions
- Thread starter R. Scott Clark
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sevenzedek
Puritan Board Junior
I cannot tell you how many times I have heard people combine the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants under the same rubric; apparently because both Abraham and Moses are written about in the same group of books we call the Old Testament. In my neck of the woods, this must be one of the main stumbling blocks (one of them) hindering people from coming to a view that includes children in the covenant of grace and its sign. They say insistently, "The old covenant has passed away and the new has come." The fact that the new covenant has come bolsters their argument because the new covenant has indeed come. Who can then prove them wrong on that? The new has come!
One of the challenges I have found when dealing with these webs of assumptions is likened to a table on which stands a system of assertions about what is believed to be true. By the time one leg of the table is hacked off with a good argument, it has already grown back, just as another leg of the table has been shortened by another good argument. In this way the table stands and the web of assertions stand with it.
People sometimes do not think they need to start over on the foundations on which they rest their understanding, and reconstructing something that is so plainly simple to understand often takes work. Who can see the forest for the trees? Or, "I said the sky is blue", so to speak, and arguments to prove it to be true must become quite complex when simple evidences are denied. Peter's statement in Acts 2 does little to help such and our message again falls on deaf ears. So the paedobaptist argument is seen to be so complex, but is it really? The baptismal promise really is to your children too! Well, Peter must be talking about saved children only, so don't go baptizing anyone children unless you are able tell with certainty that they are really saved. (Now we are gong to need someone to pass out those special glasses like they do at the 3D movies. "Step right up, folks. You can really know.") From where does an assumption like that come? And the web just gets more and more entangled.
There are other aspects of the paedo view that are hard to understand. I found that I had to just accept the plain truth and allow myself to wrestle with peculiar implications of the doctrine. It made the going much easier until I finally came to a holistic view of the paedo position. Until simple assertions of the bible on this matter are accepted, an enormous structure of interrelated arguments must be erected. Who has a mind or the time for that? Others do have the mind and the time for it, but trade it for a false pursuit; like a boy in elementary school who ran the wrong direction with the football during recess. You know; I really did do that, once upon a time. Everybody kept saying, "Don't run that way!" I ran anyway because I was convinced. I didn't want anyone to trick me into running for the wrong side. Only when I got to the end did I realize how wrong I was. Every single one of us will have a similar experience when we get to heaven; how wrong we were.
...musings of one who has become so convinced.
One of the challenges I have found when dealing with these webs of assumptions is likened to a table on which stands a system of assertions about what is believed to be true. By the time one leg of the table is hacked off with a good argument, it has already grown back, just as another leg of the table has been shortened by another good argument. In this way the table stands and the web of assertions stand with it.
People sometimes do not think they need to start over on the foundations on which they rest their understanding, and reconstructing something that is so plainly simple to understand often takes work. Who can see the forest for the trees? Or, "I said the sky is blue", so to speak, and arguments to prove it to be true must become quite complex when simple evidences are denied. Peter's statement in Acts 2 does little to help such and our message again falls on deaf ears. So the paedobaptist argument is seen to be so complex, but is it really? The baptismal promise really is to your children too! Well, Peter must be talking about saved children only, so don't go baptizing anyone children unless you are able tell with certainty that they are really saved. (Now we are gong to need someone to pass out those special glasses like they do at the 3D movies. "Step right up, folks. You can really know.") From where does an assumption like that come? And the web just gets more and more entangled.
There are other aspects of the paedo view that are hard to understand. I found that I had to just accept the plain truth and allow myself to wrestle with peculiar implications of the doctrine. It made the going much easier until I finally came to a holistic view of the paedo position. Until simple assertions of the bible on this matter are accepted, an enormous structure of interrelated arguments must be erected. Who has a mind or the time for that? Others do have the mind and the time for it, but trade it for a false pursuit; like a boy in elementary school who ran the wrong direction with the football during recess. You know; I really did do that, once upon a time. Everybody kept saying, "Don't run that way!" I ran anyway because I was convinced. I didn't want anyone to trick me into running for the wrong side. Only when I got to the end did I realize how wrong I was. Every single one of us will have a similar experience when we get to heaven; how wrong we were.
...musings of one who has become so convinced.
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