# Infant Baptism – some further thoughts



## Jerusalem Blade (Jul 5, 2012)

This is to tie up some loose ends in the now closed thread, http://www.puritanboard.com/f57/infant-baptism-74887/

Hello Bill the Baptist,

I was reading Greg Welty’s, “A Critical Evaluation of Paedobaptism”, that you posted a link to in your post #51 of the closed thread referred to above, and I must say that is a flawed work.

Looking at his section, “I. The Fundamental Hermeneutical Error Of Paedobaptists,” where he says, “Paedobaptists simultaneously ‘Christianize’ the Old Testament (read the Old Testament as if it _were_ the New) and ‘Judaize’ the New Testament (read the New Testament as if it _were_ the Old)” [emphases his].

Then you, Bill (via Welty), assert that the New Covenant is unbreakable whereas the Old _is_ breakable, and give Jer 31:31-34 as proof of this – where the LORD says, “because they broke my covenant” – indicating that this covenant was broken and now null and void. The question that immediately comes to mind is, What is this “broken covenant” being spoken of? It is without doubt the Mosaic Covenant, and not the Abrahamic, for Hebrews 8:13 states of this passage, “In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth [“becoming obsolete” NASB NKJV] and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.” For of the Abrahamic, it is written, “And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law [given by Moses], which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect. . . And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Gal 3:17, 29). So this covenant of promise, in and by which Abraham lived, continues, and we who are in Christ also live in and by it; now we have received the promise of the Christ, and the indwelling of His Spirit, yet we also await the final consummation of this everlasting covenant.

Did you say that the covenant God made with the elect in the OT is breakable? Are not the OT saints saved – regenerated, justified – because they are reckoned by God to be in Christ, having faith in the Messiah that was promised, even though He had not yet appeared to them in the flesh? Will you say that any OT elect person could lose their salvation? I don’t think you will. Welty doesn’t.

In Genesis 15, when God told Abram He would give him seed of immense number, and that from his own loins – which promise Abram believed – and then the Lord made him promise of the land, and Abram asked how shall I know this? So the LORD made more promises regarding his seed and the land they were to dwell on, and then cut a covenant with Abram. But you will notice that in the ratifying of this covenant (Cf. Gen 15:9-17), Abram did not pass through the severed pieces of the sacrifices, but the LORD alone did, signifying that if the covenant was broken _*He*_ would be torn as were the animals, but Abram (his seed included) would not be held to pay for the breaking of the covenant. This all foreshadows Christ and His people. Not one of Christ’s elect sheep, of the OT or New, shall perish. This Abrahamic covenant of undeserved favor continues unbroken even today, though Christ revealed the full glory of God’s grace.

To sum: The Old – Mosaic – Covenant was breakable, and was indeed broken, but the Abrahamic was not.

To get back to Welty’s article you posted; he says, “the New Covenant is made with believers only”, whereas in the Old Covenant (now comprehending the Abrahamic as well the Mosaic) Welty says, “The fact that not _all_ covenant members experienced these [glorious covenant] blessings under the Old Covenant is part of the divine motivation for readministering the covenant under the New!” I respond: So the wicked of the OT, although they may have had godly parents, you think were considered by God to be “covenant members”? 

I say it was *never* the case that God included physical seed in the covenant by virtue *merely* of blood-ties to believing Jewish parents! 

Looking back on Abraham and his seed, Paul in Romans 4:12 says of Abraham that he was


...the father of circumcision to them who are not of the circumcision *only*, _but who walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had being yet uncircumcised_. [emphasis mine –SMR] (AV – all Scripture quotes are from the AV unless otherwise noted)

NASB: “…who are not only of the circumcision, but who also follow the steps of the faith of our father Abraham...”

ESV: “...who are not merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith...”​ 
Paul in Romans 9:6 and 8 famously says,


For they are not all Israel who are of Israel....That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.​ 
And again, in Romans 2:28 and 29,


For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh:

But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.​ 
The significance of these sayings is that *those physical descendants of Abraham who were not believers were not counted as “the seed”, nor were they counted as Israel, or as Jews!* Concerning those who live as breakers of the law, their “circumcision is made uncircumcision.” (Ro 2:25)

In Jeremiah 9:25 and 26 it is written,


Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will punish all them which are circumcised with the uncircumcised;

Egypt, and Judah, and Edom, and the children of Ammon, and Moab, and all that are in the utmost corners, that dwell in the wilderness: for all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in the heart.​ 
In the _un_circumcised-in-heart house of Israel, which God did not recognize as His people, there remained a believing and faithful remnant, which was Israel indeed.

Scripture is clear that those who were unbelieving, who were without faith, though they were the seed of Abraham after the flesh, were not the seed.

So when I see it asserted that warrant for membership in New Covenant Israel is no longer based on blood ties of natural descent as per the old dispensation, but strictly on faith in Christ and the new birth, I must object and answer that inclusion into God’s house has always been by faith, and not natural descent. Those who were but Abraham’s seed after the flesh were not included in His covenant household, though they may have appeared to be.

Those who were not of faith had neither _de facto_ (as a matter of fact) nor _de jure_ (as a matter of right) membership in the Old Covenant house of God. When the LORD spoke through Moses saying to the multitude of Israel, “Ye are the children of the Lord your God....For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God, and the LORD hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth” (Deut 14:1, 2), He was not addressing those whose father was the devil, who were the reprobate, though they were among the house of Israel. What they had was *an appearance* of being the _tekna Theou_ (children of God), but in fact rotten grapes on the vine of Israel. This is the purport of the apostle Paul’s making distinction between true and false Jews, being Israel or merely of Israel.

Will it be said that they were _de facto_ members by virtue of their presence in the camp? And that they had the right to enter the temple to worship? They were imposters, known to God, and were considered by Him uncircumcised, as it is written: “For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh” (Ro 2:28), and, “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord” (Prov 15:8), even his thoughts and prayer are abomination! (Prov 15:26, 28:9). No, their presence in the camp, and names on the scrolls of their tribes, are as vessels in a great house, some for use unto honor and some unto dishonor (2 Tim 2:20), some unto mercy, and some unto wrath, these latter “endured [by God] with much longsuffering” (Rom 9:22, 23). Just as the Jewish state of our day is an imposter “Israel”, so these reprobates were imposter Israelites. The Israel of God was holy.

The unbelievers within the house of Israel had membership neither by right nor by fact. They were tares among the wheat, or to switch metaphors, but chaff. So things did not change regarding membership in the New Covenant house of Israel. It was the same. Only those of faith are counted as the seed.

Note that the house of God in the New Covenant is the house of Israel, our king sitting on the throne of David. In Amos 9:11–15 the LORD speaks through the prophet concerning the latter days, 


In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old: 

That they may possess the remnant of Edom, and of all the heathen, which are called by my name, saith the LORD that doeth this. (verses 11, 12)​ 
In the remaining three verses there appear to be prophecies concerning material blessings and promise concerning the land, but in Acts 15:13 ff. where James is addressing the Jerusalem council, we see him applying the Amos passage to the _spiritual_ blessings given the New Covenant house of Israel and the Gentiles which had been included into it. This hermeneutical principle shows that the material blessings promised to Israel under the Old Covenant were typical of the spiritual blessings awaiting the New Covenant house of Israel.

The material blessings, and the land promises, never were realized by Old Testament Israel – save for those periods of prosperity under David and Solomon, which themselves were types of the blessings to be received in the kingdom of David’s greater Son – and we are not to say that God’s promises failed, but that they were pictures, shadows, of the spiritual blessings promised Abraham. The church of God in the Old Covenant (Acts 7:38) was essentially the same as the church in the New, and all the promises were spiritual, painted in temporal garb.

Lest anyone object to the OT people of God being called the church (_ekklesia_), which is easier, to call old Israel the church, or to call the new church Israel? They are one body, one people, saved the same way – regenerated, justified by faith, through grace; in Galatians 3 it is shows old Israel as a child under tutors, and then as a man after being renewed in faith in Christ – he is one person. When Paul speaks, he speaks as a bridge between the two ages of Israel: “...the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ...after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster” (vv, 24, 25).

When Peter was preaching on Solomon’s Porch (Acts 3), reiterating Moses’ warning in Deuteronomy 18:19, that whoever did not heed the Prophet (Messiah) would “be destroyed from among the people”, at that moment God revealed His judgment: as with a great cleaver cutting gristle from meat, He cut off from the people of Israel all those who in wicked unbelief denied Christ. Israel was now constituted of those who bowed the knee to the resurrected king, be they Jew or Gentile. Jesus had told the priests and rulers this was coming: “Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof” (Matt 21:43). What was this “nation”? It was Israel _reconstituted_ by Him who sits “upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, _to order it, and to establish it with judgment_ and with justice from henceforth even for ever” (Isaiah 9:7) [emphasis added]. 

This is why Paul can use the terminology he does in Ephesians, telling the Gentiles that in time past they were “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel”, but now, having cleaved to Christ, they “are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God...” (Eph 2:12, 19). And again, in Hebrews 3, he says that it is one house, Moses being a servant in it, but Christ the Son and builder – “whose house we are” (Heb 3:2–6).

To sum (for the moment): God’s Israel in the Old Covenant was spiritual, with the promises of material and land blessings pictures of the spiritual blessings that would be theirs in Messiah.

We in Israel today put the token of the covenant on our children according to the command given our father Abraham. The sacraments of baptism and circumcision “are God’s word to his elect by which God signifies and seals the promises of his covenant....[they are] instituted by God to be added to the preaching as signs and seals of the truth of the gospel.” *

Is not the promise of the Old Covenant the same as that of the New? Listen:


And the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live. (Deut 30:6)​ 
In the Israel of God we rejoice in this word even today, in 2012.

––-

* From Herman Hanko's _We And Our Children: The Reformed Doctrine of Infant Baptism_ (RFPA 2004), p. 54.

Part of the above taken from the earlier thread, http://www.puritanboard.com/f57/john-1-12-13-baptism-revisited-38633/ .

There is more that can be said, but I think this is enough for now. I just wanted to post an objection to Greg Welty’s assertions regarding the covenants.

Tyrese, ponder these things some more before you settle your view. Hanko in his book mentioned just above interacts with Reformed Baptist views, and gives an excellent presentation of the baptist and paedobaptist positions.


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## PuritanCovenanter (Jul 5, 2012)

I have a question Steve. Is there not a sense in which the Abrahamic, Mosaic, and even New Covenant can be broken by individual apostasy? Even the Abrahamic Covenant has a threat to those who are not circumcised and told they were cut off. God keeps his promises and they are immutable and salvation is only by grace through faith in all of the Administrations of the Covenant of Grace. But that in no way suggest that their is a Covenant of Works principle. Salvation is not earned in anyway.


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## Tyrese (Jul 5, 2012)

Jerusalem Blade said:


> This is to tie up some loose ends in the now closed thread, http://www.puritanboard.com/f57/infant-baptism-74887/
> 
> Hello Bill the Baptist,
> 
> ...



This was actually the third (and the last) time studying infant baptism from a Presbyterian POV. But this last study really gave me a peice of mind because I have all new objections to infant baptism added on top of the ones that I thought could be answered. Even beyond my objections to infant baptism, I have serious problems with the mode that Presbyterians present as to how one is to be baptised. I think the 1689 has it right. Thanks for the imput.


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## PuritanCovenanter (Jul 5, 2012)

Tyrese,

Be Encouraged and just stay close to the Lord and walk with him. His Covenant Love is keeping and will bless you in your abiding relationship with him. The spirit he gave us cries Abba Father. There is a lot of comfort in that. The 1689 is a wonderful confession of faith and I gained a lot of wisdom from it as I have from the other Reformed Confessions. Grow in Grace brother.


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## Peairtach (Jul 5, 2012)

PuritanCovenanter said:


> I have a question Steve. Is there not a sense in which the Abrahamic, Mosaic, and even New Covenant can be broken by individual apostasy? Even the Abrahamic Covenant has a threat to those who are not circumcised and told they were cut off. God keeps his promises and they are immutable and salvation is only by grace through faith in all of the Administrations of the Covenant of Grace. But that in no way suggest that their is a Covenant of Works principle. Salvation is not earned in anyway.



Individuals can break the New Covenant, either temporarily, as those who are truly converted, by presumptious sin leading to church sanctions placing them "outside" while in their heart of hearts they are "inside"; or permanently, as those who are unconverted but under the outward covenant administration but who never exercise faith and are eventually lost.

Once someone has been properly baptised, they never utterly lose their connection to the covenant and the visible church in this life, which is illustrated by the fact that Presbyterians don't "rebaptise". They are "in the covenant" for life, whether or not they ever become "of the covenant".

The references to breaking the covenant above are possibly to the collective breaking of the Abrahamic Covenant Old Covenant by the childhood Church. The Abrahamic Covenant in its New Covenant phase cannot be collectively broken and then dispensed with by God, but extends into eternity.


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## Tyrese (Jul 5, 2012)

PuritanCovenanter said:


> Tyrese,
> 
> Be Encouraged and just stay close to the Lord and walk with him. His Covenant Love is keeping and will bless you in your abiding relationship with him. The spirit he gave us cries Abba Father. There is a lot of comfort in that. The 1689 is a wonderful confession of faith and I gained a lot of wisdom from it as I have from the other Reformed Confessions. Grow in Grace brother.



Thanks I appreciate your kind words. Presbyterians are dear brothers whom I deeply respect. W/O the WCF there probably wouldnt have been the 1689. In Christ we have much in common. Thanks again brother.


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## Semper Fidelis (Jul 5, 2012)

PuritanCovenanter said:


> Tyrese,
> 
> Be Encouraged and just stay close to the Lord and walk with him. His Covenant Love is keeping and will bless you in your abiding relationship with him. The spirit he gave us cries Abba Father. There is a lot of comfort in that. The 1689 is a wonderful confession of faith and I gained a lot of wisdom from it as I have from the other Reformed Confessions. Grow in Grace brother.



It is unbreakable in the sense that those who fully participate in the work of its Mediator not only have the benefits of Christ's work fully sealed to them but are also kept by them. In this sense, the CoG is unbreakable for those who are Christ's. The fingerprints of this notion are all over the Westminster standards which describe Christ's role of Prophet, Priest, and King in His Mediatorial office. In another sense, however, there is an external administration of the CoG where a real, visible Kingdom of Christ exists here on earth that can be seen, heard, touched, and tasted. It has a people that are visibly distinguished from the world by Word and Sacrament. All of its visible citizens are disciples of Christ and are commanded to press in and to hear, Today, the Word of the Lord. We know, however, that some shrink back. Some taste and see the visible Sacraments and yet they participate in none of its sealing benefits because of rebellion and the Sovereign will of the Spirit Who blows where He wills. In this sense, then, men disobey the command of the Gospel and fail to lay hold of what is laid before them. We can only live by that which is revealed and not peer into hidden things but must accept that God seals men to be truly in Christ but that men are yet judged for their willing rebellion of Christ who will be identified as those who shrink back from what they should have laid hold of.


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## PuritanCovenanter (Jul 5, 2012)

Thank You Rich. You put into words what I have tried to express.


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## Jerusalem Blade (Jul 5, 2012)

Tyrese, you showed an openness to understand when you started that thread, and that’s a commendable thing. I, for one, would not say that my credo brethren are in sin for their view, as I do not believe it is charged against them due to their strong desire to be godly and obedient to Christ. The disposition of their hearts is right; what I would say is simply they are mistaken – I would not make accusation against them. If they come against me for my views I will withstand and rebut. It remains that many Baptists are godlier men (and women) than I, and have borne far greater fruit than I, so it behooves me to abide in humility in their presence (I don’t always succeed, but I try). Discussing Biblical truths I can vigorously prosecute my case, while treating my Baptist opponents with respect, affection, and honor. This is my aim, even if I fall short.

I pray the Lord watch over you, and prosper your way as you walk with Him.

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Randy, children raised in the covenant care of faithful parents and a faithful community of believers and abide under the ministry of God’s Spirit – whether in OT or NT times – who renounce their circumcision or baptism and turn away from God in unbelief, are rightly called “covenant-breakers”. This does not mean they were ever the elect – or regenerated by God’s Spirit – for the word of God is clear that, as Jesus said, “My sheep . . . shall never perish” (John 10:27, 28), and, “this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day” (John 6:39). I think I am saying the same thing Rich is, but from a different angle.

The threat the LORD made to Abraham in Genesis 17:14, regarding the uncircumcised child, “that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant” is really aimed at the parent – here at Abraham – for failing to put the token of the covenant on the child as commanded, though the child would also suffer for his father’s sin. It would be an exceedingly wicked thing to do to one’s child, depriving him of membership in the community. Evidently Moses himself failed in this matter in Exodus 4:24-26, and the LORD dealt with him.

In New Covenant times it is slightly different. I believe God is wonderfully gracious toward the Baptists who fall short in this matter (He has the prerogative to forgive all sin due to Christ’s atoning sacrifice for His people), who out of ignorance do not understand what is required of them. As the hymn says,

The only view God has of me
Is through the blood of Jesus.​ 
I think the Baptists, in their abhorrence of the practices of Rome (and Eastern Orthodoxy), become blind to the realities of the matter, and cannot think past Rome and priestcraft, even when Abrahamic Covenant practice is spoken of. Like – in my view – New Covenant Theology seems but an extreme way to support credo baptism and deny the Reformed understanding of the covenant of grace, which leads flawlessly to NT infants being brought into the covenant community.

Being infants in the covenant community does not mean they are elect – some will grow up to be covenant-breakers – but as parents we try our best to raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. A couple of posts more on covenant infants from the thread I excerpted from above:

Infants born into the new covenant house of Israel

Can an infant “receive Him”, even though they have not the capacity to “believe”?


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## Stephen L Smith (Jul 6, 2012)

Hello Martin. Thank you for your response to my question in the previous post. Given that you are well read in RB CT (eg Coxe/Owen, Malone? etc, ) perhaps you could produce an essay where these RB guys got it wrong?


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