# Baptism and lawful administer of the ordinance



## PuritanCovenanter (Nov 12, 2007)

Another discussion cropped up in another thread a while back concerning the adminsters of Baptism. Someone suggested that women, or any common disciple was a lawful administer of the ordianance of Baptism. The discussion started here.... http://www.puritanboard.com/f71/great-commission-us-today-26208/




elnwood said:


> Rich, I was more responding to Amazing Grace because he was talking about baptism.
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## PuritanCovenanter (Nov 12, 2007)

I started jumping in here but we were on a rabbit trail of the topic.

http://www.puritanboard.com/f71/great-commission-us-today-26208/



PuritanCovenanter said:


> elnwood said:
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> > KMK said:
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## PuritanCovenanter (Nov 12, 2007)

I am skipping some posts because they are included in following posts as quotes.



elnwood said:


> PuritanCovenanter said:
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## PuritanCovenanter (Nov 12, 2007)

At this point in the thread I then suggested that I would see what Dr. Jim Renihan thought about the topic. So here is something he wrote a few years ago on the rblist. I got his permission to post it here.



> It seems that there continues to be a misunderstanding of the 1644/46
> doctrine on the administrators of baptism.
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> Here is an edited
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## Semper Fidelis (Nov 12, 2007)

Great legwork Randy. This is a reminder about how arguments from silence can be easily generated. It also demonstrates the importance of having some good source material to ensure that the surface reading of a document doesn't lead a person to an erroneous conclusion. That backstory about Featley is interesting. 

It's kind of ironic how we're having a discussion about an over-arching emphasis on education. Unfortunately, as Luther noted, when you've fallen off a horse on one side you usually jump so hard back on the horse that you fall off the other. I do think the constant arguments against an overweening reliance on degrees has tended to depreciate the value of and educated (or even Church sent) ministry among Baptists. I appreciate that the Confession does provide some guards against the idea that just any can administer the ordinances even if the controversy led to the language causing some confusion in that direction.


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## NaphtaliPress (Nov 12, 2007)

Kudos. I thought us WCF nuts only did this kind of research.


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## KMK (Nov 12, 2007)

There seems to be two choices: 

1) 17th century Baptists were confused about the issue and they waffled, hence the differences in 'The True', the 1644, the 1646 and the 1689.

or

2) 17th century Baptists did not express their beliefs clearly in the 1644, hence the corrections in the 1646 and the 1689.

Dr. Renihan proves the latter. And after reading Dr. Renihan's other article from the aforementioned thread:

http://www.reformedreader.org/ctf.htm 

I wonder about the wisdom of using the 1st LBC as a confession at all. It seems like the 2nd LBC worked out all the kinks from the 1st. Dr. Renihan, in the above article, points out that some of the writers of the 2nd had never heard of the 1st since it was in such short supply. Could it be that the 1st disappeared for the most part because it was not found to be very useful?


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## Semper Fidelis (Nov 12, 2007)

KMK said:


> I wonder about the wisdom of using the 1st LBC as a confession at all. It seems like the 2nd LBC worked out all the kinks from the 1st. Dr. Renihan, in the above article, points out that some of the writers of the 2nd had never heard of the 1st since it was in such short supply. Could it be that the 1st disappeared for the most part because it was not found to be very useful?



Good point. At the very least, if one is going to use both you can't just put them side by side and guess what the exclusion or inclusion of a term meant without knowing the backstory. It's not always the case that details are left out because they are repudiating another document. In this case they wanted to make the same restriction but didn't want the baggage associated with a particular term.


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## Pilgrim (Nov 17, 2007)

The 1644 was a much shorter document that I think was primarily designed to argue that the Particular Baptists didn't hold to the heretical soteriology and other errors of some of the anabaptists.


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