R Harris
Puritan Board Sophomore
Shortly after beginning to attend I started reading the Westminster Confession and came across the section on baptism. I was rather startled to see that infants of believing parents were to be baptized. Wasn't that a Roman Catholic thing? I remember the index of my MacArthur study Bible listed Pro 30:6 as the solitary reference under "infant baptism", which of course reads "Do not add to His words, Lest He rebuke you, and you be found a liar."
MacArthur makes the comment that the Reformers just didn't reform enough, and they held onto infant baptism because of tradition. I think that is an extremely unfair comment to make about a people who thought through and studied everything they did and held it up to the Scriptures. They probably would have been appalled at that comment. I found that Reformed theology was overwhelmingly paedobaptist and that there was strong reason for it historically. The early fathers misapplied it I think but like most things they went astray in, it seems to have had a good start and foundation.
The MacArthur Study Bible actually uses Proverbs 30:6 against infant baptism?
Wow, just wow . . . . I knew MacArthur had a vehement hate against IB, but that is really a strong shot.
The issue of one having to make that "profession of faith" before the baptism as "sealing the deal," is something that the NT itself doesn't even go to. I remember years ago talking to an SBC pastor after he had delivered a sermon on "believers only" baptism, who came up to me at the end of the service and semi triumphantly stated "well, what did you think?"
I replied, "you realize that the apostles baptized non-believers in the NT, don't you?" To which he incredulously replied "and your example of that would be?" To which I said, "well, let's see, there is Simon Magus in Acts 8, Phyletus, Higemon (sp?), Alexander, Demas, and a whole host of people unnamed in I John 2:19. There are others that I have missed.
The whole point is that NO ONE can "read" a heart at the time of baptism. Only TIME can tell if they have been truly regenerated or not.
It is the same with IB; only TIME can tell if they are truly in the Covenant or not, or if they will fall away like an Esau.