I understand RB confusion on sign/seal/paedo

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You didn't answer my question. Does the sign lose its significance when a person's mental capacity diminishes with age or brain injury causes the event itself to be forgotten?

You're right. I didn't answer your question. I am not talking about exceptions. That is why I used the word 'ordinary'. :)

I'm sorry, I don't understand. It is not "extraordinary" for elderly people to experience dementia. The wife of a Baptist minister who just passed away yesterday is suffering this in fact. Does her baptism still retain any significance?

This is debateable, but after sleeping on it I think I better understand the point you are trying to make.

Your point is that a 'sign' does not necessarily have to be 'seen' in order for it to be a 'sign'. Therefore, infant baptism is still a 'sign' even though the infant will never actually 'see' it without the help of the testimony of others.

The credobaptist, as far as I know, doesn't disagree that baptism is a sign to the infant being baptized. However, we do believe that credobaptism is a better sign that naturally goes along with a better Covenant.

For example, there is an old town where two roads cross. The older people in the town would tell you that when you come to that intersection you must stop and look both ways because other cars are coming fast in other directions. Later on, the town council decides to do some improvements. One of the improvements is to put a stop sign at that intersection.

Was it a 'sign' when the old folks warned the young people to stop at the intersection? Sure. But isn't a stop sign, which you can actually see, an even better sign? Yes!

It should also be pointed out that this idea is not so much an argument in favor of credobaptism, but against paedobaptism. Therefore, charges that the credobaptist is not reverencing the Creator-creature distinction are unfounded in my opinion.

It was not my intention to take this thread off topic. I think all of the above posts prove Jacob's point. This is one of the many problems the credo has with the paedo system. Obviously many do not agree that it is a problem but that does not change the fact that it is.
 
You didn't answer my question. Does the sign lose its significance when a person's mental capacity diminishes with age or brain injury causes the event itself to be forgotten?

You're right. I didn't answer your question. I am not talking about exceptions. That is why I used the word 'ordinary'. :)

I'm sorry, I don't understand. It is not "extraordinary" for elderly people to experience dementia. The wife of a Baptist minister who just passed away yesterday is suffering this in fact. Does her baptism still retain any significance?

Of course, provided it was a biblical baptism. :)

Ken was probably not wanting to get into exceptions since hard cases make bad law, etc.
 
You're right. I didn't answer your question. I am not talking about exceptions. That is why I used the word 'ordinary'. :)

I'm sorry, I don't understand. It is not "extraordinary" for elderly people to experience dementia. The wife of a Baptist minister who just passed away yesterday is suffering this in fact. Does her baptism still retain any significance?

Of course, provided it was a biblical baptism. :)

Ken was probably not wanting to get into exceptions since hard cases make bad law, etc.

Hard cases also require Pastoral counsel. With millions of elderly people who experience this tragedy it is hardly some hair brained case. If one is going to insist that the significance of baptism is tied to the mental acuity of the person remembering the sign then this question needs to be asked.

This, of course, goes to the point of all sorts of other people who are never fit in the RB schema for baptism. A member of my congregation in Springfield, VA had a normal child struck by a car when he was 8 years old. He was mentally incapacitated thereafter. He could express affection in a way that a parent might be able to ascertain but would never get over the "bar" of profession to add his mental capacity to the meaning of the sign of baptism in the RB schema. He is forever unfit.

These kind of cases demonstrate the poverty of binding up the significance of God's sign in the mental acuity of the recipient. You say "...of course it has significance..." in the case of the person with later dementia but give no reason why it is so since their mental acuity was required to be mixed with the sign in the first place to grant it significance.

I also think you take little stock in the diminishing memories of men who might forget the intensity of their devotion or what they actually thought when they were baptized. I was baptized only 14 years ago and, already, I cannot really put my finger on what it is I really believed about the Gospel at that time. Man's memory fades.

Perhaps I didn't have real faith at the time. A "do over" is in order perhaps because my profession was illegitimate. In fact I had one RB Brother suggest that very thing in your thread. Hence, the practice of re-baptizing every time a person might come to the conclusion that they don't remember the reality of their conversion at the time and the need to ensure that this time I'm really sure I'm converted so I want to make sure I have the full significance of my baptism that points to the apex of my fervor for Christ.

This is completely inverted in signficance. Baptism is supposed to direct a person toward God and His Promise and not direct inward so that the person's comfort rests in the shifting or eroding sands of the memory of a faith he had when he was baptized.
 
Related to this is the concept of "improving your baptism," the subject of WLC 167, which is about as clear example as there is of proceeding from an unwarranted assumption to a foregone conclusion. The assumption here being that baptism is essentially the same as circumcision and that the New Covenant is essentially the same as the Old. There is no scriptural support offered for this concept. (Edit: What I have in view here is those baptized in infancy, particularly.) I wonder why?
 
Another example is the injunction sometimes given by paedos to those struggling with assurance look to their baptism. That is little different than the "soul winner" telling someone to look to their decision card or that they walked the aisle and thus to never doubt their salvation. Rather, we should look to Christ.
 
Related to this is the concept of "improving your baptism," the subject of WLC 167, which is about as clear example as there is of proceeding from an unwarranted assumption to a foregone conclusion. The assumption here being that baptism is essentially the same as circumcision and that the New Covenant is essentially the same as the Old. There is no scriptural support offered for this concept. (Edit: What I have in view here is those baptized in infancy, particularly.) I wonder why?

You might not "wonder" if you didn't overthrow the significance of circumcision itself and make Abraham the only person who got to take any comfort from his own circumcision. When you individualize an entire Covenant people then everything gets whacky. I don't know how a person can read the Book of Hebrews and all its encouragements to persevere and say that the New Covenant has nothing to say of striving together toward the end we were set upon.
 
Another example is the injunction sometimes given by paedos to those struggling with assurance look to their baptism. That is little different than the "soul winner" telling someone to look to their decision card or that they walked the aisle and thus to never doubt their salvation. Rather, we should look to Christ.

Another example of why you would never tell a person to look to their baptism because there is nothing at their baptism to remember since it only points within to the sincerity of their heart. I wouldn't tell them to look there either. All of your ordinances are disconnected from the Covenant and so you have nothing to offer in way of strength from them. You pour Christ out of the Sacraments and strip them bare and then wonder why we would look to them. I would not look to something impoverished by such a schema either. Our Sacramental understanding does not suffer this problem.

Off to bed.
 
This is completely inverted in signficance. Baptism is supposed to direct a person toward God and His Promise and not direct inward so that the person's comfort rests in the shifting or eroding sands of the memory of a faith he had when he was baptized.

(excuse the intrusion, I have been following...:popcorn:)

Fair enough. Given the above, would you refuse baptism of my unsaved spouse (hypothetical), who though not expressing faith, is willing to be baptized along with her children and submit to the headship of her husband in attending worship?
 
Related to this is the concept of \"improving your baptism,\" the subject of WLC 167, which is about as clear example as there is of proceeding from an unwarranted assumption to a foregone conclusion. The assumption here being that baptism is essentially the same as circumcision and that the New Covenant is essentially the same as the Old. There is no scriptural support offered for this concept. (Edit: What I have in view here is those baptized in infancy, particularly.) I wonder why?

You might not "wonder" if you didn't overthrow the significance of circumcision itself and make Abraham the only person who got to take any comfort from his own circumcision. When you individualize an entire Covenant people then everything gets whacky. I don't know how a person can read the Book of Hebrews and all its encouragements to persevere and say that the New Covenant has nothing to say of striving together toward the end we were set upon.

Who has argued for that? I haven't seen any antinomians or "free grace" no lordship types interject themselves into our discussion here. Honestly I can't think of a worse straw man than to say that Baptists are just a group of unconnected individuals who have no concept for striving together toward the end we were set upon and must assume that it is late over there and perhaps you didn't express yourself as clearly as you might have otherwise.

To those who haven't previously wrestled with the passages in Hebrews, the paedo view can appear to be an explanation that does justice to them. But of course we Baptists do not think the paedo view does justice to the Scriptures as a whole. See The Race Set Before Us: A Biblical Theology of Perseverance & Assurance by Thomas Schreiner and A.B. Caneday for an examination of the warnings that doesn't resort to viewing the New Covenant community as a mixed entity.
 
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Another example is the injunction sometimes given by paedos to those struggling with assurance look to their baptism. That is little different than the "soul winner" telling someone to look to their decision card or that they walked the aisle and thus to never doubt their salvation. Rather, we should look to Christ.

Just to clear this up, such injunctions are not representative of the confessional paedo view. Most significant here is the fact that the WCF chapter on assurance has absolutely no mention of baptism, or the sacraments in general.

Also, here is a thread from a few years ago that has a lot of excellent thoughts on this matter (namely, why baptism in itself is not to be looked to for any kind of assurance of one's salvation), mostly from Fred, and also from a few others, such as Wayne, and Adam McMurry:

Infant baptism and crisis conversions
 
This is completely inverted in signficance. Baptism is supposed to direct a person toward God and His Promise and not direct inward so that the person's comfort rests in the shifting or eroding sands of the memory of a faith he had when he was baptized.

(excuse the intrusion, I have been following...:popcorn:)

Fair enough. Given the above, would you refuse baptism of my unsaved spouse (hypothetical), who though not expressing faith, is willing to be baptized along with her children and submit to the headship of her husband in attending worship?

They would have to in order to be consistent. This would also be consistent with the assertion of "unqualified household baptisms" argued for in another ongoing thread. Not doing so exposes them in my opinion to the charge of having already reached their conclusion and then going to the scriptures in an attempt to justify it.
 
This is completely inverted in signficance. Baptism is supposed to direct a person toward God and His Promise and not direct inward so that the person's comfort rests in the shifting or eroding sands of the memory of a faith he had when he was baptized.

(excuse the intrusion, I have been following...:popcorn:)

Fair enough. Given the above, would you refuse baptism of my unsaved spouse (hypothetical), who though not expressing faith, is willing to be baptized along with her children and submit to the headship of her husband in attending worship?

May I ask, first, which of the baptized in your current congregation are saved from the foundation of the world and how do you know? I'm not avoiding the question, and will be happy to answer your question, but your answer will help guide how I answer the question you asked.
 
I'm sorry, I don't understand. It is not "extraordinary" for elderly people to experience dementia. The wife of a Baptist minister who just passed away yesterday is suffering this in fact. Does her baptism still retain any significance?

Of course, provided it was a biblical baptism. :)

Ken was probably not wanting to get into exceptions since hard cases make bad law, etc.

Hard cases also require Pastoral counsel. With millions of elderly people who experience this tragedy it is hardly some hair brained case. If one is going to insist that the significance of baptism is tied to the mental acuity of the person remembering the sign then this question needs to be asked.

This, of course, goes to the point of all sorts of other people who are never fit in the RB schema for baptism. A member of my congregation in Springfield, VA had a normal child struck by a car when he was 8 years old. He was mentally incapacitated thereafter. He could express affection in a way that a parent might be able to ascertain but would never get over the "bar" of profession to add his mental capacity to the meaning of the sign of baptism in the RB schema. He is forever unfit.

These kind of cases demonstrate the poverty of binding up the significance of God's sign in the mental acuity of the recipient. You say "...of course it has significance..." in the case of the person with later dementia but give no reason why it is so since their mental acuity was required to be mixed with the sign in the first place to grant it significance.

I also think you take little stock in the diminishing memories of men who might forget the intensity of their devotion or what they actually thought when they were baptized. I was baptized only 14 years ago and, already, I cannot really put my finger on what it is I really believed about the Gospel at that time. Man's memory fades.

Perhaps I didn't have real faith at the time. A "do over" is in order perhaps because my profession was illegitimate. In fact I had one RB Brother suggest that very thing in your thread. Hence, the practice of re-baptizing every time a person might come to the conclusion that they don't remember the reality of their conversion at the time and the need to ensure that this time I'm really sure I'm converted so I want to make sure I have the full significance of my baptism that points to the apex of my fervor for Christ.

This is completely inverted in signficance. Baptism is supposed to direct a person toward God and His Promise and not direct inward so that the person's comfort rests in the shifting or eroding sands of the memory of a faith he had when he was baptized.

Don't blame the RBs. Blame the Westminster Divines who chose to use the word 'sign' which, according to Augustine is something "which of itself makes something come to mind, besides the impression that it presents to the senses"
 
From what I have read on this thread, the RB position falls on two points:

1. It's definition of "covenant children" as only being those who are regenerated means that nobody can be baptized as we do not know for certain who is regenerate. A profession of faith does equal a regenerate heart. Moreover, will Baptists baptize a 3 year old who professes saving faith? IME, this is unlikely, because the Baptist position tends to imply that someone has to prove that they are saved; hence you find that converts in Baptist churches are often not baptized until they have underwent a 6-month trial period in order to "make sure" that they are regenerate before receiving the sacrament.

2. Why was the covenant sign of circumcision - also symbolic of regeneration - given to children who could not profess faith? Why should those who receive the sign in the NT be expected to profess faith, while this was not a requirement in the OT.
 
This is completely inverted in signficance. Baptism is supposed to direct a person toward God and His Promise and not direct inward so that the person's comfort rests in the shifting or eroding sands of the memory of a faith he had when he was baptized.

(excuse the intrusion, I have been following...:popcorn:)

Fair enough. Given the above, would you refuse baptism of my unsaved spouse (hypothetical), who though not expressing faith, is willing to be baptized along with her children and submit to the headship of her husband in attending worship?

May I ask, first, which of the baptized in your current congregation are saved from the foundation of the world and how do you know? I'm not avoiding the question, and will be happy to answer your question, but your answer will help guide how I answer the question you asked.

If you are asking me if I know for certain who is elect in my congregation - I do not.
 
(excuse the intrusion, I have been following...:popcorn:)

Fair enough. Given the above, would you refuse baptism of my unsaved spouse (hypothetical), who though not expressing faith, is willing to be baptized along with her children and submit to the headship of her husband in attending worship?

May I ask, first, which of the baptized in your current congregation are saved from the foundation of the world and how do you know? I'm not avoiding the question, and will be happy to answer your question, but your answer will help guide how I answer the question you asked.

If you are asking me if I know for certain who is elect in my congregation - I do not.
One last point of clarification then. When you were asking me, whether or not I would refuse baptism of your "unsaved" spouse, was that in contrast to those that I might hypothetically baptize that are "saved" in your estimation?
 
May I ask, first, which of the baptized in your current congregation are saved from the foundation of the world and how do you know? I'm not avoiding the question, and will be happy to answer your question, but your answer will help guide how I answer the question you asked.

If you are asking me if I know for certain who is elect in my congregation - I do not.
One last point of clarification then. When you were asking me, whether or not I would refuse baptism of your "unsaved" spouse, was that in contrast to those that I might hypothetically baptize that are "saved" in your estimation?

No, this would be in contrast to those that you might hypothetically baptize that are "saved" in your estimation...not mine. :)
No, it would not be in contrast...
 
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If you are asking me if I know for certain who is elect in my congregation - I do not.
One last point of clarification then. When you were asking me, whether or not I would refuse baptism of your "unsaved" spouse, was that in contrast to those that I might hypothetically baptize that are "saved" in your estimation?

No, this would be in contrast to those that you might hypothetically baptize that are "saved" in your estimation...not mine. :)
No, it would not be in contrast...

I'm sorry, I don't understand. I'm asking you what you meant when you asked if I would baptize an "unsaved" person. If I was in the position to baptize, then my basis for baptizing an individual would not be on the basis of discriminating between the "saved" and the "unsaved". You asked me if I would baptize an "unsaved" person so I'm trying to determine if you are contrasting that activity with the baptism of the "saved". I hope you don't think this is about playing word games here. I'm trying to get honest answers and, I can assure you, I will be forthright in my reply but I want to make sure we're using equivalent terms and ideas before I do.
 
One last point of clarification then. When you were asking me, whether or not I would refuse baptism of your "unsaved" spouse, was that in contrast to those that I might hypothetically baptize that are "saved" in your estimation?

No, this would be in contrast to those that you might hypothetically baptize that are "saved" in your estimation...not mine. :)
No, it would not be in contrast...

I'm sorry, I don't understand. I'm asking you what you meant when you asked if I would baptize an "unsaved" person. If I was in the position to baptize, then my basis for baptizing an individual would not be on the basis of discriminating between the "saved" and the "unsaved". You asked me if I would baptize an "unsaved" person so I'm trying to determine if you are contrasting that activity with the baptism of the "saved". I hope you don't think this is about playing word games here. I'm trying to get honest answers and, I can assure you, I will be forthright in my reply but I want to make sure we're using equivalent terms and ideas before I do.

I do not think you are playing word games. No, I'm not contrasting the two. I used the word "unsaved" and perhaps should just have left it as "has not expressed faith", to point out the hypothetical situation, of me and my family coming to a church that practices paedobaptism. The question being, would you baptize my spouse (who has not expressed faith) along with my children (who also have not expressed faith) if she is a willing participant?
 
No, this would be in contrast to those that you might hypothetically baptize that are "saved" in your estimation...not mine. :)
No, it would not be in contrast...

I'm sorry, I don't understand. I'm asking you what you meant when you asked if I would baptize an "unsaved" person. If I was in the position to baptize, then my basis for baptizing an individual would not be on the basis of discriminating between the "saved" and the "unsaved". You asked me if I would baptize an "unsaved" person so I'm trying to determine if you are contrasting that activity with the baptism of the "saved". I hope you don't think this is about playing word games here. I'm trying to get honest answers and, I can assure you, I will be forthright in my reply but I want to make sure we're using equivalent terms and ideas before I do.

I do not think you are playing word games. No, I'm not contrasting the two. I used the word "unsaved" and perhaps should just have left it as "has not expressed faith", to point out the hypothetical situation, of me and my family coming to a church that practices paedobaptism. The question being, would you baptize my spouse (who has not expressed faith) along with my children (who also have not expressed faith) if she is a willing participant?

This is a question that will typically yield different answers depending on which paedobaptist is answering. Of course all of them will baptize infants born to Christian homes. But it becomes a bit more dodgy as children get older. Once the children attain a certain age (which tends to vary, again depending on who is answering) many will not baptize them if they do not profess faith. I saw a woman on another list relate how she had to beg her PCA pastor to baptize her 9 year old because he thought the boy was too old for covenant baptism. Rarer still is the paedo who will baptize a teenager if he does not profess faith. But I've seen a few of them state that they will baptize anyone in the household who is not openly hostile and of course consents to be baptized. I heard an OPC pastor once say that he believed that everyone in the household passages in Acts was baptized based on the head of household's profession, including any servants and extended family.

Trey, Hopefully I haven't gotten off track since I think your question is probably aimed primarily at 1 Cor. 7. But it is of course related to the question of household baptisms as well.
 
Not off track at all Chris. You referred earlier to inconsistency and that's what becomes evident. The very things that RB's get accused of (age of accountability, determining profession of faith) are very present in paedo life as well. :)
 
The more words, the more confusion. Let's clarify the issue. Baptism is a sign of salvation. Paedos administer it to children, non-paedos do not. Paedos practically acknowledge infant salvation, non paedos do not. It is that simple.
 
The more words, the more confusion. Let's clarify the issue. Baptism is a sign of salvation. Paedos administer it to children, non-paedos do not. Paedos practically acknowledge infant salvation, non paedos do not. It is that simple.

I'll just speak for myself. I affirm John the Baptist's regeneration in the womb, and I do not adhere to the use of the "specific place and time" language.
 
I'll just speak for myself. I affirm John the Baptist's regeneration in the womb, and I do not adhere to the use of the "specific place and time" language.

You affirm that on the basis of special revelation. You do not have special revelation in the case of each and every child. All you have is outward participation in the visible church. By not baptising infants there is no such participation, and so there is no practical affirmation of their salvation. They are consigned to outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
 
I'll just speak for myself. I affirm John the Baptist's regeneration in the womb, and I do not adhere to the use of the "specific place and time" language.

You affirm that on the basis of special revelation. You do not have special revelation in the case of each and every child. All you have is outward participation in the visible church. By not baptising infants there is no such participation, and so there is no practical affirmation of their salvation. They are consigned to outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

So could my spouse (who has yet to express faith) receive baptism along with my children, and in so doing, have participation in the church as well as a "practical affirmation of her salvation"?
 
So could my spouse (who has yet to express faith) receive baptism along with my children, and in so doing, have participation in the church as well as a "practical affirmation of her salvation"?

If she is of years she can speak for herself. But we're to open our mouths for the dumb, and that includes infants; the poor souls are shut out of Christ's kingdom because they cannot speak.
 
Far be it for me to speak for Rev. Winzer on this. I appreciate his answer. I agree that baptism signifies salvation but I assume that he would agree with me that baptism does not confer salvation nor is one baptized because they are saved already. This is sort of why I was asking the question.

As I noted earlier in the thread, and elsewhere, the primary confusion that Baptists have in the discussions on baptism is believing, as Rev. Winzer so aptly put it, that because they have special revelation about the nature of the elect they have special revelation about the recipients of baptism.

There is actually a bit of schizophrenia in dogmatics and practice in this point and it sort of slipped out (as it usually does in these discussions) when you asked me if I would baptize an "unsaved" spouse. Baptists are so accumstomed to conflating their notions from special revelation about the elect that they tend to forget, in these discussions, that their daily practice has nothing to do whatsoever with knowledge of the identity of the elect. Even Randy sort of tripped himself up when he was accusing me of confusion for trying to point out this fact. It's not something that the RB has "switched on" in his mind and, even when I'm explicit about what I'm saying, it takes a lot to overthrow this dissonance between their dogmatics and actual practice. This is why I was asking for clarification to get you to start talking in the terms of the visible Church where the Sacrament of Baptism resides.

Now, on that basis, I will state that the first thing you have to do is not confuse yet again what you think you're saying about the baptized when you baptize them into what Scripture says about it. I believe the RB is confused about the Scriptural nature of the sign.

You implied, for instance, that if I were to hypothetically baptize a child or a spouse I would be saying of them that "...they are saved...." This is a typical straw man importation of Baptistic thinking into what the Scriptural view (read Reformed paedobaptist) is of the nature of the Sacrament. You believe that we are baptizing because we have information of the individual that indicates they are united to Christ in salvation and are therefore marked out by the sign because the sign is pointing toward them and the Church is saying: "We are baptizing these people because we just discovered something inside this person that impels us to recognize their conversion and union with Christ."

As I stated in another thread, however, this not only speaks to a confusion over a sign that is not meant to point to the individual but it goes to a confusion of what a disciple is. After all, it is to disciples that baptism belongs. If a person is a disciple in Christ's Church then they are to be baptized and taught. This is the nature of the Great Commission. Christ does not command the Apostles to look for evidences of mature fruit and then baptize. Discipleship itself, in the commission, implies simply that a person is under the training and authority of the Church. To the Baptist that is accustomed to confusing discipleship with union with Christ this is shocking and difficult to bear and this is also the reason why entire sections of Hebrews have to be recast as impossible hypotheticals because nobody could be a disciple (to their thinking) that is ever warned of being cut off because nobody is a disciple (to their thinking) unless they are already united to Christ.

As I also noted in another thread, the notion of discipleship implies a training in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Proverbs notes that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the pursuit of the things of God and Ecclesiastes sees it as the end. Again, however, a priori assumptions that discipleship must imply a certain, congnitive, mature expression of the elect causes the Baptist to be literally blind to the regular parallels in the NT where we are commanded to train our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. I've pressed Baptists repeatedly on the basis for this training and it is always everything else as long as it's never called discipleship. Heaven and earth would have to move before any parallel to the Proverbs or the Psalms or Deuteronomy is admitted because our children might be our disciples in the home as long as we never call them Christ's disciples. What the material difference in that training is once the child decides he's going to jump the tracks and announce his discipleship within the visible Church? Nobody really articulates those points because those are matters of practical theology and RB theology deals primarily in the abstract in matters of the Covenant.

All that said, I am not an elder in Christ's Church. There are a variety of circumstances where, if the spouse of a believer presented herself to the Church to be baptized, it would be appropriate to baptize if she expressed willingness to be taught the things of God. If the spouse refused to submit to the teaching of the Church then she would be disqualified from baptism. It might be unsatisfactory for the Baptist who is looking to speak definitively of the heart of the person baptized but that is only because of the defect in thinking on the significance of this. Baptism is given to disciples. Discipleship does not imply a finished work.

Even the father of the epileptic admitted honestly to Christ that he sort of believed but needed help with his unbelief. Chris has repeatedly asserted some sort of presumption in our theology in this and other threads but, as has been demonstrated, the only parties that dangerously presume upon their profession are the RB's. If they took stock of the unbelief that yet resides in their hearts they might not be so sure that baptism should point within them but would be seeking a more comforting, and Biblical, sacramentology, that kept the significance of the Sacraments upon God's work and His promises.
 
Assertion #1:
Related to this is the concept of "improving your baptism," the subject of WLC 167, which is about as clear example as there is of proceeding from an unwarranted assumption to a foregone conclusion. The assumption here being that baptism is essentially the same as circumcision and that the New Covenant is essentially the same as the Old. There is no scriptural support offered for this concept. (Edit: What I have in view here is those baptized in infancy, particularly.) I wonder why?
Assertion #2:
Another example is the injunction sometimes given by paedos to those struggling with assurance look to their baptism. That is little different than the "soul winner" telling someone to look to their decision card or that they walked the aisle and thus to never doubt their salvation. Rather, we should look to Christ.

Incidentally, Chris, I couldn't help but wondering which of these two statements you want to actually assert is true of us.

Do you want to assert that Presbyterians teach their members to improve their baptism by earnestly seeking to make their call and election sure (WLC 167) or do you want to assert that we teach our members to be negligent about their salvation because, after all, we're baptized?

I noticed you didn't point to a confessional basis for the second assertion. Would you care to offer one?
 
I'll just speak for myself. I affirm John the Baptist's regeneration in the womb, and I do not adhere to the use of the "specific place and time" language.

You affirm that on the basis of special revelation. You do not have special revelation in the case of each and every child. All you have is outward participation in the visible church. By not baptising infants there is no such participation, and so there is no practical affirmation of their salvation. They are consigned to outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.


Here we see once again the inconsistency and perhaps even the pragmatism (i.e. arguing whatever sounds good given the particular objection at hand) that is so often evident in paedo arguments. This is no doubt why those paedos who don't ignore T.E. Watson's Should Babies Be Baptized? hate it since Brother Watson used the paedos own words against them, effectively having other paedos refute the whole case for infant baptism. In one post we see the paedos argue that baptism is only a sign that the infant is in the outward administration of the covenant and that the efficacy is not tied to the time of administration. None here, I trust, would argue that an infant cannot be saved without it. Then in the next post or thread they say that if you don't baptize the child, then he is consigned to the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Which is it?
 
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