Infant baptism seeking to understand

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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.
 
The MacArthur Study Bible actually uses Proverbs 30:6 against infant baptism?

Randy, it was in the topical index for the original-edition MacArthur study Bible I had. Memory seems to tell me that this index had been taken from elsewhere and not made specifically by MacArthur's team but I can't find anything to corroborate that. I would give the benefit of the doubt, as I don't know for certain MacArthur approved or was even aware of that particular reference in the index used in the study Bible.
 
The MacArthur Study Bible actually uses Proverbs 30:6 against infant baptism?

Randy, it was in the topical index for the original-edition MacArthur study Bible I had. Memory seems to tell me that this index had been taken from elsewhere and not made specifically by MacArthur's team but I can't find anything to corroborate that. I would give the benefit of the doubt, as I don't know for certain MacArthur approved or was even aware of that particular reference in the index used in the study Bible.

I've got both NKJV editions and just skimmed the topical indices in both. I didn't find this reference under the topic of baptism and I didn't find an entry for infant baptism. I do think it is correct that the topical index in the first edition was derived from some other source that was based on the KJV. The entry "Unicorn" is pretty much a dead giveaway as the word does not appear in the NKJV. Perhaps for this reason I never made much use of the index. I always thought it was funny that the first edition included neither a concordance nor an index to the study notes. I concluded that the reason for this is that he wanted you to read it all the way through!
 
I've got both NKJV editions and just skimmed the topical indices in both. I didn't find this reference under the topic of baptism and I didn't find an entry for infant baptism.

I just looked at it again last night. Mine is from the first printing and is is under Baptism, then subsection something like "who it is applied to" (administered to) and the last entry under that is "Scriptures supporting Infant Baptism, Prov 30:6", it's close to the end of the baptism topic.

I would be glad to hear it was discovered and removed from later editions.

Edit: It looks like it may have originally been from Torrey's New Topical?
 
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Just for completeness, Pilgrim suggested I upload pictures (though I realize this is a side trail from the original topic). As I said, it was an early edition, first printing of first edition so apparently it had been removed by 1999. The reason I thought it might be from Torrey's Topical Index is because I did a search for the entry's phrasing and multiple sites showed it under that in their reference sections.

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