Bill The Baptist
Puritan Board Graduate
@ Bill the Baptist." Additionally, if circumcision allegedly has the same meaning as baptism, then two important questions need to be asked: Why institute a new sign? Why baptize those who had already been circumcised into the covenant community?" I think these are excellent questions that the author raises.
While all these questions are interesting and important, they can all be answered. The one question that cannot be answered which has always puzzled me is this, if circumcision was such a big issue in the early church whereby the Judaizers were insisting that Gentile converts be baptized against an understandable backlash, so much so that Paul dedicates a good part of several of his letters to this topic (Gal.5) and so much so that the church convened the Jerusalem council to solve this problem, why then if baptism had replaced circumcision did none of the apostles simply solve this problem by stating that circumcision was unneccesary because it had been replaced by baptism? This solution is never offered by Paul or any of the other apostles to address a major problem to which this would have been a perfect solution. That, in my mind, is a serious problem for infant baptism. Theologically it makes perfect sense, and it is fruitless to argue against it in that fashion,but we just don't have any real evidence of the early church practicing it, and the issue with the Judaizers simply highlights this.
Bill,
I hope you know that that's no way to form a decisive argument. I could pose the same kind of question:
If the children of believers were included in the covenant in the OT, and not in the New, why did Jews who converted to Christ never have to be told that their children would no longer be in the covenant? Why was there no controversy over this question with the Judaizers? Why is it never explained to Jewish families that, after many generations of covenantal succession through families, their children would not be born into the covenant?
So both our observations about the silence of the apostles are interesting, but they aren't conclusive.
You are correct that this is an argument from silence, and thus inconclusive, however it is not exactly the same as the example you gave. Circumcision and whether or not it should be continued is a huge topic in the New Testament. More pages are dedicated to this controversy than to virtually any other issue. It just seems to reason, if paedobaptist theology is correct, that this would have been brought up as a resolution to this issue. Again, clearly this is not conclusive, but it is a legitimate question.
This could have been discussed, yet left out of scripture for a reason.
Very true.