Samuel, the main point of what you're looking for is the constitution of the new covenant. Who is part of it, and how? Is there a differentiated covenantal membership? A couple of false trails lead off into the bushes at this point. The Arminian answer is that a person can partake of the saving benefits of Christ and the covenant and then lose them all. This would fall foul of the many security passages, such as Romans 8. The other false trail is the Federal Vision answer, which says that although the decretally elect can never fall away, the non-decretally elect can fall away from real saving benefits. In other words, the FV guys are Calvinistic when it comes to the decretally elect, and Arminian when it comes to the non-decretally elect (though some of them are pretty much pure Arminian).
The normal Calvinist position is that there is an essence of the covenant, in which only believers partake. They are the elect. They are the only folks who receive actual saving benefits of any kind (since the chain of Romans 8 is an unbreakable whole: if you have one, you have them all). However, there is an administration of the covenant, even in the new covenant, by which various people partake of non-saving benefits, such as sitting under the preached word, praying with the saints, seeing the sacraments preach to them, enjoying the fellowship of the saints, but never experience saving faith. In addition to this category of non-saved people, there are the children of believers, whom we do not treat like pagans in our midst, but as children of the promise. They may or may not be saved, but we treat them as children growing up in the church, growing under the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
The passages that support this position are many. That children of believers are part of the kingdom of God is proven from Matthew 19:13-15:
Then children were brought to him that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuked the people, but Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven." And he laid his hands on them and went away. (ESV)
The question I have never been able to get a good answer from credos about this passage is this: the wording does not suggest analogy or simile, as if people
like or
similar to children own the kingdom of God, but rather "
to such belongs the kingdom of God." If they can possess the substance of the kingdom (which is far greater), then why not the sign?
Concerning a differentiated covenantal membership, I would direct you to the various passages that point to the visible/invisible church distinction: Romans 9:6ff, 1 John 2:19. The former passage is sometimes disputed as to whether it can apply to the church today, since it is talking about Israel and Abraham's descendants:
But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but "Through Isaac shall your offspring be named." This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. (Rom. 9:6-8 ESV)
However, this passage uses many present tense verbs, plainly connecting the situation of Israel to the church today. He is concerned about his brothers and sisters (verses 1-5). But he is primarily talking about the present condition, not the past. So, those who are of faith are the children of Abraham (as Galatians 3 says). But those who do not have faith are not unconnected to Abraham in any way. There has therefore always been a distinction in the Abrahamic covenant between those who are merely physical descendants, and those who are both physical and spiritual descendants.
The ultimate passage connecting the Abrahamic covenant with the new covenant (thus showing that they are actually iterations of the same covenant) is Galatians 3, especially verses 7-9. The Scripture saw in advance (verse 8) that the Gentiles would be partakers of the Abrahamic covenant. The conclusion? All who have Abraham's faith are blessed (present divine passive) along with Abraham.
Most Reformed authors would also argue that the warning passage in Hebrews 6 speaks to the "slippage" between those who are merely belonging to the administration of the covenant, but do not have the saving benefits, and then fall away. The benefits that Hebrews ascribes to those who fall away are covenantal benefits, but they are not saving benefits. If there is no differentiation at all in covenantal membership, then Reformed Baptists will have an impossible task of taking the warning passages into account. What did these people have? According to the RB position, they can have had nothing at all. But this is not how Hebrews 6 runs!
As to literature, there are a great many books that are excellent. My favorite is Fesko's
Word, Water, Spirit. Understanding the negative, condemnatory side of the sacraments (to those who do not by faith receive them) is extremely helpful, and Fesko brings this out so very clearly. It is a forgotten or underestimated dimension to the baptism debate.
Richard Pratt has
the best exegesis of Jeremiah 31 in relation to the debate that I've ever seen, explaining why the RB position has an over-realized eschatology when it comes to the interpretation of that passage.
Other helpful resources include
Hyde,
McDowell,and
Strawbridge.