non dignus
Puritan Board Sophomore
David, that sounds awfully condescending ("bless his heart").
Bill,
Please accept my apology. My intention was not to be condescending. It was my feeble attempt to appeal ad absurdum. The idea is to show a faulty argument by using magnification.
The Baptist will not baptise infants because the inward spiritual condition of infants cannot be known. It is for the purity of the church that he is cautious not to baptise unsound candidates. This is admirable indeed, no joke. But I don't see in scripture this scrupulousness in regard to the young. To the contrary, I see children in holy writ as the most viable candidates for baptism.
If children of believers are holy, what is there more to say?
If heaven belongs to such as these, what is there more to say? Mt 19:14
---------- Post added at 09:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:54 PM ----------
Does this mean then that the unbelieving husbands of believing wives should receive baptism? If not, then why not? What if the children are older? Should they also receive baptism without professing Christ?
The difference between the sanctified spouse and the sanctified child is this: the spouse is an unbeliever, and the child is a nonbeliever. The unbeliever has a faith apart from Christ. The nonbeliever has no faith apart from Christ.
Older children can be distinguished in this way as well. We don't force baptisms, but on the other end, we give special treatment to older children of believers. We give them the benefit of the doubt, where we wouldn't with the older child of unbelievers.
Above all, we are commanded to baptise our children (Acts 2:38,39) and we find little in this regard to the unbelieving spouse.