Your Family Must Die
or Not What It Says On The Tin
“We are not baptized because of who we are but because of Whom we have believed.”
“He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.” (Matthew 10:37-39)
Time for yet another baptism rant. I thought I’d said everything I needed to say, but a recent post by Dr Leithart, whose words are usually music to my ears, was like being captive at a karaoke contest.
Dr Leithart writes:
Baptism looks like a quaint family ceremony. Parents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents gather to bring a new child into the cozy family circle.
In fact, baptism doesn’t affirm the family but tears it in pieces. In baptism, Jesus comes with a sword to cut the umbilical cord and claim your child as His own. Jesus comes with water to bear your child away. Through baptism, we share in the death of Jesus, which is death to flesh and the fleshly family.
In a few moments, you will hand your son over to me for baptism. When I hand him back, he’ll be marked as a son of his heavenly Father. I will hand him back not to his parents, but to you, his foster parents.
Pastor Sumpter has talked about family mission. Your family has a particular vocation and purpose, and your family’s mission is one piece of the mission of God. This is the highest possible calling. God is determined to restore and glorify His creation, and we share in His cosmic renovation by having and raising godly children. Our family stories are caught up in the story of the universe. It’s breathtaking.
Left to itself, though, your family can’t be part of that story. By bringing your child for baptism, you confess that you are inadequate parents, that your child is a sinner and that you can’t save him, that your whole family has to die. By bringing your son to this water, you confess that your home has to be torn down and rebuilt.
At the same time, baptism is a confession of faith. Your family must die, but Jesus says that death is the paradoxical path to life, including family life. Your family is demolished and then renewed by baptism, by the sword of the Word. Your family is cut in pieces, so that it can be swept up by the Spirit in the mission of God.
This all sounds very good, but it’s not New Covenant baptism. The picture Dr Leithart paints here is a beautiful one, but it’s one that is entirely at odds with the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles. In fact, it misrepresents clear New Covenant teachings concerning the gospel at every point.
I don’t criticize Dr Leithart lightly. I’m a total fanboy. But in the light of all else I have learned concerning the process of maturity in the Bible, this illogical blindspot makes me cringe. And I don’t usually stoop to refuting anyone line by line, but every sentence here is a total clanger, a separate rusty Old Covenant tin can that needs to be shot off the New Covenant doctrinal fence!
[Paedo]baptism looks like a quaint family ceremony.
That’s because it is. Credobaptism can also be distorted into such a ceremony, but it’s a lot more difficult. A paedobaptism is simply a celebration of offspring, whatever the claims made for its efficacy. Some of those who practice paedocommunion are at least consistent in that they also distort communion into a quaint family ceremony.
If non-Christians uncles and aunts and other relatives are invited to the ceremony, it is a dead giveaway. A circumcision could rightfully be, among other things, a family ceremony because everyone present was an Israelite, including any non-believing Jewish aunts and uncles. It was, by definition, a “carnal” act, whether it was carried out in faith or carried out in unbelief. It was necessarily familial and genealogical.
Baptism doesn’t affirm the family but tears it in pieces.
Really? That would mean that it is making void the natural relationship of the parents to the child and replacing it with a spiritual one. This has two problems. Firstly, there is nothing wrong with the natural relationship. Secondly, it misrepresents the spiritual relationship, which is simply the Christian responsibility of the parents to preach the gospel to everyone, especially their children. That is how Christian fatherhood and motherhood is glorified. It is not in baptism. Baptism is for when this job is done. It is for when the child deliberately, publicly steps off its parents’ coattails because it now has its own coattails. Baptism doesn’t do anything to the natural family. The only godly thing that tears families apart is the Gospel of Christ.
“Now brother will deliver up brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. And you will be hated by all for My name’s sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved. When they persecute you in this city, flee to another. For assuredly, I say to you, you will not have gone through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes.” (Matthew 10:21-23)
Now, this warning was for the first century church, but it paints an entirely different picture of the distinction that baptism made within the natural family. An unbaptized brother would deliver the baptized brother up to death. Baptism didn’t redeem the existing natural relationships; it forged entirely new ones.
In baptism, Jesus comes with a sword to cut the umbilical cord and claim your child as His own.
No, Jesus has already claimed the nations as His own. We don’t need our umbilical cords cut. Or our penises. We need our hearts cut. We can label our offspring any way we like, but that’s not what baptism is for.
Jesus comes with water to bear your child away.
To where? This sounds very poetic, but it doesn’t even have any basis in the sacrificial rites. There were no infant priests. The only people beyond the Laver under the Old Covenant were grown men, and under the New Covenant, the phrase continually used concerning baptism by the apostolic authors, to hammer home the point, is “both men and women.” There are no babies on the crystal sea. It is the place for wise governors.
Through baptism, we share in the death of Jesus, which is death to flesh and the fleshly family.
No, hearing the gospel, and being convicted by the Spirit of God is what brings death to the flesh. The gospel doesn’t give the old family a new coat of paint. It incinerates it, member by member. That’s how the New Covenant works. It is not the one becoming many but the many becoming one.
Sure, fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers are to live sacrificially for each other as unto the Lord, but that concerns the ones doing the loving, not the ones loved. It means you carry out your fleshly parenting and siblinging and mastering and slaving responsibilities as a born again Christian. A Christian son must love his non-Christian father. A Christian employee must serve faithfully his non-Christian employer. But none of those relationships requires a baptism. Baptism marks the one willing to die. Then, the relationship—in the Spirit—between two baptized people is an entirely new kind of relationship. It is not a washing of the old. We have natural brothers and spiritual brothers. A natural brother may also be a spiritual brother, but they are not the same thing. I really don’t understand why I have to spell this out, but a natural brother has the same father or mother and a spiritual brother has the same heavenly Father. Paedobaptism confounds the natural with the spiritual.
In a few moments, you will hand your son over to me for baptism. When I hand him back, he’ll be marked as a son of his heavenly Father. I will hand him back not to his parents, but to you, his foster parents.
This bit is just plain old heresy. [1] Jordan and Leithart have made plain that the false teachers in the epistles and Revelation were Judaizers, but this teaching is simply that — Judaizing. Is the child actually a son or daughter of God? No. It is a son or daughter of the parent. It’s a son or daughter of Adam with the potential of becoming a son or daughter of God, and that by the Gospel.
There are no New Covenant foster parents. That is a subtle misrepresentation of the relationship between the natural and the spiritual. Timothy was Paul’s “son.” That is spiritual sonship, a begetting by the Gospel. This idea of being a foster parent to your own natural child is just plain weird. We are to be spiritual parents to the whole world by preaching the gospel and making disciples. This includes our own children, but it is on an entirely different plane to our natural, genealogical relationships. We don’t bring our genealogical offspring to God to get it back transformed into a “spiritual” genealogical offspring. We parent in a godly way because we are regenerate Christians. Baptism is not about who is being discipled but who is doing the discipling.
Circumcision was a mark of death. It pictured a salvation that was yet to come, the death of the Son. Baptism is a mark of life. It pictures, not the salvation of one who will hear, but the resurrection of the one who has heard and believed. Paedobaptism takes this picture and distorts it beyond recognition. If you’ve attended a “good” paedobaptism and a “good” credobaptism, you’ll understand what I mean when I say that only one of these rites has very obviously eternal ramifications. Each represents an entirely different kind of hope.
Your family has a particular vocation and purpose, and your family’s mission is one piece of the mission of God.
The only “family mission” in the New Testament is that of the Church, which is the family of God, an entirely new kind of family. The job of Christian parents is to bring their children into this new family by the preaching of the Gospel. If this distortion of New Testament doctrine isn’t plain, you really need to take off those ridiculous paedobaptistic goggles for a moment. You cannot, repeat, cannot, relate to your infant child “in the Spirit,” until your child repents and believes. Until then, the spiritual relationship is a one-way, sacrificial, Gospel investment. The rite of paedobaptism stitches dead limbs onto a living body.
By bringing your child for baptism, you confess that … your child is a sinner …
Does anyone really believe that Jews were presenting their infants to John for baptism? Does anyone really believe that Jews and Gentiles were presenting their infants to the apostles for baptism? God forbid! That turns baptism into another gospel, a rite that can stand apart from repentance and faith, and actually usurp the place of the gospel.
Now, this confusion arises because both males and females can be baptized. But only males could be circumcised, so not even circumcision was a confession that children were sinners. The girls were certainly sinners too. Circumcision was for the purpose of setting Israel apart under the Law of God. The whole world is now set apart. A “setting apart” of the flesh is now not only unnecessary, it leads to the same elitism that the Jews fell into through their circumcision.
By bringing your son to this water, you confess that your home has to be torn down and rebuilt.
Yes, there’s rebuilding to be done, but it is done by the baptized working within the natural institutions, including the family. If your entire family believes, praise God. But the family per se is not a New Covenant vehicle. Jesus makes this plain. The gospel makes us better fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, but the Gospel is not about fathers, mothers, sons and daughters. If we think it is, we have grossly misunderstood how this age is supposed to play out.
Your family must die, but Jesus says that death is the paradoxical path to life, including family life.
The Federal Vision guys make a big deal out of the “objectivity” of the Covenant. Your family is labelled “Christian” and is expected to be so, in faith. They rightly teach the strength of a corporate Body of Faith, but then wrongly apply that to the family, which is a Body of Flesh. It’s not the same body, whatever label you want to put on it.
Western Culture certainly suffers from a rampant plague of individualism, but despite this, the Gospel does actually come to us as individuals. It comes to us as individuals, calls us out of all the old institutions and baptism puts us as individuals into a new institution. Dragging the old unities, whether it be family or “household” (including slaves and employees) to the water simply isn’t the new unity. It’s still full of dead men’s bones.
When a household believed in the book of Acts it was because they all believed as individuals. Each member believed as an individual and became one in a new way, that is, they were now regenerate. Their communication was in Spirit.
So, the solution to Western individualism is NOT a corporate carnal baptism. A school of fish is not a number of fish all doing their own thing, but labelled as a school simply because they are fish. No, it is fish animated by one spirit and moving as one. That’s what makes a school or a flock. That is the New Covenant, and it is pictured in many similar ways throughout the Old Testament.
Your family is demolished and then renewed by baptism, by the sword of the Word. Your family is cut in pieces, so that it can be swept up by the Spirit in the mission of God.
Your family is not demolished as a family. It is demolished by the gospel one-by-one, and renewed by the Spirit one-by-one. Baptism is what denotes the renewal of the individual. Our “one baptism” has nothing to do with our physical offspring. Baptism is a sword that cuts off heredity altogether. Putting our infants inside the line simply because they are our infants twists the New Covenant into an ethnocentric doctrine. There is no longer such a thing as a “chosen people” according to the flesh. Jesus took that to the grave. Our infants are not any different to any other infants. The only difference is the Gospel. It is to be passed down to our children but it is not our children. We are not baptized because of who we are but because of Whom we have believed.
Any of us, including Dr Leithart, can say that baptism does all sorts of things. We should stick to what it actually says on the tin.
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[1] I’m not one of Dr Leithart’s accusers! I think they’re totally wrong, and he’s half right. That’s why there’s a problem. See Rise of the Uberbaptist.
March 30th, 2012 at 11:10 pm
Mike,
“Our infants are not any different than other infants.”
Wouldn’t the fact that they are raised in a Covenant home make them different? The Covenant is a shelter (love that image, by the way), and they are under the Shelter in a way that a child born into a Muslim family in Saudi is not.
Also, doesn’t 1 Cor 7 teach that the children of at least one believer are holy (unlike the children of unbelievers), and thus different?
I don’t think this warrants paedobaptism, but it is still something.
March 30th, 2012 at 11:36 pm
Joe
It all depends on what we mean by a Covenant home. A Covenant household was bounded by blood, and that boundary is now worldwide.
What makes the difference is the Gospel, not baptism. Our children should be under the conviction of the Spirit. The problem with this is that such enlightenment (a taste of the goodness of God) leads either to conversion or to a high-handed rejection of the gospel. Baptism is only for the former.
Yes, a child of Christians is under the shelter of the gospel, but baptism is not meant to designate that. Baptism is for those who are shelters, completed “Booths.”
I have a post coming up on 1 Cor. 7. Matt Colvin said that Doug Wilson and I were both barking up the wrong tree on Doug’s blog. So I’ll summarize Matt’s interpretation of the passage. It makes a lot of sense to me.
Thanks for reading.
April 6th, 2012 at 2:42 am
Hi Mike,
“We need our hearts cut. We can label our offspring any way we like, but that’s not what baptism is for.”
Actually, that’s EXACTLY what baptism is for. Baptism cuts the heart.
“in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands… having been buried with Him in baptism” (Col 2:11-12)
“He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5)
I don’t think I have ever come across a credobaptist who has been able to reckon with the plain teaching about baptism in the New Testament. Paedobaptist presuppositions seem to yield a much more biblical view of what baptism actually accomplishes, whereas credos tend to view baptism as merely formal/symbolic.
And let’s stop with this talk of heresy – this is a secondary issue. One of my pastors is a dispensationalist – should I regard him as a heretic? Sure, some paedos (and credos) seem to regard baptism as simply a family ceremony, but they need to reform their practices in light of scripture. Baptism is death – death to the family, death to the flesh – but having died the person must walk in newness of life.
April 6th, 2012 at 8:38 am
Thanks for your comment Chris, but you are still wearing those PB goggles.
- You have turned baptism into another gospel. It is not baptism that cuts the heart, but the the gospel. This is very clear. So preach the gospel to your infants first. When they respond, baptize them. The verses you quote offer no support for PB at all.
- Plain teaching? There is not a single instance of it in the Bible, it defies everything the Bible says baptism is for, and, as I have hopefully shown over the last couple of years, the OT typology actually supports credobaptism. Links here: http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/baptism/
Circumcision was not replaced by baptism but by the gospel. See: http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/2012/01/16/circumcision-and-apocalypse/
- I take your point about an objective baptism, but there’s nothing keeping a credobaptist from applying all the good stuff Dr Leithart says about baptism and Covenant to a believer. It actually works much better with credobaptism. In truth, it is a paedobaptism that is nothing, because the “object” is not regenerate, whatever miracles they claim. The prerequisite is always repentance. This is really basic stuff.
- The reason it’s heresy is because it is another gospel. The reason the FV guys are not heretics is because they preach the true gospel. They just don’t seem to understand that this teaching conflicts with it, because of their dastardly PB goggles. Dispensationalists only preach the gospel, as far as I can tell, even to Jews, at least in this dispensation. Their doctrine doesn’t make them heretics until after the rapture!
- Yes, baptism can be death to the family, but only if it divides the family. That is Jesus’ point. But it doesn’t result in a new version of the old family. It results in the Church. Preaching the gospel to our families is the New Covenant method, but the family is not a New Covenant vehicle per se. This is not hard to understand.
April 7th, 2012 at 11:56 pm
Hi,
Thanks for the response. I think I have read most of your main arguments for the credo position from this blog, so I will respond to them as best I can from a paedobaptist position.
1. Baptism is for the mature
I agree that baptism is linked to maturity, but I would say it is more a means of maturity than a result of it. Our children are Adams and need new life breathed into them so that they can grow up in the kingdom of Christ. Baptism puts them in Christ. Both Romans 6 and Colossians 2 teach that baptism unites us to Christ’s death, enabing us to walk in newness of life (maturity/resurrection).
2. Our “children” in the new covenant are those we bring to faith in Christ.
That would make my girlfriend my spiritual daughter, eww! Joking, she is my sister in Christ and that’s just as weird
I’m not convinced, I think that (for example) Timothy’s grandmother brought him to faith and that Paul’s fatherhood related to him being a mentor/authority figure for him. In the new Covenant, we become children of God, not of man. Hence I would agree with Leithart that the family as an institution in and of itself must die in order to become swept up into the wider priesthood of the church family. Baptism is an act of God which makes fleshly children of Adam into spiritual children of Christ. The promise to us and our children still applies in the new covenant, but in a new way.
3. Baptism makes us martyrs
Yes, and in the deepest sense. As I have strongly argued above, baptism really does cut the heart, it slays us. I have never found any other satisfactory reading of the new testament passages on baptism. Baptism kills, it drowns us with the heavenly waters of the blood of Christ, just as many were drowned by heavenly waters in the flood and the waters held above by the spirit drowned the egyptian army at the exodus.
Well, that’s my best shot. I know it’s not great. Not sure how representative this all is of general FV rhetoric on baptism, but I hope you can at least see where I am coming from. Don’t feel your responses are a wasted effort though, I’m not fully decided yet.
April 8th, 2012 at 2:27 pm
Hi Chris – thanks for the reply.
1. Chris, if this were the case, we should be attempting to baptize the world instead of preach the gospel. Paedobaptism quite obviously gets the cart before the horse. Bad argument. The apostle’s words in Romans 6 and Colossians 2 are for believers, who are required to walk in Christ.
2. There’s no evidence that entire families were brought into the New Covenant “uncut.” Even when a “household” is baptized in Acts (and the literary purpose of Luke here is to fulfill the Feast of Tabernacles), they all believed. If baptism makes fleshly children into spiritual children, without repentance, you have invented another gospel. It’s entirely carnal.
3. The other satisfactory reading is that it applies only to believers. Credobaptists don’t always get the significance of baptism right, but they do understand who qualifies. There is no reason for credos to have a problem with any of these texts on baptism. Israel did not pass through the Red Sea as individuals, but as Israel, as “one flesh.” That is not the case with the New Israel. We pass through as individuals united not in flesh but in Spirit. That means believers only. Unregenerate flesh doesn’t qualify. If it turns out that someone got baptized who wasn’t regenerate, we preach the gospel to them again in Church discipline.
Cheers,
Mike
April 8th, 2012 at 11:33 pm
Hello again,
1. Our children are to be regarded as saints, as among the faithful, unless there are good reasons to doubt this. If they are not saints, then why does Paul call them saints in Ephesians (compare 1:1 with 6:1-3) and Colossians (compare 1:2 with 3:20)?
2. The Gospel is not repentance. The Gospel is the proclamation that the man Jesus who was crucified is now the risen and exalted Lord of Creation (How appropriate on Easter Sunday!). Jesus did not expect a confession of sins or repentance from the babies who were brought to him (Luke 18:15-17), he took them in his arms and into his kingdom just as they were.
The Gospel means including the weak and helpless. Infant baptism means including in the covenant those who are our children by birth or by mental disability (if we are their carers). When Paul talks about “another Gospel” he is talking about excluding gentiles from the table. Inclusion of our children doesn’t seem to go against the central truth of the Gospel, but is rather supported by it.
3. See argument 1 for a paedobaptist interpretation of “believers”.
Also, Israel was not a unity of flesh when she passed through the red sea. There were many uncircumcised foreigners in her midst that nethertheless became part of the nation through that baptism which came to define Israel as a people. And God would continue to remind her of how he rescued her through baptism and “brought [her] out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Ex 20:1). Her baptism was spiritual, as made clear by 1 Cor 10:1-5.
But please do keep coming back to me, i appreciate it a lot. You’re the only credobaptist I’ve come across who has convincing arguments for your position. I’m even a member of a baptist church and I’ve never heard a decent defence of it there.
April 9th, 2012 at 1:33 pm
Hi Chris
1. Unbelieving children and spouses were not to be “put away” as they were in Ezra. The reason is that the New Covenant is about the touch of life, not the touch of corruption.
2. The only response to the gospel is repentance and faith. And as regards the babies, baptism is not about who can be brought to Jesus. Baptism is about who can go out again as a witness, a qualified representative. It is a robe of authority. Jesus didn’t come out of the tomb naked.
I’ve covered this “disability” excuse elsewhere. It’s like arguing that murdering 30 million unborn infants is justified because of the previous 37 deaths due to backyard abortions. If we baptize unbelieving helpless people, aren’t we simply bringing more judgment upon them when they can’t keep their “proxy” Covenant vows. Nobody seems to think this through very well. They are blinded by the carnal security they find in baptizing their physical offspring.
3. Yes, there were uncircumcised foreigners present, and even the Israelites didn’t circumcise their baby boys in the wilderness. But the “national” circumcision was Passover. The Egyptian firstborn flesh was cut away to reveal the people of the true God. The other “flesh” was the flesh of faith. It is possible to draw too many comparisons, because the first Pentecost resulted in 3000 deaths, and the last resulted in 3000 believers. Paul corresponds Israel’s wilderness testing with the period from AD30 to AD70. It was the end of Israel according to the flesh. The promise at Pentecost (to you, your children and those [Jews] afar off) was to the last generation of the physical children of Abraham. It does not apply to us.
April 9th, 2012 at 8:46 pm
Hi Mike,
1. Good answer. Though how do you deal with the fact that Paul also uses the term “faithful in Christ Jesus” and “faithful brothers” to describe the children?
2. I can agree that baptism prepares us as witnesses but not necessarily straight away. It is a starting point in a journey. It kills us so that may may bear the marks of Christ to others, but in a way appropriate to our circumstances. Why did Jesus include babies in his kingdom (“such as these”) if the kingdom is not for them?
I wasn’t trying to prove infant baptism by the disability thing, I was just trying to show that it wasn’t wholly inconsistent with the Gospel. I think you often speak as if the Gospel is something we do and not something that Jesus has done for us. Please don’t take it as a watertight proof (excuse the pun!).
3. You’re right, a national circumcision would fit much better with a national baptism. I’ve never heard that “those afar off” could refer to the scattered Jews, but it does seem to make more sense of the phrase and of the Caiaphas’s use of the phrase “gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad” in John (given that he was so nationalistic).
Well, you’ve given me some food for thought. Let’s call this your last answer, unless you have any questions for me. Hopefully I’ll have made up my mind by the time I have kids
April 9th, 2012 at 8:50 pm
Sorry, to clarify,
Let’s call the answer you’re about to give your last answer. I didn’t include questions for no reason!
And thanks a lot for your replies, they really mean a lot to me. I basically just want to figure out what on earth I’m supposed to do with my kids when I have them.
April 10th, 2012 at 10:45 pm
Hi Chris
1. Children that can respond to such a command in faith should be baptized. This verse actually supports my main assertion in this blog post. We fulfill all our “fleshly” stations in the power of the Spirit — as individuals.
2. The model we are given shows that baptism is for those who respond. A faithful response was a good enough testimony, and baptism was the first step of obedience as proof of that testimony. In many countries, identifying with Christ in baptism entails a great deal of suffering. For many Jewish, Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox families, a credobaptism “re-” baptism is seen as a betrayal of culture, a disloyalty to the clan. That both exposes paedobaptism for what it is – a carnal rite – and it displays the intended beauty of New Covenant baptism, a new allegiance that transcends heredity and culture.
Jesus was baptized at the beginning of His ministry. He didn’t say these babies should be baptized. They were not disciples. But disciples are to have the same kind of faith in God as children have in their guardians.
Beyond this, credobaptisms are way more edifying and way more fun.
Hope that helps. Thanks for your comments!
April 13th, 2012 at 5:53 am
Thanks again Mike.
I suppose you could say that you’re not against infant baptism per se – that if you somehow found an infant who could give a profession of faith (like the one in Psalm 8 ) then you would baptise them.
So, on a separate (though not entirely separate) note, would you say that those baptised in infancy should be rebaptised if they come to faith later on? The ramifications are quite significant, you would effectively be saying that many of our paedobaptistic brethren are not in a full covenant relationship with God. It doesn’t affect me since I have had both but I know others who are struggling with this one.
Would you say that the fact that they have already been baptised means that they don’t need to receive it again since now their baptism is made complete by their faith? Or would you go with the more common baptist view that their first baptism is totally invalid?
Sorry to keep on pestering you!
April 13th, 2012 at 11:14 am
Hi Chris
I’ve covered that desperate misreading of Psalm 8 here:
http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/2011/06/22/psalm-8/
Baptism puts us into the Body, and the Body is the Church. In baptism a new Christian submits to the authority of the Church, so I think I would advise rebaptism even where one has been credo-immersed but wants to become a member at a church where their old baptism for some reason is not recognized (I know some Independent Baptists require this).
If a saint hasn’t been immersed but has submitted to the Church, it’s no worse than the Church doing Communion wrong. It’s an institutional disobedience, not a personal one. Like any failure to obey, I believe they miss out on a blessing. But as for being in a Covenant relationship, this applies to the entire world, not just paedobaptistic “seed” (which is a ridiculous idea). The entire world is under the New Covenant, and those who obey the Gospel are blessed now with refining and finally on the day of reckoning. Paedobaptism messes up the refinement process. It muddies the New Testament definition of “Christian” by tying it to heredity. So their biblical postmillennialism is hamstrung. We’re not supposed to outbreed the godless (although this is certainly a factor in an apostate Christendom), we’re supposed to plunder them with a big net. Their federal vision is focussed on their physical progeny. They can point out the failure of baptists to discipline and parent, but it’s a false dichotomy. The Scriptures require godly parenting by credo-baptized believers JUST FOR STARTERS.
As I tweeted the other day, what good is reuniting baptism and communion if this reunion divorces them both from the new birth? It’s not just unbiblical, it’s illogical.
Cheers,
Mike