“…falling headlong, he burst open in the middle…”
Todd Robinson commented:
“I’ve enjoyed your particular brand of orthodox preterism. Working through Acts recently, I began to wonder what Michael Bull’s take on Acts 1:11 and 3:19-21 would be… Thanks for any insight.”
Does Christ’s exhortation to His disciples in John 15 to remain in Him allow for the possibility of unregenerate New Covenant members?
Doug Wilson writes:
“For many Christians, [John 15:1-6] is a ‘problem passage.’ We want Christ to use a different figure. We want Him to be the Marble Box, with us as the individual marbles. When we are saved, we are put into the Marble Box, and we had better watch it, or we might find ourselves taken out of the Marble Box, losing our salvation. Or, if we know that salvation is not a possession of ours, which we could lose, we want the Marble Box to have a great big lock on it, and to be full of elect, non-loseable marbles” (To a Thousand Generations, p. 84).
We agree that the truly elect cannot be lost. We also agree that not all of the Old Covenant people were truly elect. But can we import this “not all Israel are Israel” into the New Covenant order?
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Doug Wilson writes:
“The debate in the early church was not whether the Jews should stop circumcising their sons; it was whether the Gentiles had to start. The decision of the Jerusalem council was not that individual Gentiles did not have to be circumcised. If circumcision had been required of them, it would have obligated them to live as Jews under the Mosaic law — which included the circumcision of all subsequent generations. Circumcision was not being waived for individual Gentiles; circumcision was being waived for Gentiles and their seed. So the Christian church did not insist that Gentiles circumcise their infants — not because they were infants, but because they were Gentile infants” (To a Thousand Generations, pp. 68-69).
Since there is no ex-plicit proof of infant baptism, Pastor Wilson’s self-stated, continuing goal here is to find im-plicit proof. My goal in the following is to show that not only do circumcision and baptism not correspond, but also that the solution to the dispute in this passage he refers to is given in the passage, leaving no room for an im-plicit reference to infant baptism.
We receive baptism, but is membership of the visible New Covenant body entirely objective? The Old Covenant church, “the Body of Moses,” was Adamic. The Tabernacle was a Babelic tower, a ladder to heaven, laid out prostrate on the ground. The New Covenant Body, the Body of Jesus, is Evian. As a Temple filled with the Spirit of God, it stands upright and walks on the Crystal Sea.
Doug Wilson writes:
“This objection misses the point that Peter is making. The issue with Cornelius and his household was not whether they were old enough to receive water baptism, but whether they were Jewish enough. If this household had contained an infant, the members of the ‘circumcision’ who were there would not have objected to baptism on the grounds of infancy, but rather because the infant was Gentile and uncircumcised” (To a Thousand Generations, p. 55).
Certainly, the issue was whether Gentiles should be baptized, but it was never a pitting of circumcision against baptism. They understood that circumcision was a beginning and baptism was a new beginning. Circumcision was replaced not by baptism but by the death of Christ, which united Jew and Gentile. Jesus tore down that wall, and paedobaptism unwittingly puts it up again. Circumcision marked out flesh as a plot of Land. That is entirely done with. Spirit water overflows all human barriers, it wipes out every distinction with a new one – Repentance and Faith.
Someone made the comment that the “Bible Matrix” is something mystical. While it is certainly typological, it is not mystical. And it is only typological because it is the process of maturity God has built into everything under heaven. Trees and men grow up and bear fruit. That’s typology.
Fig leaves without fruit are a false covering. Nathaniel (“gift of God”) was “covered” by fig leaves like Adam, but he did not image the serpent. Jesus “saw” him and he was guileless. [1] Years of Bible teaching and a godly upbringing bore the fruit of righteousness. He was a true Israelite, a victorious prince of God. He would see heaven and earth united in Christ.
The debate over infant baptism at Doug Wilson’s blog continues. Pastor Wilson writes:
“The Gentiles were threatened with removal from the same tree the unbelieving Jews had been in. But if this were the tree of salvation, then the elect can lose their salvation — which cannot be defended biblically. And if this is the tree of the covenant, then the point stands” (To a Thousand Generations, p. 36)
This looks logical enough, but trees are a process of maturity, from seed to fruit. So is righteousness, and so is sin.
Doug Wilson writes:
“The Levitical administration brought strong curses for disobedience (Heb. 2:2-3); the New Covenant administration brings much greater curses (Heb. 10:29; Heb. 12:25). Christians commonly assume that the really terrifying curses for disobedience were given in the Old Testament, and that under the New Testament all is grace. But this is precisely the opposite of the New Testament’s teaching on the subject” (To a Thousand Generations, pp. 28-29).
This is certainly a side of the New Covenant that Christians are never taught. The first time I ever heard of it was in David Chilton’s Revelation commentary The Days of Vengeance in 1989. But along with baptism (just had to throw that in), a rediscovery of the Old Covenant hammer makes everything in the New Covenant look like a nail. The Revelation is, after all, a book about the end of the Old Covenant.
There is great advantage in tracking the shape of God’s work in history through the Old Testament. This is because God is consistent. Everything He does has the same shape, even though He does it in new and surprising (and sometimes devastating) ways.
One of the big handles in Scripture is the five-fold Covenant pattern, described by Ray Sutton in his book, “That You May Prosper: Dominion by Covenant.” Continue reading
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