Bully's Blog

More on baptism. Jane Dunsworth has posted some well-thought-out strikes and I figure it’s worth posting my parries here.

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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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or Holy Smoke

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.

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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.

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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.

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What do the Psalms mean when they speak of the Lord “bowing the heavens”?

“Bow thy heavens, O Lord, and come down: touch the mountains, and they shall smoke.” (Psalm 144:5)
“He bowed the heavens and came down; thick darkness was under his feet.” (Psalm 18:9)

The language is architectural, based on the original and greatest Temple of them all, the cosmic “house” constructed in Genesis 1.

This post has been slain and resurrected for inclusion in my 2015 book of essays, Inquietude.

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Doug Wilson writes:

“It is of course true that real religion is concerned with the state of the heart, and not with whether a man has jumped through all the right ceremonial hoops. When a man believes the covenant promise he points away from himself . . . To look away from the heart to an objective Christ is not to neglect the heart; to look away in this fashion is the only way to be justified and put right with God” (To a Thousand Generations, p. 46).

This is an excellent statement. It’s perfect fruit for a pie but Pastor Wilson is sticking it in a casserole.

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You can find this over at Doug Wilson’s blog. I’m reposting it here because I’ve just spent over an hour responding to Doug R. and John B.’s good objections to comments on Shakin’ The Tree, so I’ve not got time to write anything new. Also, posting it here means I can find it more easily in future! So, at the risk of becoming the anti-paedobaptist/anti-hyperpreterist blog…

Baptism Points Away

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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.

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