The Baptism Discussion - What really stands between us?

In 1915, Howard Christy Stanley designed a wartime recruiting poster that said, “If you want to fight, join the Marines.”  100 years later in 2015, if you want to fight, you bring up baptism in a Reformed Facebook group filled with Baptists and Presbyterians.  Of course, the difference is these two parties are not squaring up against each other like the Triple Entente and the Central Powers, but rather as brothers, with a fundamental disagreement.  It is not a trifling disagreement, but a weighty disagreement, with immense importance for the church of all ages.

With great joy, I count myself among the many men who left their Baptist roots to embrace the historic and reformed practice of paedobaptism.  I consider my conversion to this position a gift of God's grace, and a tremendous blessing in my life and ministry.  A covenantal view of baptism is now a truth of sacred scripture that I hold so dearly, I would be willing die for it, just like I would die for reformed soteriology.  That may seem radical, but the sacraments our Lord has commanded us to administer in the church are worthy of such reverence.  

My transition away from my Baptist convictions did not come by a particular proof text, or an isolated instance in scripture, but rather an in depth study of the covenant of grace.  Baptists ground their disagreement with paedobaptism in the same arguments I once did, by saying "scripture nowhere commands the baptism of infants" (even though we will show in the coming days that it does).  When we start here, we set ourselves up to fall into hermeneutical laziness, and what could be great discussions about baptism quickly turn into trivial games of proof texting between parties that end faster than a game of go-fish.  So you have both baptists and paedobaptists trying to pin-point specific verses that they believe make their point explicitly clear, which will never satisfy the demands of each party.  Proof texting is something internet atheists are really good at doing (and rightfully mocked for), so Christians should obviously try to avoid such practice when the word of God is being examined.  But the point is, to focus our attention on proof texting and other silly arguments like simply calling it a relic of popery, or shifting the discussion to the mode of baptism and calling it "baby sprinkling" because βαπτίζω can only means immerse, (which it certainly does not) is a display of immaturity and ignorance.  So we must rise above the temptation to stick our tongues out at each other and begin throwing darts that completely miss the real issue that stands between baptists and paedobaptists.

Contrary to popular belief, disagreement between the two parties is not rooted in an examination of church history, nor is it in who is included in New Testament household baptisms.  How we view such things are important to the discussion, but they don't serve as an appropriate starting place for discussing baptism. The fundamental disagreement is in the covenant of grace, which is the true foundation for the historic doctrine and practice of paedobaptism.  

So it is not even baptism that we need to examine.  Instead, we must examine how the covenant of grace, as revealed in the full redemptive narrative of sacred scripture, regards the children who belong to parents in the covenant community.  If scripture speaks about children the same way it speaks about their believing parents, then children should be recipients of the sacrament of baptism by virtue of their inclusion in the covenant of grace.  

This is where an honest examination of baptism begins -- Right where the church has founded their position from the inception of baptism as the covenantal sign and seal.  We will examine this closely in the next several days. Stay tuned.  

(I also wish I could give credit to someone for this hilarious photo of the pope.  But, the source is unknown)