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Contra_Mundum · #2 (**permalink**) 05-07-2008, 10:03 AM

Erick
Did you see this response in the other thread?

Quote:

Originally Posted by shackleton

It does almost leave one (me anyway) with the lingering question that there would have to be two methods of salvation. One for adults, which is the way laid out in the New Testament, and another for babies. Does God suspend what he says is true for everyone else for the sake of babies who are not capable of believing? The answers I have read are along the lines of, babies would have to then be regenerated in the womb. This seems absurd but it is the logical conclusion one must come to in order to have babies who die before being regenerated, saved. On the other hand I do not believe God overlooks sin until a magical age of accountability. If we are all born sinful then we would all be responsible for having our sin atoned for and since the atoning of sin comes through justification through faith the person justified would have to be capable of having faith.

It seems like paedobaptism leads to an inevitable contradiction.

What about the mentally retarded, where do they fall in all this.

Answer to the second question:

10:3 Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated, and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how He pleaseth: so also, are all other elect persons who are uncapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word.

To the first point, to be regenerated is to be endowed with a new capacity to believe savingly in the Lord Jesus Christ--previously an impossible condition to meet. In other words, it is necessary to lovingly apprehend Christ, to "see" him with the eyes of faith for who he is.

In our longer-lived selves, that capacity is acted upon in time and our faculties engaged, and we "see" the truth as it is in Jesus. IOW, we exercise saving faith. We individually believe. and are saved. "Without faith it is impossible to please God."

Elect infants also must act on the capacity to believe they have been given through regeneration. Will they? Why not?!? In fact, they will "grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" almost without having to "unlearn" anything, since all that growth takes place in his deivine presence. Do you think they believe in him? Will WE still be believing in him in glory? The answer to the latter is Yes, and so must be the former.

Baptism is not simply an "individual thing". It is a churchly thing, for the church. So, baptism of any one of us is also for the edification of the whole body. At the time of baptism, the faith being displayed most prominently is the faith of the parents. The words "I will be a God to YOU, and to your children after YOU," is made directly to them. THEY are participating/presenting their child. Of course, just as with Abraham, there is an implied condition there: ... if they believe the same faith you believe.

The simplest, childlike faith is also being portrayed there--a helpless child trusting in its parent's arms. If one says "I don't think actual faith is there at all," of course that is just presumption in the negative. Just as presumptive as if a professor made a profession, and we were to say: "that's probably a lie." Or even "that's probably the truth." We have no idea if it is or it isn't. Baptists and Presbyterians baptize adults on profession of faith, not on the truth of the profession. And they baptize infants (they confess as their motive) on the basis of a command by God to do so.

For many infants, no doubt the faith in view is proleptic--in view of future exercise. But since, say we, it doesn't matter when a baptism happens for a proper statement of God's promises, we baptize early. We baptize according to the divinely instituted custom of Abraham.