Dennis, what was the program that Steve Kellam recommended to you. If you have already explained or given the link, I apologize for asking you to re-post. I may have missed it.

__________________
Briant Holley
Grace Reformed Baptist Church;
Husband to Barbara, Father of Alexis, Justin, and Lacey
Silver Creek, MS

I would like to pass on the link to anyone else who might be interested.
IIIM Reformed Seminary

No matter which side you come out on I have the utmost respect for you. Your humility is a breath of fresh air.

__________________
Kevin - PCA - Mississippi

"What, for some, is sin, others do to the glory of God. And the good Dr. Pentecost's remarks notwithstanding, I intend to go home tonight and smoke a cigar to the glory of God. It is a kind of incense drifting to Heaven." - Charles Spurgeon

"Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!" - 2 Corinthians 9:15

Dennis:

Concerning all this "viper in a covenant diaper" business: it's important to remember that we paedos don't believe that baptism saves anyone, infants included. Infants are not automatically saved just because they are born into covenant homes. Babies are sinners and, as they grow, need to have the gospel presented to them, just as adults do. Covenant theology only guarantees that elect infants will be saved, and there is no guarantee that every infant born into a covenant home is elect.

The short version of all this is: both presumptive regeneration and baptismal regeneration are rejected in covenant theology.

I know you know all this, but it bears repeating, I think.

By the way, I had your experience some years ago, as others have testified in this thread: it's covenant theology that makes all the biblical pieces fit together. I went from being an Arminian who thought that the "dividing line" of the Bible was that white space between the two Testaments to being a Reformed person who understands that the great "divide" comes at Genesis 3:15.

__________________
Richard T. Zuelch, M.Div
Ruling Elder, OPC (not currently serving)
Westminster Presbyterian Church, CA (OPC)
www.alexandermaclaren.wordpress.com
www.reiterations.wordpress.com
www.spurgeonswords.wordpress.com

Devout souls do not take offence at the depths and difficulties of God's Word, but are, thereby, drawn to intenser contemplation of them. - Alexander Maclaren (1826-1910)

Richard,

Yes, my struggle is with the logic of covenant theology. While Baptists of a Reformed inclination ALSO make their case from covenant theology, the logic of the paedo view certainly coheres with the system. That is why I am trying to be so careful in my consideration this time. Baptism, CT vs. TR in the translation and text arena, and eschatology were issues that my education presented in a more or less straw man way at best. Yes, I always knew that Reformed paedos did not believe in the efficacy of baptism in an ex opere operato sense. I also knew that you all denied presumptive regeneration (at least the mainstream paedos). However, other than a few bullet points, I had never heard a case for it by a paedo. The pictures of Calvin Leino's baptism were the first close-ups of an actual infant baptism (other than in the movies such as "The Godfather") I had ever seen.

Now after a hiatus for vacation, I'm back to the Shishko MP3s (#13/23). Whether you buy the logic of the position, the exegetical analysis, or the putative ties between the testaments or not, that man is a true pastor. What a gift! He has a knack for presenting his case winsomely and without rancor and minus the misrepresentations of the baptist position. A Shishko teaching session is a libel free zone suffused with an earnest desire to know God and make him known.

I will withhold judgment on the issue until doing the rest of the reading. Conner was shockingly weak in argumentation (IMO) and harped on the same point, although he scored more than a few hits on the paedo position. I'm anxious to get into material by Renihan. Marcel is a fascinating read and our PB folks were right to recommend it as a powerful case for infant baptism. My more than three decade long irritation with the theology of my old Sys Theo prof, Paul K. Jewett, has kept me from reading his admittedly seminal work. But it will also be on my list to pour over before committing myself either way.

__________________
Dennis E. McFadden, Ex Mainline Baptist (in Remission)
Atherton Baptist Homes, CEO
First Baptist Church of Alhambra, Member, Transformation Ministries (CA)

Click to get: Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions?

Brother, do you have a link for downloading/buying the Shisko mp3s?

Also have you heard the mp3s of the White/Shisko debate on the subject? I listened to those about a year ago (they were free for download at the time), but I think I read something later that said that portions of the debate were mysteriously missing and it had to be re-edited. I specifically remember having a conversation with James White (on one of the AOMin cruises a couple years back) where he said he asked a cross examination question about the circumcision of Ahab's sons, but that was missing from the mp3s I listened to.

My favorite part of the debate? White repeatedly stating that infants are incapable of having faith, and then (during the audience question portion of the debate) someone asking White to respond to Psalm 22:9 -- "Yet You are He who brought me forth from the womb; You made me trust when upon my mother's breasts." I wouldn't call it a meltdown, but White sounded like he became very animated over the question.

__________________
Tim Phillips
Pastor, Midlane Park Presbyterian Church (ARP)
Louisville, KY
Husband of Scottish Lass
My Blog: Gairney Bridge
My Facebook/My Avatar

Click to get: Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions?

"Wherever the gospel is preached, it is as if God Himself came into the midst of us." ~ John Calvin

Link for Shisko mp3s: SermonAudio.com - Search Results

__________________
Steve Butts - Former SBC-er
Three Forms of Unity - Bradenton CRCNA - Bradenton, Florida
(A conservative member in a conservative congregation)

"Turning away to false Theology is equal to turning away to false gods" — Francis Schaeffer (Death in the City)

Yes, the Shishko series is all available at Seb's link . . . for free!

My copy of the debate has the restored missing minutes. Evidently, what happened is that the official debate recording stopped (ran out of tape??? didn't get turned over???). It looks like they found a person in the audience who made their own tape and spliced in the missing minutes. There is a very notable drop in fidelity for the twenty some minutes, but it is listenable. I downloaded it for $4.50 off White's website (http://www.aomin.org/catalog/product...roducts_id=712).

Hey, Paedo bros and sises . . .

Here is another musing. Leaving aside the issue of truth and error, from an intellectual history perspective, what do you see happening in the paedo vs. credo camp these days? I would think that the unrelenting march of individualistic pluralism, privitization, and "democracy" in general makes the credo practice seem more congruent with the spirit of the times. If so, then the paedo position is fighting an unhill battle to receive fair hearing in this culture.

Any thoughts?

I can certainly see this trend, which I think has been going on for a while now. The Enlightenment really started it all. So, the paedo position has been counter-cultural for at least 200 hundred years. But then, so has the church itself been counter-cultural. Any kind of body of people who think they have the truth (and this would include the Baptist churches) is counter-cultural. As to its effect on paedo-baptists, I think it has primarily stiffened our resolve to make our position clearer. Certainly, the importance of covenantal familial succession (not of election but of the promises) impresses itself upon us more forcefully when we consider how much it is under attack.

__________________
Rev. Lane Keister
Teaching Elder, PCA, North Dakota (working out of bounds in a CRC and an RCA church)
http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com
http://brahmsgreenglove.blogspot.com
http://accenttranslation.blogspot.com
Click to get: Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions?

There are some rays of hope for paedobaptists. Who would have thought that an American Baptist educated in a liberal Baptist religious studies department would be pursuing membership in a RCUS congregation? Yet here I am. I know of at least two other friends from my college who have also come over to the dark side. This past Tuesday, we just said our goodbyes to another college friend who is headed off to Westminster California. He's still claims to be Baptist, but argued the paedo position in a group discussion we had last week.

The covenantal worldview is certainly at odds with the surrounding culture, but this can be a good thing.

__________________
Bryan Peters
Providence Reformed Church (URCNA)
Des Moines, Iowa

Doctrinal truth should be preached always, openly, without compromise, and never dissembled or concealed. There is no offence in it; it is the staff of uprightness.
~Martin Luther~

Bryan,

Regardless of where my journey ends up on the baptism question, I will NEVER regret our withdrawal from the ABC! Just yesterday, someone made a quip on my blog that since stopping my commentary on the ABC, this "barking dog" doesn't have much to say. Part of what I replied related to increased work responsibilities. But here is the rest of it:

Hmmmm. How true! For several reasons:

Nothing like deep grief to provoke the spilling of much ink. Three years after the fact, my grieving over leaving the ABC is largely over and Trans Min is doing GREAT! As of last month, 148 congregations have signed the Transformation Ministries covenant and as treasurer of the organization, I can vouch for the fact that our finances are in better shape than they have been in years.

So, why pick on Ole Roy[for you Presbys, he is the General Secretary of the ABCUSA]? He recently preached at an AWAB church [translation: pro-gay marriage and ordination of openly gay persons] and evidently lauded them lavishly. The pastor of the church commented [emphasis mine]:

There is no denying that the withdrawal from the ABC was a very painful separation for me. More than 50 years in an organization and lots of hours of committee service makes a divorce like that pretty wrenching. But, the decision of the other regions to stick with the ABC was something that I was emotionally unprepared to face. Knowing what some of these executives of judicatories believe (hey, they sent me e-mails professing it) made their subsequent public "loyalty" incomprehensible to me. And, when the pastoral leaders around the country also fell into line with VF [translation: Valley Forge = headquarters of the ABCUSA], that was more than I could take. If an "ecology of relationship" with gay advocacy and the Islamic Society of America is what "conservatives" in the ABC want, they are entitled to enjoy it in peace (at least from this barking dog).

So, like some other former critics of things at VF, I have moved on to other issues. A barking dog with a principled objection is one thing, a cranky old coot with a tiresome and repetitious complaint is another. All of the insider information, devastating budgetary trends, knowledge of documented personal immorality (both sexual and financial), and heterodox teaching can be identified and chronicled. But, ultimately it doesn't matter. People stay in the ABC for reasons of "family," and all of the arguments, evidence, and the like are, in the final analysis, beside the point. Hey, I fought VF and VF won. Even a barking dog can read the score board.

The good side is that as a result of my "crisis," it prompt me to return ad fontes to the essentials of my faith and consider again what the Bible teaches on any number of issues of eschatology, baptism, confessionalism, covenant, etc. Regardless of where I come out on baptism, that journey has been a blessing.

Only a general observation.

It seems now there is a slight falling away trend among "broad evangelicals" and those who are not firmly grounded on Scripture as a basis for faith and practice. There are some losses as people lose interest (short term excitement but longer term loss) whereas Reformed theology is gaining, albeit slowly. It is especially gaining "acceptance" in evangelical theological circles partly because it is not the mainstream.

This all may mean some growth in paedobaptism. Also, the idea of covenant communities and covenant families tend to mean higher growth.

__________________
Scott
PCA
North Carolina


"Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised)"
Hebrews 10:23