Randy:


what do you mean by 'fresh?' AS in new or novel?

__________________
N. Robert; Trinity Reformed Church RCA, Holland MI

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You're missing my point. Baptism, like circumcision, is/was to be received by faith. I think I understand the paedo position rather well. An infant is baptized into the covenant community (visible church) and under the headship of his earthly father. The long-standing Baptist problem with that view is that baptism is not on the basis of the faith of the one receiving the sign whereas circumcision was. The Presbyterian would answer that N.T. baptism is covenantal and, therefore, does not require individual faith. I give Bruce my compliments in carefully explaining that paedo covenantal baptism does not impart regeneration or justification. Those are both on the basis of faith.

If I was a Presbyterian, I would say that Baptists come to the same place as Presbyterians in the area of soteriology but via a more painful road, by dismissing paedo covenantal baptism. My rejection of paedo baptism is not on the basis of misunderstanding. It is based on a material disagreement of a number of component issues. But in the end we do have a meeting of the minds regarding soteriology, and that is a comfort.

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Bill Brown
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Grace Baptist Church
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Bill,
All I did with reference to our respective Confessions was point out a salient difference. I think its a difference that gives evidence that the two sides see baptism speaking two different ways; yes, in a fundamental sense, but not necessarily in a way that excludes the other when its turned obliquely.

I've honestly not tried to put an "everybody knows the WCF has priority" spin on our conversation. I'm simply arguing from my Confessional stance: I understand it, I know it, and it gives me confidence. I think its clearer to everyone now why I'm approaching the text as I do. I think, if I had not begun where I did, I would have had to go back there anyway, to justify why it just doesn't matter to me which baptism Paul might have had foremost in mind when he wrote 1 Cor. 12:13, if we assume he must have had one and not (or ahead of) the other. Most of the time if a baptist hears someone "mingling" the physical act and divine act, they just assume we are heading back to Rome.

I'll be happy to continue the discussion with you focused solely on the text. I have no need to make repeated references to standards. Blessings.

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Rev. Bruce G. Buchanan
ChainOLakes Presbyterian Church, CentralLake, MI


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Randy,
I just think you need to let those old white dudes speak for themselves. Update the language. "Make the most of your baptism." "Refresh your soul-appreciation of your baptism." "Ponder your baptism."

You can indeed "improve" baptism, just as you can "improve" the Lord Supper when you partake of it. In fact, you better be "improving" the latter, because if you aren't, then you are "eating and drinking condemnation to yourselves." If you aren't "improving" you are falling into disuse and forgetfulness.

Randy, please don't assert that we are making a "work" out of this! Go ahead and make whatever hash you can out of our Presbyterian Catechism. Seems to me you could be cutting off your nose to spite your face... On the other hand, I can understand you not caring to "reflect" or "improve" on your statement to God--if that's what baptism is. But if the reality is a promise from God, if it is the gospel in pictures, then such reflection is more than warranted.

As for the matter of the body, well, same visible-invisible distinction that always hangs us up. If you can't call the people you gather with on Sunday morning "the church" and "the body", then there we are. At an impasse.

Blessings, my friend.

Yes, I meant fresh as in newer. I have heard similar teaching before but don't remember seeing it put that way before. It may have been stated that way but I just might not have paid attention before. It isn't something in the early church that I had read about concerning baptism . Of course what I have read concerning the early church is just terrible doctrinally. Baptismal regeneration, baptisms based upon necessity for salvation (imminent death), and the teaching that your sins are forgiven by baptism are out there in my opinion. I understand where the teachings came from but they aren't biblical.

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R. Martin Snyder

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Bruce, how about this for starters: what is Paul writing about in 1 Cor. 12? I'm not talking about the interpretive grid of our macro-presupposition but of the face value of the text? He starts and ends the chapter on spiritual gifts. "Now, concerning spiritual gifts..." (1 Cor. 12:1). "But earnestly desire the greater gifts." (1 Cor. 12:31). Within this discussion Paul writes about the unit of the body in the midst of varying gifts. "For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, yet are one body as also is Christ." (1 Cor. 12:12). To emphasize this point he describes the spiritual foundation of the SOMA. "For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit." I don't believe Paul's intent (v. 13) was to write about baptism (whether spiritual or water). Paul was writing about the administration of spiritual gifts within the body and how the body is unified even though there are varying gifts. That's it. Help me see what I'm missing.

Brother, It wouldn't be the last time I had done that. I do think it is important to understand Baptism and to remember what it means. I am not denying the picture as you seem to imply. I do believe that Baptism is a statement concerning what Christ has done for me. Not what I have done for him. Death, burial, and resurrection is a beautiful thing. I am a Covenant child of Abraham because of what Christ did. And I reflect on it in the Lord's supper and daily meditation also. I am seated in the heavenlies by him. It just keeps getting sweeter the older I get.

I think post #12 is an outstanding presentation of the basic difference in approach. Baptism - How does one know they are saved?

It is in the attempt to peer into the things hidden and bring them into the visible is where failures in understanding of Baptism occur and, consequently, the effectiveness of the Sacrament to encourage a believer.

Our salvation fundamentally begins in the decree of God. I drew a line on the board last Wed to show how we are saved and it begins with us being promised to Christ in eternity and ends with us reigning with Him.

But we are not privvy to the entire timeline of our redemption. We are privvy only to the timeline of our existence. We are privvy only to that which is revealed to us. We have to have some point of historical contact with this eternal purpose of God or we are left in the things hidden and can only speculate about who He has elected.

Frankly, discussions about the subjects of Baptism that focus on who God has elected from all eternity fail to identify an actual subject of Baptism. It remains hidden in God's holy counsel.

This is why God has revealed the Covenant of Grace to us and has instituted His Church in both its nascent form pre- and post-Sinai and then maturely to us in the New Covenant with Christ.

Our experience of God's covenant to save us reaches us by our hearing when we hear the Gospel preached to us. We have no experience of any regeneration that may have occurred with it. We can experience our response to it and understanding of it. We can also experience the water as it is poured on us and hear the announcement of the minister. The minister announces with the authority of God that God saves all those who trust in Christ. We then hear and taste and see Word and Sacrament regularly administered to us that declare and re-affirm the same promises. We experience our affections for the things of God and how they correspond to the delights of the heart that the Scriptures say accompany those that believe upon him.

Our experiences, then, are like points on that eternal line of God's perfect redemption. We have assurance of our salvation because God has given a promise and an oath to us. He has sworn by Himself that He saves those who believe upon His Son. Because we know we trust and we heard the Promise we are most certainly "attached" to the plan from eternity and to eternity to be saved. The visible intersects the invisible in the Covenant of Grace.

Frankly, it is my estimation that discussions that say that "...well this is speaking of spirit baptism..." wrench the Covenant of Grace from its point of contact with the eternal. It places redemption back into a point completely hidden because it divorces sign from thing signified. There is now no longer any point of contact to God's eternal plan. It's not that the Presbyterian disagrees that only those that are united to Christ by evangelical faith are truly saved and such only receive the benefits of the Holy Spirit, but it's that now the sign that signifies it is said to no longer have any real reference to it because "...only the elect participate in this...."

Thus, in the end, assurance is maintained without the problems of turning signs into the thing signified or divorcing them but placing them within their proper categories. As Bruce noted, the visible, fallible Church has, by the foolishness of Words preached, the visible role in proclaiming the Gospel in time and space. This same visible, fallible Church has the authority to ministerially declare the Promise of a God who has backed up the same Promise with an Oath so that by two unchangeable things we can be utterly convinced that the Promise will be true of those it speaks of. We hear the Word and respond and believe. We feel the Water and taste the Bread and Wine and they connect us in time and space to the eternal plan of God. Abraham never saw a great nation but he had the sure hope that everything promised to him would come to pass by a sign placed in His flesh. We have the same assurance.

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Rich
Okinawa, Japan

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I would add to Rich's statement that I did experience a change as 2 Corinthians 5:17 mentions. And I can say something made me alive to be concerned about the things of God before I was converted. Something drew me to read the Word of God and experience it in a personal way.

Old things did pass away and all things did become new for me. Everyone around me saw it. My view of the Word of God changed. It became food and meat for me. Before it meant nothing to me. I know God and I know he knows me by his activity in my life. I have a relationship with God. The Devil has one also. The difference is mine is based upon the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ for me. It isn't imagined. It is experienced. His Spirit bares witness with ours it says. We can cry Father in a familial way.

St. John said he wrote what he wrote so that we may know that we have eternal life.

Jeremy,
Let's not commit the word-concept fallacy now, bro. If we think about what a seal is or does, we see that it is an attestation by someone and a guarantee. It is the oath of the God of the promise.

Randy asked: "Where does the scripture say that baptism seals us in the promise of the Gospel?" Actually, the exact language of the HC is "seal to us the promise of the Gospel," but I take it that is his reference.

How am I going to answer his question? Like a Presbyterian. Baptism is a wordless gospel (which is why it needs explanation). It is the promise of God to save all those who come to Christ in faith, to justify them, to give them Christ's righteousness.

Rom 6:5 says believers are united to Christ in his death, which as the previous verse states is symbolized by baptism--our point of departure from the old life, into the new. So Holy Spirit ingrafts a believer to Christ the vine, uniting him. That's what he does in his realm; the church just acts in accordance with him, by dint of her limited vision, according to his ordinance.

Col 2:11-12, just makes the connection of baptism to circumcision (denied by many baptists, I know), and circumcision was God's seal/oath/guarantee of the righteousness Abraham had by faith, Rom. 4:11--so that he would be the father of all the believers.

To you first comment, what the church does in "sealing" CAN be "broken," because what the church does has to do with a worldly, fallible administration. You're right, its not a very good seal. Fortunately, it's not the seal that counts, namely God's. And he never makes a mistake, and seals someone he isn't taking to heaven.

How do I justify this usage? Well, I say that God gives his covenant sign that name. He gave it to circumcision, that outward sign in the OT, which was supposed to be emblematic of a Spirit-wrought regeneration. The same Spirit regenerates in the NT too, with this advantage: HE actually comes to dwell in all believers he regenerates, a presence vastly superior than that which OT saints enjoyed.

He is said to "baptize" believers with his presence, falling on them, poured out on them. So, Eph 1:13 simply focuses on the Spirit-reality that the mundane is supposed to symbolize. He is the real deal; the water of baptism is an emblem. Nevertheless, the Bible speaks of the emblem using the same language as the reality, to reinforce the teaching embedded in the symbol, to reinforce the connection.

I'll just leave it at that, and you can ask me for more clarification if you want it.

Peace.

I guess we'll just have to conclude that's another way the NC is "better"! Cheers!

The point is, nevertheless, that you're still speaking of something that you can be put into contact with. You can speak generically of it but you cannot say, definitively of your regeneration or your conversion. You don't even know if a prior encounter with the Gospel may have been the means toward the end you were experiencing.

I think we err in being too definitive about when and where the wind blew.

Hi KK,
I've posted in this thread quite a bit, so I really can't recall which one of my questions, rhetorical or actual, you are referring to... no matter, though.

I agree of course. And baptism is the gospel in a picture. If only we all could believe the Word just fine without extras! But God know how weak we are, and he accommodates us in our frailty. He knows what we need better than we do, and he decided we needed two visible, but very plain, signs of the New Covenant and its gospel. Hence, baptism and the Lord's Supper.

Praise the Lord!

I believe what John Says. He wrote it so that I might know that I have eternal life.

Thanks, Bruce, that answers my questions.

I obviously disagree on a few aspects of it, but the question was mainly for me to understand how you were internally consistent with two fundamentally different types of seals. Maybe it's a peripheral aspect of most paedo/credo discussions, but I had never seen that portion reasoned through and acknowledged. Thank you.

__________________
Jeremy Gage
First Baptist Church
Durham, NC

"No heart can conceive that treasury of mercies which lies in this one privilege, in having liberty and ability to approach unto God at all times, according to his mind and will." - John Owen

Thank you!

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Ivan Schoen, Pastor
Maranatha Baptist Church
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