Kistemaker (Baker Com., w/Hendrickson) is against me.

At this point, I'm just waiting for one of these commentators to actually lay out their argument. The closest thing to a technical commentary on Hebrews I have is John Owen. And he notes the "odd" construction, but exposits as though it were written the way it isn't. Everyone else seems to assume, "Well, it must be them."

I have never disputed the fact that the parents were believers; it's a vital part of Moses' preservation that they were so; their actions are on display. But it is just as clear to me that v.23 refers from the first two words (and therefore primarily) to Moses' faith: 1) (Pistei Mwusas). 2) The parallels to the rest of the chapter; 3) the striking verbal parallel with v.24 ("By faith Moses when he was born... By faith Moses when he was grown..."). 4) That because of his faith God would save him from death by means of his parents is wholly consistent and harmonized with the whole tenor of the chapter. This is the most pure, childlike faith exhibited in the whole chapter. If this example wasn't here, we might well wonder why any such faith-example of a youth (age 0 to maturity) wasn't included!


With regard to Heb. 11:23, I am officially on the defensive now. But for all the above reasons, notwithstanding the authorities arrayed against me, I am not abandoning my position. Let someone deconstruct my grammatical understanding, or at least weaken it first!

If little else is forthcoming by way of respectable authority support, I will have to grant that my chosen stance is the minority, and considered by others anyway the weaker position. But I'm not throwing in the towel.

That said, Hebrews 11 could utterly fall away as a support for infant-salvation, and the doctine still have plenty of remaining pillars.

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


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Exactly. Might be easy for some to miss that point as that particular passage was in lengthy dispute.

Ironically I was reading Stephen's martyrdom this AM and came across Moses in his Gospel message to the Sanhedrin. It struck me how strange a notion to Jews it would be to think that there is some sort of "age of intellectual assent" that a person must reach before the Spirit is capable of regenerating through the Word.

It seems the objection to this and other passages presented is the notion that regeneration must always accompany the preached Word and the logical construction being presented is this:
1. regeneration follows the preached Word
2. the ear organ must be functioning to hear the Word or the eye organ must see the Word being presented (in the case of a deaf man)
3. there is a certain age at which a mind is able to process the data just received and "make sense" of it
4. given working ears and eyes and a mind mature enough to process the information, the Word then cooperates with these faculties to renew the heart and mind of the hearer (or seer if the person is deaf)

Therefore, infants cannot be regenerated because they might have working ear or eye organs but their intellects are too young to cooperate with the preached Word.

Sound like synergism to me.

__________________
Rich
Northern VA
PCA

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Yes, Rich,
Did you catch the Acts 7:20 reference. The Geneva is verbally much closer to the original (you can see the literal in some margins of the versions). It is an interesting complex of verses (taking Ex., Acts, and Heb, together), and the commentators are a little split on what the insipred writers were declaring.

Actually, I remember glancing briefly at Lenski on Acts 7:20, and I thought he was somewhat supportive of my Hebrews position, but I have to go back and check it. It was a fast look. However, I usually admire his technical work. (but there are definitely occasions when his doctrinal positions color his exegesis)

I definitely caught it. I love Stephen's compact and beautiful summary of God's gracious Covenant from Abraham to Christ. You know you've just given a powerful Gospel message when you have God's enemies grinding their teeth at you.

By the way, even if it was the parents' faith, what was it about Moses that was "beautiful"? Would Scripture be commending their faith just because they thought Moses was a cute baby or did they note something spiritually significant about him?

Just to clarify my present view, I agree with #1 and #2, disagree with #3 (I think even an infant mind can process the gospel) and reject the synergy of #4. I think that, based on God's sovereign choice, he chooses to honor or not honor the preached gospel call effectively and regenerate the sinner.

#1 is the most important, I think. If you deny that regeneration and faith must follow from the preached word, then you must argue that the preached gospel is not necessary to salvation. This, I think, leads to a view that says that the preaching of the gospel is unnecessary since God will regenerate and save who He wishes regardless of whether the gospel is preached to them or not.

Romans 10:17 says that "Faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ." If you remove regeneration and faith from the hearing of the gospel, how do you understand this verse? Does this not apply to infants? If an infant has faith, they must have heard/seen the word of Christ, i.e. the gospel.

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Hey Bruce, your interpretation is so innovative, you ought to write a paper on it and publish it as an original thesis!

But if you take a wooden view of Romans 10:17 then you have to exclude deaf people. The verse says nothing of "seeing the Gospel". If you extend the passage to those who are deaf then how about those that are blind and deaf? Now you have communication by touch (i.e. Helen Keller) You still have the Spirit's work somehow tied to the physical function of biological function. If not then I can easily argue that all my children, while in the womb, were present during dozens of Gospel calls and actually "heard" my wife praying words of faith for months. As you tie regeneration to the hearing or communication of the Gospel then an infant can easily be regenerated on those grounds.

I still have a larger problem of how you link regeneration in such a wooden way on the basis of a single passage however. I already pointed out earlier in this thread that salvation may also come from the reading of the Word. In the context of Romans 10, Paul is hardly presenting didactic teaching on the process of regeneration but, rather, the necessity of God's message being heralded by those charged with the ministry of the Word. Certainly the Gospel cannot advance without the Word spreading as there is no object for faith but you cannot create a whole doctrine of tying regeneration to preaching through the implication of a single verse that is not even speaking specifically to the issue of regeneration. Christ, in John 3:8, does not limit the agency of the Spirit in such a deterministic fashion.

Again,
You have confused regeneration (which has nothing to do with the gospel) and conversion (which has everything to do with the gospel). Gospel regeneration is heretical and held as doctrine by none other than the Arminian. Those that God regenerates, Gods preachers will preach to. John the Baptist was regenerated in the womb by Gods Spirit and later converted under sound preaching of the gospel.

__________________
Scott Bushey
Husband to Tina, father to Nicole, Danielle and Zoe
Member First Presbyterian Church of Margate PCA

Maybe...?! yea, right.

Definitely not before it gets peer-reviewed. Hey Don, would you read this... tell me what you think?

Heb 11 aside, I think its been demonstrated pretty clearly infant salvation is possible. We've shown that infants can have faith in the 2nd act and that the word of God is only the means of grace not grace itself. Numerous examples of infant regeneration have been given (Jeremiah, John the Baptist, Timothy). I think anyone above being cavil will recognize that infants can be regenerated.

__________________
*Peter Gray* Elkins Park RPCNA

"Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. " Mk 9:24
"The greatest thing we can desire, next to the glory of God, is our own salvation; and the sweetest thing we can desire is the assurance of our salvation. In this life we cannot get higher than to be assured of that which in the next life is to be enjoyed. All saints shall enjoy a heaven when they leave this earth; some saints enjoy a heaven while they are here on earth." Joseph Caryl

I don't take a wooden view. The point is not "hearing," but "word of Christ." I have stated many times that I think the gospel can be communicated in ways other than hearing. But it NEEDS to be communicated. Although theoretically possible that a baby in the womb could hear gospel prayer and preaching and be regenerated, I'm not sure if they could understand English well enough. My hang-up is not that they can't comprehend the gospel, but that they can't understand the spoken language. If we could speak baby talk, then maybe we could communicate the gospel to them.

You hit the nail on the head when you said "without the Word ... there is no object of faith." Some of you, like Scott Bushey, while holding infant regeneration, agrees that faith needs the preached gospel, holding to a potentially long period of time in between regeneration and saving faith. I am not addressing that view now. The problem is that I'm trying to discuss this with several of you at once, and not all of you hold identical views.

Not all of you agree with Scott. Bruce, for example, still holds that baby Moses had faith (apart from the preached gospel, I'm assuming). So that particular critique is leveled against those who hold infant faith without the gospel (i.e., not you, Scott or Rich). I want to address that view first, and I think Romans 10:17 is appropriate to that topic.

I am curious, though, where you came up with that interpretation. Did you hear it in a sermon? Did you learn it at seminary? From a bible study? Something you found on the web? Or did you come up with it pretty much by yourself?

Previously, with respect to point # 3 which was:
You wrote that you reject point 3, now you are affirming it as I suspected.

I think you missed my point wrt to Moses. All I acknowledged is that the passage in Hebrews in dispute might have spoken of the parents' faith in one portion but you never addressed my second observation. They hid him because he was "beautiful" or extraordinary - the infant Moses. It is impious indeed for someone to presume that God is commending the parents' faith because Moses was a particularly cute baby - almost as impious as saying that John the Baptist's leaping in the womb was like that of Charsmatics' leaping.

Also, although when I wrote about faith having content I was speaking of the spread of the Gospel. Faith and regeneration are two separate things as well. Infants, for instance, are born in Adam and are sinful by nature - that is they just lack opportunity to sin. In the same way, as Rev. Winzer pointed out, a regenerate infant may lack mental capacity to respond in a mature way in faith but it does not mean that God's Spirit cannot have given a heart disposition to the child that is receptive to the Gospel.

You keep conflating receiving and resting on the Gospel with regeneration.

Let me clarify. I neither reject nor affirm ALL of it. If I reject a part of it, it is accurate to say I reject point 3 as stated.

In particular, in #3 I object to "certain age" (I don't believe in an age of accountability) and that they need to be old enough to "make sense" of it. The only part of #3 I affirm is that they need to "receive it." I think infants can make sense of the gospel IF they receive it.

Ha! You must be an engineer. Only engineers would use "wrt" to mean "with respect to." And I must be an engineer for understanding that without losing a beat.

Many of the commentaries cited above address the "beautiful" aspect. I am mildly insulted that you are calling me impious for my view on Hebrews 11:23, even though I made no comments whatsoever about Moses's cuteness. But I will bear that insult gladly, since you are accusing John Calvin, John Owen, and every other commentator of Hebrews as being impious as well.

The substance of # 3 is not about age but capacity which you affirm. Regeneration is dependent upon the intellectual capacity of the receiver according your view.
Certainly very theatrical aren't you? Read more carefully what I said. You have said nothing about what that portion of the passage represents but to ascribe cuteness to it would be impious. What do you believe the parents saw in Moses that was beautiful since you exclude his regeneration but other commentators, and most especially Calvin, do NOT.

Don,
Bruce, Rich and I all agree that infants can be regenerated prior to hearing the gospel. What faith we refer to are seeds of faith. See Calvin.

This article really is pastoral and not doctrinal (IMO). I have difficulty with it.

As do I

__________________
Richard
CofE
UK

elnwood,

I haven't read all of the responses, but I'm sure this has already been addressed by one of the many scholars already..

in reading the Directory of Worship for Infant Baptisms 56:5

The Covenant Promises...

In that these promises are true and right, does it matter if the children are born living, or still born? God made a promise to those in Covenant with Him, and He is not one to break His promises.

So would it not be right to take God's promise and beleive it to be true where infants are concerned if they die before a certain age? God promised they are in the covenant, sotherefore they are in the convenant.

__________________
Bobbi Clark
Covenant Member
Pinewood Pres. (PCA) Middleburg

When I kept Silent, My bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. Psalm 32:3

The children of believers are not de facto in the covenant only the elect ones so I would have to say no.