I've notice of late, alot of 'discussions' about baptism. Especially between the credo/paedo camps. I'm just throwing out a question of how come this has become such a hot topic, and why does it get discussed so much. I had to wrestle with it, and no new information is presented by anybody, yet each person brings up their side like nobody's heard there arguments before. And yet I know that's not the case. I know everybody's heard what I have to say about it before. And nobody ever tell me 'WOW Grymir, I've never heard that before, you convinced me' And yet it seems to be occupying a bigger percentage of the threads than usual, or am I just an idiot and it's always been like this.

__________________
Timothy Johnson
First United Presbyterian of Moline
PCUSA (Yea, I know)
Theology/Philosophy Sunday School Teacher
Davenport, IA

I'm sure it's my fault for posting the "Why I'm now a baptist" thread. The baptism debates tend to come and go around here. It will be a hot topic for a while and then will sort of die down. Then the EP debates will pick up, or KJV, theonomy or whatever.

__________________
Chris
Member at Grace Community Baptist Church, Mandeville, LA

Beware of a religion without holdfasts. But if I get a grip upon a doctrine they call me a bigot. Let them do so. Bigotry is a hateful thing, and yet that which is now abused as bigotry is a great virtue, and greatly needed in these frivolous times. I have been inclined lately to start a new denomination, and call it "the Church of the Bigoted." Spurgeon

Thanks, Chris. I was just about to blame you but you saved me the trouble.

__________________
Bill Brown
Elder
Grace Baptist Church
Anne Arundel County, Maryland

Click to get: Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions?
Visit my BLOG Theology for the Rest of Us

Timothy, actually we're just catching up for lost time. We have a quota of baptism posts that we have been negligent in maintaining. We're working hard to get ahead of the game. If you could post a few lines in the active baptism threads you'll help us out a great deal.

O.k. So these subjects just come and go? With different ones making the topic of the week? I'll go do my duty. I'll try. Hmmm maybe I'll start alot of threads about the KJV superiority to the modern versions. Or maybe how credo's/paedo's make better lovers or somthing like that?

Hi Pilgrim! I did follow that thread, but I found it hard to believe that one person switching sides could cause so much 'discussions' Hmm I wonder if people have their view locked up and well researched, or just that people haven't done alot of study about it? Or maybe it's something else altogether. I was a psychology major for awhile, but I still can be dense when it comes to people.

There's a lot I've read here that I've never heard before. As a new believer, I was taught that credo is right and everything else is a works-based salvation. After listening to the episodes on Renewing Your Mind about the cases for and against infant baptism, I realized that there was more to it than I was previously told. I ask questions here to help immerse myself in discussion with other respectable, thoughtful, and informed paedobaptists. Even if I do end up credo, I want it to be because I truly believe it's what God has revealed, and I want to do it as informed as I possibly can be.

If you take a look at the recent questions being asked, a good chunk of them are from people looking to understand the other's point of view in such a way that is typically inaccessible in books. I mean, even as someone who has only know the credo way of life, rebaptism, infant dedications, and children's church are all very strange to me, and I don't agree with their presence in the local body. They are definitely worth asking about.

__________________
Dan Pemberton
Vacaville, CA

Member, First Baptist Church San Luis Obispo
Formerly ABUSA (We left, so I guess that makes us American Baptists Unleashed!)

Baptism discussions come in waves but it's always the hottest of topics when they really heat up. I'm sometimes relieved when they sort of tail off but also miss them a bit when it's been a while because I do like talking about the nature of the CoG with families because it is integral to my relationship with God.

I think it's a bit silly to ask if we should just stop because people's minds are made up when the hottest threads are usually those where a person has been convinced by arguments to switch positions. Biblical Truth and Error are at stake and it is never something we just put our swords down and declare: "Ah well, their mind is made up to believe error...."

__________________
Rich
Northern VA
PCA

WebsiteMaven - Web Hosting Reviews, Guides, and Advice to build and promote your web site.
SoliDeoGloria.com - A Community for Reformed Thought and Discussion

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

A lot of the discussions have surrounded the consequenses of either the credo or paedo position and it is these consequences that are often not immediatly obvious.

I also believe that it is the Reformed attachment to systematic theology (which I believe is its great strength) that necessitates thinking these points through to all its theological consequenses.

Neither the credo or paedo position can be considered in isolation from the total theological impact of that position, it is not merely a case of looking at a few words in one passage.

__________________
Mike
London City Presbyterian Church
London
England

"Surely, we wish to be orthodox, but we must first learn what real orthodoxy is. Surely, we wish to be progressive, but we must first have a basis to progress from."

Timothy

Just an FYI

I tried fighting these things for a solid year here to no avail. It's no secrete that I can't stand the baptist debates and have seen them lead to honest anger and grudges amongst brothers and sisters here in the past (though I'll admit it's been a while since it's been that bad).

I'll go so far as to saying that one side comes off (to me) so stubbornly that it has turned me off of their position but I pray earnestly it not keep me from it if it is the truth. For the past two years I've been reading and discussing with my pastor is issue of baptism and yet still struggle. You would think I would flock to the baptism threads but I instead avoid them because more often than not I'll use my rarely used moderating powers in them and make someone angry. I honestly feel neutral and able to do that more than just about anyone here, but I'll never do it again.

If you don't like them I strongly advise you stay away from them. Maybe you're not bothered by them and if so, carry on. I just wanted to say that as someone who does not enjoy them it is my advice to anyone that feels the same to avoid them with all of your might because it will negatively effect your time here and your feelings, etc. regarding certain people you might feel come off too strong, proud, certain of their position, etc.

You can send me a private message if you would like to discuss it further. If not, God bless!

__________________
Adam Leavelle
Westminster OPC
Roaring Spring Pa.

http://www.myspace.com/aleavelle
"Speak wisdom to a fool and he'll think you have no sense at all"

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

Usually, once or twice a year someone new will come in and ask (the same old) questions.

This isn't a bad thing at all, and I don't mean to make it sound bad.

Even if they know how to use the search function (and it seems to not be able to find much), inevitably the way someone else asked the same question is not the way this new person is asking it. And so we go around, saying the same things we did before, in new ways.

Research project for doctoral dissertation: study the years of PB baptism threads, and classify all the arguments for both sides. See which of the three (two? four?) basic arguments on both sides gets the most mentions. That might tell you what most people *think* is their most persuasive argument.

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


When posting friends, kindly bear those words of earthly wisdom in mind:
Oh, that God the gift would give us
To see ourselves as others see us.
--Robert Burns, 1786 (modernized) ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ Click to get: Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions? --

Given the amount of information there, that's actually not a bad idea. I probably have an intuitive sense, at this point, what those would be.

Or we can just send all new PB'ers a leather bound "All the Best of" baptism threads.

Heh, now you stole my thunder. I started something like this about two months ago. I doubt it would be a dissertation though--that would cost too much.

__________________
R.Vic Bottomly
Providence Reformed Baptist Church, Tacoma, WA

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

"Hi. My name is pastor Bawb."
"And I'm pastor Wabbit."
"You probably know us from the PB Argument Forum"
"No, Bawb, that's the PB Baptism forum."
"Right, where we never can seem to get along. Why can't we all get along?"
"Well anyway, we're here today to tell you about something we can agree about--the Puritan Express Card."
"Sure. From the Right, or the Left, we know that leaving your home page without this is like throwing the baby out with the baptismal water. Big, big mistake."
"Straight shooting there, Elmer--er, Bawb."

The Puritan Express Card. NJB Financial. SIPC, FDIC, LBC
Use your freewill, and ask for an application today.

Tim,

I suspect that most of what you heard already by my esteemed elders in the PB are spot on. Here are a few more nuances . . .

* To get into the PB you have to be willing to subscribe to a limited number of confessions, the chief points of which are not in much dispute between them. Baptism, however, is one of those points. So, it will naturally become a flash point for discussion since it is one of the only major points of divide separating us (other than your irrational addiction to Barth ).

* Some of us take our theology very seriously (and more than a few of us take ourselves too seriously). We want to be right and cannot understand (let alone abide) the fact that otherwise intelligent people would disagree with us. This generates considerable heat.

* There are a steady stream of newbies coming through PB. So lots of topics recycle for reasons of natural interest. Have you ever wondered why Andrew posts so many YouTube songs? After 20,000 posts I bet he has heard it all with all the choruses of the baptism lament many times over.

* A few of us actually come here to test ourselves and explore new avenues. Being a ex-mainline Baptist in remission, my disgust for the mainline is real, deep, and terribly existential. My broadly evangelical theology (as it was practiced in the mainline anyway) did not hold up well against the juggernaut of pervasive liberalism (they won, we lost).

For several years I have been positing that Carl F.H. Henry's experiment in neo-evangelicalism was a flawed enterprise and now a manifestly failed one. It lacked the internal strength to withstand the combination of liberalism in the academy and doctrinal idiosyncracy and just plain kookiness in the congregations. Consider the evangelical embrace of egalitarianism for reasons of cultural pressure (with homosexual ordination close behind, believe it or not!), denials of inerrancy for reasons of academic respectibility, and tolerance of the emergent church, the Joel Osteens, and Willowcreek-ization of evangelical Christianity for reasons of doctrinal drift.

For me, PB is a place where I can reconsider views accepted uncritically in childhood and never put under the microscope of scrutiny in any of my umpteen years of college/grad school. Eschatology, vestiges of dispensational assumptions in other areas of theology (no, I didn't say I was a dispensationalist), polity, and baptism are the issues on the floor for me. Any threads on those topics will draw my interest like a moth to the flame.

During the years of extracation from the mainline, it was my conclusion that my Calvinism was too weak as a broad evangelical and incomplete without confessionalism. Now, my purpose is to determine where in the confessional "Where's Waldo" of church life I fit. Or, more theologically . . . what is the Lord really teaching in his word and have I been missing something all of these years by way of obedience to his written revelation?

So brother, please pardon my preoccupations. They come honestly enough out of the frustrations of five deades in the mainline, the willy nilly latitudinarianism of broad evangelicalism, and genuine concerns for the direction the American church is going.

Besides, what is it with you and the KJV and you and Barth?

__________________
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?

Exactly!

__________________
Andrew Myers
Husband of Jessica, Father of Jackson, Katie and Samuel
Member, Presbyterian Reformed Church of Northern Virginia
Warrenton, VA USA
Editor, The Matthew Poole Project

"Let your Morning Thoughts, and your last Evening Thoughts, be what shall become of you to all Eternity." -- Matthew Poole

Andrew, I'm sure you used to be a bastion of theological thought on the PB. Is this what we all one day devolve to? You and your You-Tube vids. Me? I'll probably be off in the corner playing with my Tonka trucks. Dennis? He'll probably outlast us all and go on to fame and fortune and turn the PB into a huge revenue producing monster.

Stay tuned for another post of mine on another thread. One can only re-hash the same things so many times. But carry on, my friends. Truth is always worth fighting for. Just remember (this is directed at myself and learned from sad experience):

"Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than the arguments of its opposers." -- Rainer Maria Rilke

Psalm 122
6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.
7 Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces.
8 For my brethren and companions' sakes, I will now say, Peace be within thee.
9 Because of the house of the LORD our God I will seek thy good.