A question on "household."

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Andrew,

If you followed my arguments on previous pages you'd note that your points aren't sufficient to say that there were no infants/children there. I showed that many times (a) things are predicated of an "entire household" but could not be "technically" true of the infants there. One more example: The "entire congregation" is told to "slaughter the paschal lamb," yet I don't think you'd say there were no infants in all of Israel sincenew borns can't slaghter animals! (b) I also showed, via Titus 1:10-11, that virtually the same thing is going on, but in an opposite direction, in houses where you allowed infants to be. I argued that this allowing of infants to be there on your part consisuted an internal inconsistency between that passage and how you view Acts 16. (c)I furthermore argued that, given your rigidity here, then a baptist could never say, "But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." You cannot predicate "serving the Lord" of an "entire household" if there are infants or otherwise young children there. But, we know that the Bible does use this kind of language. It predicates things of infants/children that could not "technically" be predicated of them.

Hence, your argument (a) is insufficient to prove that there weren't children there, even if it were true that "the entire family rejoiced and only regenerate people can rejoice," (b) would, if aplied consistently, contradict what you allow for in Titus 1, and (c) would, if applied consistently, not allow men like Joshua to say what they did say about their family.

For these reasons your argument fails to undercut the paedobaptist position.


Brother Paul,

I don't think you understood how I let childeren be in that passage.

I explained that in the passage of acts 16, it was dealing ONLY with salvation. In Titus though, these men were "of the circumcision" dealing with the teachings of circumcision. If the adult is taught this, the apllication of this teaching is applied to the adult as well as the child. Does the child understand what circumcision is?(Remember, we are dealing with infants.) The teaching in Titus is not just thought, but application. For example, the Pharisees taught ceremonies. Were the ceremonies pure knowledge and not actually done? They taught the ceremonies, and then did them(Matt. 15:9). This goes back to the issue in Galatians where the men "of circumcision" taught justification not only by faith but also by circumcision.
 
the teaching of the Judaizers was that one needed to be circumcised to be *saved,* now how could this affect an infants salvation?

It's the converse of your acts passage. You have to reason the same way with both.


That's like asking the question, how could baptism open up grace for the infant? Yet, catholics do it anyways. Grace is before baptism not vice versa.
 
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This may be of help - many of the quesitons posed here in this thread were also posed by Malone. I just updated this today:

http://www.apuritansmind.com/BookReviews/MaloneFredBaptismDisciplesAlone.htm

The Rejection of the Baptism of Disciples Alone
By Dr. C. Matthew McMahon

His book is:
The Baptism of Disciples alone
by Fred Malone
Founders Press, Cape Coral, FL , 2003.
284 Pages, Hardback

Thank you brother.

I started to read it and this caught my eye:

"This paper is not an exegetical attempt at Paedo-Baptism. This paper simply serves as a huge question mark on the new book put out by Fred Malone on believer’s baptism."

Also, I glanced over it to see if he wrote about these two texts Paul and i are discussing; he infact did not.

I will read it when I have more time though. Thank you.
 
Well, I've made numerous points here. if you're not going to interact with them, then I'm not going to keep shooting one liners back and forth.


So have I brother. :)

Well, this is where I will have to disagree with you on your view and interpretation about the family. It was a good discussion though. This has pretty much been exhausted.

In Christ with love,
Andrew
 
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