Peairtach
Puritan Board Doctor
The evidence of pre-natal conversion seems to be special and extraordinary
God can do as many pre-natal conversions as He wishes, if He wished to increase their number. I don't think this is the issue between RBs and Presbyterians.
However this is not God's exclusive plan because unbelievers are called to faith outside of believing families all the time. So, whereas the RB understands God to work through believing families ("covenant families"), the RB understands that the real power is in the Gospel itself, which is freely offered to all.
We agree that people are converted from non-believing families. But Presbyterians believe that those brought up in believing families, whether they believe or not, have a Covenantal relationship with God from birth, just as children that were engrafted into the the Covenant along with their parents had in the Abrahamic period (Covenant of Promise) and in the Old Covenant period (which Old Covenant along with the New Covenant is a phase of the Abrahamic Covenant).
Of course the power to save is in God. The Q is are there any peculiar promises regarding the children in a believer's family different from the case of an unbeliever's family. To be consistent the RB would have to deny this.
No RB who knows his theology would ever say that an unbeliever could be in covenant with God. The Old Covenant contained specific promises to a specific ethnic and religious group. It was not dependent on saving faith. The New Covenant is only made with those who believe. Are there false professors who are numbered among the ranks of the New Covenant? Yes. But that is due more to our not being able to distinguish their fraudulent profession than it is to their actually being a member of the New Covenant.
What promises of the Old Covenant are you referring to?
Your first two sentences are contradictory. You should have said, "No RB who knows his theology would ever say that an unbeliever [in the New Covenant period] could be in Covenant with God".
In the Old Covenant you surely ackniowledge, as you seem to here, that lots of unbelievers, and non-elect people were in covenant with God. How is this possible? The Covenant has inner and outer aspects like the sacraments which signify and seal the invisible benefits of the Covenant.
Abraham was in one sense in covenant with God before he was circumcised, and was on his way to Heaven. In another sense he did not enter into covenant with God until he was circumcised.
In one sense a married couple are in covenant when their hearts knit in love; in another sense they are not in covenant until they say, I do.
I'll get back with a list of some of the promises respecting children.