How does a Paedobaptist relate the teaching of John 1:12-13 to infant baptism?

[PuritanCovenanter]

Again, you're missing the point. No, the child can't keep the Law perfectly and that's the point. Yet, when you're training them to obey you, there is an implicit or explicit motivation that is instilled into the child every time discipline occurs. We are given explicit instructions by God to train "in the Lord".

So now the discipline moment arrives for the 4 year old that must be assumed to be unregenerate by the Baptist for lack of a credible profession. Hence, the child is to be presumed to only be at enmity with God and to suppress knowledge of Him in unrighteousness. The child must be presumed to be an enemy with God and everything that God commands, the child hates (the child is unregenerate after all).

The parent tells this child, whose heart is at enmity with God, to obey "in the Lord", but the child's relationship to the Lord is only wrath and judgment.

Thus, from the knee, if this is consistently carried out then the child learns that obedience is on the basis of minimizing wrath and judgment.

This is antithetical to Christian discipleship. If such program of discipline were carried out in ruthless consistency then the child would need to be re-trained to see the motivation to the Law as of a completely different species then what he grew up with up until the point that he made a credible profession.

Tell me Rich... What are you trying to mirror to a child. It looks like a false pretense to a child. Did not God deal out longsuffering towards the unregenerate also? He rains upon the just and unjust. God teaches he is gracious to all who seek him. Therefore I have taught my children to seek for mercy because they need it. Whether they do or not is up to other circumstances outside of me. While discipline or judgment is always to lead to the Saviour it is not always taken that way or given in that fashion. Sometimes a mere condemnation is just pronounced. Remember Jonah and Nineveh. That was God's doing.

Randy,

You keep mixing uses of the Law and don't realize you're doing it. I can guarantee this, if this was not a discussion about your children then you wouldn't keep sneaking in 3rd use concepts into the 2nd use.

We would never approach the Law to an unbeliever with the promise that God's mercy rains on the wicked and righteous. An unbeliever, apart from Christ, has only a relationship of wrath with respect to the Law.

Until you interact with this point then you have failed to interact with the main issue.

We're dealing with a Baptist understanding of children, if you want to understand how a Covenant understanding presumes a person within can respond then ask yourself why you assume your children can now obey God out of gratitude when you have no true knowledge of their regeneracy.

Your first statement is an assumption.

We would never approach the Law to an unbeliever with the promise that God's mercy rains on the wicked and righteous. An unbeliever, apart from Christ, has only a relationship of wrath with respect to the Law.

And I agree with you on this. So goes what I am saying concerning how we look at our children. But I also do see that God providentially does deal with the unregenerate in terms of mercy and graciousness or all of his days would be constant hell and torment on earth.

We're dealing with a Baptist understanding of children, if you want to understand how a Covenant understanding presumes a person within can respond then ask yourself why you assume your children can now obey God out of gratitude when you have no true knowledge of their regeneracy.

My children's response to gospel obedience has nothing to do with my assumpitons. It is totally in relation between their reconciliation to God. How can I assume you can now obey God out of gratitude when I have no knowledge of your regeneracy. From without I rely upon ones conversation as we are told to look at. The fruit, it is the converstion of fruit and experience. The reason I know some things about you and my children is because I have seen you and them both. I do have some knowledge based upon knowing and experiencing our relationships together. I may see through a glass darkly but it isn't total blindness. As I posted above..... Romans 10:9-11. How does the church disciple and discipline anyone? By examination and experience.

 

[timmopussycat]

You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout I'm telling you why... you better be good for goodness sake.

As I heard in a sermon recently, if we want our children to misunderstand, even from a toddler's perspective, that obedience is not commanded of them unless they have made a credible profession of faith in Christ, then we should teach them the moralistic mantra of the above.

It's easy to conclude, if you're a baptist, that Paul is not writing to anyone other than regenerate kids. But that is only because of the presupposition that they are strangers to the covenant of promise until such time as they are regenerate.

I don't buy the argument that Paul was necessarily addressing only regenerate kids. Even if he was his teaching of the hosehold codes has broader application as it fits the other situations I alluded to. For it is not impossible that he knew of situations where children had come to faith before the parents (one of the neatest evangelists in my congregation is the eight year old girl who was used of God to bring her Daddy to Christ!) and even on paedo premises, Paul must have encoutered cases of believing parents whose children gave signs of being currently unregenerate.

However, if they are strangers, then the only possible thing we can teach them is, "you better be good for goodness sake." This brings them up with what Baptists must call "works-righteousness." If the same thing happened in the OT, (which it did, because they were commanded to bring up their children to know the Lord) and Baptists call that works-righteousness, then the same must apply to children in the NT who cannot possibly be taught to know the Lord because they are not regenerate. After all, when one becomes regenerate, they no longer have to be taught to know the Lord, according to the J prophecy, strictly interpreted.

A little thought shows that this is simply not true. We do not teach our kids to be good for goodness' sake. We teach our kids that there is a God who made all things, including them and that by virtue of that fact God is Lord of all. We then teach them that biblical ethics not only to show what God is like and what He requires of His creation, but also to prove, by demonstration of our shortcomings, that because our first father sinned we all have within us a bent to do evil and that we constantly sin and therefore are vulnerable to God's judgment of sinners. Next we teach that God is perfectly holy and the perfectly holy response to sin is judgment and eternal damnation and that a even a perfect life less one sin (which none of us are good enough to have achieved) =damnation. But we also teach that God provided the Saviour to take the deserved punishment of those who have faith in Jesus (Rom 3:23) so that he need not punish them. Finally we teach them that Christ made an open call inviting anyone to come to Him (Matt. 11:28,29) and a promise that He would never cast out any who did so (John 6:37). So we encourage our kids to come to Jesus and, once they have done so, we then teach that Biblical ethics is now the way of pleasing our heavenly father and the way of blessing for us.

I'm sure that there will be great arguments that follow, but realize what the implications are. If these verses in Ephesians and Colossians are only for regenerate kids, then the rest of the kids may be as unruly as they want to be. That is the logical conclusion. Paul is telling all the regenerate kids to obey, but if it doesn't apply to you, then you have all rights to disobey. This is akin to telling them (unregenerate) they are part of a group called, "the sons of disobedience," following their father, the devil.

Or,

Paul is commanding the unregenerate kids that they should obey their parents because it is moral to do so. One day it might pay off, but only if they become good first, so that the Holy Spirit can make them really good.

Or,

Paul is talking to covenant kids. This seems the most logical because of the promise given in Ephesians. If Paul is talking to all children, but it is meant for the regenerate kids, then how are the unregenerate ones to understand the promise given in Ephesians 6:3? If they better be good for goodness sake and they actually are, won't they also receive a long life on earth? Or, did Paul somewhere else tell them that they can't obey properly unless they are regenerate and so give them permission to be rebellious until God finally catches up to them? None of us would say this.

But that is the logical conclusion. Paul is either talking to all kids, giving permission to the unrenerate ones to be as rebellious as they want to be, or he's talking to all kids as being in covenant and so liable to do their duty before God.

Please review my previous comment. You have overlooked a possibility. Paul is commanding the unregenerate kids who, he knows live in the context I have described above.

 

[timmopussycat]

That's a good point Kevin - one that probably would cause some chaffing but something that needs to be seriously considered.

There is a Biblical novelty to Tim's inistence that "...well this is probably because they're pagan kids..." or something like that as if Paul wrote in a Scriptural vaccum and the entire Scriptures (and historical-grammatico context) are completely irrelevant.

Ahem...Will you please read what I wrote and not what you think I wrote? I specifically stated (twice now no less!) that Paul's assertion of the duties of children applies to all classes of children, regenerate or not. So there is no novelty here whatsoever.

I don't think Baptists sometimes think through what they're arguing for when they try to make these injunctions just any other "law" that all kids and all parents must obey. Really, what they're saying, is that kids need to be told to obey the Law and pursue the Law - because they're not Christians after all and cannot be obeying on its third use. Thus, a child is taught that it is his religious duty to obey God, not on the basis of redemption, but on the basis that the keeping of the Law is an end to itself. When he is converted, is it then time to "undo" all the pedagogy that has preceded and explain what the Law is really for?

And I think, and your and Kevin's reaction to my post is one reason why, that paedo's often give credo arguments less than their full attention. You think you see a disasterous consequence and you proclaim it immediately, never wondering if perhaps, there might not be something within Baptist pedagogy that nulliifies the consequence.

As I said in my previous post to Kevin, we don't teach our children their relationship to the law in isolation apart from of teaching them the Christian faith and their relationship to it. Basically we simultaneously teach the law as a holy God's expected standard for his creation, and the proof of human sinfulness when we fall short and therefore face damnation and the necessities for both trusting Christ for salvation and keeping the law thereafter to please God and live blessedly.

This ought to scream out the broad inconsistency on this point and the absolute need to understand what the purpose of discipling kids is. If you raise a child to be a Pharisee then it is a bit late in his development to "shift trails" and re-train as a Christian once he's made a decision to be baptized.

Since we are not inconsistent, no retraining is necessary.

 

[PuritanCovenanter]

Bob,

Grace and peace unto you.

My experiences with Baptists have been positive having labored for 3 years in a congregation while a Presbyterian. I love them as brothers and sisters in the Lord.

I do want to say that I reject that I have made a caricature of any Baptist parent. I merely proceeded (as did Kevin) on the things that Reformed Baptists and Presbyterians should agree with: what does it mean to be unregenerate? What is the nature of the Law? What is the relation of the unregenerate under and to the Law?

If we were discussing these items in another thread and it didn't involve children of believers then we would answer the Arminian objector the same way. The categories of law would be clean and there would be no confusion. When the subject of how a father is to train a child in the fear of the Lord in light of the insistence that the child is unregenerate then we need to consider how we would address the issue of the unregenerate man before the Law apart from any reference to how we're actually treating our own kids. If we're treating their capacities of the nature of the Law differently for our kids, contra our confession, then the problem is either with our confession or our consistency in believing the confession.

I'm not trying to "score points" here by getting Baptists to interact on this but I'm pointing out what the pitfalls are if you insist that non-professors are unregenerate. If you treat them with the judgment of charity as if they are regenerate then you deny that insistence in practice while you uphold it in principle.

I answer that the principle itself is erroneous and this is why only a very few Baptists actually live out consistently an ideal that insists that they know their children are unregenerate and must treat them that way.

Simply getting Baptists to think about these things is not a straw man or a caricature. I neither misrepresented the nature of the Law nor the nature of unregenerate men. To extend these two ideas to the children of believers, who Baptists insist are unregenerate, is not a caricature, nor is it a slippery slope fallacy. It is merely interacting with categories that we all agree with until our kids faces are put on those categories and we realize that no Baptists that we know truly act like their kids are unregenerate.

Rich,

I did treat my children as unregenerate and warned them very lovingingly about the wrath that was to come. Did I pound it into their heads till it hurt. Of Course not. I am called to be longsuffering and pray that God would peradventure grant them repentance. And at the same time I told them to obey the Ten Words. I also do this with the unregenerate unbelieving adult. There are still benefits to the unregenerate if he does try to obey the Ten words. Marriages are better if the physical act of adultery is not committed. Men stay our of jail if they do not murder or steal. It is a good thing to be honest and you do have better relationships. There are still the benefits of not committing certain acts of evil. And society is better for it.

(1Pe 2:12) Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation.

2Pe 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

Personally I admonish everyone in the Lord. Whether they be regenerate or not. If they are on the outside I admonish them to obey the Lord. If they are in Christ I admonish them to obey the Lord. I admonish the unregenerate to call upon Him, obey Him, and seek Him. Life is easier for the unregenerate if he has some conviction of sin. And as you know many a man do apologize for bad language when they are in our presence because they do not want to be offensive in our relationships. And they know that God is watching. They may not understand it all but maybe God will grant them repentance.

I might be inconsistent in your eyes but that is ok. I try to let men know the issues as best as I can.

 

[timmopussycat]

Will a person not die for a good man? Perhaps. Jesus died for bad men. Our children must know that Christ died for the ungodly before the ungodly were even aware. He didn't die for them while they were becoming aware, or right before they were ready to settle on Him, or even after they'd already made their decision. I think you'd agree that telling our children that there is nothing they can do to make God want them to be His kids is what we should teach. But we should also teach that Jesus did embrace the children of those who followed Him. He did have a special relationship with them because of their parents. No, it wasn't saving. But it was promising.

The Scripture says nothing about whether Christ counted the children of those who followed him to be already regenerate or even elect. All we are told is that he let them come to him one day. We cannot read the idea that they had any more relationship than the blessings he gave them into that statment.
And there is one thing we can and should teach our kids to do: and that is to cry to God for his mercy and grace.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

And I think, and your and Kevin's reaction to my post is one reason why, that paedo's often give credo arguments less than their full attention. You think you see a disasterous consequence and you proclaim it immediately, never wondering if perhaps, there might not be something within Baptist pedagogy that nulliifies the consequence.

As I said in my previous post to Kevin, we don't teach our children their relationship to the law in isolation apart from of teaching them the Christian faith and their relationship to it. Basically we simultaneously teach the law as a holy God's expected standard for his creation, and the proof of human sinfulness when we fall short and therefore face damnation and the necessities for both trusting Christ for salvation and keeping the law thereafter to please God and live blessedly.

And you expect dead hearts to apprehend this pedagogy?

The issue is not whether or not I believe you have an answer but whether or not I think your answer does justice to what you claim in your insistence that those you are training must be treated as unregenerate and apart from Christ.

The main question is not whether or not they think you fall short and have someone to go to for your sins but whether or not you train them to recognize that they have someone to go to when they fall short.

Now, you can answer that they will if they believe - perhaps a sort of "...maybe someday I'll be able to go to Christ for my sin..." kind of thing.

In the meantime, however, there's a four year old child who you are convinced is unregenerate. On that basis, you cannot train them to repent of their sin or turn to Christ for the sin they committed today. I suppose you could but then you'd be denying your insistence that they are unregenerate until they've made a profession of faith.

Thus, from the knee, they cannot be trained to approach God in the manner that you will expect of them when they have more mature faculties. The very time of their lives when mimicry and memorization sets in habits in other areas, you deny them a habit of a posture of faith on the insistence that they are unregenerate and incapable of turning to Christ in repentance until a time when you can evaluate it and pronounce it legitimate.

 

[timmopussycat]

And I think, and your and Kevin's reaction to my post is one reason why, that paedo's often give credo arguments less than their full attention. You think you see a disasterous consequence and you proclaim it immediately, never wondering if perhaps, there might not be something within Baptist pedagogy that nulliifies the consequence.

As I said in my previous post to Kevin, we don't teach our children their relationship to the law in isolation apart from of teaching them the Christian faith and their relationship to it. Basically we simultaneously teach the law as a holy God's expected standard for his creation, and the proof of human sinfulness when we fall short and therefore face damnation and the necessities for both trusting Christ for salvation and keeping the law thereafter to please God and live blessedly.

And you expect dead hearts to apprehend this pedagogy?

Of course and so do you, as illustrated every time you expect dead hearts to apprehend the same pedagogy when you preach to unbelieving adults. In that situation you have no expectation that your words alone will do any good; you rely on the Holy Spirit to honour your attempt to glorify God by regenerating the individual. You don't give up if the initial response is imimical, instead you pray and try again. So what's wrong with us expecting the Holy Spirit to work every bit as much as you do?

The issue is not whether or not I believe you have an answer but whether or not I think your answer does justice to what you claim in your insistence that those you are training must be treated as unregenerate and apart from Christ.

Not quite. As I pointed out to Matthew originally, the existence of the household codes does not lead to a GNC consequence that the children so addressed must be believed to be within the covenant. Nobody has yet proven the contrary.

The main question is not whether or not they think you fall short and have someone to go to for your sins but whether or not you train them to recognize that they have someone to go to when they fall short.

Now, you can answer that they will if they believe - perhaps a sort of "...maybe someday I'll be able to go to Christ for my sin..." kind of thing.

And we train them that they may call on Christ for mercy at any time.

In the meantime, however, there's a four year old child who you are convinced is unregenerate. On that basis, you cannot train them to repent of their sin or turn to Christ for the sin they committed today. I suppose you could but then you'd be denying your insistence that they are unregenerate until they've made a profession of faith.

As Dr. Bob said: Quit with the straw men.
I can show an apparently unregenerate child the biblical testimony to the seriousness of the sin he committed five minutes ago, i.e. that he is under the judgment of a holy God and doomed unless God has mercy on him. I can also show him that Christ provided the one way for God to do that and that all God now requires is to trust Christ for forgiveness. I know my words alone won't have any effect, every bit as much as you also know your words alone won't have any effect on any sinner apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. But both of us freely testify to the evil of sin and the availability of the grace of God.

Thus, from the knee, they cannot be trained to approach God in the manner that you will expect of them when they have more mature faculties.

Baloney. Jonathan Edwards records in his "Faithful Narrative" the case of a three year old girl who could definetely understand biblical repentence. And there are others.

The very time of their lives when mimicry and memorization sets in habits in other areas, you deny them a habit of a posture of faith on the insistence that they are unregenerate and incapable of turning to Christ in repentance until a time when you can evaluate it and pronounce it legitimate.

Again, you are presuming a consequence that does not follow. I never deny the capacity for a posture of faith. I just ask to see it.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Where is that thread where the author recommends stating "This is a straw man..." as a response to a query in a discussion....

I'll simply leave this as saying that we're talking past each other. You don't understand the point I'm making and I'll chalk it up to lacking the language necessary to make the point. For those that can understand the point that has been made I'll let what I've written speak for itself at this point.

Your example of discipline is inadequate on a few points that are apparent to a person who has to do more than simply call a child to repentance but we don't want any more straw men erected that may cause exclamations of the Baloney expletive.

 

[MW]

As I stated in an earlier post, I personally feel constrated to see Paul's words as directed to minors who were members of the church. Grammatically, Ephesians 6:1-3 is tied to Ephesians 5:21, which in turn is tied to Ephesians 5:18 ("Be filled with the Spirit"). Study the grammatical connections and look at the commentaries.

So you would have us believe that the apostle was telling fathers to only bring up their children who were church members (i.e., who had made a profession of faith) in the Lord?

Also, I am not sure why you think the statement, "be filled with the Spirit" cannot apply to infants.