1) Was God’s name upon Israelite females? As above, the rite was only applied to those who could image personally the Covenant body as a whole.

2) Baptism is explicitly connected to repentance and faith, and implicitly (typologically) connected to eldership.

3) Baptism is aligned with the sanctions, but also with the Day of Atonement. Eldership concerns wise judgment. Baptism is the sign for a more mature Covenant, the warrior bride. Were there baby Nazirites?

4) Isaac didn’t need a proxy. Yes, he WAS the proxy. Circumcision is about the Son under the knife of the Father. It is submission to death, helplessness, prostration, historical discontinuity. It is also familial, two thousand years of cutting into Adam in anticipation of the Bride.

5) God claims our children, certainly. But circumcision was not about God’s claim on Israel’s children, unless you discount the baby girls. It was about the Covenant mediators, the males, in anticipation of the seed of the Woman. It had nothing to do with parenting.

6) The FVs want paedocommunion. The TRs don’t. So stop baptizing babies and the problem goes away. The FVs say baptism is “efficacious.” The TRs don’t (obviously this is far more nuanced in reality.) Again, stop baptizing babies and the problem goes away.

7) Baptism makes knights, and communion is the round table (a place of celebration and government). They cannot be separated. One is an oath to the Body, and the other is the renewal of that oath. Discernment, judgment, is key.

8 ) One’s children shelter under the Covenant, the priesthood of all BELIEVERS. No point baptizing non-believing infants (paedofaith is not Christian faith, it is training for Christian faith).

9) Baptists might behave like Arminians, but in one respect, they are right. Baptism pictures the RESPONSE of the Bride to the self-sacrifice of the Bridegroom. Granted, God is sovereign. But the response is the response of a corpse suddenly brought back to life. Infant baptism is not a celebration of the response of the faithful. It is nothing like the baptisms in the Bible.

10) Baptists go wrong if they make it entirely autonomous. They need the good Covenant theology of Presbyterians, just without this misuse of it. Not sure what baptists are like in USA (although I do have quite a few ex-patriot American baptist friends) but I don’t think the problem is autonomy so much as a failure to teach the Bible. It looks to me like it’s not just the kids that are raised with no comprehension of Covenant. Neither are the adults!

While oaths are a part of the picture here, I would venture to say that it is God’s oath which takes precedence. He claims for himself our children saying, “These are mine. They are my warriors, my quivered arrows. By faith they will live; by apostasy they will die.” God’s claim on our children is primary. Does this not rule all other apps of this ideology? If baptism is a ritual that places God’s name on the subject, he then is the primary oath maker. Proxyism takes a back seat then. Abraham wasn’t Isaac’s proxy the foreskin was dying in his place. Circumcision was an ordination rite, not a salvific one. Abraham was saved back in Haran w/o circ’n. His circ’n was his ordination as priest. Ha! Look to whom I am preaching.

Listen to my sermon on Christ’s circumcision and let me know what you thynk.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2076795/JesusCutOffaTheologyOfCircumcision

2)I’m not sure I understand your “evil-kid-in-the-classroom” comment. How does its removal benefit? Isn’t that like closing your eyes to make the boogeyman go away?

3) Your paragraph on “bit-saints” I think proves the ordination aspect. Infants are ordained in their baptisms. You want an oath vow taken by volitional creatures? That’s the eucharist.

4) Dontcha know you’re not s’posed to mix your metaphors?

5) Per se, baptism has nothing to do with faith unless one is a pagan converting. If one is a pagan converting and is baptised for service, where does that leave one’s children? “Son, if you like what you see in the deal I got, then when you come around you can have it, too”? That’s the problem with baptistic baptism theology (imho): like Arminianism, it wants to retain autonomy which, ipso facto, is null and void when God comes a-callin’.

BTW, (although I didn’t agree with it) I really enjoyed the imagery you used above: “infant baptism is . . . the evil kid in the classroom” — I’ll remember that!

Blessings,
Doug

Thanks for that. I probably meant infants. The qualification is a circumcized heart (repentance) and faith.

The “little ones” texts do concern Christian parenting, but Jesus uses parenting as an illustration for discipleship. Just as we trusted our parents/teachers who led us to Christ, we are to trust Christ Himself. He says in Matthew that the children are under angelic guardians. When you took a millstone as surety, you took someone’s life “in pledge” (Deuteronomy 24:6). Perhaps that is what Jesus is referring to here. False teaching is robbing someone and forcing them into debt slavery. Will have to give that some more thought.

Revelation 18:21 Then a strong angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, “So will Babylon, the great city, be thrown down with violence, and will not be found any longer.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is not said to be for children, but those adults who humble themselves “as this child.”

Jesus told the women to weep not for Him but for their children, who were slain with the sword, or crushed in the collapsing Temple (6000 women and children in one go) or sold into slavery by Titus and carried “back to Egypt in ships.” Judaism was thrown into the Gentile sea like Pharaoh’s army.

You want infant baptism? There it is. They all “drowned,” with their teachers, the first century Jewish rulers. They didn’t make it out of Egypt.

Baptism is for mediators, priests, not those who are mediated to. It is for those who minister to others, and in the New Covenant body we are all given gifts for ministry. This quite obviously doesn’t include infants, unless you bring a tradition to the text and scratch around for support. If these “child” texts (here and in the Psalms) are the best there is, it’s looking bankrupt.

I read one article on paedobaptism (I think part of the book edited by my friend Gregg Strawbridge) that used “we are not commanded not to do it” as an argument. With that brilliant logic, perhaps we should be baptizing animals. After all, they were part of an Old Covenant household. We are not commanded not to do it.

If I’m hearing that correctly, that’s where I don’t grant the defining assumption that children aren’t/can’t be believers (Mt. 18, “these little ones who believe in me”).

I think the matrix stuff is waaaay cool, but it can’t negate what the text actually says about the little ones . . . who believe in Jesus.

I don’t /think/ that I’m misreading what you’re saying about children, but please correct me if I’m wrong.

Best wishes in Christ, with thanksgiving for your faithfulness to Him! Keep it up!
Doug

It is hard for thee to kick against the goads . . . thanks for the comments.

Doug