Ritualizing bloodlines. Well put.

I’m thinking…what motivated pedobaptism in the first place? Abstractly thinking even circumcision is at the root of contractarian thinking. It is not DNA but an intentional act of adoption which grafts one into the covenant people. But the fact that candidates for circumcision are overwhelmingly likely to be offspring of “the people” means that the covenant defaults to ethnicity. On the other hand this doesn’t happen in the case of the original baptism. But once one substitues pedobaptism one is back to ritualizing bloodlines.

And this may also be the root of predestinarian thinking. Which may mean that there is a plausible justification for it (i.e. pedobaptism). It all just depends on the vector of cause/effect is construed.

And appropos of nothing else…I’m not so sure I am happy about the way that the concept of efficient causality was adopted by the Renaissance (Galileo) and likewise the Magisterial Reformation. It seems to me that with the advent of Quantum theory we are back to a universe in which entities are largely determined, but determined internally by their own organic goals. Of course God is still soverign, but soverign the way the USA is sovereign rather than the way the USSR was soveregin. The delegation of autonomy and free will would seem to be a sign of strength rather than weakness.

You might have to explain that a bit more for this Australian. You are saying that paedobaptism keeps out the blacks? Yet that credobaptist churches had their own means of maintaining segregated churches?
Things are most certainly more complicated than the baptism issue. And I’m happy to hear more, but those other issues might be separate issues – that means paedobaptists and credobaptists grabbed whatever was on hand to maintain the status quo… Although I agree that paedobaptism by its very nature becomes a racial segregation – a ghetto. Have written on this elsewhere here.

Blessings,
The Not So Discerning Student

And if, as Pastor Wilson writes, an apostate child is also a fulfilment of the promise, why do it at all? Especially since “Covenant children” were not “signed” as individuals under the Old Covenant anyway. My point has been to show that, not only is there no support for PB in the NT (as Doug admits in his 1000 generations book), but the only support available in the Old Testament comes from reading your doctrines into it and screwing up its typology.

Paul says there was no benefit in the circumcision, except exposure to the truth. Turning baptism into bap-cision makes it as meaningless as circumcision now that the wall is gone.

So, sprinkled people, your are in the Head. Time to get the New Covenant gear on your Body and make a public vow.

Not rude at all, though I can cope with rude anyhow. Just taught two Bible classes with some fairly rude students.

I’l do my best here:

1 – “Infants and small children of believers or unbelievers are unable to meet the qualifications you stipulated: confessing and vow-making. Thus they are excluded from the covenant not because of sin but because of the way they were created by God.”

We are a condemned species. Being within the Covenant “territory” (i.e. a circumcised people) brings not life but the promise of life. Adam’s children were condemned to die physically by Adam’s sin (and in fact, would not have existed at all had God not substituted animals to carry the curse).

My earlier point was that the entire world is now included in the Covenant, which is why the entire world is hearing the Gospel of Christ. Nobody is left out.

But your assumption seems to be that “Covenant” infants are somehow promised salvation. That is nowhere to be found in the New Testament, and one has to read it into the Old Testament. In many cases, Old Covenant membership brought death, children included. And my point above was that Covenant membership of individuals was not dependent upon each child receiving the “Covenant sign” as an individual. Circumcision set Israel apart (cause) and the robe symbolized the result (effect). Now the entire world is under the Covenant cause. Nobody is excluded from the New Covenant. Baptism did not replace circumcision. If anything, it replaced the “robe of righteousness” — signifying a circumcised heart.

An important point here is that the NC sacraments signify the “effect” not the cause. To confer them “genealogically” actually disempowers them. Baptism is supposed to be a public witness to a faith that unites every tribe, people and nation — not set up a new one, which is what any genealogical sign does. Baptism is supposed to do the exact opposite of what circumcision did.

2 – Once they get old enough to confess and make a vow then they are welcomed in but not until that time.

Again, paedobaptism confuses cause and effect. All are welcome to hear the gospel. That is the cause. If they believe, they become representatives of the gospel. PBs seem to have a problem with the difference between the speakers and the audience.

3 – It seems as if you make it impossible for infants and small children to be a part of the new covenant and humanity in Christ.

No, your definition of “Covenant inclusion” is skewed. The Gospel is for all people. All are welcome to come in and hear and worship. But just as the Gentiles look on and learned from “generational” Circumcision and Passover (but were excluded), so those who are not regenerate look on and learn from Baptism and Communion (“regenerational”).

Hope that helps.

Is there an unholy union between one’s station in life (being a priest to the world, or a baptized warrior for the kingdom) and one’s ultimate destiny (where you spend infinity after death) in Christian theology? Are we conflating the current covenant mission we’re in, the New Covenant, with things beyond it which no one really knows, that is, where people’s final destination is? Therefore, since there is this outside pressure from preaching about the afterlife, the current covenant gets crunched by that pressure so that baptism and circumcision are forced together?

Perhaps I’m wrong in simply calling being a baptized Christian a station in life. I understand it’s a new birth. But it seems to me that all the emphasis on Hell and what is at stake (eternal fire) eclipses the covenant process and puts everyone in panic mode, and so we come up with things like bap-cision. Perhaps if we just took it one mission at a time, this New Covenant is about this world, not the next, and leave the next level’s worries to itself, we’d be better off.

Concluding brash, sweeping, perhaps uninformed hypothesis: Give up our unwavering allegiance to the doctrine of hell and the anxiety over those who have not heard the gospel (infants in particular) and focus on the current mission of turning this world into the kingdom of heaven and the pressure on the covenant structure will be relieved and circumcision and baptism and find their proper places in the restoration process.

I am not trying to be rude, but I don’t see an answer to my question.

Infants and small children of believers or unbelievers are unable to meet the qualifications you stipulated: confessing and vow-making. Thus they are excluded from the covenant not because of sin but because of the way they were created by God.

Once they get old enough to confess and make a vow then they are welcomed in but not until that time.

It seems as if you make it impossible for infants and small children to be a part of the new covenant and humanity in Christ.