Reformed theology is the best school in which to learn about covenant theology, yet it is also the worst place to learn about New Covenant theology. Why is this so?

Reading a to-and-fro between a baptist and a paedobaptist recently, it struck me that despite the fine manners and scholarly diligence on display in the responses of both gentlemen, neither of them really had a grip on what they were dealing with.

The prime example was the way in which each relied on the Abrahamic Covenant to support his case. The paedobaptist accused the baptist of spiritualising this covenant, while the baptist accused the paedobaptist of “carnalizing” it. Both of them were cherrypicking in order to support their take on God’s covenants in general.

Now, theologians love to generalise in order to avoid doing the grubby work of dealing with specifics, and one ubiquitous theological meme, dripping with clever evasiveness, is the statement that there is both continuity and discontinuity between each covenant, or each stage of the overall covenant of God with men. Apparently there is some entirely arbitrary “spectrum” of relevance in each covenant, and we are supposed to isolate the elements which are common to all covenants to discover what a covenant is. Then we can figure out whether “covenant membership” is based on faith, or heredity, or tribe, or all of the above.

“…both sides get an F when
it comes to covenant theology.”

On the “baptistic” side, things tend to slide into a realm where the physical rites, baptism and communion and even corporate worship, are considered to be less important than “my personal relationship with Jesus.” The New Covenant sign is “faith,” but since true faith expresses itself in willingness to submit to discipleship under Christ’s representatives, in examination of heart, in a desire to be with other saints, in prayer and good works and in legal testimony before the Church and the world, this error is easy to deal with.

On the “paedobaptistic” side, the focus on the rites, the “covenant signs,” leads to:

a) an illogical splitting of the sacraments in the withholding of communion until a baptised child comes of age;

b) united paedosacraments which merely serve as a legalistic “claim” upon the baptizand until they are truly born again; or

c) united paedosacraments which somehow regenerate the receiver without any requirement of actual repentance.

As I have written elsewhere, each of these three conclusions is an attempt to deal with the doctrinal fallout of the errant rite of paedobaptism in a slightly different way. The conflation of circumcision and baptism necessitates the redefinition, or scapegoating of something, somewhere. In order to preserve the tradition, the scapegoat chosen for sacrifice is either the necessity of personal conversion (and the redefinition of “faith”), or the global nature of the New Covenant, or the efficacy of the sacraments.

However, both sides, baptistic and paedobaptistic, get an F when it comes to covenant theology. The baptists are right when it comes to the necessity of hearing the Gospel and responding in faith as the defining characteristic of a Christian, but generally they have little idea of what a covenant with God actually is. “Covenant” is just a word to describe God’s “agreement” with Noah, Abraham and Moses. There is little understanding of a covenant as a process, with delegated authority, rules for success, desired results and accountability, and a use-by date. It is these “missional” elements which are the things common to every biblical covenant, yet somehow these are totally overlooked in the continuity/discontinuity debate.

“…the solution is an aspect
which both sides in this debate,
as far as I know, have either failed
to discern or failed to apply.”

The paedobaptists, generally speaking, at least understand what a biblical covenant is. The problem is that since they are stuck with their baptismal tradition, they pick the Abrahamic Covenant as their benchmark for covenants. This renders them enemies of many fundamental differences between the various covenants, which are simply the result of the fact that each covenant has a different mission. They are so keen on the maintenance of the notion of a “Covenant people” delineated by a sign that they force the covenants both before and after the Abrahamic Covenant into the Abrahamic mold. The rainbow is turned into a “sign” upon Noah and his family, when in fact it was a sign upon all creation, one which endures to this day. New Covenant baptism is turned into a “corporate” sign upon all members of a believing household, either conferring “covenant membership” (legalistic accountability) or “infusing” some level of faith without the hearing of the Gospel.

Paedobaptism is a mongrel of a doctrine, an ugly mix of conflicting designs and crossed purposes, which is why its meaning is impossible to define or agree upon even among those who practice it. But it gets worse. For some paedobaptists, the fact that there was no sign of “Covenant membership” upon females under the Abrahamic Covenant, as they believe there is under the New Covenant, means that they go looking for one. Some have suggested that the Levitical “purity rites” for Israelite women served as a sign of membership in some fashion. But although this is a rare assertion, it does demonstrate just how far off the track people will go when following an errant doctrine to its logical conclusion. Since every person within their imagined New Covenant boundary must be “stamped” by Jesus with their “hybridised” New Covenant baptism, this leads them to seek something similar under the Abrahamic Covenant when clearly there was no such thing. For a start, the Levitical rites can have no bearing on membership of the Abrahamic Covenant because they were not instituted until Moses, four centuries later. Females were under the Abrahamic Covenant without any personal sign. Even more inconveniently, there was no personal sign upon anyone whatsoever under the Noahic and Adamic Covenants. They have allowed the stipulations and purpose of the Abrahamic Covenant to distort their comprehension of the New Covenant, and then their perverted understanding of the New Covenant requires the distortion the Abrahamic Covenant. This is not “Covenant continuity” but enforced “equalisation,” the theological equivalent of gender neutrality. It is a wilful twisting of the Scripture to defend the indefensible, bordering on the brand of hermeneutical travesty committed by the Roman Catholic Church in defence of its own coercive and highly imaginative traditions. Yet regardless of how much they must sacrifice, doctrinally-speaking, and how many ludicrous notions they must consider to maintain this shibboleth, they consistently refuse to question their devotion to this age-old household god. I find this incomprehensible.

However, for two thousand years in God’s economy (not today), one was either a Jew or a Gentile, either in Abraham or not, so there clearly was some kind of “membership.” Is there a way that we can understand the history of the greater Covenant, taking into account each of its varied stages, including the ways in which each stage uniquely complements and contrasts with the others, that enables us to discern both what is continuous or discontinuous and why? Most certainly there is, and the solution is an aspect which both sides in this debate, as far as I know, have either failed to discern or failed to apply.

“In some sense, only a twist on
the Copernican revolution in
covenant theology can unite
the schizoid sacramentology
of the modern Church.”

When Covenant history is diagrammed by the experts on both sides, it is inevitably linear. This is understandable, since history itself is linear. But a journey from the boundary of our solar system to the heart of our sun is also linear, although the solar system itself is not. My assertion here is that the various covenants throughout history are not segments but spheres, not lines but layers. Passing from the orbit of Mars to the orbit of the Earth does not render the orbit of Mars redundant or non-existent.

Likewise, we must understand that the establishing of the Abrahamic Covenant did not nullify the Noahic. The Covenant with Noah was in full force in its original form at least until the end of the Abrahamic Covenant in AD70, for the Gentiles were still obliged to keep its basic stipulations. This fact was the basis for the judgment of James at the Jerusalem Council of the Church in Acts 15. There was no need to put believing Gentiles under the Law of Moses. Nor was there any need to circumcise them as members of the Abrahamic extended family, the dispersed tribal nation of Israel. Yet, (and what follows here we must understand if the disgusting fissures in our sacramental unity are to be closed and healed) these Gentiles were still “under Covenant,” just not the Abrahamic one. This is because the Abrahamic Covenant did not exist after the Noahic Covenant, nor even alongside it, but within it, just as the orbit of the Earth exists within the orbit of Mars. In some sense, only a twist on the Copernican revolution in covenant theology can unite the schizoid sacramentology of the modern Church.

Since Covenant history resembles the medieval concept of the celestial spheres,¹See also String Theory the “outer limits” consist of the reach of the covenant intended to be ratified in Adam. The word “covenant” is never used of Adam, and this is because he failed to qualify for kingdom. The word is not used until God spoke to Noah, the first man to qualify as a righteous judge, a man who could legally represent God on earth because he was found faithful in the eyes of heaven. However, the curse of death remained. This was because the Noahic Covenant was ratified within the Adamic one. All men were still in Adam.

“…the Mosaic Covenant
was ratified not in opposition to 
but within the Abrahamic one.”

When Noah’s offspring sinned in ways that can be corresponded to the offspring of Adam, another global deluge was on the horizon, covenantally-speaking: the destruction of all flesh. To keep the promises to Noah, God divided humanity in two in Abraham. However, the Noahic order of priest-kings, such as Melchizedek and Jethro and Job, still ministered among the Gentile nations as “sons of God,” which may explain the persistence of accounts similar to the early chapters of Genesis not only in the Ancient Near East but also in just about every culture around the world. Every human being was still a “member” of Adam, and a “member” of Noah, yet only those in Abraham’s household were members of this new genealogical-tribal covenant. Noah was not replaced. Like Adam, he was “divided” that he might later be conquered and glorified.

The main players in the Abrahamic line reversed, in many ways, the failures of Noah’s sons, but in Moses they were brought to maturity, both in size (as a nation) and accountability (in ministry). Israel was baptised into Moses and another covenant was established, and here we see centuries of wasted ink revealed for what they are as we understand that the Mosaic Covenant was ratified not in opposition to but within the Abrahamic one. Every Israelite was still in Adam, and still in Noah, and of course in Abraham, but not every Israelite was a member of the tribe of Levi. The Levitical order served within Israel as yet another layer, smaller and with even more concentrated standards of purity. Within the tribe of Levi, only males of a certain physical and moral standard were permitted to serve as priests, and even then under a roster of temporary vows, a division between the common and the uncommon in holy office. Then, of course, there was the High Priest, the focal point of this particular layer, but even here, since the Aaronic order was genealogical, God made a covenant within it, giving Phinehas the succession since he was found faithful.

This layered “geocentric” process can also be observed in the developments or refinements in the sacrificial praxes. Adam was to offer himself, but judgment for his failure was stemmed by God‘s mercy in the first substitutionary sacrifices. They were slain and offered whole but not burnt. The first burnt offering — or “ascension” — was presented by Noah, picturing his office as a mediator with authority from the heavenly court. Humans were now permitted to eat flesh, but not blood. In Abraham, picturing the division between Jew and Gentile, certain animals were chosen by God and cut in half by Abraham. Under the Levitical Law, animals were not only presented and cut to be offered by fire, but the various parts were allocated to different purposes, places and people. In a sense, the move towards the High Priesthood of Aaron was a cutting away at the flesh of Adam (or his substitutes) to get to the heart of the matter.

But of course, history did not stop there. The temple and priesthood were glorified under the inspired administration of King David, and here we observe yet another “eternal” covenant. Of course, you should by now understand that the Davidic Covenant existed within Adam, Noah, Abraham, and the Law of Moses (as expressed in the Psalms), being “under”, that is, accountable, to all of them, as they related to, operated within, mediated for and expounded upon each other. The holy center of this new, smaller, even purer, orbit, was not the hearing of the laws under priesthood but the incarnation of the law in true kingdom.

Following the failure of Israel’s kings, there was another division, and another covenant, this time with Jeroboam. His “orbit” was actually outside, larger than, the covenants with Levi and David, and his envy of their centrality was at the heart of his rebellion and idolatry. This envy was also at the heart of the rebellion of Korah, who apparently believed that every tribal leader in Israel should be a priest-king after the order of Melchizedek/Noah.

After the exile, a “new covenant” was established under Ezra and Nehemiah, Zechariah and Haggai, as predicted by Jeremiah.²See Jeremiah”s New Covenant. The priesthood would serve as keepers for the Davidic line, and now every Israelite, not just the priests, was required to prove his genealogical heritage. The latter prophets rail against the sins which led to the downfall of the previous kingdom, and this newly restored Israel, like the second generation in the wilderness, avoided the idolatries and adulteries of their forefathers. But the point here is that even this “new” covenant was ratified within all the previous ones.

Now we reach the center of this grand celestial construct, and it is of course the New Covenant in the blood of Christ, a covenant which was ratified within all the other covenants and yet fulfilled and succeeded them. In His baptism He was Noah, with the witness of the dove (Creation – Day 1). In His death, He was the circumcision of Abraham, cut off for the world (Division – Day 2). In His Ascension (Day 3), as the Lamb worthy to open the scroll, He was Moses on the mountain, receiving the Law of the Spirit. At Pentecost, He brought the kingdom of God, the law in the hearts of men (Testing – Day 4). In the testimony of the apostles, He was Israel scattered among the Gentiles, establishing New Covenant synagogues (Maturity – Day 5). In the destruction of Jerusalem, He was a new Israel freed from idolatry and adultery under “Babylon” (Conquest – Day 6). And with the covenantal knife finally reaching the heart of the matter, the construction of the Bride was complete, and it is in this light that we must understand the marriage feast of the Lamb in Revelation 19 as already fulfilled in history (Glorification – Day 7). All the old demarcations were eradicated, or more correctly, transformed.

Since our High Priest has entered into and recast the fiery center of the system, the entire Old Testament history is now a magnificent, seven-ringed “armillary sphere,” wheels within wheels, an apparatus of heavenly measurement which incorporates and employs in perfect harmony the specific authority of each of Jesus’ major Covenantal predecessors. It is now we who must follow Him from that center, from personal conversion into our families, tribes and nations to the outer limits, where the final enemy, death, will be destroyed, and the universe will be renewed. But all of these elements are already “in Christ” and thus already in our hands. In Emmanuel, God is with us, not only in our hearts, but to go up and possess our inheritance.

“All men, women and children
were always under covenant
with God in some form…”

The conclusion concerning “Covenant membership” and the concept of “Covenant children” in the binary sense as understood by many paedobaptists is that these were uniquely Abrahamic features and obligations, earthly stoicheia, carnal elements serving as stand ins for the heavenly parts of a much greater picture. Now it makes sense why God kept “moving the goal posts,” each level of promise and inheritance becoming redundant with the call to sacrifice it for something greater. Even Abraham understood that Canaan and his offspring were only object lessons for the possession of a heavenly country as tried, qualified and glorified sons of God, enthroned with Christ for rest and rule.

All men, women and children were always under covenant with God in some form, and the notion that baptism, especially paedobaptism, puts people “into the covenant” is absurd. Baptism is the foundation not for life, but for a life of service, of ministry, of accountability and discernment as a “son of God,” just as it was for the world under Noah, and for Israel under Moses.

All people, including all children, even the yet unborn (who cannot be paedobaptized if miscarried), have everything they could possibly have in the Gospel of Christ. The death of Jesus put them into this covenant, under obligation to the great High Priest and King of Kings, and also under His mercy. To limit His jurisdiction to some renovated or hybridised version of the Abrahamic demarcation is to grossly misunderstand Covenant history, defining the glorious New Covenant by one facet of its construction. Our “Covenant community” is not in here. It is out there.

This is why Reformed theology is the best school in which to learn about covenant theology, yet it is also the worst place to learn about New Covenant theology.

“The telos of baptism is not faith but resurrection.” Bull vs. Leithart again, this time a response to The Ambivalence of Baptismal Theology.

Modern individualism has resulted in a dislocated society, but ancient or medieval corporatism is not the solution to it. The Bible deals with people as individuals and as groups, so neither “ism” is a solution to the other. An understanding of the one and the many based on biblical theology reveals both “isms” to be unnecessary enemies. So then, what accounts for the fundamental difference in baptismal theologies? The answer is that history is chiastic. Circumcision was a corporate sign whose telos was the personal faith of each Jew, making him or her a “Jew indeed.” Baptism is the opposite. It begins with the believer as a “Jew indeed,” the individual with the circumcised heart, and gathers them into a prophetic body. The telos of circumcision was faith, conversion. The telos of baptism is not faith but resurrection.

This helps us to understand Peter Leithart’s recent lament concerning Presbyterians whose theology, despite the claims at the font, is functionally baptistic. He is right that they are being inconsistent and illogical, but they are, by godly instinct, being inconsistent and illogical with their defective theology. Presbyterians must sense at some level that the doctrine of paedofaith has no clothes.

Logic is fine if we start off with a correct definition of baptism. So, to deal with Leithart’s flawless logic, we must attack his flawed foundation. He writes:

In ancient Israel, the vast majority of those circumcised were circumcised as infants. If one were developing a theology of circumcision, it wouldn’t make sense to focus on the comparatively rare adolescent or adult circumcisions. What is normal in practice would naturally be the norm of theology.

Firstly,  as I have claimed before, paedobaptism requires a misunderstanding of both circumcision and baptism in order to create this double-minded hybrid which would better be termed as bap-cision. Pitting adolescent/adult circumcisions against that of infants reveals Leithart’s unwitting sleight of hand at the outset. In seeking for some kind of “norm” in the age of circumcision, Leithart ignores the very purpose of circumcision so that our baptismal debate can be wedged into it. The truth is that baptism has an entirely different purpose from circumcision.

I am sure that Leithart would respond that age was irrelevant when it came to circumcision, and he would be correct, but it does not follow that age is irrelevant when it comes to baptism. This is because circumcision was about physical generations, a separate family tree, and baptism is about an oath of allegiance which renders one’s heredity redundant.¹Jordan claims that paedobaptism renders heredity redundant, but if this is the case, why is one particular baby qualified and another disqualified for baptism? A sign that renders heredity/tribe redundant that is yet limited to or demarcated by heredity/tribe defies basic logic and reveals the level to which a paradigm can pervert our thinking. It is not only logic but plain common sense that has its throat slit at the almighty altar of the bap-cision font. The Abrahamic promises concerned the fruit of the land and the fruit of the womb. For the life of the world, Israel would bear two of the sanctions pronounced in Genesis 3 and reverse them by faith. The norm of circumcision had nothing to do with age simply because its qualifications related to one’s sex.

The Abrahamic miracle was the reversal of barren wombs, not some miraculous “paedofaith” possessed either from birth or circumcision. And, of course, the argument falls apart when the fact that females were not circumcised is factored in, revealing that the rite had nothing to do with personal faith but with a familial, then tribal, then national, identity.²Some have claimed that Levitical purification rites for females somehow served as Covenant markers, but the claim is ridiculous since these rites were introduced over four centuries after circumcision. Once again, paedobaptists come to the Bible with an agenda rather than allowing the Bible to dictate their agenda. Gentiles could certainly join or marry into Israel, but the foundation of the separation remained the setting apart of sacrificial flesh.

In the two-millennia history of the church, the vast majority of those baptized were baptized as infants. Yet, baptismal theology is often developed, even among paedobaptists, as if infant baptism were the exception rather than the rule. What is normal in practice should be the norm of theology.

Jordan and Leithart tell us that when it comes to the other sacrament, communion, theology defines practice. But Leithart has to consult historical practice to defend the supposed “norm” of paedobaptism. Baptists cannot make this claim, certainly, but they simply point to the New Testament Scriptures, the same place Jordan and Leithart rely on for the “norm” of the eucharist. Now, certainly, there is the possibility that once the first baptisms were carried out, the “norm” became generational, as it did with circumcision, and that adult baptisms were few and far between, like they are in paedobaptist churches. The problem with this claim is that we are given very different qualifications for baptism, and, as mentioned, they relate not to the sanctification of family, tribe, and nation but their subversion! The rite serves as a public profession of faith, in which the individual, the one, pledges allegiance to the only Israelite flesh which matters, He who was set apart as a sacrifice and “cut off” for all in the flesh, the true Isaac, the promised Seed. To be frank, it blows me away that paedobaptists claim that baptism is not circumcision and yet rely so consistently upon its practice as support for their mistaken tradition.

Yes, the vast majority of the church was bap-cised, but if we are still in the early days of Christianity, these are the foibles of the Church’s childhood. The fact is that Christendom has come to an end, having served its purpose, and a rite that is familial or civic in nature is now more clearly than ever revealed to be redundant. Worse, if the vast majority of the church was bap-cised, they were never truly baptised, which includes many Christians today. Dr Leithart has never been baptised, and many Christians in paedobaptist churches have never witnessed a real baptism. This might sound offensive, but it is the same kind of lament as Leithart’s, just based on a firm foundation — a more biblical theology. The forerunners of baptism were different from circumcision. They were the rites which spoke of a circumcision of heart,  the various Covenant vows and priestly investitures, including the robe with blue tassels worn by all adult Israelites to remind them of the laws of God. None of these had anything to do with infants, since they concerned qualification for ministry in various capacities.

Of course, Leithart does appeal to Scripture, but through the lens of his prejudice concerning bap-cision.

In some traditions, this appears in a disjunction between what the New Testament asserts about baptism and what is said about infants who are baptized. The New Testament says that those who have been baptized have died and been buried with Christ (Romans 6), that baptism saves (1 Peter 3), that baptism clothes the baptized with Christ (Galatians 3).

The texts that Leithart quotes have easy answers in the light the priesthood of Israel. It is the priests who served as living sacrifices. They were the ones whose bodies and clothes were washed, since they were mediators between God and men. Commoners were only sprinkled. The trickiest text is the apostle Peter’s claim that “baptism saves you,” but Leithart’s interpretation is an example of using a single obscure text to skew the meaning of many other clear texts. In context, Peter is simply telling Jewish Christians that baptism replaced all the requirements of the Levitical law under which they were previously bound by oath. They were delivered — “saved” — from the vengeance which would soon be visited upon Jerusalem and its superseded sacrificial system. And finally, Galatians 3 refers to priestly investiture, an idea which can be traced right back to Genesis 3, where Adam failed God and was clothed in death instead of a robe of righteousness. The curse upon his children was collateral damage, as it was for Israel in later history. Baptism is about the oath before heaven. Circumcision was about the sanctions on earth.

Yet, some paedobaptist churches, perhaps especially Reformed churches, refuse to apply the claims of these texts to the children baptized in a straightforward fashion. Even though infants are baptized, we cannot yet say that they have been united to Christ’s death, or clothed with Christ, or saved.

At other times, this ambivalence appears in systematizations of sacramental theology. On the one hand, one makes an argument for infant baptism; on the other hand, a baptismal theology is developed that assumes non-infant baptisms are the norm. If we take convert baptism as the norm, then the relation of faith and baptism will be described in one way. If we take infant baptism as our theological norm, the relation of faith and baptism will appear somewhat different.

I paint in broad strokes. That doesn’t mean my portrait doesn’t capture what it paints.

All this means is that the conflict between Scripture and practice is simply in a difference place for Leithart than it is for other paedobaptists. They are ambivalent about baptism, but Leithart is ambivalent about personal faith. Or perhaps ambivalence is not the correct word in either case. For Leithart, the rivalry between flesh and Spirit simply gets shifted to somewhere more noticeably out of step with the Gospel of Christ, which requires personal repentance and public allegiance. The choice is between a redundant baptism or a redundant Gospel. Leithart chooses the latter, a rite which “objectively” transforms the unwitting into “Christians,” many of whom, for some reason, later struggle to make their faith their own. The true “norm” eventually catches up with errant theology, which is why many Presbyterians minimise that errant theology in practice. At some level, they perceive that a rite concerning the flesh and a rite concerning the heart are mutually exclusive, yet their defiant tradition robs them of a rite that serves the purpose for which the Lord gave us baptism: unashamedly naming Jesus before men that we might not be ashamed before Him in heaven.

“In the days when our courts are declaring that good is evil and evil is good, the recovery of baptism as a delegation of divine legal authority rather than a sign of ‘limited Covenantal obligation’ is crucial.”

Every biblical Covenant is a word from heaven designed to bring a response from the earth. When the laws in the Ark of the testimony were given to Israel, the response of a legal oath was required, intended to culminate in the legal witness of Israel to the nations. Thus, every biblical Covenant is also a process which leads to maturity, beginning with cultivation and ending in representation.

A child must be schooled before he can be employed. A man must be a disciple before he can be an apostle. Adam was to be qualified before he could represent God as a just and merciful judge on earth. But the difference between cultivation and representation is the difference between circumcision and baptism, and this facet of the biblical Covenants is something paedobaptists are unable to accept, at least in its full glory.

Leaving Home

My friend Peter Leithart, once again, has written a brilliant article concerning this process of maturity.

Can we protect our kids from the world and prepare them for it?

Parents can draw guidance from an unexpected source: Paul’s letter to the Galatians, where Paul describes Israel’s history as a centuries-long process of child-training (Galatians 3–4). When Yahweh first brought his son from Egypt, he gave clear, detailed commandments and exercised strict discipline. Israel was, Paul says, “no better than slaves.” But this was always intended to be a temporary arrangement. The law was a tutor, but when faith comes, then “we are no longer under a tutor.” Israel was under guardians and stewards, but then God sends Jesus and the Spirit so that “we might receive the adoption as sons.” Overall, it’s a progression from childhood slavery to mature adulthood.

We can see this progression within the Old Testament. Early on, Yahweh created a comprehensive world that was at once a protection and a pedagogy. He gave his creatures stories, songs, structures, and rules—many rules. By the time of the kings, Israel had grown up. Instead of being withdrawn from the nations, Israel began to make good on the Abrahamic promise to be a light to the nations. Kings and queens streamed to Jerusalem to hear Solomon’s wisdom. Exile was both a judgment and a commission: By the time Nebuchadnezzar deported the Jews, they had become true children of Abraham, capable of leaving home for a land they didn’t yet know.

All this adds up to a rough but useful pattern for child-rearing. On the one hand, parents should have no problem treating their children as “slaves” during their youngest years. “No” is not a swear word; eight of the Ten Commandments begin with “No” (in Hebrew), and one of the two positive commands is “Honor your father and mother.” We don’t send toddlers into combat, and we shouldn’t send them into the warzone of the world. Should we sequester young children in an artificial cocoon of peace, love, and virtue? Absolutely.

On the other hand, the goal is to prepare them to leave, and to keep their heads as they pass through the big world outside. Like the God of Israel, we prepare them by gradual manumission. Some years ago, I read in a now-forgotten book that a parent moves from commander to coach to counselor. We give orders to little kids and require obedience. We coach them through the challenges of young adulthood, giving them room to make decisions, fail, and try again. By the time they’re ready to leave home, the commands should be second nature, and we offer advice to help them over the rough patches.

As Christians tell it, at the end of Israel’s story, the Lord doesn’t command Israel to “return.” Instead, Jesus, the God of Israel made flesh, sends the new Israel of the disciples away: Get out of the house. Fill the corners. The Hebrews started as priests, serving in Yahweh’s house, living under command. They grew to be kings, conquering and ruling a land in wisdom. They were sent out on a prophetic, then an apostolic mission, no longer slaves but sons, heirs of God. It’s the perfect pedagogy of the perfect Father, and we do well to imitate it.¹Peter J. Leithart, Rearing Slaves, Rearing Sons, www.firstthings.com

Leithart describes perfectly the purpose of cultivation as preparation for representation, of training our children that they might leave home to change the world. Yet once again he fails to make any connection between this process and the difference between circumcision and baptism.²See Exposed to the Elements. Circumcision was about cultivation (“Hear O Israel” — word as seed). Baptism is about representation (“Go and tell” – profession/witness as fruit).

Judicial Maturity

For the Covenantalist / sacramentalist, the New Covenant sign means pretty much the same thing as the Old one did: cultivation. The sign is somehow believed to contain maturity in “seed form,” and Leithart has to read Galatians backwards to cram the judicial maturity of New Covenant baptism into something that can be applied to infants. See Reading Galatians Backwards. However, if Israel was in training until Christ, and only then was baptism as we now know it instituted, how can baptism ever be a sign of earthly pedagogy? Surely a personal confession by our children (and a desire on their part for baptism) is the time to celebrate a parenting job well done?

Adam heard the law but did not “image” God legally. He listened but failed to “Go tell” when the Word was challenged by the first false teacher. Unlike Adam, Noah heeded the word and became the first true prophet. Each was under the sword (cultivation) but only Noah took it up (representation as a judge).

We see the same contrast in Israel in Egypt (under the sword) and Israel at Jericho (wielding the sword). In the big picture, this is the difference between the Old Covenant and the New. This might be why the Covenant has moved from circumcision/Land to baptism/Table. We are following the life of the harvest from its natural origin on earth to its supernatural destiny as a communion between heaven and earth. The process begins at the root, works its way to fruit, and finishes at the table of God. The food on the table is the “qualified and glorified” representative of the cultivated land.

Culmination and Initiation

Now, the paedobaptist might object by saying that life is a continuous process of cultivation, and indeed it is. But these levels are not the same. An infant’s gown is not the same thing as a graduation gown or a wedding gown. There is “cultivation” in the womb, there is the “cultivation” of childhood, there is the “cultivation” of study, and of courting, and there is “cultivation” as a minister of God. Infant baptism is thus the breaking of the waters in the womb and cutting of the umbilical chord. This is the only way “paedo” can ever be linked with “baptism.” Physical birth ends cultivation in the womb and begins physical representation of the parents by the child.

Breaking the waters signals the end of something old and the beginning of something new. So baptism is a new beginning, and is thus both culmination and initiation. But what does baptism bring to an end and what does it allow to begin? Where does baptism fit among all these varied stages? Well, what does a biblical baptism picture? Death and resurrection. Baptism is linked inextricably to a ministry as a living sacrifice, a martyr for whom death is gain, given the power to bless and curse as a spokesman for God.

Unlike circumcision, baptism does not speak of being a child of men but a son of God, that is, a legal representative, a prophet. It ends the period focussed on submission to heaven and begins the subsequent dominion of earth. Noah’s Great Flood “baptism” ended the old world and began the new one, but the new order was one of greater maturity and more authority in office. Noah blesses and curses with the full authority of God, a chosen ambassador. Baptism ends “legal” childhood under the stoicheia and begins a ministry of legal representation of God.

Baptism is about office, not flesh. It is supernature, not nature. Jesus spoke of a new birth, but He was not talking about more sons from Sarah’s or Rachel’s wombs. He spoke of the firstborn from the dead, and the legal witness which would follow. Paedobaptism confuses the Covenant “Oath” (Adam’s faithfulness) with the Covenant “Sanctions” (the resulting gifts from God), the same error made by the Jews and Judaizers in the first century. It is a subtle seizing of the Tree of Kingdom without prior submission to God.

Conflated Births

Each era of cultivation speaks to the others, but conflating them is an enormous mistake when it comes to the meaning of baptism as legal representation. Baptism accompanied the sign of tongues and the explosion of prophetic ministry across the world. To claim it is about cultivation rather than representation is a backward step. This puts the criticism of the Christian Jews in Hebrews 5 into context. They were still “hearing” like Israel, but stuck on the Old Covenant basics.

About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. (Hebrews 5:11-14)

Hebrews refers to the physical cultivation of childhood to describe spiritual cultivation. The saints should have been on the wine (strong food), and past the “milk” of the Covenant basics. Despite being raised as Jews, they were still getting a grip on the basics (cultivation) when they should by now have become teachers (representation). The author is not saying that these people were actual babies. Since they conflate the first birth with the second, paedocommunionists give wine to actual babies, which exposes their paradigm as a profound misunderstanding of some very basic things. The Church is the “nursery” of culture, but the Federal Vision unwittingly turns the church into an actual nursery. The earthly image is mistaken for the glorious reality, rather than merely a stage in the process.

This answers Dr Leithart’s strange case against us baptists who “talk to our babies.” He misguidedly conflates two very different stages of human life. Advocates of paedofaith quote Psalm 22:9-10 without thinking too deeply about it. David himself poetically conflates the care of his heavenly Father with the care of his earthly parents, but only poetically:

…you are he who took me from the womb;
you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts.
On you was I cast from my birth,
and from my mother’s womb you have been my God…

One certainly images the other, but these levels of cultivation are not the same. David’s parents were representatives of God in David’s boyhood cultivation. The ministry was from the hand of God but it came via mediators. In the New Covenant, we are no longer under an order administered by angels. We are now the angels, the messengers. That is the point of baptism. To claim that these very different periods of cultivation are the same thing is to claim that a child of men is, without ethical qualification, a son of God. But as in Hebrews, these are not the same thing. Although there is continuity between the child and the adult, a child is not an adult, and the flesh is not the Spirit.

The sacralizing of the first birth rather than the second unwittingly feminises the New Covenant. The New Covenant is about God’s sons, not ours, which is what Jesus’ baptism was all about, and why He had no physical children. The Church is not a nursery for the training of infants but a barracks for the training of soldiers. The Federal Vision’s hybridised New Covenant, with its “two tier” baptism, is just Abrahamic foozball in the clubhouse. Nurturing our children in the Lord is certainly a grave responsibility, but the real game is with Jesus out there on the field. Abraham’s inheritance was his own children. Jesus’ inheritance is the nations of the world.

Jesus’ Baptism

Based on Jesus’ baptism, the rite is a ceremony of graduation from the authority of Joseph the carpenter to the Craftsman of all Creation. Each stage prefigures the next, but the stages are not the same, just as the first birth is not the second birth, and just as the regeneration of one individual is not the regeneration of the world. The image is not the reality, yet although it is a part of it, conflating them is a form of idolatry, an over-realised eschatology. This explains the “sorcery” of Israel, whose leaders thought their earthly lineage made them acceptable to God. The Pharisees were indeed sons of Abraham (image) but not sons of God (reality). They were Jews but not what Judaism imaged or pointed to, thus not true Jews. “Dominion” was thus seen to be the result of breeding rather than legal witness.

The “baptism of the Spirit” was what officially ended the time of cultivation of the disciples and officially began their apostolic witness as representatives of Christ.

Jesus’ baptism signified the end of His personal cultivation on earth and the beginning of His representation of heaven. However, Jesus had four of these events, and even these must not be conflated, since they are stages of growth in stature and maturity: Circumcision (earthly father), Baptism (heavenly Father), death and burial (Table), ascension and return (enthronement). This process works from earth to heaven, from the Bronze Altar, through the Laver, into the Holy Place and ends on the kapporet. We see this exact sequence in the architecture of Exodus 24, which was the culmination of Israel’s physical cultivation as a nation, culminating in only the legal representatives dining with Yahweh on the mountain.

Likewise, in the life of Jesus, each of these events ended a period of cultivation and began a greater level of representation. The “baptism of the Spirit” was what officially ended the time of cultivation of the disciples and officially began their apostolic witness as representatives of Christ. This might be why the martyrdom of the saints in Revelation 14 is presented as a “fractal expansion” of the death of Jesus: the white harvest of the oikoumene (cultivation) was cut down and gathered for the table of God (representation).

Israel’s Baptism

Paedobaptists mistakenly think that Israel’s corporate baptism supports their errant rite, but even the nation of Israel was baptised for the sake of legal representation. Israel was not baptised into Abraham but Moses. Why? Circumcision was about cultivation (Abraham to Joseph) but Israel’s baptism was about representation (Moses to Joshua), her mediation for the nations.³See Destroy This Temple And within Israel, it was only the Levitical priests and the sacrifices — those who represented Israel before God — which were washed as mediators. The priesthood of all believers, the sign of which is believer’s baptism, came only at the end of Israel’s history. Israel’s annual feasts were also a process of cultivation (preparation for ministry) and then representation (witness) to the nations at Booths. Like the end of her annual feasts, this was the completion of her cultivation under the Law of Moses and the beginning of her ultimate ministry to the nations.

As Leithart fails to mention, protecting our children from the influence of the world until they are ready to influence it illustrates for us in microcosm the purpose of circumcision in history. The children of Israel were taken out of the nations that they might be matured, able to judge between good and evil, and then put back among the nations as a corporate image of the justice and mercy of God.

The Old Testament is claimed to offer support for paedosacraments, but even within the history of “Israel according to the flesh” we can see that circumcision and baptism meant very different things.

As we have seen, the institution of circumcision culminated in Israel’s “baptism” through the Red Sea and the “table” on the mountain. But just as the events from Abraham to Joseph were cultivation (Canaan to Egypt as Forming), and the events from Moses to Joshua focussed on legal representation (Egypt to Canaan as Filling), we also see these two elements within this secondary stage in legal terms, that is, legal cultivation and legal representation. The nature of Israel’s baptism as a sign of judicial maturity is the point paedobaptists miss when they note Paul’s allusion to these events. Since they are satisfied that their erroneous practice is vindicated, they fail to think any further about it. This is not only terrible exegesis, it is a failure in “Covenant theology” from its traditional experts.

The process in Israel’s journey from Egypt to Canaan is entirely legal, moving from external law (childhood) to internal law (adulthood), and this is why Paul refers to it in 1 Corinthians 11. The “exodus” of the Church from the Egypt of Herodian worship was fundamentally Ethical in nature. It had nothing whatsoever to do with being set apart genealogically as Israel was. It amazes me that this fundamental difference is consistently ignored.

Between Egypt and Canaan, the judicial maturity of Moses the prophet was to be “measured out” in the hearts of Israel. Israel was given the “Nos” of the Law and possessed Canaan only when the new generation said “Yes.” The process follows not only the Creation Week, but also the pattern of sacrifice. What began as raw flesh and blood was offered voluntarily to God and became a fragrant cloud of smoke, a pleasing testimony. Whereas the narratives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob focus on the reversal of physical barrenness (Sanctions), the wilderness journey is all about “ethical fertility,” that is, richness towards God (Oath).

To claim that Israel’s corporate baptism is any kind of foundation for paedobaptism is to misunderstand the difference between circumcision and baptism. The Old Testament is claimed to offer support for paedosacraments, but even within the history of “Israel according to the flesh” we can see that circumcision and baptism meant very different things.

The Land of Israel

Circumcision was a boundary for farming, fencing off a people and Land for cultivation. The promise of fruit from the Land and fruit from the womb cannot be separated, either in Adam or in Abraham. This is why animals are always treated as part of the Old Covenant household of faith. The animals were the only truly “blameless representatives,” serving as substitutes for Israel as the firstborn of God, both her physical sons (cultivation, Exodus 4:22) and her ethical sons, the Levite priests (representation, Numbers 3:22).⁴See The Case for Covenantal Animal Baptism. If this twofold process seems strange, we must remember that Israel gave a tithe of its harvest to the Levites (cultivation) and the Levites then gave a tithe of that tithe to the Lord (representation). Man’s table is not God’s table. Differentiating between the sons of men and the sons of God under the New Covenant should not be difficult for theologians since it is woven throughout the very fabric of the Old Covenant.

Paedobaptistic ecclesiology is still working on the Abrahamic microcosm, the hobby farm.

Israel was set apart from the nations by circumcision, and cultivated by the Law. When Gentile believers mocked the Jews, Paul reminded them that this cultivation was of great benefit.

Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means… (Romans 3:1-3)

The oracles of God were beneficial, just as our preaching to our children is beneficial. Whether or not it produces fruit, the process of ploughing, sowing and watering is a holy one. But when circumcision was ended through the death of Christ, the time of cultivation was over. It was time for the harvest. Paul also reminds those in Rome that both Jew and Gentile were still “under sin.” In Christ, the focus moved from seed to fruit, from cultivation to representation. Circumcision and uncircumcision meant nothing once there was spiritual fruit. When one brought forth spiritual fruit, the field from which one came, cultivated or uncultivated, Jew or Gentile, became irrelevant.

Baptism is not about seed but about fruit. Paedobaptism misguidedly sets a boundary of cultivation (planting the seed), which might explain why infants are “sprinkled.” But biblical baptism is about harvest, and Matthew 28 says there are no longer any fences. God harvests where He will. Paedobaptism tries to make the Church the field to be farmed, when the Church is actually a silo for the harvest, and a barracks for the workers. Paedobaptistic ecclesiology is still working on the Abrahamic microcosm, the hobby farm.

Since the “field” is now the entire world, the “nurture in the Lord” is not merely for our children but for all people everywhere. When one believes, one becomes a representative, a speaker. Since circumcision is gone, there is only the Gospel (cultivation) and witness (representation). There is no sign for cultivation, any more than there was before the time of Abraham. Baptism is only for legal representatives.

Paedobaptism makes the New Covenant as parochial as the old, as this comment from a paedobaptist demonstrates: “When you try to evangelize and disciple people who do not have the Spirit and who have no faith, you have no guarantees or promises or statistical probabilities.” This assumes that the Gospel has no power unless there is some kind of “fence” to contain it. Not only does this make no sense, we have no such guarantee anyway. We are simply told to sow the seed, water, and trust God for the increase.

The four “household” events recorded in the book of Acts were signs of the end of the old order, shifting the Covenant from the sons of a man to the sons of God, from physical forming to spiritual filling, from vessels to treasure, from cultivation to representation. If infants had indeed been baptised, this would make the New Covenant a limited obligation, a limited cultivation, like the Old. So it cannot logically be the case. It must therefore be a sign of representation, the sign of circumcision of flesh fulfilled in the circumcision of the heart of the believer.

Imitating Christ

To make baptism about cultivation under the Gospel rather than authority as an ambassador of the Gospel is to misunderstand the temporary purpose of the nation of Israel as a bootcamp for prophets. One must hear (cultivation - Land) before one can speak (representation - Table). Although Abraham was not baptised, he was qualified at various stages and only then ate before God with Melchizedek. Hebrews 5 says the same thing of Christ Himself, who was qualified before being given His great office.

If we want to celebrate parenting, baptism surely comes at the end of a job well done, at the beginning of ministry. The glory of a newborn is not the same as the glory of a child who chooses wisdom over folly. This glorious New Covenant rite is not one to be dismissed as “individualism.” Israel was baptised into Moses the prophet, but now all the Lord’s people are prophets, legal representatives, wise judges of what is good and what is evil. In the days when our courts are declaring that good is evil and evil is good, the recovery of baptism as a delegation of divine legal authority rather than a sign of “limited Covenantal obligation” is crucial.

At which point were the apostles sent out? In the big picture, it was after the institution of baptism. The Covenant moved from commander to coach to counselor — priesthood, kingdom, prophecy. As Leithart says, “We do well to imitate it.” But he does not. His ecclesiology is stuck in the Abrahamic childhood of the Church, and his sacraments are all about earthly parenting. Israel was baptised into Moses’ “No.” A believer is baptized into an uncoerced “Yes,” the testimony of Jesus Christ, the first sign of spiritual maturity. It is the day when a son or daughter becomes an eternal brother or sister.

After conversion, our “judicial” cultivation certainly continues until our baptismal investiture is fulfilled in resurrection. Only then will we truly represent God, enthroned with Him not only by faith but also by sight.

_______________________________
ART: The Ambassadors, Hans Holbein the Younger

There are no “Abrahamic” promises concerning offspring — or real estate — for New Covenant believers.

Like the dogma of evolution, the doctrine of paedobaptism is not supported by indisputable evidence. Rather, the data must be interpreted through the lens of a pre-existing framework. The paedobaptistic lens is, however, a biblical one, being Abrahamic, and it comes in extremely handy when used in the right way. It deals with the few texts which paedobaptists rely on for proof, showing that they are not establishing a revised Abrahamic tent, but bringing the old one to an end.

The text I deal with here is Peter’s mention of the Jews, their children, and those afar off, in Acts 2. The idea that the phrase “you and your children” has anything at all to do with Christians is ruled out by the context. The audience was the “men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem” (2:14), “Men of Israel” (2:22), “brothers” (2:29), and “all the house of Israel” (2:36). Peter, who famously quotes Joel, was speaking to Jews about their accountability to the Covenant made with Abraham. But that Covenant was drawing to an end.

However, this does not explain why Peter mentions three groups of people, “you, your children and those afar off” (2:39). A clue to part of the answer is found in the preceding verses. Peter concludes his speech and the Jewish men respond:

“Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”

The men are afraid because they have realised their blood guilt, not only of a brother like Abel but of the very Seed promised in Genesis 3, a promise later ratified in Abraham. Worse, these were likely some of the same people who, after Pilate washed his hands of the execution of Jesus, declared their conviction of his guilt by taking any liability for the shedding of innocent blood upon themselves.

So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.” And all the people answered, “His blood be on us and on our children” (Matthew 27:24-25).

Among Orthodox Jews today, offspring is still of prime importance. A proselyte cannot convert to Judaism without a commitment to marriage and fatherhood. Jesus was cut off without any offspring, and these men, knowing the Old Testament, realised that they, too, were liable to being cut off without any “Abrahamic” inheritance.

By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people. (Isaiah 53:8)

They shall besiege you in all your towns, until your high and fortified walls, in which you trusted, come down throughout all your land. And they shall besiege you in all your towns throughout all your land, which the Lord your God has given you. And you shall eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your sons and daughters, whom the Lord your God has given you, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemies shall distress you. The man who is the most tender and refined among you will begrudge food to his brother, to the wife he embraces, and to the last of the children whom he has left, so that he will not give to any of them any of the flesh of his children whom he is eating, because he has nothing else left, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemy shall distress you in all your towns. (Deuteronomy 28:52-55)

The curses in Deuteronomy 28 did indeed fall upon Israel one generation after Peter’s proclamation, upon these men and their children, the children whom Christ told the women weeping for Him to weep for instead. The final generation of the children of Abraham according to the flesh was either destroyed or sold into slavery, carried back to Egypt in ships as Moses predicted (Deuteronomy 28:68).

The interesting thing is that these men and their children, those who believed, could be delivered from this terrible judgment upon Israel by putting themselves under the blood of Christ in a different way. In circumcision, in the blood sprinkling at Sinai, and in the Levitical rites, His blood had always been upon them, for blessing or for cursing.

And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar. Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.” And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, “Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words. (Exodus 24:6-8)

But now in Christ, Abraham had obtained a heavenly country, so an earthly Abrahamic inheritance, both the fruit of the Land and of the womb, became redundant. This is why the Jewish Christians, unlike Jeremiah (Jeremiah 32:6-9), sold their lands (Acts 4:34-35).

So, there is really no doubt about who these children were. But the identity of “those far off” is more difficult to discern. Are they the Jews and Jewish proselytes scattered across the Roman empire, or is Peter referring to Gentiles? The Abrahamic Covenant promised an earthly inheritance of not only Land and womb (narrowing the curse of barrenness upon Adam and Eve to Abram and Sarai that it might be borne and resolved) but also promised that all the families of the “earth” (literally, ’adamah, the ground, and thus all mankind) would be blessed.

Not only was the promise of the Spirit for the Jews, but also the Gentiles, which later events in Acts make plain. Not only Jews but “those far off,” both Jews and Gentiles, received the Spirit of God. Paul uses similar language concerning Gentiles in Ephesians 2, where Jew and Gentile are united in a new household of faith. The Ephesian Christians were no longer “strangers” who could attend only certain festivals, but heirs along with believing Jews.

And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. (Ephesians 2:17-18)

Paedobaptists assume that this language means Peter should really have said, in Acts 2:39:

For the promise is for you
and for your children
and for all who are far off,
and for their children,
everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.

The problem is that this is not what Peter says, and to conveniently assume that this is what he meant is to ride roughshod over the entire Abrahamic Covenant, the one which is supposed to provide all that imaginary support for the practice of paedobaptism.

Not only is Peter’s audience different from that of Paul, Paul makes no mention whatsoever of children as part of the promises of the New Covenant. Certainly, he instructs the saints concerning parenting, and marriage, and even instructs the children, but there is no “promised seed.” This is because, after the flood, where all flesh was “cut off,” all the cutting off was done in the microcosm of Israel for the sake of the life of the world. The children in Acts 2 are mentioned because all of the Jewish rites, and indeed the Temple, were still in place. The children are mentioned because they were still under the curses of Moses if their parents disobeyed the Lord.

If the Jews would not be “brought near” in Christ (our “near bringing” or sacrifice), they would be brought near for destruction. If they would not celebrate “Ingathering” but instead rejoice as rebels in a Passover already made redundant by Christ and His cup, they would be gathered as food on the table for the Roman eagles.

All of the Jews who rejected Christ, and their children, and indeed all of the Jews and Jewish proselytes (whom Jesus called “twice children of hell”) from across the empire were trapped in Jerusalem by Titus, whose clever strategy had been to wait until Passover to besiege the city. If the identity of “those far off” in Acts 2 is indeed Jewish, these are the people whom Peter was referring to, those who were either still under the Law, or who had placed themselves under it voluntarily. I believe this is the most likely solution, given the context. But those curses were finished in AD70.

However, even if Peter is referring to Gentiles, the architecture of this favourite proof text of paedobaptists betrays them. It not only follows the Covenant-literary structure, hinting at the Ten Words, working from above, to beside, to below, it is actually a textual map of the progress of the Gospel, by the Spirit, from Jerusalem into all the empire before AD70. The shape of the verse itself defines both the temporal and geographical boundaries of its scope. So, whether “those far off” are Jews or Gentiles, either way, the reach of Acts 2:39 ended with the abolition of the oikoumene.¹The oikoumene was the “household” of the empires established by God in the book of Daniel. The destruction of the Herodian Land beast and the Neronic Sea beast in the Revelation ended not only the division between Jew and Gentile but the Covenantal authority of these institutions. See James B. Jordan, The Handwriting On The Wall, A Commentary on the Book of Daniel, or search this blog for the tag oikoumene.

TRANSCENDENCE

HIERARCHY

ETHICS

OATH/SANCTIONS

SUCCESSION

The architecture of the verse puts a three-level house at both altars, the microcosmic one (Jerusalem) and the Jews (or believing Gentiles) throughout the  oikoumene, neither of which exist any longer. The fulfilment of the Feast of Booths, also known as Ingathering, was predicted by Jesus in Matthew 24:31, and likely occurred just before the siege of Jerusalem.²See Sin City – 3.

In the Garden of Eden, the Covenant “Oath” was the failed confession of Adam, his unwillingness to submit to the authority of heaven, and the Covenant “Sanctions” was the limited curse of barrenness upon the fruit of the Land and womb. This is the difference between baptism (oath), and circumcision (sanctions). The testimony of Jesus is the oath upon the lips of the faithful, and in Him there are no Mosaic Sanctions upon our fruitfulness. This is why there are no “Abrahamic” promises concerning offspring — or real estate — for New Covenant believers. There are certainly correspondences, but they transcend the originals. We are called to give up our families and possessions for the sake of the Gospel, yet are told we will receive siblings, sons, houses and lands in this life the way Jesus did (Matthew 19:29; Mark 10:29-30; Luke 18:28-30), by adoption, since one day we shall possess them all. Land and offspring were closely related in Abraham’s earthly inheritance, but the New Covenant is about a heavenly country, and about “sons of God,” those who believe the Word as Abraham did, and become the friends, the confidants, of God (Isaiah 41:8; John 15:15; James 2:23).

Is our justification a past event or a future one? The debate continues while the answer is, like Adam and Eve, hidden in plain sight.

The problem with most theological discussions concerning our justification is that they are imagined in the courts of men rather than in the court of God. What is the difference between these two courts?

The courts of men are either sanctuaries or courtrooms, priesthood and kingdom divided like the house of the Lord and the house of Solomon. But God’s court is the domain of priest-kings, that is, prophets. The “third tree” is always a Tree of Righteousness, a Man clothed not in fig leaves but in the glory of God, who is a shelter for all those on earth.¹The book of Genesis begins with the nakedness of Adam, and ends with Joseph, a young man who loses his robe a number of times but ends up feeding all the nations through his heavenly wisdom. See also The Third Tree.

The False Prophet

God’s court is where His representatives, “the sons of God,” not only worship Him as His subjects but also report to Him, and even advise Him as elders. This is exactly what Abraham did concerning the destruction of the cities of the plain, and it is very likely that it was during one such courtly appearance that the Lord pointed out to Satan his servant Job, who was a priest-king like Noah, Melchizedek and Jethro.

The first time God held court with Man was after the sin of Adam. Words from God, an abundant promise (kingly rule on earth) and a restraining law (priestly submission to God), had been given to Adam. He, too, could be a priest-king, but this would require a response, a word from Adam. In fact, it would require two words: a denunciation of the works of the devil on earth, and then a confession, an oath, before the God of heaven. This oath would have been something like: “Here is the woman you gave to be with me. The serpent deceived her, but I present her to you now as a chaste virgin.” Following this very first Covenant oath would have come blessings from God, “Well done!” and then the opening of the Land and the Womb in abundant fruitfulness. Instead, of course, Adam justified himself but in entirely the wrong way. He shifted blame, and the Lord gave him a chance to confess—a negative oath, but a true confession nonetheless. In our confession of sin we cross the courtroom to the Lord’s side against ourselves. But Adam failed again, and forced God to shift the blame—onto sacrificial substitutes.

In the court of God, all sins exist in a single body, incorporated in Man’s role as the image, the representative of God. Thus the High Priest represented all Creation before God (being the only Israelite permitted to wear combinations of animal, vegetable and mineral) and the Prophets represented God to the entire Creation (with access to the Garden, the Land and the World), speaking in the secular courts of the nations. Only in the Prophets is there a link between the court of God and the courts of men.²This brings the background of sacred architecture to light in Paul’s condemnation of the saints’ failure to judge between themselves in 1 Corinthians 6:3. It might also explain Jesus’ ministry’s in “Galilee of the nations” (Isaiah 9:1) and in the Temple “Gentile” courts, a faithful Jewish testimony before all nations.

Thus, the animals which the Lord slew to cover Adam’s sin were a taste of the death of all flesh, all the animals whom Adam represented before God, since he shared the same breath. But for now, the heavenly breath, the indwelling Spirit of God, was denied him. He would not be a Prophet. The rest which would have come on Day 7 included rule and representation. But Adam failed to serve the Lord in the day of small things,  so he would not be given anything greater to do. Failing to speak for God, we never hear a word from him in the Bible ever again. His life continued, but his testimony, and his intended Prophetic ministry, was ruined.

Adam’s iniquity, his gross sin, was a failure to balance the scales of justice before the nations (in this case, Eve, the mother of all living) and to advocate for them before God, the exact opposite of what prophets are supposed to do.³The English words iniquity and inequity are both derived from the Latin aequus, meaning equal, the only difference being the scale of the difference.

What is Justification?

To justify something means to show adequate cause. The problem with our sin is that the scales never balance. There is never a cause great enough—even in our own minds—to justify the enormity of our rebellion against God, since all sin is at heart an unwillingness to believe that He is good when His promises are challenged by satans and circumstances. And that brings us to the truth that justification is always a Covenantal act, which means it is part of a process.

This is what we see in the first legal case in history. Justification comes after an ethical response to the Law of God, and it results in the expression of either the Lord’s pleasure or displeasure, as blessing or cursing, a judgment which then affects the future.

In the Covenant pattern found throughout the Bible, this assessment and confession before God, a legal hearing, is found at the fourth step.⁴For an introduction to the Covenant pattern, see Reading the Bible in 3D, and then the more detailed Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key.

All adult Israelites took a Covenant Oath at Sinai, and they broke that oath soon after by worshiping a golden calf. Many died at the hands of the Levites, but the entire generation died at the hand of the Lord in the wilderness. It is worth noticing that this process occurred at exactly the same point in the initial cycle of the Abrahamic Covenant, from Canaan to Egypt and back again:

This oath-breaking is the legal scenario behind the many times when the Lord speaks of His people honouring Him with their lips but not their hearts. So this initial cycle of delegation—taking the Oath—leads to another event where the Lord returns to assess whether or not His delegates kept their promises, that He might keep His. Either they would be justified through their obedience, or God would be justified in condemning them. Of course, this is where the mercy of God comes in, and it is no accident that in the sevenfold festal pattern (as presented in Leviticus 23), the Day of Atonement corresponds to the Oath/Sanctions step of the Covenant:

You might notice that this seven-point pattern is a microcosm of the first seven books of the Bible. It is also the pattern of Israel’s entire history from Abraham to AD70.⁶See Bible Matrix: An Introduction to the DNA of the Scriptures for a full rundown.

What is very interesting is that this exact pattern is found in the Ten Commandments—but only if we follow what is known as the Jewish “Scroll Division” favoured by Augustine.⁷See Q&A: Why Ten Words on Two Tablets?

Theft and false witness in this construct are Adam and Eve, or Church and State, in the courtroom of God. A testimony is required of them. Adam attempts to cover his sin, but Eve gives a true testimony. As it was at the condemnation of Christ by the Jewish priesthood, their testimonies did not agree. A false testimony is always somehow a condemnation of God.

As two conflicting testimonies, heaven and earth, Priesthood and Kingdom, like Adam and Eve, were set in conflict forever until the Prophet came, a better Adam. When two or three (as legal witnesses) are gathered in His name (as a legal confession, identifying them with the atoning sacrifice), He is there among them, and there is rest, rule and representation, the Day of the Lord. They are justified in His sight.

It is worth noting that this is also the basic process found in every sacrifice. Although the Levitical sacrifices allowed men to eat with God for the first time, all the previous sacrifices were whole burnt offerings, or Ascensions.⁸See The First Ascension. Every sacrifice was a microcosm not only of the Creation Week, but also of the history of the entire world, thus the entire world could be judged in the final sacrifice of the Son of God.

Now, although there is a priestly washing at Division (the sacrifices were washed), it was not until the smoke ascended from this earthly Laver to the heavenly Sea, the court of God, that Yahweh was pleased. The waters above and those below were united in a good way by a sacrificial mediator between heaven and earth. It was the Circumcision and then the ministry of the Levitical priesthood which prevented another Great Flood.

But what we must notice here is that the offerer was not vindicated (if obedient), or not justified (if disobedient but repentant), until step 6. Even if we are disobedient, God Himself is vindicated in a faithful confession of sin (Psalm 51:4; Romans 3:4).

Take Me to court; let us argue our case together. State your case, so that you may be vindicated. (Isaiah 43:26, Holman)

Now, every baptism in the book of Acts follows this pattern.⁹See for instance New Covenant Virility, but I am sure you can see this pattern easily in each story now that it has been pointed out. All baptism account put baptism at Conquest, or Oath/Sanctions. That is, the profession of the saint on earth vindicates God in heaven. The name of Jesus on the lips is the vindication of the work of God in its circumcision of the heart, making it priestly, that is, submissive towards God. Peter the apostle understood this clearly, even if not every Peter does. Faithful testimony is a fragrance which pleases God.

Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him. (1 Peter 3:21).

So baptism is tied to the Covenant Oath, and the Sanctions. The Father looks upon the Son and is pleased, just as Yahweh smelled the savour of sacrificial smoke and was pleased. This means that the hybridisation of circumcision and baptism in paedobaptism—in sacrificial terms—is the offering of raw flesh to God. But no flesh can be justified in His sight. It must first be transformed by fire, and ascend as fragrant smoke. The evidence of transformation is the “smoky” testimony, in word and/or deed.

Baptism Justifies You

Peter Leithart was recently hauled over the coals by Tim Bayly¹⁰Peter Leithart: No Baptism, No Justification for linking baptism with justification.¹¹Peter Leithart, No Sacraments, No Protestantism Pastor Bayly cannot allow this, because he, like Doug Wilson, has divorced baptism from actual conversion. However, although Peter Leithart is, I believe, correct that the apostle links baptism and justification, he and all the more consistent Federal Vision guys think sons of men can be made sons of God “objectively” through baptism. These gentlemen will keep fighting among themselves until suddenly one day the penny drops and they identify paedobaptism, their little “household god,” as the cause of all this confusion. I have explained this numerous times to no avail but I look forward to, well, being vindicated.

Since baptism justifies one, what then is justification? Vindication in court. And those who appear in God’s court, which is where Jesus was at His baptism once the heavens opened, are required to give a testimony. Baptism is for representatives of God. It is not for the children born as the fruit of the earth, nor for the angels of heaven, but for the Spirit-filled saints who are hybrids of heaven and earth, as the first Adam was intended to be.

Past or Future

Is our justification a past event or a future one? The debate continues while the answer is, like Adam and Eve, hidden in plain sight.

The problem is, as always, that we are dealing in fractals. One man can die for all because the one represents perfectly the whole. The Justified One is a mediator, uniting the waters, or perhaps keeping them apart. He stands on the crystal sea, the court of God, as a slain lamb, after being washed in the Laver on earth. The ministry of Christ thus moved the High Priesthood from the Jerusalem below to the Jerusalem above.¹²See my commentary on Galatians 4 in The Shape of Galatians: A Covenant-literary Analysis.

So justification is always a two-fold event, Covenantal bookends, just as the Oath and the Sanctions represent the beginning and end of the Covenant process. Circumcision of the flesh of Israel eventually led to a Pentecostal circumcision of heart. The Abrahamic Covenant began with a household of circumcised sons of Abraham and ended with the sign to the Jews of households of “sons of God”—legal witnesses who were both Jews (Church) and Gentiles (State). Thus, these events did not establish a new “household” order at all.¹³See The Household of Faith – 3 The process moved from childhood to adulthood, from a people set apart in Abraham and baptised into Moses as one flesh, to a supernatural Body of Adams and Eves robed in white and acting as mediators. That is what Christians are: legal representatives and advocates between heaven and earth.

So for the believer, justification is a set of bookends, both past (conversion) and future (resurrection). A true baptism, after all, looks just like a resurrection. If yours did not, it was not a baptism.

ONE MAN: Justification of God in the courts of Men

• Delegation (Step 2): Hearing the Gospel – Circumcision of heart (NOT flesh)
• Vindication (Step 6): Initial public testimony and baptism (profession)

ALL MEN: Justification of Men in the court of God

• Delegation (Step 2): Testimony before God to the world, beginning with baptism, the first step of public obedience in the Spirit as a Covenant representative (as Adam was supposed to be)
• Vindication (Step 6): Testimony (as a witness/martyr) before men, and resurrection

Justification is thus both past and future. Those who are truly born again will persevere. The testimony of Jesus (the Gospel “oath” on earth) is its beginning and His testimony in heaven is its end, and the end looks a lot like the very beginning, only with a better Adam as our legal representative, the first Man to be baptised and have the heavens open above Him.

So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 10:33)

Satan’s desire was always to turn the “pruning” of circumcision into an ax laid at the root of the tree of Israel.

A handful of treatments of the “massacre of the innocents” by Herod the Great see this bloodshed as the first of the New Covenant’s martyrs. But these miss the point of Matthew’s use of the word “fulfilled,” rendering it as good as meaningless. This massacre was the harbinger of the end of the old era and its promises. It said nothing about the promises of the new.

There is no way that this is the first of a series of new incidents, that is, Christian martyrdoms. Either this event simply continues the murders of offspring found throughout the Old Testament, or it brings them to an end. As my friend observes, suffering would now be different, but of course I would take this a little further than he would, concerning the significance of the sacraments.¹See my previous post, Feed My Lambs. Suffering would no longer be racial, tribal or genealogical, but voluntary. Killing Jews is genocide. Killing Christians is like killing Communists or capitalists. Its intention is not to wipe out a despised people but an intolerable “ideology.” The sons murdered in Matthew 2 were physical sons, sons of Abraham according to the flesh. Martyrs however are Sons of God.²See Provoking the Dragon.

New King on the Block

The era of Christ and His apostles was a period of transition, an overlap between the Old Covenant and the New. It was much like the time between the anointing of David and the death of Saul. Seen in this light, the parallels are remarkable. Just as the anointing of David was an irreversible divine decree, so was the life of Christ. And the Herods’ reaction was much the same as that of Saul. The sword of the Lord in the hand of a king maddened by jealousy was always a Covenant Sanction from the hand of God (1 Samuel 16:14). Saul would have seen both David, and later Jonathan, slain, had not the people restrained him. He employed an Edomite to slay the priests of God. The Herods were Edomites, and for the Herods, there was no restraint. Herod the Great murdered his own family as well as many rabbis. Like Pharaoh, the Herodian dynasty was the bloody hand of Cain. Sadly, the Jews failed to see that the “greatest builder in Jewish history”³Ken Spino, Crash Course In Jewish History. had built a Cainite city upon cursed ground.

 The Mutilation

The massacre if infants at the command of Herod the Great makes perfect sense as a sign of the imminent end of the Old Covenant, a Covenant which began with a barren womb and a barren Land. These infants sons — one from each woman, due to the directive concerning the age of the boys — were all Isaacs cut off because the end of the circumcision was nigh.

Circumcision was a genealogical “pruning,” bearing the curse upon Land and Womb in Genesis 3 for all nations that there might be a priestly nation, a people fruitful in righteousness. Satan’s desire was always to turn the “pruning” of circumcision into an ax laid at the root of the tree of Israel (Matthew 3:10, Luke 3:9), not a circumcision but a castration, a mutilation.⁴See New Covenant Virility 1 and 2.

The prophets condemned Israel’s shepherds when they became wolves, trading and tearing the sheep instead of leading them, shedding the blood of their own people while they perverted or ignored the substitutionary nature of the blood of the sacrifices. A cultic expression of this national self-mutilation was the worship of the priests of Baal, who cut themselves and threw themselves onto the altar on Mount Carmel. God would never accept human blood, at least not until truly blameless human blood was shed. This is why Paul refers to the Circumcision as the Mutilation, and wishes they would go the whole way and castrate themselves.

Ramah and Rachel

None of this is difficult to understand, but what is the reason for Matthew’s reference to Ramah and Rachel? Most commentators focus on Rachel, but the mention of Ramah is also significant, and its meaning is discovered in the “Covenant-literary” structure of of the text.⁵See also Matthew’s Literary Artistry.

In this passage, Ramah occurs at Ascension, which corresponds to the Bronze Altar (the Land) and the Table (the Firstfruits). For Israel, the foundational Ascension was the offering of Isaac on Mount Moriah. Her subsequent idolatry led her into the practice of false worship on the high places and child sacrifice in the pit, the Valley of Hinnom (Ge henna in Greek).

Failure to repent of false worship led to the slaughter and slavery of the children of Israel by Assyria and Babylon. The Lord protected Ramah and the other towns of the kingdom of Judah (Judah and Benjamin) from the Assyrians (Isaiah 10:24,27-29), but the continued corruption of Judah led to invasions by the Babylonians. It is believed that there was a prison camp at Ramah where the people of Judah were held before being carried into exile. This may be the background for Jeremiah’s mention of this town in 31:15. Jeremiah himself was imprisoned there for a time (Jeremiah 40:1).

What is the connection between Ramah and Rachel? Ramah was a town in the allotment of Benjamin, son of Rachel. He was the last son born to Jacob and his name means “son of my right hand.” Benjamin and Ramah thus symbolised an end to the immediate Succession of Israel, pointing to the cutting off of “the last son.”

Joseph’s brothers “slew” him, and Joseph tested them in return with the “slaying” of Benjamin, Rachel’s only other son, whom they presumed to be the only son of Rachel still alive. Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery in Egypt and all Israel suffered in slavery. Just so, Israel’s child sacrifices in the Valley of Hinnom led to that valley being filled with the bodies of the idolaters. In the first century, this massacre not only of the sons of the flesh but also of Israel’s sons of the Spirit (Abraham’s true sons) would lead to a final filling of Ge henna, this time not at the hands of Babylon (the first empire) but Rome (the last). The circumcision intended as mercy for Israel on behalf of all nations (to avoid another flood) was twisted into a kingdom of bloodshed, a land filled with violence (Genesis 6:11).

You and Your Children

This “head-and-body” multiplication of judgment helps us to make sense of the words of Jesus, who not only knew of the massacre of the innocents and His own miraculous rescue, but also what was in store for all the Jews who rejected Him. It is Jesus Himself, as the suffering prophet on the way to His death, who tells the “Rachels” weeping for Him to weep for their own children.

This is the context of Peter’s words to the Jews on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, a text upon which rests almost all the supposed weight of arguments for paedosacraments. However, even a cursory reading by a one-eyed, uneducated, blithering ignoramus like me reveals its context to be entirely Jewish, with not-so-subtle references to the treatment of Joseph by his brothers.

Brothers,… Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.

This clearly has nothing whatsoever to say about the children of Christians. This text is the Reformed equivalent of Haeckel’s fraudulent embryo diagrams. Although its abuse is so easily exposed, it remains in the textbooks because the cupboard is otherwise bare. Despite clear, concise and convincing arguments from myself and others, paedobaptists simply close their eyes and recite “You and your children” like some magic mantra. The irony is that Dispensationalists would likely understand this text perfectly!

Wait a minute, I hear. What about “those who are afar off”? Firstly, Peter was addressing all the house of Israel, and as is common in Scripture, but commonly overlooked, his literary architecture is triune, an oratory reference to the Tabernacle:

You (Word, Most Holy – Fathers)
Your children (Sacrament, Holy Place – Sons)
Those afar off (Government, Court – Spirit)

I suppose this is easy to dispute, but as it was with Moses’ supposed “murder” of the Egyptian, the true crime is identified through God’s righteous judgment upon it and the corresponding atonement. Those who rejected Peter’s warning to this last generation of the children of Abraham according to the flesh were cut off; the fathers, the sons, and even those far off. Not only were the Jews trapped in their own city, clever Titus waited until Passover before he besieged the city, so that Jerusalem would be filled with Jews from all over the empire, “those afar off.” In the final act, six thousand Jewish women and children were slain in one stroke when part of Herod’s Temple complex collapsed at the end of the Jewish war. And the best of the young men, the Josephs, were sold into slavery in Egypt. This “cutting off” brought an end to the Circumcision, the era of “sons,” and the inauguration of the age of the Spirit.

Conclusion

Circumcision was about pruning that there might be more fruit. Baptism is a celebration of the firstfruits of the Spirit, a public testimony. Good fruit makes the cultivation or non-cultivation of the tree irrelevant. To turn baptism into merely another sign of cultivation misses the point entirely at best, and at worst puts our children under a curse. The sign of the end of Christendom  and its carnal sacraments comes with a massacre of infants of untold proportions. The answer is certainly not more paedosacraments.

or Sacramental Sorcery and the Seed of Abraham

“O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?”

Having written a (basically word-by-word) commentary on Paul’s epistle to the Galatians, one which demonstrates his use of the biblical pattern of maturity at every point and every level, it amazes me how sacramentalists are not aware that their doctrine makes them the modern targets of Paul’s ire.

Sacramentalism gets my goat for the same reason the promotion of circumcision in the Galatian churches made Paul’s blood boil. It is a false doctrine which purports to be complimentary to the Gospel of Christ but is in fact diametrically opposed to it: a cunning rival, a Judas in the ranks.

Since the “office” of Jew no longer exists in God’s economy,¹See James B. Jordan, The Future of Israel Re-examined. sacramentalism has to be even more cunning than the Judaizing perversions with which Paul was confronted. Instead of promoting circumcision of the flesh, it attempts to hybridise circumcision and baptism, a division of flesh and a demarcation of Spirit, when these two are irreconcilable, forever opposed to each other (Galatians 5:17). This is why it was possible for Jews and Gentiles to unite “in the flesh” first against the Christ, and then against His Jew-Gentile Church, which was united “in the Spirit.”

So, despite their “New Covenant” pretensions, the fundamental assumptions of sacramentalism are cut from exactly the same worn out Old Covenant cloth (Hebrews 8:13; 10:20). Sacramentalism claims to be a work of the Spirit, but remains a work of the flesh. It claims to unite people in Christ, but in reality attempts to sanctify familial and tribal ties. Human nature’s desire for carnal security has not changed since Paul composed his epistle.

Since they do not see this “bap-cision” as simply an Old Covenant rite disguised in a New Covenant veneer, Paul’s argument against circumcision in Galatians is misunderstood.

Peter Leithart writes:

According to Paul, the baptized are clothed with Christ (Galatians 3:27). In baptism, all the baptized are joined in “one” in Christ Jesus. We can read backwards in Galatians 3 to see what that means.

The “one” is the “one seed” of Abraham (3:16). We might follow NT Wright in understanding that phrase corporately (one family of Abraham) or take the view that the one is Christ. I think Wright has the better reading  of verse 16. Regardless, verses 16 and 28 are linked by reference to the “one.” Baptism gives a share in the “one seed.”

According to verse 16, the “one seed” is the recipient of the promise to Abraham. And we are told in verse 14 that this promise is the promise of the Spirit. If baptism makes the baptized a part of the one, and the one is the one seed, and the one seed is promised the Spirit, then by making the baptized a member of the one baptism confers a share in the promised Spirit.

We confirm this point by reading forward from verse 28, just one verse: Those who are baptized belong to Christ, are one in Christ Jesus. And those who are belong to Christ are Abraham’s seed and heirs (v. 29). Heirs of what promise? Reading backward one last time, we have to say that the promise of which the baptized are heirs is the promise of the Spirit.

For Paul, to be baptized into Christ is to be baptized as a son of Abraham and a son of God and so to be heir of the Spirit.²Peter Leithart, Baptism and the Spirit.

So, as he frequently does, Leithart begins with a Judaistic ecclesiology, an assumption of bap-cision, then applies all the blessings of the regenerate to anybody lucky enough to be part of a “body of Christ” based on familial, tribal and other social ties. This can only work if he reads Galatians 3 backwards, starting with a flawed baptism at the root of his logical tree. Of course, paedobaptists who are not sacramentalists have to sell out when it comes to an efficacious baptism, because there are indeed many blessings conferred upon the baptised. We just have to submit to Scripture concerning the identity of the baptised.

The solution is to read Galatians 3 forwards, with Paul’s condemnation of Judaistic witchcraft as the starting point. In Covenant terms, “witchcraft” is the attempt to obtain the promised Covenant blessings without obedience to the conditions of the Covenant.³See Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key, Chapter 7, “Ethics or Magic.” This “Covenant sorcery” began with Adam’s seizing fruit that was prohibited until he demonstrated that he was faithful to God. This seizing of kingdom without prior priestly submission was the sin of Cain, Nimrod, Israel, the Herods, and was of course the sin of the Judaizers, who conflated circumcision of the flesh with circumcision of the heart. This inversion of priesthood and kingdom is at the heart of Leithart’s ecclesiology. An individual can be declared a child of God without hearing the Gospel, without repenting, without any response to the Word, simply because they were born to, or under the care of, Christian people.

Now, I am not advocating pietism, a “kingdom of the heart” which is private and must not be allowed to speak to the kingdoms of the world. I am saying that the kingdom of Christ begins in the heart (Luke 17:20-21), with priestly submission, and authority in the kingdoms of men will follow.

As I have written elsewhere, it is from the Biblical Horizons crowd that I learned to see this pattern of judicial maturity in the Scriptures, and I am simply calling them to be consistent with it when it comes to baptism. There is a reason that Paul puts baptism at this point in his argument, and it is Covenantal. For the individual, baptism comes after the Law has done its work in circumcising the heart, just as it did for Israel.

So, Paul begins with witchcraft (kingdom-by-circumcision), a sign of judicial immaturity, but works his way forward to spiritual maturity, the work of the Law vindicated in the fruit of the Spirit, and testified to publicly in baptism as a robe of authority, a sign of qualification for priestly rule (1 Peter 2:9) just as it was at the baptism of Christ. Leithart, however, begins with bap-cision, and from this false foundation predictably works his way backwards, textually and Covenantally, into sacramental sorcery.

What the Order of Melchizedek Means For Baptism

Jesus is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, and all His works are chiastic. Because of this, a solid understanding of any Covenant requires us to identify its “bookends.” According to Hebrews, the Melchizedekian bookends are crucial for a comprehension of the limitations of the Abrahamic Covenant.

Firstly, the description of Melchizedek itself has a Covenantal shape, which should help us to understand its content and its flow:

As usual, the internal logic of the content and order of the statements is made plain with a Covenant-literary analysis. In describing this mysterious priest-king of Jerusalem, the author not only recapitulates the first seven books of the Bible, he recapitulates the entire history of the Abrahamic Covenant.

• “Most High God” is a Gentile name for Yahweh, alluding to the priesthood of all nations which existed before the Aaronic priesthood.
• The slaughter of kings and the blessing of “dining with God” as a prophet was fulfilled in the destruction of Egypt and the ascension of Israel’s elders in Exodus 24. In both cases, the tyranny of opportunistic and vengeful “Cains” was judged that the ministry of atonement might be re-established.
• PRIESTHOOD: Abraham’s tithe obviously alludes to the establishment of the Levitical Order, whose members represented the Firstfruits of the Land.
• KINGDOM: As the righteous king of Jerusalem, Melchizedek prefigured the priestly kingdom of David, with its expanded priesthood and permanent house. The reference to the translation of his name at this point might be the fact that God’s chosen man often receives a new name “in the fire” of the Covenant Ethics (beginning with Adam as “Ish.”) For David, it was the establishment of a house for God’s own name.
• PROPHECY: Maturity concerns either war or peace, plagues or plunder, depending on the obedience of the kings. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus blesses the peacemakers at this point. In Israel’s history, of course, the failure of Solomon (“Shelomoh”, derived from shalom) to keep the Mosaic laws for Israel’s kings¹See Guns, Girls and Gold, led to an Imperial Era under Gentile kings.
• Just as circumcision singled out a childless “Father” to be the genealogical source of the Messiah, so baptism began the ministry of a fatherless Son.

The pattern begins with the original Melchizedek and ends with his fulfilment in Christ. It seems to me that the confusion concerning the use of Melchizedek in Hebrews originates from a two-fold failure:

a) A failure to understand the Noahic priesthood as an order of priest-kings like Noah. The union of priesthood and kingdom, Church and State, is pictured in the offering of both bread and wine. Once united, they result in the ministry of the Prophet, the one who not only listens to God, and acts for God, but also speaks for God. The division of humanity into Jew and Gentile was the reason the Aaronic priests never drank wine in God’s presence.²See “The Forbidden Feast” in God’s Kitchen: Theology You Can Eat & Drink. The Lord’s Supper pictured the imminent end of the Aaronic order.

b) They fail to realise that the lack of detail in many descriptions of Old Testament characters is part of the Spirit’s work in giving us archetypes³See the introduction to James Jordan’s Judges commentary. which would later be fulfilled. The name of Manoah’s wife is never revealed to us, not because she was not worthy to be named, but in fact because she was worthy to typify “the Woman” who would give birth to the miraculous Son.

From Adam, we can trace the Messianic genealogy to Abraham. But the purpose of the writer of Hebrews is to demonstrate to his Jewish Christian audience that genealogy was irrelevant to priesthood in the undivided world. Being without genealogy is symbolic of a New Creation, referring to Adam as the “son of God” (Luke 3:38). When the entire Physical world was wiped out, Noah became a man “without genealogy.” The entire previous civilisation had failed, and he was a new beginning. The author of Hebrews does not mention either Adam or Noah because the contrast he desires is only obvious in Abraham’s submission to an uncircumcised priest-king.

This brings us once again⁴See Children of Heaven. to the baptism of Jesus. No one disputes that the appearance of the dove was to symbolise a new Creation, alluding to the “fluttering” or “brooding” of the Spirit upon the waters in Genesis 1, and the dove sent out upon the flood waters by Noah. What I want to highlight here is the subtle supersession of genealogy at this event. Not only is Jesus’ true father revealed as the Father in heaven, He is chosen from a wide field of circumcised, repentant sons of Abraham. At this point, circumcision became entirely redundant. Natural pedigree, or lack of it, is made redundant when one responds to the Gospel and receives the Spirit of Christ. This is why, in Christ, all physical and social advantages or disadvantages become utterly meaningless. The standard is an Ethical/Spiritual transformation, an entirely new life.

For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)

This means that a baptism which is not only given to infants because they are part of a particular social group or family, but purports to confer either “advantages” of grace, or even “salvation” due to natural pedigree is a monstrosity. Paedobaptism mutates baptism into the very thing it supersedes: a new circumcision, a sign which has to do with genealogy, with tribe. It takes the New Covenant and makes it Abrahamic, Aaronic. Consequently, the next verse in Galatians is misunderstood:

And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. (Galatians 3:29)

Paul says that those in Christ are Abraham’s heirs, but in the context of the preceding verse he cannot be referring to physical offspring. Why would the Lord dismantle the Jew-Gentile divide only to establish something that is almost exactly the same? The answer is found in Jesus’ baptism. He is speaking of the sons of heaven, not the sons of earth, the Order of Melchizedek, not the “genealogical” line of Abraham.

They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did…” (John 8:39)

Paedobaptists claim that their baptism is about faith rather than genealogy, but in truth it is an unworkable hybrid of the two. This is why they fight amongst themselves so much. If their baptism is genealogical, then infants should not receive Communion, because the Table is clearly about faith. If their baptism is about faith, then their infants must somehow be miraculously “regenerate” from the womb. The myopia (or stubbornness) on both sides is breathtaking, because the solution is so simple. Those who claim that “Covenant membership” is objective show a surprising lack of objectivity when it comes to the Scriptures concerning baptism. ⁵I do believe “New Covenant membership” is objective, but this is because everyone on the planet is a member of this Covenant, and called to repent and believe. The clear teaching of the Bible concerning the qualifications for baptism are ignored, and many baptism texts are twisted to fit their agenda.

Marcionism — ignoring the Old Testament — is a wrong turn, because we can only understand the New Testament through studying the Old. But this “objective” baptism requires a kind of reverse Marcionism, where the New Covenant realities are “carnalised” and rendered “Abrahamic.” Almost all of the supposed “proof texts” for paedobaptism are Abrahamic, including the ones in the New Testament. But the Order of Melchizedek is a priesthood whose ordination celebrates the irrelevance of genealogy.⁶See An Atheist ‘Gets’ Baptism. Just ask a Jew or a Roman Catholic whose grown child has committed the “unforgivable sin” of getting baptised by immersion. Many such converts are disowned, because their circumcision or baptism is hereditary. The unwillingness of many Christians to submit to biblical baptism is likely due to a similar fear. If one sprinkled Presbyterian requested to be immersed in a congregation of sprinklers, this act immediately renders all their “baptisms” to be meaningless, totally discredited. Suddenly, they are revealed to be what they are: baby dedications. This is because such a baptism is an act which publicly states an allegiance to heaven rather than earth, to God rather than men. If you question a credobaptism, you question Christ. If you question a paedobaptism, you merely question some earthly guardians (regardless of the claims of efficacy by many paedobaptists).

Baptism is about ethical maturity, about “outgrowing” your parents. This is why circumcision and baptism sit where they do (typologically) in the passage above. Circumcision is an objective application of the Law. Baptism, however, speaks of internal Law. It is about stepping off the coat tails of your parents and answering to God and His Church for yourself. It is about the beginning of ministry, graduating from being limited to “priestly” bread to drinking wine in God’s presence as a king, that one might go and serve as a prophet.⁷Wine is not for children. Paedocommunion puts the mental in sacramentalism! Sadly, many of my paedobaptist friends think the cries of their infants are somehow terrifying to the devil and to the nations, as though the birth of a child is as miraculous as Christ emerging from the grave. This is ludicrous. Perhaps if they applied their teaching on the interpretation of tongues to these infant cries they might stop being so silly. Babies are not prophets. Giving the wine of the Sanctuary to infants is to claim that circumcision of heart is not necessary to be a son (representative) of God, and this particular claim originated in the mouth of the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

As a New Covenant “child of God,” the Christian is “without father or mother or genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life.” The second birth makes the first birth quite meaningless. To celebrate a first birth with baptism is like having wedding cake at a circumcision (as Peter Leithart evidently does). A paedobaptism which requires not only parents but “God-parents” is the exact opposite of Jesus’ baptism. It is a blatantly obvious distortion of everything which Jesus’ baptism stood for. Paedobaptist friends have told me that paedobaptism is not purely genealogical, and neither was circumcision, to which I reply that it was genealogical/tribal, the exact opposite of the New Covenant, which is designed not to replace but to transcend all  such human boundaries. If parental/tribal guardians must be present, then I’m afraid the heavenly Father has nothing to do with it. If it has four legs, a tail, and barks like a dog, it is not a wild stallion.

I am surprised the Reformers did not reject the practice. I guess they were culture-bound by their idea of Christendom, resulting in a “civic” sprinkling as part of a rite of citizenship, but modern paedobaptists are not bound by such ideas (and ought not to hanker after them!). In any case, we are to obey God rather than men, the Bible rather than the Reformers. And a good dose of objective, logical thinking would not go astray, either.

To insist on paedobaptism, or to be wrong more consistently by insisting on paedosacraments (Abraham ate the bread and drank the wine on behalf of those in his loins), is to misunderstand both why circumcision was instituted (a fundamentally Social order) and why it was ended (replaced by a fundamentally Ethical order). In baptism, an individual becomes a new Creation, and I will discuss what this means in the next post.

“A baptism which does not discern between the fruit of the womb and the fruit of the tomb is anti-Christ, denying He has come in the flesh.”

This post follows on from Exposed To The Elements.

An online paedobaptist friend commented that he had never heard sacred architecture offered as an argument for credobaptism before. My experience with the brilliant Bible teaching by the various Federal Vision gents is that I get a principle under my belt, then automatically begin to see its implications for all of Scripture. But then numerous times I would be surprised when no one had thought of applying it consistently. The main offender is paedobaptism. Despite their claims, it is a rite that does not spring naturally from Scripture. In fact, it has to be protected from Scripture, from the very principles I have been taught by paedobaptists.

There’s a reason that people with Asperger’s are being employed to find bugs in software. We can hold a lot of data in “working RAM” at once, which means we can “spot the difference” visually. Penelope Trunk writes:

 I have a feeling that what gave me the ability to bridge from a quirky writer to a marketable writer was focusing obsessively on Generation Y. Nobody could memorize the facts as fast as I did, and because they were all in my head I could synthesize them faster than everybody else and come up with trends. [1]

My friend Chris Wooldridge is a data analyst. His job is to find trends in data and present them pictorially. I have no doubt this is why he has picked up the Bible Matrix so quickly and is parsing passages like an old hand. To some degree, this ability requires having all the other key instances of the matrix in a “holding pattern” so they can be overlaid and compared. It is immensely beautiful, and it is one of two reasons why the practice of paedobaptism irks me so much. It is the fly in the ointment, the bug in the software. The Bible Matrix is the DNA of the Scriptures, which, like DNA, have a mechanism of self-correction. The matrix process of maturity rejects paedobaptism in every instance. Not only is the practice never described or commanded in Scripture, forces the redefinition of Christian, Church, Gospel, faith and just about everything else in its perverted path, the very DNA of the Bible treats it as a foreign body to be neutralized, a bug to be exterminated, an error to be corrected. The structure of the Scriptures themselves is as fussy as someone with OCD.

Now that I have many of my readers in defensive mode, I would like to take a look at a very simplified version of the architecture which makes paedobaptism the impossible doctrine. This has to do with the definition of “son of God.” Are sprinkled babies children of God? Both James Jordan and Peter Leithart maintains that the Gospel “redeems” natural patterns. I agree with them to some point. But their conflation of the image with the imager is an unwitting form of idolatry, with infants as the idols. They claim that paedobaptism is a New Covenant version of circumcision, at least as far as defining the boundary of the Covenant people (Jordan rightly says that circumcision is not baptism, and we strangely agree on many other points.) But a son of God is not a son of man. Paedobaptists love to abuse the Covenant with Abraham to support their well-meaning but perverted rite. I want to undermine that by taking us right back to the Garden of Eden.

Jesus called Himself “the Son of Adam,” a fact made clearer by the use of the phrase concerning the prophet Ezekiel, in whose book it appears over 90 times. I believe the reason is that Ezekiel is the only prophet given access to the heavenly Sanctuary, the throne of God. He is made, as Jordan observes, a kind of “rival High Priest in exile,” much as was Jesus many centuries later. The prophet is symbolically slain, falling on his face, then lifted up and filled with the Spirit of God. As a new Adam, he goes through a process of death and resurrection, and the rest of the book describes the same process measured out upon Israel.

But Jesus also called Himself “the Son of God.” This has an entirely different meaning. It is not genealogical, since it does not refer to an earthly father but the heavenly Father. An earthly father is most certainly an image of the heavenly Father, but the two cannot be conflated. The Pharisees who challenged Jesus had Abraham as their earthly father, and the devil as their heavenly father.

You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and bhas nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.” (John 8:44-47)

Based upon the relationship between the Father and the Son in heaven, that which is at the heart of earthly sonhood is Representation. This is why the Succession step of the matrix process often concerns physical offspring in many Old Testament passages. It refers to genealogical Succession in history, God’s faithfulness to many generations of the faithful. But the New Testament moves the goal posts. Instead of physical offspring, it puts Gospel messengers at this point in every instance. The emphasis has moved from earthly sonhood to heavenly sonhood, from sons of Adam to sons of God. The switch began at the baptism of Jesus, the only Adam who was both.

At Jesus’ baptism, the Father chose Him from among all the other circumcised sons of Israel. It is the same scenario as that which brought about the anointing of David. All the possible choices were circumcised in the flesh, but God looked upon the heart of Jesus. This heart alone pleased Him. David’s name means “Beloved,” and I have no doubt that this is why the heavenly Father says, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” Since Christ was the only one who truly displayed Priestly submission, He was chosen to be King.

From that moment, Jesus, like David, was no longer under the authority of His earthly father. This was hinted at in the event of Jesus’ disappearance at age 12, a kind of “Firstfruits.” Baptism for every Christian is the point when the individual becomes directly accountable to his new Father, to Christ, and to Christ’s Church. As Jesus did, the baptizand bows to the authority of heaven that he or she might speak with the authority of heaven.

At the instant of Jesus’ baptism, there was only one true Jew, a brand new Adam. Just as Adam was a man without genealogy, whose Father was God, so for Jesus, all heredity, all circumcision and non-circumcision, was left behind in the water of baptism. This included allegiance to Abraham, the earthly father, since the heavenly Father had now revealed Himself for the first time in history.

So, what of circumcision? This is simple, indeed, so simple that it amazes me that so many bright Reformed theologians and Christians have not thought things through with any consistent logic, especially the ones who are aware of the dominion promises in Genesis 2. If Adam was faithful as the son of God, God would make Adam a father. Both the womb and the land would be opened to him, producing their fruit in season, just as Adam had produced the fruits of righteousness, a circumcised heart, to his own Father. In Abraham, the “Great Father” who was by nature barren, both the curse and promise concerning the land and the womb were repeated. Canaan was initially barren, but we will deal with that another time (it’s quite fascinating!) and of course Sarah was barren. Circumcision was given to Abraham because he was faithful. It was a symbolic “pruning” that both the womb and land might be opened. At every point, the Firstfruits was to be given to God, including Isaac. Baptism is a rite not for the inheritance but for the inheritor. The “architectural” background of all the Psalms is Edenic.

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,
the fruit of the womb a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
are the children of one’s youth.
Blessed is the man
who fills his quiver with them!
He shall not be put to shame
when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.
(Psalm 127:3-5)

Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord,
who walks in his ways!
You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands;
you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you.
Your wife will be like a fruitful vine
within your house;
your children will be like olive shoots around your table.
Behold, thus shall the man be blessed
who fears the Lord.
(Psalm 128:1-4)

You can see from the diagram above that baptism is a rite that concerns circumcision of heart (things above: the Edenic Laver/Spring) that God might bless the believer with fruitfulness (things below: the Bronze Altar-Land). With the coming of Christ in the flesh, the promises to Abraham were fulfilled. The relationship of heredity to the Covenant was removed forever. It no longer mattered whether one was a Jew or a Gentile. The only household is the household of faith. The only sonhood is submission to the Father by the faith of the Son. A baptism which does not discern between the fruit of the womb (Land: below) and the fruit of the tomb (Garden: above) is anti-Christ, denying He has come in the flesh. Why do many of the world’s best Bible teachers, including many friends, fail to see this practice for what it is, especially those who know their way around biblical architecture?

Baptism is thus not about generation but regeneration. James Jordan claims that “regeneration” refers not to individuals but to the regeneration of the world in general, thus unregenerate offspring can be included in this process. But that is not the picture given in Scripture at all. Once again, the image is conflated with the original, the source confused with the result. And all the support given for paedobaptism relies on “Abrahamic” verses, texts about the earthly image. [2] In paedobaptism, the heavenly Father is conflated with earthly fathers, and the heavenly Son who, like Melchizedek has no genealogy, no earthly father, is confused with the sons of Aaron for whom genealogy was crucial.

If the Lord had slain Adam and Eve for Adam’s sin, it is obvious that the fruit of the womb and the land also would have been cut off. But Adam’s death was the source of this lack of natural fruit. Adam’s death had to do with his relationship to the heavenly Father. So baptism is not related to either the fruit of the Land or the fruit of the womb. It has to do with the fruit of righteousness, and these other things are only the result of that initial “Garden” fruit. Jesus’ death as Adam was prefigured in His baptism. He was not sprinkled or poured upon by John. He was submerged, slain, like the entire world during the Physical Flood, like Israel under Babylon and Rome in Social Floods. Only submersion pictures the complete end of the Old Order and the beginning of the New. The dove is never present over the Land, but only over the waters. If you have never been immersed, you have failed to publicly testify as Jesus did, that the old is gone and the new has come.

A paedobaptism is a false testimony. It says that a son of Adam is by nature a son of God. Even Jews would never claim such a thing. Every “begat,” every “bar,” was a testimony to earthly lineage. Even they understood the difference between physical offspring and those who represented not their earthly fathers but the heavenly Father. A son of God is one who has Sanctuary access not by the flesh but by the Spirit because they please God, having been slain and lifted up like Ezekiel, leaving that fiery courtroom as His representative on earth, to divide between light and darkness with his words as Adam did not and Jesus did. Jesus did not come to have earthly sons but heavenly ones (Hebrews 2:13), images of Himself not Physically or Socially but Ethically.

Now, my friends like to claim that their sprinkled children have Sanctuary access because they received the Spirit in their baptism and are now a child of God. Some even claim that infants who have not heard the Gospel have faith in God (the stupidity of this still blows me away. Who needs the Gospel, then?). This all stems from their unwillingness to discern the difference between earthly parents and the Eternal Parent, the image and the reality. Here is an example from my otherwise wise friend Toby Sumpter, who tweeted:

 Christians who spank their kids in love are high sacramentalists: they believe the Spirit saves souls through material means (Proverbs 23:14).

This is as confused as the claim that infants are believers because they trust God on their mother’s breast (Psalm 22:9). The Psalmist conflates the heavenly with the earthly poetically because one leads to the other, but they are not the same thing. The natural comes first, and then the spiritual. It is a process of maturity. The entire point of baptism is that one no longer needs to be spanked by one’s parents because one now serves the Father in heaven. Again, baptism is for the inheritor, not the inheritance, for the earthly father, not his babies. When Jesus blessed the children, who was the baptised one? It was Jesus. Somehow, everyone overlooks the obvious because they are looking for support for something else.

The blindness involved in such teaching mystifies me. Baptism is for heavenly sonhood and confers Sanctuary access as a representative of the Father. The only choice for paedobaptists is to eliminate the efficacy of baptism (and deny Sanctuary access) or to maintain the efficacy and minimise the requirement for heart circumcision. Both are really stupid, unbiblical ideas, and the solution is incredibly obvious. But I have no doubt they’ll keep fighting over this for decades to come, trying to unite heaven and earth by the will of man rather than by the true work of God in the hearts of contrite men and women, relying on badly composed, complicated statements by Reformers whose typological skills were not far removed from the sophistries of Rome, and thinking that because they have been sprinkled, witnessed so many sprinklings, and perhaps even performed their own sprinklings, this perversion must be the work of God. (I would draw a helpful diagram to demonstrate the difference between a womb and a tomb, but I haven’t got a crayon. I’m sure you can work it out.)

I hate paedobaptism because I love the Bible, which spits it out at every opportunity. But I also hate paedobaptism because I love the Gospel of repentance and faith, and an inheritance of the Spirit which expresses itself in willing identification with the sufferings of Christ. If this is offensive to you, you neither understand the promises to Abraham, or the promises in Christ. They are very different things, as different as the heavens are from the earth. They are obscured by well-meaning but carnal doctrine.

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[1] Penelope Trunk, 3 Things you need to know about people with Asperger’s.
[2] With such a misguided foundation, it is little wonder that my friend Luke Welch takes things to such shocking but logical conclusions. Apparently, the children of Christians are like Aaronic priests, who were symbolic sacrifices for sin.

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