Credo Vs. Paedo Baptism/Communion is not a scriptural debate

    I didn't think I cared about this topic as much as I do. As a former Baptist who only recently joined a Reformed church and had our children baptized, I'm not the most qualified person in the world to consistently promote either side of the debate.

    But I do have something to say on the subject that I don't think I've heard anyone say before: the baptism debate is a worldview/presuppositional debate. Further, where you fall on the issue has very little to do with the actual text of scripture.

    This is where the Baptist jumps in and says, "That may be true for Presbyterians, but we Baptists hold to Sola-Scriptura. That's why we only baptize professing believers because there are no biblical commands to baptize apart from repentance and belief." And then the Presbyterian jumps back in and says something about the covenant and how much more gracious it is, repeat ad nauseum while the actual argument is being completely overlooked.

    The fact of the matter is that Presbyterians do allow tradition to influence their application of baptism. And, in order to do so while holding to Sola Scriptura, the mode, age, and responsibility of baptism is relegated to a secondary issue. They then always feel the need to read baptism into circumcision texts (and everywhere else) to justify their worldview biblically without ever realizing that this is exactly what the Credo-Baptist is accusing them of.

    From what I've written above, you might think I hold to a Credo-Baptist position. I don't: I just understand it. It's a very simple argument: 1) Baptism is tied to repentance, faith, and/or effectual salvation in scripture, and 2) There is no explicit command to baptize infants in scripture, therefore 3) the only scriptural warrant we have to baptize anyone is on the basis of a professed repentance and faith. Most Presbyterians just don't get this. I do. It's why I was a Baptist.

    So what changed? Did I just want to have the liturgy and benefits of a Presbyterian church structure (that is so much better than the atomized nature of Baptist churches)? That definitely pushed me into rethinking the issue. After all, "you will know them by their fruits," and the Baptist churches I've attended have always had an alarming number of children abandon the faith at college age (also my family and many other Baptist families), while the few Presbyterian churches I knew didn't have that problem. Someone else may have had the opposite experience though. My experience doesn't determine truth and if these were the only reasons I embraced Paedo-Baptism I'd be a fool.

    For me, it was a worldview change. First my fundamental understanding of the gospel changed through reading a Scottish Presbyterian's book called "The Whole Christ" (Sinclair Ferguson). At first this worldview shift was primarily related to the law and its manifold applications, which resulted in me rejecting the Christianized interpration of "love" that was nothing more than the secular idea of "tolerance" (that's not what the book was about, it was just the first thing that it immediately applied to for me). Then my eschatological view changed (from Amillennialism and a hatred of the material world to Preterist/Postmillennial that sees all of history as a continual story of the world's ultimate salvation). It was only in light of this new (for me) way of looking at the world that the Reformed understanding of Covenant membership began to make sense.

    I know I'm summarizing a lot, but this is all necessary to understand the seismic shift my worldview went through to change from a Credo-Baptist position to a Paedo-Baptist position. I will happily expound on any of the points above in further detail, but no one reads what I write anyway so who knows if that will ever happen. The point is, I came to Paedo-Baptism convictions through a long process in the reformation of many different theological contexts. And even then, I was backwards on that because I embraced Paedo-Communion first. My wife was pregnant and since the child in her womb was being nurtured by what she ate, shouldn't communion be withheld to protect the purity of the table? And, so in conjunction with and as a result of many other changes, I changed my opinions about who should be baptized (and receive communion) as well.

    It's not a flawless argument. Someone asked me recently "If she were a new convert, should she be kept from baptism then? It's not like the baby in her womb would be baptized if she were." But I think this is a really weird distinction that Presbyterians make, because the benefits of the food a mother eats while pregnant or nursing is a far more obvious application of the reception of grace that comes from the faith of a child's parents then the sprinkling of water that the infant can in no way understand. I understand that a Baptist would be opposed to it, but I don't get the division of Paedo-Baptism from Paedo-Communion in Presbyterian circles.

    For me, I understand the application of the covenant through the ministry of the parents in communion with the church as an explicit expression of God's grace to a child born into those circumstances. I understand baptism as a sign of membership in the earthly church. And I can even agree with many of the connections people make between it and circumcision. You won't convince a Baptist with those arguments, but I agree with you.

    And here's where putting it into my own words begins to become problematic: it wasn't scripture that convinced me on this issue. Yeah, it's a scriptural worldview and a change of perspective that initiated it (I personally don't believe Paedo-Baptism makes sense outside of a Preterist historical view with the New Testament being completed prior to the destruction of Jerusalem which is directly tied to a Postmill eschatology). But nothing that the bible explicitly said on this issue caused me to change my view. How could it? It doesn't say "Baptize the children of believing parents" anywhere.

    So the debate really comes down to "what is Sola Scriptura and how does it pertain to baptism/communion?" I have no intention to address that question or solve it here, except to say that 1) I affirm Paedo-Baptism and Paedo-communion to be the biblical ideal even though it's never explicitly commanded, and 2) I affirm Sola Scriptura (the bible is the only infallible word from God, or, the bible is the only sufficient, infallible authority for life and godliness). What I can say on the issue, however, is that both sides have temptations that too often appear.

    Complain about it all you like, but the easy-believism that so many Baptist churches fall into is an obvious problem. And it's not an offshoot of the theologically ignorant: it's baked into the system. The Amish let their kids Ruhmspring to see if they want to stay in "the faith" (remain Amish) or leave the church when they're old enough, with the ones in this area forcing a decision once they're married. The emphasis on a personal discovery of the faith leads parents to treat their children like (they could be) heathens until they know better, which, not surprisingly, often results in their children acting like heathens. And that's why every Baptist church is a church to itself, because the emphasize on a credible profession leads to hyper focusing on the errors of other people, churches, and organizations because they're accustomed to searching for evidence of faith (or lack thereof) in everything.

    But the dry, egg-headed Presbyterian trope only comes about because we're accustomed to finding scriptural support for things that there's an entire history of tradition, creeds, and confession that have shaped our understanding of that scripture more than the explicit text itself. Even for those who can read the original languages, there's mountains of commentaries and expositional texts that they're indebted to in order to better understand the language and historical context. There's no way to understand scripture truly without making assumptions about the people and places it was written to, some of which are not clear in the text. That's not to say that scripture isn't clear where it speaks clearly, but part of the reason we're still debating eschatology is because we can't even agree on when the books of the New Testament were written. We can't admit that our view of baptism has as much to do with historical tradition as it does with scriptural merit (just because the Baptists are right about that doesn't mean they've won the debate). So we overcompensate. We study to show ourselves approved, which means burying everyone under thousands of scripture references and an hour of prayer before the dishes can be done properly. Thus, the egg-headed Presbyterian who has all of the answers and nothing to do with them is born.

    Another place where this different approach to the world becomes clear is church government. Ironically. Baptist churches tend to be far less strict when it comes to calling Ministers than Presbyterians. Because the emphasis of Baptist theology is a personal discovery of the gospel displayed in good works after conversion, much less theological knowledge is expected for a Pastor. Yeah it helps and should be pursued, but Baptists are far more willing to take on a zealous young Christian with proven faith as a Pastor because the understanding of the gospel is the only true requirement for Christian fellowship and leadership. This extends into granting more leniency toward men whose families are out of order, because his children's personal faith has nothing to do with him and we're all just on a journey of discovery anyway, so they'll all figure it out someday.

     Meanwhile, Presbyterians have rigorous, well-defined requirements for who is to be considered an elder in their denominations, including the authorization of a minister before he can lawfully preach, serve communion, and perform a baptism. This can be offensive to a Baptist mindset, as the only person fit to qualify or disqualify a man for ministry is God. But Presbyterians don't treat the world like true Christianity is their's to rediscover every generation, and those standards have been put in place over centuries for a reason. The scriptural qualifications for a minister are the final authority, but our traditions tell us what to look for doctrinally for a proper understanding of the Biblical AND Historic Christian faith.

    So I adopted a Presbyterian mindset on this issue. And that mindset is that the mode of Baptism is not a scriptural argument: it is a historical one. There's a fundamental assumption in Paedo-Baptism, and that is that the historical record of Baptism in the book of Acts were not normative. This is why they always take it back to Abraham's circumcision and the circumcision of his household, that then led to the normative assumption of circumcision for all of Israel going forward. The assumption is that the New Testament was primarily written for the benefit of the first generation of Christians, with a roughly 30 year span from its first words to its last prior to the destruction of Jerusalem (Preterism). It wasn't intended to answer every question for the church moving forward throughout history, including church membership in a modern civilization where Christianity is celebrated. To say it another way, Credo-Baptist theology makes the same error the book "Pagan Christianity" makes by assuming that our services should look like they did while the church was in its infancy. The church has grown throughout history: we don't have to keep acting like it was just born.

     I couldn't understand this as a Baptist, because, for some reason, Presbyterians always try to argue like scripture is where they're getting Paedo-baptism/communion from explicitly. Or maybe they did admit it was a largely historical argument and I took it as a sign of surrender (because that was all that mattered to me)? I couldn't say: I haven't always been the best at listening. But still, it doesn't help that a lot of Presbyterians aren't Postmill/Preterists. No wonder Baptists are confused about what they believe: some Presbyterians aren't even consistent with it themselves.

    Now please don't hear a papist appeal of raising tradition to the same authority of scripture in revealing God's will to us in this post. I'm not saying "Paedobaptism is the historical view which has equal weight with the written word of God." I'm saying "Paedobaptism is the historical view, scripture is silent on this issue, and it makes sense to me." What the Baptist says is "Paedobaptism may be the historical view of the church, but the clear commands of scripture concerning it contradict the church's view, so we will only do what scripture commands and ignore the traditions of men."

    My point is only this: this argument starts before we ever open our bible. And despite how many verses we can quote to the contrary, none of those words will change our mind. Let people fall where they will on this issue and discuss it as much as you like, but a bible study won't change your assumptions here. That would take the Holy Spirit. Or a great church that makes you want to understand what those good people believe. Or a garbage church that makes you want to reject everything that church believes. Whatever the case, only an entire shift in worldview will make you change from one side to the other.

    Except for Presbyterians that hold to Paedo-Baptism but not Paedo-Communion. I have no idea what's wrong with them.