The Halfway Covenant

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Lane continues to interact with my book in his recent post on the relationship of a profession of faith with the half-way covenant. This is an issue that, in my view, requires some untangling.

First, let me summarize was the half-way covenant actually did. The New England Puritans were paedobaptists, but they required a (high-bar) credible profession of faith before someone was admitted to the Table. As a consequence, many baptized individuals grew up in their churches, but never became full communicant members. After the passage of time, these folks grew up, married, and had children. Because they believed the Christian faith, and accepted their churches’ exclusion of them from the Table, they wanted their children to receive infant baptism as well. Because of the theocratic nature of that society, church membership was related to other civic privileges as well. Now, should the church baptize the children of baptized but non-communicant parents? The Half-way Covenant said yes.

This was a function of very scrupulous views of what constituted “true conversion.” What the non-communicant parents had to profess in front of the church in order for their children to be baptized was rigorous. In those days, such a person couldn’t get to the Table — today, depending on the presbytery, they might find themselves ordained. The Half-way Covenant was not a laxadaisical slide away from rigor; it was actually the result of overly-conscientious pietism, trying to solve the problem caused by their high standards without actually lowering them.

Now, what should they have done? They ought to have brought little children to the Table routinely, brought them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord and, if any of them grew up and apostatized, he should have been excluded from the Table at that point. The Half-way Covenant is the reductio ad absurdum for those who want to protect the purity of the Table a priori. All pastors and elders should want to protect the Table from corrupt use, but we should do so a posteriori. The approach to church purity taken here is that of hiring big, beefy security guards at the door to check everyone’s IDs three times. The approach taken to church purity by what I take to be a more consistent covenantal approach is to hire big, beefy bouncers.

Now, with that said, I need to interact with just a few of Lane’s comments.

“This post will finish the review of chapter 22 of RINE. The issues before us are these: is a two-tiered church membership the result of the Half-Way Covenant? Is a two-tiered church membership biblical? Are we placing our faith in something we can see if we require a profession of faith in order to have access to the table? Wilson would answer yes to the first question, no to the second question and yes to the third question. That is a fair summary, I believe, of Wilson’s argumentation in the rest of chapter 22.”

Yes, it is fair, depending on what we mean by two-tiered membership. But if we mean different things, or if the meaning shifts in the middle of the discussion, then I have to say that there is confusion here that needs to be cleared up. It is not enough to simply say “two-tiers.” What is the composition of each tier? On what basis? By what standard?

Lane says, “A two-tiered membership of the church corresponds to the visible/invisible church distinction in ideals. As such its biblical basis rests on that distinction. Of course, it cannot correspond in reality, since many make profession of faith who are hypocrites. But the church must fence the table somehow” But this, in my view, surrenders the whole point. If a practice has as its biblical basis the visible/invisible church distinction, and if that practice does not correspond to its basis, then what are we doing? Not only are many professors in the visible church hypocrites, but many non-communicants are regenerate and elect. In other words the members of the invisible church cut across both tiers. If the house that was built and the foundation beneath it are all cattywhampus, then maybe we need to go back and redo some things.

If we are talking about visible and invisible church, I believe in a two-tiered membership. If we are talking about over three feet and under three feet, that is also two-tiered, but not one that is grounded in Scripture.

Lane goes on.

“With regard to the third question, Wilson makes a mistake. Requiring a profession of faith does not mean that the church trusts the word of man rather than the word of God (contra Wilson, pg. 185). The Bible speaks about professing with one’s mouth (Romans 10:9, and the content of that profession follows, which rules out an overly wide definition of professing so as to include a baby’s nursing, etc.). A verbal profession of faith is commanded by the Scriptures. If that is commanded, and the church is supposed to do something about that, then does the church stop believing God’s Word in order to listen to a man to see if it is credible? The church must judge so as to exercise church discipline properly. Of course, Wilson will disagree with me here. But I did want to demonstrate not only that the critics’ position on this is Reformed, and not dependent on the Half-Way Covenant, but also, and more importantly, that it is biblical.”

I grant that the Bible requires a verbal profession. But it requires a verbal profession for salvation, not just for church membership. On what basis can we grant a special dispensation to infants with regard to salvation, but not with regard to church membership? Why do we say that verbal profession is required for all those who are capable of making it, but that it is not required for salvation in cases of death in infancy, and it is not required for baptism, but that all of a sudden different hermeneutical rules apply when we are talking about the Lord’s Supper? I expect Frank Turk to come in to back me up — right, Frank? If the argument applies to the Table, it applies with equal force to the Font. If it doesn’t apply to the Font, then it doesn’t apply to the Table.

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