With regard to the baptism of infants, I no longer accept the requirement for “express warrant” that I used to hold to when I was baptistic in my convictions. The “express warrant” hermeneutic winds up prohibiting way too much — worship on the Lord’s Day, women taking communion, and so on. At the same time, when I was baptistic I really wanted the question to be settled by an express statement of the Scripture. It would be really cool, thought I, if there were only a verse recording Paul baptizing an infant from the household of Demetrius.
When I was working through the material for my book on infant baptism, I came across what I believe is express warrant for infant baptism (by good and necessary consequence). Those who want the fuller development can find it in the book, but here is the outline of the argument. Like I said, I don’t believe express warrant from the New Testament is necessary, but it turns out we do have express warrant. Gravy.
The New Testament identifies believing synagogues as churches. James identifies the two in his letter. If a man in filthy rags comes into your synagogue (Jas. 2:2), don’t do thus and such. And if anyone there is sick, let him call for the elders of the church (Jas. 5:14). Now when Paul came to Jerusalem (where many of these believing synagogues were), he went out of his way to reassure everybody that he was not teaching Jews to discontinue circumcising their infants. This means, in the short form, that there were New Testament churches that had infant members. A circumcised infant in a believing synagogue was a member of that church. Now if Jewish churches/synagogues had infant members, on what grounds could we exclude infants from membership in Gentile churches? We could not exclude them. But we could say that circumcision was not required for them, because the sign and seal of the covenant was in the process of being changed to baptism. “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek . . . And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Gal. 3:27-29).
The question for our baptistic brethren is this. Are you prepared to maintain that an infant brought to your congregation (formally and covenantally excluded) is in the same position as an infant brought to a believing synagogue in Jerusalem in AD 52? Not only would the believing synagogue not exclude such an infant, I believe that they would have difficulty even comprehending the concept of excluding the infants. And if there was such a generation-long uproar over the inclusion of the Gentiles, what would the commotion have been if the apostles really were teaching the Jews that not only must you start admitting the Gentile adults, but you must start excluding your own children? I have trouble believing that this would not have caused the Mother of all Theological Controversies. But there is not a word about such a controversy in the New Testament.
I’m gonna be completely honest… i was watching your youtube interviews with Joe rigney about Edwards, and when you were talking about the church and got into paedobaptism i got excited for the first time instead of frustrated. I feel like in the next 5 years ill end up a presbyterian… so the only logical thing was to search “paedobaptism” on your website so I could send you a message. Could you write a book explaining it, using Wilsonese? or a very very long youtube video for me.
Flawed logic. Jewish synagogue didn’t circumcise female infants, so taking a practice done for only half of infants and using that to prescribe an activity that is gender-neutral is odd (unless you take a progressive view that says that Christ came to break down gender barriers, and take this extension from male circumcision to baptism for both genders as a sign of that!). Also, Paul didn’t refer to those infants as members, anymore than the outsiders visiting would be considered members.
No express warrant, no gravy.
You may have already listened to it, but there is a wonderful sermon on Paedobaptism and Communion on Canonwired.
Creedalists always get it wrong. Go back to the Vatican with the baby sprinkling. Come on Doug extrapolating dogma shouldn’t be your fallback position on a scriptural doctrine position. Is veneration of Mary in there too? How about last rites administered by a Roman priest? How about sacred celibacy? All unfounded dogmas based on very poor analogies taken from scripture out of context.