I appreciate Frank Turk’s comments and input from time to time, and would commend his discussion of my recent posts on the minimum of orthodoxy required to get one through the pearly gates. I commend them, not because I agree, but because it is a pleasure to interact with someone who at least gets what you are saying, or is obviously making diligent efforts to do so. This, on any issue within a stone’s throw of Auburn Avenue, is quite an achievement.
That said, let me toss a few more carrots into the crock pot of truth. Conscientious paedobaptists and credobaptists are both concerned about the purity of the visible church, and are both concerned about the practice of biblical discipline in the church. But the two groups go about trying maintain this purity in two different ways, which I may be able to illustrate with (what else?) an illustration. Godly credobaptists hire security to guard the front door. Godly paedobaptists hire bouncers.
Before getting to the question of which one is biblical, let us at least admit that each position is faced with peculiar temptations and challenges. The obvious concern is that the bouncers might not do their job well enough, leaving people inside the road house of Christendom who shouldn’t be there. The other concern is that the security guards might exclude from the nightclub of Christendom individuals who had been specifically invited by the one giving the party.
In addressing which approach is more biblical, I offer the suggestions below with the recognition that I have been a participant in both approaches. I have been a neck-deep participant in both approaches, and when I abandoned the credobaptist position for the paedobaptist I was in principle abandoning the security guard approach for the bouncer approach. This took some time for me to sort out but the two approaches to discipline are implicit in the positions on baptism themselves.
As I consider the condition of the church as described in Scripture, I have to come to grips with the fact that God seems to like riff-raff. We are to invite all kinds to our banquet and not worry too much about the silver. This is not because God wants us to remain riff-raff — He has big plans for this motley collection of forgiven adulterers and winos, and so He cares very much for the qualifications of those who run His soup kitchen (to alter the metaphor). Training of His ministers is very important, along with a godly family, and a fierce love for orthodoxy. These are all crucial. But — and this is the glorious thing — God does not have high standards for the winos. “But I am all screwed up.” “That’s great! You qualify!”
I am not accusing conscientious adherents of the security guard approach of having evil motives, but I do suspect an element of safety-consciousness and prudence in all this that I think should be missing from our evangelism and ministry. Let’s live on the edge for a bit. Let the tares grow too. The servants in Christ’s parable (Christians) were more conscientious about wanting to weed the field than the farmer (Christ) was. This is the way it frequently is. We confuse our constant inclination to be fussy-mussy with diligence in rightousness. We have a hard time with taking Christ’s teaching straight up the middle (“And the Lord said, ‘Aw, what can a few weeds hurt?'”) and so we tidy it up a bit.