This is my reply to your last reply: It’s good to hear that you take the logical line you take. I can appreciate that.

And I think that the Reformed Baptist pastors I have met are woefully unequipped to actually engage this conversation. When they hear “Wright” they generally retreat to a defense of Luther. And when they think “Covenant” they tend to retreat to the 16th and 17th century formulations. The Reformed Baptists I know tend to read the Puritans, not Josephus!

So I would agree with a lot of your criticism. However, I would love to hear you expound on this statement: “However, after spending my life in Reformed Baptist circles and reading many Baptist theologians on the subject, I am convinced that something very different is meant here.” I might agree, but I’d like to see this fleshed out, it would be instructive.

The reason I am not a padobaptist is exactly because of the kind of exegesis N.T.Wright does in Romans 4! I was Presbyterian. But all the systematic-theological arguments that argue the covenants as including the genealogical principle face serious problems with Romans 4. And I came to that conclusion reading the now deceased OPC scholar Dr. Meredith Kline — it was his book on Baptism, By Oath Consigned, that made this happen for me. After that, I read N. T. Wright on Romans 4, and found him saying what I was concluding (only he says it 100x better than I ever could).

Does that mean that children have no benefit by being born into Christian families? No! But I am talking redemptive-historical shifts, and the genealogical principle (i.e., the meaning of seed and children of Abraham, etc.), not the benefits of being in a Christian home.

As for Colony of Heaven language, I am using that phrase as I got it theologically from Edmund Clowney, but then I am also using it historically as I was taught by my seminary professor when we looked at Philippi archaeologically and from the witting of Casscuis. Finally, I am using that phrase keeping a close eye on already-not-yet eschatologically as understood by N. T. Wright (where he also uses Roman History to explain what a colony was and is). His latest book, Surprised by Hope is really helpful here.

Sadly, I think that some Baptist ministers might stop at the Clowney level (if they even know about him — he was a Presbyterian and few Baptists read him). But any critique of Baptists missing the point on Colony is only as good as the representative Baptists we interact with. Certainly there are plenty have more developed views (maybe even including me).

Mostly, I am glad you are consistent with padeocommunion. I am completely befuddled and baffled by Presbyterians who are die-hard padeobaptists because of their systematic theology, yet who are simultaneously almost apathetic for the corollary of infant communion. Their apathy over the inconsistency says more than all their systematizing and all their arguments about covenant theology (usually being a brand of 16th century Westminster Covenant Theology).

The best answer I have heard to date is when the Presbyterian will make a case for the once-only nature of baptism vs. the ongoing nature of communion. But that, to me, is backfilling. They had to come to an answer. The answer is forced, and does not flow from covenant history but from a defense of their position. It is artificial, at best, even as I always hold open the possibility that I am wrong!

Steve

I am a paedocommunionist, as is Wright (The Meal Jesus Gave Us, p.80-81). I am convinced that the Presbyterian practice of denying communion to infants is utterly devoid of biblical justification. I also believe that it undermines the God-given significance of Baptism and devalues the Church. As Wright puts it: ‘Baptism is the way into the family; the Eucharist is the family meal.’

I know that some Baptists employ the language of the Church as colony. However, I also know that they employ it in a significantly different sense to that in which Wright employs it.

I am also aware that Baptists can make statements that sound like an affirmation that children are in some sense part of the covenant community. However, after spending my life in Reformed Baptist circles and reading many Baptist theologians on the subject, I am convinced that something very different is meant here. I have discussed this matter with a number of Reformed Baptist pastors and I know where they stand and that there are great differences of understanding here.

As for the Presbyterian denial of infant and young child communion, it is a serious inconsistency. The fact that so many see such a position as natural and self-evident and not just a little bit unusual probably has something to do with the fact that ‘watery semi-Baptist theology’ (as Wright has termed it) does not only affect Anglicans, but has also penetrated deeply in Presbyterian circles. Many of the Presbyterians that one encounters are little more than Baptists who happen to sprinkle their babies.

It is high time that we went back to the early Church practice in this area.

I propose that your argument might be used against you by a paedo-communionist. If you don’t let babies take of the eschatological community meal (the Lord’s Supper), then you have picked one sacrament over the other (baptism over covenant meal) to permit children to participate in. So, it seems to me that Wright’s claims about the political character of the Church as a Colony of Christ stands in direct opposition to Presbyterian ecclesiology — if I follow your logic. All I did here is use your sentence and replace the word “Baptist” with “Presbyterian”.

Every time the bread and wine pass before a covenant child — and that child is not allowed to eat with his covenant Lord — the church is saying the Colony of Christ does not include children. In fact, it becomes a weekly reminder to the child (following a high theology of the sacaraments).

Ahhh, but Presbyterians don’t say that! You see, they don’t let the children take the Meal until such a ones are of a volitional (voluntary?) age. A person is allowed the Bread and Wine only after they themselves swear loyalty to the king. And so Presbyterians, like Baptists, can have a high view of the Colony of Christ. They both look for a voluntary age of confession.

A Baptist can see a child as part of the larger covenant community without the child having a participation in the covenant waters. Likewise, a Presbyterian can see the child as part of the larger covenant community without the child having participation in the covenant meal.

And imagine this: a group of Christians that gather to eat a meal, and the kids wath from afar while a subset of the Colony eats?! That is what happens each week in Presbyterian churches when the supper is taken in worship.

I was thinking, regarding household baptisms, that it might be helpful also to consider the historical practice of an entire nation following its leader to whatever faith he had been converted to. In that way we are all vassals of Jesus, and after we are baptized, our subjects need to be baptized as well. My four children, who are the subjects in my “kingdom”, are baptized for that reason.

As you’ve said before, we need to learn to step outside of the individualism that is very much part of modern (and Baptist) thought.

Thanks for your helpful comments. By ‘gathered church’ I was referring to the form of ecclesiology found in Baptist and Congregational settings, which is both nonconformist and voluntaristic.

On your second point, my reason for not mentioning that was more due to the fact that, off the top of my head, I could not think of a place where Wright himself drew the connection. The circumcision-Baptism connection is probably stronger in Wright’s thought than it is in mine. I have long argued that too strong a parallel between the two risks undermining the challenge that Baptism and the Church pose to the family order of the old creation.

One disagreement and one amplification.

As to the first, a “gathered church” ecclesiology is not necessarily at odds with the sort of thick ecclesiology that you suggest for Dr Wright. As you note, the problem is voluntarism, not gathering per se. The ekklesia is called out and gathered by God - not by themselves.

As to the second, certainly the Apostle Paul suggests the connection between circumcision and baptism, but the connection between Jewish proselyte baptism and Christian baptism should also be pointed out, especially given the household baptisms that are liberally sprinkled through the Acts of the Apostles. Not thinking of membership in the covenant community of faith as in any way individual, it is likely that all members of a household in which the father and mother converted to Judaism received proselyte baptism, including infants (as well as adult slaves and servants, which raises the issue of corporatism directly with regards to adults instead of children).

1. The distinction is not merely one between ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’, but between ‘holy’ and ‘unclean’. ‘Holy’ is a stronger word than ‘clean’. To be holy is to ’set apart’ for God’s special presence. To be ‘clean’ is not the same thing as to be ’set apart’. The implication is that the child and the unbelieving spouse are set apart for Temple access. Of course, we enter the New Covenant Temple through Baptism.

The idea that many Baptists put forward, that ‘holy’ refers to the general privilege of being in a Christian environment simply turns a blind eye to the weight that such language carries over from the OT. Paul is speaking of an objective change of status, not merely a possible exposure to things that might be of spiritual benefit.

Note: To be ‘holy’ is not the same thing as to be ’saved’. There were many sinful priests in the OT that were nonetheless ‘holy’.

2. The word ‘now’ is interesting. The implication is that the children were once unclean and have since been cleansed, most likely by the conversion of their believing parent.