Credobaptism and Paedobaptism: Difficult Questions to Answer.

[TylerRay]

As the Baptist Confession states:

All persons throughout the world, professing the faith of the gospel, and obedience unto God by Christ according unto it, not destroying their own profession by any errors everting the foundation, or unholiness of conversation, are and may be called visible saints; and of such ought all particular congregations to be constituted.—BCF 26.2​

Judas was "visible saint" insofar as his profession of Christ and manner of life were in agreement. But he was never a saint indeed. He had a name that he was alive, but was really dead (Rev. 3:1). And when his true nature was revealed, he lost even the title of a disciple. This isn't difficult to understand.

Are you admitting that Judas was a disciple? I can't tell.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on my response to your statement about our children being in the παιδείᾳ of the Lord (post #43).

 

[SeanPatrickCornell]

I think the issue here is that "Judas and Simon Magus were disciples" (if true) don't actually prove the point you think they do.

 

[Taylor]

I think a question that needs to be answered from a confessional standpoint is, “Why did the LBCF change ‘good and necessary consequence’ to ‘necessarily contained’ in WCF/LBCF 1.6?” The two phrases can’t mean the same thing, otherwise the change makes no sense. I think this question strikes at the heart of the debate, which is hermeneutics. Did the framers of the LCBF thus admit that pædobaptism is a necessary inference from Scripture? Perhaps not, but that change warrants some investigation.

Beyond this, one of the questions that convinced me of pædobaptism is: Why was there no initial revolt against such a change in the covenantal administration that now excluded children of believers? If, come Pentecost, all of the sudden the children of believers are excluded from the covenant, would there not have been outrage and questions? Yet we see nothing of the sort in Scripture or in history. Dabney deals with this question quite convincingly in his Systematic Theology. Of course, Scripture, not history, is our final authority, but given that

1) there was no such revolt,
2) pædobaptism, as far as I can tell, was very early and universally practiced,
3) covenantal continuity makes sense of the practice, and
4) exegetically pædobaptism fits quite comfortably,

I personally have enough to convince me of the practice.

 

[Contra_Mundum]

I think a question that needs to be answered from a confessional standpoint is, “Why did the LBCF change ‘good and necessary consequence’ to ‘necessarily contained’ in WCF/LBCF 1.6?” The two phrases can’t mean the same thing, otherwise the change makes no sense. I think this question strikes at the heart of the debate, which is hermeneutics. Did the framers of the LCBF thus admit that pædobaptism is a necessary inference from Scripture? Perhaps not, but that change warrants some investigation.

I'm sure that the intention of the LBCF framers was to attempt (by language constraint) to do both the following:

1) to go beyond the limit of logical deduction (in some way), that is for example they put the ideas of "divine Trinity" in one acceptable category of reasonable conclusion from evidence; and that of "infant baptism" in another unacceptable category; the former would have the doctrine "necessarily contained," whereas the latter they would regard as speculative.

2) to bear witness that they did not think infant baptism was a "necessary" deduction; they might allow it was deduced (not without resistance), and someone might think that deduction "good," but they did not. So, they made "necessary" into a kind of sole criterion, whereupon compulsion alone would justify such a doctrine. Hence, as all agreed adults should be baptized, that was "necessary," but as all did not agree that infants should, such a practice must not be.