Perhaps this is the "rule" about which I wondered above: (taken from post #3)
define the terms and the ordinances of the New Covenant based solely on New Testament data
If indeed this is the principle by which a Baptist-hermeneutic is governed (advance apologies for the broad brush strokes), then one can see all the clearer how a
deep and fundamental commitment to
discontinuity in religion is marked by the cross of Christ, when the Baptist looks to ground his theology. It is not merely that the New covenant documents are the principal context for, and the necessary justification of the conditions of the Christian religion today: if that were so, many or even most Presbyterians would agree. No, but the purported Baptist position is that the NT is the
only relevant data set.
What is the OT for, in that case, other than for a description of the preparations for the interruption of Christ on the world scene? It is a long prelude, filled with ups and downs in the fortunes--material and spiritual-- of the Old covenant people. But is this people a church of God? More exactly, on this view it seems more accurate to assess that covenant nation as a place where (more than other places in the world) one might find, here or there, the occasional man, woman, or child of faith. The church, such as it was, could be found
within the Old covenant bounds; or prior to that,
within the tents of Abraham, then Isaac, then Jacob, then the twelve patriarchs and their houses; but in no sense would it be right to identify the tents of Abraham as THE CHURCH.
But, doesn't the NT refer to "the church in the wilderness," Act.7:38? My Presbyterian-hermeneutic teaches me to recognize the constituting of the Exodus people a nation as also constituting them "the church" in that age. The things that were written for them--as instruction and promise, as background and prophecy, as a record of their engagement to be the Lord's and of their progress--are part and parcel of the guidance we have inherited for our present needs (1Cor.10:11) as the indispensable interpretive context for the capstone of revelation in Jesus Christ. There was a church in those ancient times as well as the institution founded by Christ and his apostles. Abraham's tents were the best expression of the true church in his day, even if other relics also remained from the church of Noah in men like Melchizedek.
Calvin writes in his exposition of Gen.4:26, "Seth was an upright and faithful servant of God. And after he begat a son, like himself, and had a rightly constituted family,
the face of the Church began distinctly to appear." If Calvin's statement were rebutted to him as representative of a theological
a priori, "a mere innovation which is built up only to defend infant baptism," what should he say to that? The fact there was a church before "church" was the name of it is simply recognition of the distinction between a concept and its description, or how a concept may transition from simple to complex, without altering its essence. And if there was a church back in Genesis, then is it really a textual imposition to note comparable elements of that church with present day church analogues? It was the "infant church;" and while there are extraordinary differences between infants and adults, there is undeniable continuity as well.
There is a kind of "intertwining of the Old and New Testaments in the paedobaptist hermeneutic." It is the hermeneutic that discovers the manifold ways that Christ is in the Old Testament concealed, yet brought to light by the clarity of his coming. Because he was the Hope of Israel, one wonders how the New Testament could be faithfully interpreted as the fulfillment of that hope, if not by finding the depth of Old Testament support for every predicate.
I want to close by affirming: I believe Baptists who focus on the NT--even to ignoring the OT--and such are not all Baptists!--these are not to be despised. As a Presbyterian, I think they have devoted themselves to a false principle, that they reckon Jesus Christ started what amounts to a new religion. It is so radical a break with the past--breaking hard even with revealed religion that appeared in the world between Adam and Moses and carried down to the days of John the Baptist--that they think of God and one another in ways that are quite distinct from the thinking manner (as they conceive it) of OT heroes and heroines of faith, ala Heb.11. The reason we ought not despise them, besides behavior dishonoring to Christ and his name on us, is that sometimes they love our mutual Lord better than those who take pride in their religion, or their harmony of OT/NT witness, or their covenant theology, or whatever. People with whom we may seriously disagree can still be our brother and sister through sincere faith in Jesus, in whom we too have put our whole confidence.
