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Joe examines the Baptist position that babies cannot be baptized, and how this clashes with the Old Covenant that they seem to accept.
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heshmeyer, and I want to share with you today an argument that is simple and effective at showing why Baptists are wrong, not only on baptism, but also on the Eucharist. The argument is straightforward enough that I think you can learn it very easily, but I want to get a little more into the weeds and prepare you for some background you might want to know or some arguments to expect in response and so on. As I’m doing that, I want to be very clear. Baptists are our brothers and sisters in Christ, and there’s a lot that’s admirable. The average Baptist often excels his Catholic neighbor in terms of zeal and evangelization. And there’s many things that we would do well to copy in terms of the desire to serve the Lord. That said, there are also some distinctive features of Baptist theology that are unbiblical and are incorrect and should be called out.
And at the heart of this is the very thing that gives Baptists their name, their unique views on baptism. They believe in believers’ baptism, what is called in technical terms, cradle baptism. In other words, they don’t believe you should baptize babies. They think you should wait till someone is old enough to become a believer in Jesus and only those people can become members of the church. Only those people can be baptized. They also, although there isn’t a single kind of Baptist view on the Eucharist, there is a shared Baptist rejection of Catholic views of the Eucharist, that it really is the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. So the bread and wine become Jesus’ body and blood. They reject that view and broadly speaking, are going to tend towards something like a more symbolic view of the Eucharist or of the Lord’s supper.
So what is the simple argument that you can use to show why Baptists are wrong on baptism? And then as we’re going to see, this also has the effect of showing why they’re wrong on the Eucharist. It’s a simple covenantal argument. And it works like this. There’s a few points you should know. Number one, in the Old Covenant, circumcision was the doorway into the Old Covenant, at least for boys. And number two, that doorway was open to babies as young as eight days old. So if you were a baby boy, you could become a member of the Covenant community, Israel. You could become a member of the Jewish people, not only in an ethnic sense, but in a covenantal sense. In the New Covenant, as we’re going to see, baptism is the doorway to the New Covenant, but Baptists deny this doorway by denying baptism to infants and small children.
Now, the age at which Baptists will baptize their children varies wildly. I’ve seen people argue you shouldn’t baptize until 18. I’ve seen people baptizing kids as early as about four. So you’re going to get a wide range, but in theory at least, all Baptists agree that you have to wait till the child is old enough to be a believer. And so they have to be able to understand scripture and respond to it before they’re able to be baptized. So there’s a shared rejection of infant baptism. How young you can get baptized? That’s going to be a bit of a gray area. But whatever the case, wherever they draw that line, before that line, you fall into this bizarre situation in which number one, you’re saying a baby or a small child could become a member of Old Covenant Israel, but cannot become a member of New Covenant Israel.
That is a very strange result. That should strike us as obviously off, that God creates both covenant communities, but he only will let babies into the old one that doesn’t apply anymore and not the new one. But the second odd result is that we’re just directly contradicting the commands of Jesus because Jesus is very clear in Matthew 19. The crowds try to bring some children to Jesus. The disciples rebuke them and Jesus insides with the crowds bringing kids to them saying, “Let the children come to me and do not hinder them for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.” So that’s the argument in a nutshell, that the covenant should be open to little kids because the kingdom is open to little kids. And baptism is the door in which we enter the church, enter the kingdom. And therefore, don’t deny it to infants and small children.
Simple argument, as I said, but because it involves covenant theology, there’s some more background that might be helpful to know, but also some more things that will show why this is a really effective argument, not only on baptism, but also on the Eucharist. So if you’re going to use this argument, the first thing to watch out for is that a lot of Christians today don’t really know what a covenant is or why we should care about covenants. For many of us, Christianity has become this radically individual thing. It’s all about me and Jesus. So the idea of being part of a covenant or being parties to a covenant, all of that sounds needlessly legalistic. Baptists themselves tend to be all over the place when it comes to questions of covenantal theology. Some Baptists spend a great deal of time on covenantal theology, particularly those from a reformed Baptist background, while others like dispensationalists may have little or no emphasis on covenantal theology.
But wherever the person you’re talking to lands, covenants are this incredibly important part of the Bible. In its Greek and Hebrew forms, the word covenant appears literally hundreds of times throughout the Old and New Testament, but we can say even more than that. Even the names, Old Testament and New Testament are themselves just coming from the Latin for Old Covenant and New Covenant. So when you’re reading the Bible, you’re either reading about God’s old covenants with Israel or the new covenant that Jesus creates with the church. As in Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger explained, the early Christians named those two parts of the Bible, the old covenant and the new covenant, because they were trying to sum up the essential meaning of the Bible. They’re trying to bring out the central theme of scripture itself. So covenant is their kind of one word summary of the essence of Christianity.
So covenant is super important. What is a covenant? How do you participate in a covenant? Well, it’s a binding agreement between two parties. When we’re talking about God’s covenants, we’re talking about partnerships in which God makes certain promises and calls his people to certain commitments.
CLIP:
In the story of the Bible, everyone has abandoned the partnership with God. So what God does is select a smaller group of people out of the many, and he makes a new partnership with them called a covenant. And in a covenant, God makes promises. And then in exchange asks his partner to fulfill certain commitments.
Joe:
In covenant and polity, in biblical Israel, the political scientist, Daniel Elizar, explains that there were actually a few different ways of sealing a covenant in the Old Testament. Typically, this was done through blood sacrifice, but we also see the use of a common meal and oath. And Elizar, who is a practicing Jew, notices something that many modern Christians miss, that when Jesus is celebrating the last supper with the disciples, this looks very covenantal. This looks like the ceiling of a new covenant. But I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself there. So for now, the main point is this. Covenants are the rules of a relationship. Whether we’re talking about a marriage or adopting a child or two nations entering into an alliance with each other, a good relationship has terms and there’s a sort of status. And so covenants are the way that God relates to his people.
And as Elizar points out, the Bible uses covenantal language even to describe God’s relationship with creation itself. So in Jeremiah seven, when we hear God tell his people, obey my voice and I will be your God and you shall be my people. And walk in all the way that I command you that it may be well with you. He’s using the language of covenant, even though the word there is not being used. He is establishing what the relationship is. He is their God, they’re his people, and he’s establishing what the terms of that relationship are. They are to obey his voice. So that’s what covenants are. That’s why we should care about covenants. We want God to be our God. We want to be his people. We need to know what covenant we’re in with him. But a second obstacle you might have in presenting this argument is that some Baptists misunderstand both the old covenant and the new covenant.
For example, Wayne Grudham has this incredibly influential book on systematic theology from a Baptist perspective. In it, he writes that we should not be surprised that there was a change from the way the covenant community was entered in the Old Testament, physical birth, to the way the church is entered in the New Testament, spiritual birth. But it’s not actually true that you automatically entered the Old Covenant through physical birth. At least none of you were a male. As God says to Abraham, this is my covenant, which you shall keep between me and you and your descendants after you. Every male among you shall be circumcised. Now remember, throughout the Bible, God is regularly speaking to adults, but here he’s very clear. The covenant is not just for grownups. It is for Abraham and his descendants. And he provides a way for children to enter into the covenant even from their infancy.
So circumcision is not only the sign of the covenant, but in a real sense, it is the covenant itself. Later, St. Stephen will speak of it as the covenant of circumcision. And so God says that any uncircumcised male is cut off from the people because he’s broken the covenant. This also means, by the way, that a non-Jew could join the Old Covenant community by becoming circumcised. And then he could, for example, eat of the Passover lamb. But there was more to the Old Covenant than just circumcision. Even though we use the language of Old Covenant singular, the truth is that God formed a series of covenants, first with Abraham and then with his descendants. And the most significant of those is the covenant that God forms with Moses and the Israelites and Mount Sinai. Now, remember how Professor Elizar said that a covenant was typically entered into with sacrifice, a common meal and/or an oath?
Well, in Exodus 24, we see all three. Moses builds an altar at the foot of Mount Sinai and there he offers sacrifice. He reads the words of God’s law to the people. The people then promised to obey it. Moses then splashes half of the blood on the altar and half of the blood on the people. As J. Hinton Davies explains, the blood here is a sign of God’s union with Israel. It’s what Davies calls the sacramental atonement or atonement of the covenantal relationship. So God and Israel are united through the flesh and the blood. The closest analogies we might think of are friends becoming blood brothers or a couple consummating their marriage bodily. And it’s fascinating that at this moment of the sacramental atonement, atonement of the Old Covenant relationship, Moses’s words are behold the blood of the covenant. Hebrews nine will later point to this as the moment in which the old covenant was ratified.
And what happens next? Well, in the very next verse here in Exodus, Moses, the priests and the elders of Israel see God and were told they beheld God and ate and drank. So here, as I said, we see all three of the ways that Elizar tells us a covenant is formed. You’ve got a bloody sacrifice. You have the oath made by the people. You have a covenantal meal. In the Jewish Talmud, Rabbi Judah, the prince observes that just as your ancestors enter the covenant only through circumcision and immersion in a ritual bath and the sprinkling of blood on the altar, so too converts may enter the covenant only through circumcision and immersion and the sprinkling of some blood. So even in the old covenant, there are three things needed to enter the covenant people. You need circumcision, you need the application of blood sacrifice, and you need ritual immersion or baptism and water, what the Jews called a mikvah.
Well, since God is the author of both the old and the new covenant, what might all of that be pointing towards in the new covenant? Well, perhaps the most shocking thing that we’re going to discover is this. While the word covenant, as I said, is used hundreds of times throughout the Bible, we find Jesus explicitly speaking of the new covenant only one time. And that’s when he’s instituting the Eucharist. He lifts up the chalice and he says, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” Now, the parallel between behold the blood of the covenant, ratifying the old covenant, and this is my blood of the covenant, ratifying the new covenant should be clear. That even on its own, I would suggest is already strong evidence that like Moses before him, what Jesus has in that chalice really is blood.
It’s not just a symbol. Because as Hebrews nine makes clear, a symbol of blood is not good enough since even the first covenant was not ratified without blood. But if Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, who is this covenant with? After all, it’s all well and good to say Jesus has made a lifesaving covenant. But like a marriage or an adoption or an alliance, a covenant is made with somebody else. You don’t have a covenant by yourself. Just saying there’s a covenant out there isn’t enough. So who is this new covenant with? And how do I know if I’m a party to the new covenant or not? Well, according to Jeremiah 33, one of the prophecies in the old covenant about the new covenant, the new covenant is to be with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. And so it’s striking that at the last supper, Jesus gathers the 12 apostles and he sets them over the 12 tribes of Israel.
But this gathered covenant people, this remnant of Israel organized by Jesus into a community that scripture speaks of as the kingdom or the church, it quickly comes to include the Gentiles as well. St. Paul reminds the Gentiles in Ephesians two, how they were once alienated from the Commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise. But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. So okay, how does a faithful Jew or a faithful Gentile then enter into this new covenant? Well, like the Old Covenant, this new covenant is made both for believing adults and to their children, their descendants. We see this very clearly in Acts chapter two when we’re looking at Pentecost. After Peter gives his famous Pentecost sermon, we’re told that the people are cut to the heart and they see to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brethren, what shall we do?
And Peter’s response is fascinating. He tells him, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for, that’s Ace, the forgiveness of your sins. In Greek, this means that baptism is causing the forgiveness of your sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. And then he says very clearly, for the promises to you and to your children and to all that are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him. So like the Old Covenant, this isn’t just for grownups, this is for their children as well. Peter then testified with many other words and exhorted them saying, save yourselves from this crooked generation. So there’s something about what they’re about to do next that is salvific. So those who received his word were baptized. And they were added that day about 3000 souls. Well, added to what?
Added to the church. St. Paul says that as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. And he seems to treat it as the fulfillment of circumcision. Saying in him also, you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of flesh and the circumcision of Christ. And you were buried with him in baptism in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead. So just as the old covenant had the blood of the sacrifice and the right of circumcision for infants and converts and a ritual bath, so the new covenant has the blood of the sacrifice, both on the cross and in the mass, as well as a ritual baptism. And this replaces circumcision. It’s why St. Justin Martyr as early as the mid 100s can say that as Christians, we receive not physical circumcision, but spiritual circumcision and that we receive it in baptism.
And so if we take Jesus seriously about letting the children come to him, we should let them enter the New Covenant through baptism. So how might a Baptist respond to all of this? Well, Wayne Grudham simply concedes the argument. He claims the New Covenant is only open to believers and so unbelieving children cannot be part of the New Covenant. But I think there’s a fascinating answer given by John Piper as well. Now, Piper is asked directly about this by a Baptist, it seems, by the name of Ian, who asks this.
CLIP:
While I’m an advocate of believers’ baptism, one accusation I found troubling is that because we Baptists don’t consider our unconverted children as official participants in the New Covenant, we are therefore treating them like pagan children excluded from the Covenant community. As a Baptist, how do you respond to this charge? And further, how should yet unsaved children of believers be viewed by the church?
Joe:
Now, like Gretam, Piper simply concedes that Baptist babies are not part of the New Covenant, but he argues that this is actually a problem for every Protestant who denies baptismal regeneration.
CLIP:
Before I say something positive about the way we should view our children, we meaning we Baptists, let’s make sure that we realize that both Baptists and reformed Pedo Baptists, and I’m not talking here about those who believe in baptismal regeneration, but just those who are reformed Pedo Baptists or others who don’t believe in baptismal new birth. We all have the same basic problem in how to think about our children.
Joe:
In other words, if you’re a Protestant who believes that the church is simply the elect and you don’t think that baptism saves, then whether or not you baptize your baby, you’re stuck with the same problem. You don’t think that your baby is able to actually enter the New Covenant Church. I think that’s an astute point on Piper’s part. But I think the answer to that is to recognize that there’s a real problem that both Baptists and other Protestants who deny baptismal regeneration are making. And that is this. The mistake is thinking that the New Covenant only consists of those who are ultimately saved when scripture is perfectly clear that that is not the case. For example, in Matthew 13, Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a net that’s thrown into the sea and is gathered full of fish. It is not only good fish though.
It is good fish and bad. And we’re told that at the close of the age, the angels will come and separate the righteous from the evil and throw the evil into the furnace of fire where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. So the kingdom includes not only those who are ultimately saved, but also some number of those who are not ultimately saved. And that is explicit with just the words of Jesus in Matthew 13. But you can also see this by looking at the covenantal theology explained by St. Paul in Romans 11. He uses famously the example of an olive branch or an olive shoot. And he says that if some of the branches were broken off, these are those Jewish members who do not believe. And you, he’s speaking here to the Gentiles, a wild olive shoot were grafted in their place to share the richness of the olive tree.
Do not boast over the branches. If you do boast, remember it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you. So the olive tree is the covenant people. That covenant people begins with Israel. So this is a very important point to make in response to those who believe in dispensationalism, that God has two covenant people, Israel and the church. They will accuse non-dispensationalists of believing in replacement theology. That is incorrect. Rather, non-dispensationalists who properly understand the relationship of the covenant believe this, that God has a people that he likens. We’ll say Paul here likens to an olive tree. Jesus likens to a fig tree elsewhere. And those branches that are not fruitful are broken off of the tree. And then there are other branches grafted onto the tree, but it’s still the same tree. This is what Paul will elsewhere refer to as spiritual Israel.
But this is the critical part. Spiritual Israel is not only the elect, just as there were branches that were broken off from Jews who did not believe. So there will be branches broken off of Gentiles who do not believe. And so Paul says to the Gentiles, you will say branches were broken off so that I might be crafted in. Well, that’s true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast only through faith. So do not become proud, but stand in awe. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. So if you are a Gentile who’s been grafted into the covenant people of God, the church, the remnant of Israel, and they recognize that you might have entered in through baptism, but you endure through faith. And so there are going to be some people which Baptists and other Protestants rightly point out, you can have a believing family that baptizes their kids and those kids grow up and they don’t share the faith.
Scripture already speaks to that. You can be grafted in, and then you can be a branch that dies because you only live through faith. And so you can be broken off again. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. Note, Paul says, the kindness and the severity of God. Severity towards those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you too will be cut off just as the bad fish are ultimately thrown out of the net at the end of time. So the bad members of the church will ultimately be cut off at the end of time, if not sooner. And even the others, if they do not persist in their own belief, will be grafted in for God has the power to graft them in again. So that’s the biblical message.
The new covenant church is formed by Christ with his blood on the cross and at the last supper. And we enter into this covenant people through the waters of baptism, which is the new circumcision. We participate in our sacred covenant meal when we eat the flesh of our Passover lamb and we drink his blood of the covenant at the mass. And this is a covenant not only open to us, but also to our descendants. And it’s one in which Jesus has instructed us to let the little children come to him. Now in describing this, I’m focusing just on really one aspect of baptism, the way it incorporates us into the new covenant people of God, the church. But in reality, baptism does so much more than this. So in this video, I look at six different biblical passages that clearly speak of baptism as actually saving you.
So if you want more on baptism and what it does biblically, I encourage you to check it out. For Shameless Popouri, I’m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you. I