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1. Was the male child of the Old Testament dispensation believer outside the visible church until the eighth day, because uncircumcised? Don’t the seven days preceding circumcision have a counterpart in the New Testament dispensation?
   Were either circumcision or baptism ever meant to be an intiation rite for the child of a believer? Essential signs, yes, but at initiation?

   • It’s complex answer because of the profound differences between the Reformed and Baptist views of the covenant of grace.

     1) The Reformed distinguish between and an external and an internal relation to the covenant of grace. The Baptists typically do not. On this:

     • Tracing The Paradigm Shift: Two Ways Of Being In The Covenant Of Grace
     • Calvin: There Are Two Ministers In Baptism
     • Calvin: There Are Two Ministers In Preaching
     • Calvin: There Are Two Ministers In The Supper
     • Baptism, Election, and the Covenant of Grace
     • “Baptism and the Benefits of Christ: ‘The Double Mode of Communion'”

     We baptize infants to recognize the divine command and promise. So, externally, formally, yes, they are outside but we believe and confess that they have “an interest in” the covenant of grace and therefore a “right to the sign” (as we say in some of our liturgical forms) of the covenant of grace.

     2) The Baptists do not recognize this distinction nor the the infant’s “interest in” the covenant of grace and “right to the sign” thereof. They regard the infant as utterly outside the covenant of grace, therefore unable to to be initiated into BoxCo outwardly until he can prove that he has what is being administered within BoxCo, as it were.

     3) Yes! Both circumcision and baptism are rites of initiation. Both are ritual deaths. This is why Paul appeals to both to illustrate mortification in Colossians 2:11–12 and to baptism in Romans 6. The verb used in the Hebrew Bible typically is “to cut” a covenant. One is ritually cut off from the world and cut into the covenant community.

     4) The assumption of the (Jewish!) apostles is that the children of Christ-professors under the New Covenant will continue to be cut off from the world and cut into the New Covenant (externally) as part of the new administration of the one covenant of grace. It is the Spirit who regenerates and he works when he will but it is ours to administer outwardly the covenant of grace as God has commanded, and he explicitly commanded believers and their children to receive the sign of the covenant of grace and the Apostle Peter repeats that promise in Acts 2:39 and nowhere did the apostles or the Holy Spirit indicate that children are now excluded from the external administration of the covenant of grace.

     God’s plan was never to see the children of believers standing the parking lot of BoxCo, as it were, waiting for Mom and Dad to emerge from the store. His plan was to replace the old, bloody, typological sign with the new, unbloody, watery sign of initiation into the visible covenant community.

     • Dr. Clark, this is a question I have wrestled with for a while, and I have still not come to full resolution on it. It seems to me that, at least from Presbyterians, the answer has historically been that the children of believers are members of the visible church and the covenant, and therefore they are to be baptized as a sign of their admission to the church (although they were formally admitted by right of birth). For example, WCF 28.1 is clear that baptism is “for the solemn admission of the party baptized into the visible church,” but WLC 166 is just as clear that “infants, descending from parents, either both, or but one of them, professing faith in Christ, and obedience to him, are in that respect within the covenant and to be baptized.” On the one hand, baptism is an initiation rite, and on the other it is given to infants of believers because they are members of the covenant by right of birth (unless, perhaps, I am wrong to understand “within the covenant” as “member of the covenant,” but I’m not sure how one could be within as a non-member). As another example, the PCA BCO 6-1: “The children of believers are, through the covenant and by right of birth, non-communing members of the church. Hence they are entitled to Baptism.” It’s my understanding that the OPC takes a similar view in their BCO. Is there another way to reconcile this tension? Or is this a difference between the continental reformed and Presbyterians? Perhaps, analogous to your helpful description of Baptist congregations as irregular churches, we could consider unbaptized children of believers as irregular covenant members? Thank you for your wisdom on this matter.

       • Christian,

         This is where the internal/external distinction helps. We baptize children in recognition of the promise and their relationship to the covenant of grace but external administration is a real thing. They have to be admitted externally/outwardly to the visible covenant community. That’s why the liturgical language of “right” and “interest” is so helpful. Heidelberg 74 helps:

         74. Are infants also to be baptized?

         Yes, for since they belong to the covenant and people of God as well as their parents, and since redemption from sin through the blood of Christ, and the Holy Spirit who works faith, are promised to them no less than to their parents, they are also by Baptism, as the sign of the Covenant, to be ingrafted into the Christian Church, and distinguished from the children of unbelievers, as was done in the Old Testament by Circumcision, in place of which in the New Testament Baptism is instituted.

         They “belong to” the covenant of grace, the benefits are promised to them, but they are also to be “ingrafted.” Both things are true simultaneously.

         Check out this resource page.

         • Thank you Dr. Clark. I suppose that’s what I was trying to articulate as well: both things are true. What I’m not fully clear on still is the relationship between both true things. How do the children of believers belong to the covenant, if not externally? Is the external administration (i.e., baptism) on the basis of the internal administration? Wouldn’t that lead to presumptive regeneration? Or is there another category of internal administration besides that which belongs to the elect and regenerate? My only thought is that, just like adult baptism signifies and seals something that has already been received by faith (ie, new life in the Spirit), infant baptism also signifies and seals something that has already been received by birth (ie, covenant membership). There’s some systematic tension here that my (perhaps overly) systematic brain wants to resolve!

         • They do belong externally, and that belonging is recognized by their baptism but there is also the outward en/ingrafting of the child.

           At a wedding, the vows are exchanged because they already belong to each other but there ceremony witnesses, formalizes, and seals that relationship. We don’t ignore the ceremony because of the existing reality nor do we say that the ceremony creates the reality.

           We don’t baptize on the basis of anything presumed in baptized but on the basis of the divine command and promise. Here the language of Synod Utrecht (1905) is most helpful:

           that it is, however, less correct to say that baptism is administered to the children of believers on the ground of their presumed regeneration, since the ground of baptism is found in the command and promise of God;

           that furthermore, the judgment of charity with which the Church regards the seed of the covenant as regenerated, does not at all imply that each child is actually born again, seeing that God’s Word teaches that they are not all Israel that are of Israel, and of Isaac it is said, “In him shall thy seed be called” (Rom. 9:6–7), so that it is imperative in the preaching constantly to urge earnest self-examination, since only he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.

           There is an important distinction to be made between presuming regeneration and regarding our children as believers and treating them as such until they prove otherwise.

           Presumption is just that. Nurture is rather different. We baptize our covenant children, pray for them, attend with them to the means of grace, we instruct them, and pray with them. Through these means, i.e., the due use of the ordinary means, we trust that God will, in his time, honor his promise by bringing our little ones to new life and true faith. We don’t presume to know when the Spirit will do this. Perhaps he already has? In John 3 our Lord taught us that we cannot know whence the Spirit blows, as it were, and whither. Ours is not to guess who will be or is regenerate but rather to administer the sacraments faithfully and trust in the Lord’s promise.

           Baptism no more than circumcision, in the case of infants, presumes what is true at the moment of administration. It is only a dutiful use of the divinely ordained sign and seal of what is true in those whom the Lord gives new life and true faith.

           This is the tragedy of the Baptist movement: in their zeal to protect the purity of the church they have excluded an entire class of person based on their presumption about who can or cannot be regenerate. The sacerdotalists turn the sign and seal into the thing itself, thereby destroying the sign.

         • Amen! Thank you Dr. Clark. I think that’s what I was reaching for: baptism is on the basis of a child’s external covenant membership, which is received by right of birth, and baptism is the formal and external ingrafting and admission into the covenant/ visible church. The relationship between both things is, I think, analogous to an adult, who has the substance of the covenant by faith before baptism, and their covenant membership is formally ratified and recognized in baptism. Very helpful discussion.

         • This has been on my mind, because I recently taught an adult Sunday school series on Federal Vision, and in my mind they recognize that baptism is the formal ingrafting into the visible church, but not that it is on the basis of covenant membership received by birth. This is part of what leads them to freight baptism with too much, in my reading. E.g., Lusk claiming that WCF 28.1 requires an ex opere operato view of sorts, because baptism is said to be for the solemn admission of the party baptized into the church. Perhaps he would’ve been restrained from making such statements if (at least) he had nuanced his understanding of baptism’s ingrafting function with an understanding that it was on the basis of a child already being in the covenant (WLC 166).

         • Christian,

           You’re quite right to be concerned re the FV. The FV doctrine of baptism is right at the heart of the problem with their theology. They not only teach baptismal regeneration but they, including Lusk, teach that baptism temporarily and conditionally confers all the benefits of Christ, i.e., election, “effectual” (it’s really ineffectual!) calling, regeneration, faith, union, and adoption. They have two parallel systems: the “covenantal” system of conditional, temporary benefits and the decretal system. In the end, however, whether was was decretally elect is conditioned by one’s cooperation with the grace given in baptism.

           This is the very system from which the Reformation delivered us. The Synod of Dort condemned two kinds of election and they condemned the very doctrine of apostasy professed by the Federal Visionists:

           We affirm that apostasy is a terrifying reality for many baptized Christians. All who are baptized into the triune Name are united with Christ in His covenantal life, and so those who fall from that position of grace are indeed falling from grace. The branches that are cut away from Christ are genuinely cut away from someone, cut out of a living covenant body. The connection that an apostate had to Christ was not merely external.

           This is substantially identical to the language of the Remonstrants:

           ART. V. That those who an incorporated into Christ by a true faith, and have thereby become partakers of his lifegiving spirit, have thereby full power to strive against Satan, sin, the world, and their own flesh, and to win the victory, it being well understood that it is ever through the assisting grace of the Holy Ghost; and that Jesus Christ assists them through his Spirit in all temptations, extends to them his hand; and if only they are ready for the conflict. and desire his help, and are not inactive, keeps them from falling, so that they, by no craft or power of Satan, can be misled, nor plucked out of Christ’s hands, according to the word of Christ, John x. 28: “Neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.” But whether they are capable. through negligence, of forsaking again the first beginnings of their life in Christ, of again returning to this present evil world, of turning away from the holy doctrine which was delivered them, of losing a good conscience, of becoming devoid of grace, that must be more particularly determined out of the Holy Scriptures before we ourselves can teach it with the full persuasion of our minds.

           Lusk’s claims have been refuted here. Remarkably, Lusk received as much or more attention in CJPM than any other FV author. The claim that the Westminster Divines returned to the very system rejected by the Reformation (particularly by the Reformed) is absurd on its face.

           The union between the sign and the thing signified is sacramental, i.e., figurative:

           There is, in every sacrament, a spiritual relation, or sacramental union, between the sign and the thing signified: whence it comes to pass, that the names and effects of the one are attributed to the other (WCF 27.1).

           Further, the divines explicitly rejected the notion that the sacraments do what they do (operate) because of what they are:

           3. The grace which is exhibited in or by the sacraments rightly used, is not conferred by any power in them….

           And if there could be any remaining question it is resolved here:

           grace and salvation are not so inseparably annexed unto it, as that no person can be regenerated, or saved, without it; or, that all that are baptized are undoubtedly regenerated (28.5).

           No ex opere system could say this. The FV flatly contradicts the confession here when they say,

           Baptism formally engrafts a person into the Church, which means that baptism is into the Regeneration, that time when the Son of Man sits upon His glorious throne

           and

           The connection that an apostate had to Christ was not merely external.

           The Standards say precisely the opposite.

           You know the FV resources but other readers will want to check them out.

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