Considering Covenant Theology and Baptism

In his book Children at the Lord’s Table?, Cornelius Venema includes an appendix on the issue of baptism. This appendix, he notes, is his chapter in The Case for Covenantal Infant Baptism edited by Gregg Strawbridge. This is an interesting irony since Gregg is one of the people mentioned who advocates for infant communion in the PCA.

“The argument in a nutshell is simply this: God established His church in the days of Abraham and put children into it. They must remain there until He puts them out. He has nowhere put them out. They are still then members of His Church and as such entitled to its ordinances.” B.B. Warfield

Venema rightly goes after the presuppositions that operate in this discussion. The case is not won on the basis of proof-texts because each side brings different presuppositions regarding the nature of the covenant of grace in its varying administrations. This appendix is here because Venema also sees this problem as the basis for the infant communion debate. He uses the appendix to spend more time explaining the proper relationship between the various administrations of the covenant of grace.

Venema admits both sides have arguments from silence. Just as there is no statement explicitly keeping children in the covenant community (no command to baptize them), there is no statement explicitly removing them from the covenant community. If there was, the would have been a serious battle in the church shortly after Pentecost.  We don’t see this. Rather, we do see, from the beginning, the repetition of the phrase “this promise is for you and your children”. Peter continues to expand it to the Gentiles. Peter is speaking the language of Genesis 12, 15 & 17 in the context of the sign of initiation into the covenant community (just like Genesis 17). But, I get ahead of myself.

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Considering Baptism: the Second View

I’m working my way through the 3 main sections of Baptism: Three Views.  In my previous post, I worked through the essay by Dr. Bruce Ware on Believers’ Baptism (aka credobaptism) and the responses by Dr. Sinclair Ferguson and Dr. Anthony Lane.  This time through I’ll be working through the essay by Ferguson on infant baptism (paedobaptism) and the responses.

Previously I talked about the power (for good or ill) of presuppositions.  If Ferguson’s presentation in Systematic Theology II (Ecclessiology and Sacraments) was anything near as compelling as this essay, my presuppositions were working for ill that day in 1993.

Presuppositions become far clearer in the responses of Ware and Lane.  But I found Ferguson’s essay an incredible example of how great theologizing is to be done.  Instead of expecting explicit statements as if we are all 6 years old, Ferguson thinks through biblical data to see connections and “good and necessary consequences.”  Not all things are clear (as we might like) in Scripture, but they are addressed in just this way.

Ferguson starts with a caution based on 1 Corinthians 1:17 in which Paul “prioritized gospel preaching over baptismal administration without thereby minimizing the important role of the latter.”  A different approach from Ware who warned of disobedience in the matter of baptism (though that is true).

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Considering the Incarnation

Advent is coming.  This year I’ll be preaching out of Matthew.  We get to celebrate the incarnation, a much assumed but not well understood doctrine.  It is essential to biblical Christianity.  So, here are a  few options to read up on the Person of Christ.

• Incarnation in the Gospels is part of the Reformed Expository Commentary series.  It is geared for pastors and driven by the text more than by systematic theology.
• B.B. Warfield The Person and Work of Christ.  One of the best of the Old Princeton theologians working through both His person and His work on our behalf.  The incarnation took place for the work to take place.  They are essentially connected.
• Donald MacLeod The Person of Christ.  From the Contours of Christian Theology series MacLeod follows the development of the church’s understanding of this important doctrine.
• G.C. Berkouwer The Person of Christ.  This is part of his Studies in Dogmatics, which is a rather lengthy series.  R.C. Sproul spent time studying under Berkouwer.  It is fairly academic.

What is interesting to me is that I have read none of these books.  In seminary we used David Wells’ The Person of Christ.  I might still own the Berkouwer volume.  The commentary is a relatively new volume I am interested in purchasing and using.  This shows us how little there is out there focusing on this subject.

Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo? touches on the incarnation as a basis for the atonement.  This I have read, but he is not really wrestling with texts.  It is written as a dialogue between 2 people.

 

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Considering the Reformed Confession, Part 2

The second chapter of R. Scott Clark’s book, Recovering the Reformed Confession, begins his more in-depth analysis of the crisis he laid out in the first chapter.  Here he tackles The Quest for Illegitimate Religious Certainty.

This chapter begins oddly by offering a few examples of this quest in Reformed circles.  Those are KJV-only advocates (I’ve missed this movement in the Reformed community), arguing against women in the military (I’m not sure I see the connection here as he explains it), and the Biblical Counseling movement (since he seems to view counseling as a medical issue instead of a sanctification issue in many cases).  He just drops those, without anything to back up his claims.  There is no smoking gun that these are related to the Illegitimate Quest.  Full preterism and denying the free offer of the gospel are about the only ones that I see as connected to this quest.  And those 2 are problematic.

But he spends the chapter focusing on a literal 6-day creation, theonomy and covenant moralism.  His argument is that in the shifting sands of modernity (or would that be post-modernity) some look for a solid place to stand.  Their insecurity, he says, leads them to seek certainty in all the wrong places.  He sees the role of fundamentalism as important in this.

“In fact, it is not a belief that the Bible is true which makes on a fundamentalist; rather it is the belief that one’s interpretation is inerrant which qualifies one as a fundamentalist.”

An interesting definition or defining factor.  But is he certain they are wrong?

6 Day Creation

He begins with the “rise” of a literal 6-day creation as a boundary marker.  In recent years, this was an issue in the PCA as they tried to determine if ministers should subscribe as strictly to this part of the Confession as other parts of the confession, like justification.  He notes that the RCUS adopted this as their denominational position in 1999.  I have not even heard of the RCUS.  The  OPC and URC have all studied it as well.

They defend this position from Scripture and the Westminster Confession of Faith (4.1).  This is what is so interesting to me.  He tries to say that the meaning of the Confession is not clear.  Since they may have been arguing against Augustine’s instantaneous creation instead of modern science’s evolution, 6 days doesn’t mean 6 days- it might mean something else.  This is a doctrinal statement, not a literary genre that may use figurative speech.

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Considering Deaconesses

A few years ago, the ARP was in the process of evaluating (and eventually affirming) our statement on Women in the Church when explained why we do not ordain women as elders, and why the issue of women deacons is left up to the Session of each congregation.  There are some in the ARP that strongly oppose women deacons.  One of the hang ups I identified was the word “ordained”.  In talking with some men in my Presbytery I stated we probably ought to take the stumbling block out of the way and commission deacons rather than ordain them.

With this issue briefly addressed in the PCA this summer (sadly they decided to send it back to the Presbyteries rather than study it) Tim Keller has written an article entitled The Case of Commissioning (Not Ordaining) Deaconesses.   His article explains this much better than I ever could.

This is a view that upholds male headship (complementarianism) while seeking to honestly understand Scripture on this issue.  He presents historical as well as  biblical and theological evidence that we have to deal with before making a wise decision in this matter.

I particularly like this section:

Many opponents of deaconesses today are operating out of a “decline narrative.” They claim that having deaconesses is the first step on the way to liberalism. But Jim Boice and John Piper, the RPCNA and the ARP, B.B. Warfield and John Calvin, believed in deaconing women or deaconesses. Are (or were) all these men or churches on the way to liberalism? I don’t think so. Nevertheless, one person put it to me like this recently: “Sure, the RPCNA has had women deacons for over a century. Sure, a biblical case can be made. But in our cultural climate, allowing deaconesses would be disastrous. It’s a slippery slope.”

In other words, the Bible probably allows it, but let’s not do it because of the culture. Isn’t that also responding to the culture rather than to the text? If the PCA is driven either by reaction to or adaptation to the culture, it is being controlled by the culture instead of the Word. Let’s allow presbyteries and sessions to use women in diaconal work with the freedom they have historically had in our communion.

I agree completely with Ligon Duncan when he says that the current debate in the PCA is “to determine what its complementarianism is going to look like in the future.” That’s right. His article and mine represent an intramural debate within a strong commitment to biblical complementarianism. While we argue and discuss this let’s keep that in mind.

As those who claim to be “reformed and reforming” we should not dismiss this under the accusation of feminism or liberalism.  Let’s try to work together to better understand what the Bible really does teach on this matter and how best to implement it in our communities of faith.

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Review: Piper on J. Gresham Machen

After reading this chapter from Contending for Our All, I wondered… alot of this sounds like what the Jollyblogger has been saying lately (polemics, Paul’s instruction to Philippi vs. Galatia).  Hmmmm.

This was a good chapter, but not the homerun the previous chapters had been.  Piper in no way idealizes of idolizes Machen.  But he recognizes that the church owes Machen a great debt.  While in Germany, Machen was under the spell of liberalism for a time.  Dr. Herrmann had a passion that his profs at Princeton seemed to lack.  But Machen realized he needed both truth and passion, or light and heat as Edwards put it so well.

Piper has a good discussion of why Machen was not, and did not want to be known as, a Fundamentalist.  Machen was too much of a scholar for a largely anti-intellectual movement.  Nor was he a legalist, as much of Fundamentalism was.  Instead of retreating from culture, Machen wanted to challenge it head on.

Machen, who many found annoying, once said of Princeton theologian B.B. Warfield “With all his glaring faults he was the greatest man I have ever known.”  That might be a good word for many of us.  I’ve met some of the greats of the last century, and I’ve seen some of their foibles.  We can throw stones at their imperfections- but they are still greatly used by Jesus.  We need to offer some charity over character flaws, and balance that with real accountability when they sin big (if indeed they do).

I think Machen’s best work was Christianity and Liberalism.  What is found there, as he confronts a ‘church’ captive to modernism, is quite appropriate to the more extreme elements in the emerging church.  The radicals or revisionist movements within the emerging church are pretty much doing what the liberals of Machen’s day were doing.  They were hemming and hawing, redefining words, reinterpreting creeds rather than out-right denying them.

One of Piper’s challenges to us from Machen is: “He challenges us … to say what we mean and mean what we say, and to repudiate duplicity, trickery, sham, verbal manipulating, sidestepping, and evasion.”  I think Machen, like Driscoll, would be in McLaren’s face and not allowing him to play word games and throw up smoke and mirrors.

There’s also good stuff about institutional integrity: “The compromise of an institution’s fidelity and the misuse of academic freedom happens when doctrinal and ethical doubts are kept secret, or, worse, when lurking denials are put forward as affirmations.  … But the duplicity that hides secret denials will destroy an institution and a soul.” (Piper)

Piper ends on a great point with this: “…God reigns over his church and over the world in such a way that he weaves the weaknesses and the strengths of his people with infinite wisdom into a fabric history that displays the full range of his glories.”

It is worth investing the time to read about Machen, and what Machen has written.

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