{"id":85407,"date":"2019-06-12T06:41:45","date_gmt":"2019-06-12T11:41:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/?p=85407"},"modified":"2019-06-12T06:43:17","modified_gmt":"2019-06-12T11:43:17","slug":"baptism-is-very-church-y","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2019\/06\/12\/baptism-is-very-church-y\/","title":{"rendered":"Baptism is Very Church-y"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

In a recent article on Get Religion, we encounter a new approach to adult<\/del> believer\u2019s baptism and thus a new argument against infant baptism:<\/p>\n

THE QUESTION:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why do most Christian churches baptize babies?<\/p>\n

THE RELIGION GUY\u2019S ANSWER:<\/strong><\/p>\n

This classic issue unexpectedly popped up as news on June 23\u00a0due to an\u00a0Irish Times<\/em>\u00a0interview<\/a>\u00a0with Mary McAleese, an attorney and the former president of Ireland. McAleese assailed her Catholic Church for its practice of baptizing infants shortly after birth with parents making vows on their behalf.<\/p>\n

That treats children as \u201cinfant conscripts who are held to lifelong obligations of obedience,\u201d she protested, and that\u2019s a violation of their human rights. \u201cYou can\u2019t impose, really, obligations on people who are only two weeks old\u201d or inform them \u201cat seven or eight or 14 or 19 here is what you contracted; here is what you signed up to,\u201d because they did not give their own consent to be church members.<\/p>\n

To her, the church\u2019s age-old baptismal practice \u201cworked for many centuries because people didn\u2019t understand that they had the right to say no, the right to walk away.\u201d But she says modern people \u201chave the right to freedom of conscience\u201d although \u201cthe Catholic Church has yet to fully embrace that thinking.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>So, it\u2019s about rights. I sure hope Mary McAleese realizes the profound inconsistency she\u2019s walked herself into: do we then say you are not Irish or Northern Irish or American or Danish until you make a choice? Do we wait for children to grow up or until they understand their rights to teach them about what is good, what is honest, what is noble, what is wrong, what is evil?<\/p>\n

What she fails to understand here is the fundamental dyadic nature of a human being: we are not individuals until we are nurtured by a family and a community and a society. No one is an island.<\/p>\n

Nurturing is the way we become persons.<\/p>\n

This has been brought to the fore in a recent wonderful book by Susan Eastman<\/strong><\/a>. Freedom or liberty, with their entailment of duties and obligations to others, emerged on the scene only because people\u00a0in community learned that liberty was the best way for a society to work<\/em>. What was first was the community.<\/p>\n

Which is what I argue in my book on infant baptism called\u00a0It Takes a Church to Baptize: What the Bible Says about Infant Baptism<\/strong><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

A strong case has been made and can be made for infant baptism in the context of a family and church. A focus on rights, which is found in the clip above, is precisely the antithesis of how the Bible talks about nurturing the faith of our young. Rights language itself is Enlightenment stuff, not biblical stuff. I could go on\u2026<\/p>\n

The book discusses important terms dealing with a theology of baptism (like conversion, covenant, salvation) and it talks about the importance of family and church in the baptism process, and it has something to say about whether baptism is God\u2019s act or our act \u2026 and more\u2026<\/p>\n

And I tell my story of shifting from believer\u2019s baptism only to infant baptism as the way forward.<\/p>\n

Kevin DeYoung<\/strong> <\/a>has a (very) brief defense of infant baptism posted at the TGC website. (I have now a 25 page paper or so for my own defense, but it will be published in the Colossians-Philemon commentary I\u2019m now writing.<\/p>\n

After emphasizing fellowship with many Baptists\/paedo-baptists, he gives his basic approach \u2014 covenant theology.<\/p>\n

1. God made a covenant with Abraham, it meant circumcision, for him, and then for his son \u2014 and for Ishmael too. That\u2019s the origin of the argument: covenantal theology and covenantal approach to participation in God\u2019s family.<\/p>\n

2. Circumcision had meaning beyond the physical rite.<\/p>\n

Circumcision was not just a physical thing, marking out ethnic Jews. Circumcision was full of spiritual meaning. The circumcision of the flesh was always meant to correspond with circumcision of the heart (<\/span>Rom. 2:25-29<\/a>). It pointed to humility, new birth, and a new way of life (<\/span>Lev. 26:40-42<\/a>;\u00a0<\/span>Deut. 10:16<\/a>;\u00a0<\/span>30:6<\/a>;\u00a0<\/span>Jer. 4:4<\/a>;\u00a0<\/span>6:10<\/a>;\u00a0<\/span>9:25<\/a>). In short, circumcision was a sign of justification. Paul says in\u00a0<\/span>Romans 4:11<\/a>\u00a0that Abraham \u201creceived the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.\u201d God\u2019s own interpretation of circumcision is that it was much more than just a physical sign for national Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n

Children today are baptized based on this same covenant with Abraham. Paul makes clear in Galatians 3<\/span>\u00a0what Peter strongly suggests in Acts 2<\/span>, namely that the Abrahamic covenant has not been annulled. It is still operational. In fact, we see the basic promise of the Abrahamic covenant running throughout the whole Bible, right up to the new heaven and new earth in Revelation 21<\/span>.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

3. Colossians 2:11-12, and here I would nuance things differently:<\/p>\n

But we know from\u00a0<\/span>Colossians 2:11-12<\/a>\u00a0that baptism and circumcision carried the same spiritual import. The transition from one to the other was probably organic. As the Jews practiced proselyte baptism, that sign came to be seen as marking inclusion in the covenant people. For awhile circumcision existed along baptism, but as the early church became more Gentile, many of Jewish rites were rendered unnecessary, and sometimes even detrimental to the faith. Thus, baptism eclipsed circumcision as the sign renewal, rebirth, and covenant membership.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

4. He gives a few more arguments, and here are two of them:<\/p>\n

\n

One, the burden of proof rests on those who would deny children a sign they had received for thousands of years. If children were suddenly outside the covenant, and were disallowed from receiving any \u201csacramental\u201d sign, surely such a massive change, and the controversy that would have ensued, would been recorded in the New Testament. Moreover, it would be strange for children to be excluded from the covenant, when everything else moves in the direction of more inclusion from the Old Covenant to the New.<\/p>\n

Two, the existence of household baptisms is evidence that God still deals with households as a unit and welcomes whole families into the church to come under the Lordship of Christ together (Acts 16:13-15<\/a>;\u00a032-34<\/a>;\u00a01 Cor. 1:16<\/a>; cf.\u00a0Joshua 24:15<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a recent article on Get Religion, we encounter a new approach to adult believer\u2019s baptism and thus a new argument against infant baptism: THE QUESTION: Why do most Christian churches baptize babies? THE RELIGION GUY\u2019S ANSWER: This classic issue unexpectedly popped up as news on June 23\u00a0due to an\u00a0Irish Times\u00a0interview\u00a0with Mary McAleese, an attorney […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nBaptism is Very Church-y<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In a recent article on Get Religion, we encounter a new approach to adult believer's baptism and thus a new argument against infant baptism: THE QUESTION:\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2019\/06\/12\/baptism-is-very-church-y\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Baptism is Very Church-y\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In a recent article on Get Religion, we encounter a new approach to adult believer's baptism and thus a new argument against infant baptism: THE QUESTION:\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2019\/06\/12\/baptism-is-very-church-y\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-06-12T11:41:45+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-06-12T11:43:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/40\/2018\/07\/Screen-Shot-2018-07-28-at-9.46.28-AM.png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Scot McKnight\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Scot McKnight\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2019\/06\/12\/baptism-is-very-church-y\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2019\/06\/12\/baptism-is-very-church-y\/\",\"name\":\"Baptism is Very Church-y\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2019-06-12T11:41:45+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-06-12T11:43:17+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/5919e847c58ffe6efb5899fb61797252\"},\"description\":\"In a recent article on Get Religion, we encounter a new approach to adult believer's baptism and thus a new argument against infant baptism: THE QUESTION:\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2019\/06\/12\/baptism-is-very-church-y\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2019\/06\/12\/baptism-is-very-church-y\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2019\/06\/12\/baptism-is-very-church-y\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Baptism is Very Church-y\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/\",\"name\":\"Jesus Creed\",\"description\":\"Scot McKnight on Jesus and orthodox faith in the 21st century\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/5919e847c58ffe6efb5899fb61797252\",\"name\":\"Scot McKnight\",\"description\":\"Scot McKnight is a recognized authority on the New Testament, early Christianity, and the historical Jesus. 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