Infant baptism and saving benefits

The PCA Federal Vision report condemns the notion that some receive saving benefits of Christ and later lose them. But this runs contrary to the PCA’s own covenant understanding of infant baptism and the statements of its own Constitution.

Consider:

Children of believers, all Presbyterians confess, are covenant children. At PCA baptisms, Acts 2 is often read: The promise is to you and to your children. Presbyterians often say that God is a God to us and to our children.

According to the PCA BOCO, the following statement is to be read at baptisms: “For to you is the promise, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call
unto him. And I will establish my covenant between me and thee
and thy seed after thee throughout their generations for an
everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee and to thy seed after
thee. Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved, thou
and thy house. (Acts 2:39; Gen. 17:7; Acts 16:31)” (BOCO 56-5).

This implies, if read straightfowardly, that we can say to every child in a PCA church, “God has made promises to you. God is your God. You are a covenant child.” Head-for-head, we can say those things to our children, every infant in the PCA.

Now, is being a “covenant child” a saving benefit or not? Is having God as our God a saving benefit or not? Of course it is; having God as my God is the saving benefit. Yet, no Presbyterian on earth (including me) believes that everyone who is baptized will end up sharing in the new heavens and new earth.

And we can push this further. If God is God to our children, does that not imply that God has forgiven and accepted them? Does it make any sense to say that God is God of our children, and yet also to say that they are children of wrath, piling up sins until they exercise personal faith? Do we say to our children, “God is your God, but He holds all your sins against you”? Do we say, “God is your God, but you are also a child of wrath”?

The PCA constitution does not support this kind of double-speak. BOCO 56-4, alluding to 1 Corinthians 7, says that children of believers are “federally holy before Baptism, and therefore are they baptized” (BOCO 56-4, h). That the BOCO also says that the “inward grace and virtue of baptism is not tied to the very moment of time wherein it is administered” (BOCO 56-4, i) creates some potential dissonance. But the dissonance doesn’t undermine the previous statement. The federal holiness mentioned in 56-4, h doesn’t depend on baptism; it is the gift to the children of believers, and according to the BOCO is the basis not the result of baptism. Therefore, 56-4, i doesn’t even qualify the statement about federal holiness.

But if they are holy, they are accepted, cleansed; if they are holy, they have access. What else does “holy” mean? And is that not a “saving benefit”?