Baptism

Sorry, this one is longer than usual, so please be patient and read the whole way to the end. What we're thinking about here is eternally important.

Right now, when your little family is just getting started and your newborn son or daughter is all a wonder to you, it seems a bit over the top to be talking about how important it is to find a good church. But watch out! Life seems to be passing slowly right now, but it's not. In a day or two, this infant will be leaving your home for college, and then comes marriage and grandchildren. Before you can snap your fingers, your children will be all grown up and the fruit of your fatherhood will be clear.

Last week, we saw that the most important food we provide our family is God's Word. Choosing a church where God's Word is preached faithfully is how we provide them that food. Yes, we read the Bible to our family at home, but home isn't enough. We must have the household of faith, and the most important mark of a Biblical church is faithful preaching. But there are three marks of a true church, so now we move to the second:

1. A true church has preaching that is faithful to Scripture;
2. A true church administers the sacraments as Scripture commands;
3. A true church correctly disciplines her members.

What on earth are sacraments?

Sacraments are physical things God gives us to help us in our weakness...

(This is the third in a series opposing paedocommunion, a practice started by some Reformed parents a few years ago in which parents require their infants and toddlers to participate in the Lord's Supper. Here are the first and second in this series.) 

As stated in the previous post in this series, Jeff Meyers's novel exegesis of 1 Corinthians 11 subscribed to by paedocommunionists leaves them convinced that, when the rest of the Covenant community is partaking of the Lord's Supper, regardless of age, for a member of the Covenant community to abstain is sin. Those who refuse to commune with the rest of the covenant community have failed to discern the body. In fact, Meyers demands that orthodox Presbyterians examine themselves by this rule coming out of his exegesis. As he sees it, the historic Presbyterian and Reformed church's requirement that all who partake of the Lord’s Supper must be able to discern the body is proof the historic Presbyterian and Reformed church has failed to discern the body, and thus they are guilty of breaking apart the Church's unity—the sin of schism.

Yet, when we examine the range of practices among paedocommunionists, particularly with regard to “discerning the body" around the Lord's Table, it is clear this is no united group holding to the same doctrine and practice. Rather, paedocommunionists are split into two camps: first, there are those who require no discernment at all from the Covenant child; and second, there are those who demand the Covenant child has enough discernment to recognize he is part of the body. Even within these two camps, though, there is inconsistency of belief and practice.

In this post, we'll focus on the first of the two groups—those who require no discernment at all from the Covenant child...

[The sacraments] are no means of grace except through the faith of the recipient, and in consequence of his own spiritual state and act. There is no inherent power in the ordinance itself to confer blessing, apart from the faith of the participator, and except through the channel of that faith. There is no deposit of power—whether, with the Church of Rome, we deem it physical and ex opere operato, or whether, with Tractarians and High Churchmen, we call it spiritual—in the Sacraments themselves to influence the mind of him who receives them. They have no virtue of themselves, apart from the work of Christ through His Spirit on the one side, and the spiritual act of the recipient through his faith on the other side. - James Bannerman, The Church of Christ

This is an introduction to a series of posts on paedocommunion, the practice of communing at the Lord's Table children who have not yet confessed their faith and been examined by their pastor or the elders of their church. This practice is most common today within the broad Evangelical church where parents simply commune their own children. When the bread and wine are passed, the children whisper to their father or mother that they "want some, too," and the parents see no reason to say "no."

What we are going to examine, though, is a much less common version of paedocommunion found in a small number of congregations in the Protestant and Reformed tradition. Their practice differs from that of the broader Evangelical church in three ways: first, those young children in mainstream Evangelical congregations who commune have not yet been baptized while the children communed by their parents in Protestant and Reformed congregations have been baptized. Second, children communing in mainstream Evangelical congregations don't normally do so because their fathers and mothers believe paedocommunion is Biblical and have developed a system of doctrine to defend their practice. It's really only an ad hoc practice which exists because no one's thought about it and parents aren't inclined to tell their children "no" when they want to do something that seems good, spiritually. On the other hand, parents who commune their children in the small group of paedocommunion Protestant and Reformed congregations believe Scripture requires their children...

...why should we offer poison instead of life-giving food to our tender children?

                                             - John Calvin condemning infant communion

Under another post, a commenter entered into the comment field three paragraphs of text written by the Rev. Dr. Rob Rayburn promoting infant communion (commonly referred to as “paedocommunion”). Dr. Rayburn’s promotion of this practice—condemned by Protestants and Roman Catholics alike at the time of the Reformation—is a good example of fashion replacing Biblical doctrine and theological precision. Men who have climbed on the “paedocommunion” bandwagon have believed Dr. Rayburn’s assurance that “none of our authorities favored the practice or, in most cases, ever discussed it.” 

Rayburn's point in saying this is not to warn readers that our Reformed fathers condemned paedocommunion, but rather to dismiss their condemnation under the reasoning that they had not given the practice proper consideration. After all, “in most cases” they had not “ever discussed it."

What Dr. Rayburn writes is not true. John Calvin discussed infant communion in his commentaries and Institutes, considering many arguments in favor of the practice while consistently condemning it.

So then, here are the first two sentences of the three paragraphs by Dr. Rayburn in defense of paedocommunion...

(This is the eleventh and last in a series of posts critiquing Dr. Peter Leithart's recent call for the "End of Protestantism." Here are links to the prior posts: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten.)

'Peace' is certainly a pleasing word; but cursed is the peace that is obtained at so great a cost that there is lost to us the doctrine of Christ, by which alone we grow together into a godly and holy unity.  - Calvin on Acts 14:2

The Presbyterian Church in America's Dr. Peter Leithart is calling for an "ecumenical" peace with Rome and Constantinople and he labels his movement the "End of Protestantism" project, promoting it through his journalistic residence at the Roman Catholic journal, First Things.  Dr. Leithart has laid claim to be the new fresh face of the "ecumenical" movement and tells us his project seeks nothing more than the unity of the Church that Jesus asked of His Father during His Great High Priestly Prayer:

The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. (John 17:22, 23)

No man who loves Jesus Christ can be a stoic concerning the unity of the Church. Nevertheless, across the centuries, calls for unity have often been used to cloak attacks upon the Gospel. Surely the Judaizers in Galatia attacked the Apostle Paul for divisiveness when his epistle to the Galatians was read to their congregation. And during the Reformation, the Roman Catholics never stopped accusing the Reformers of dividing the Church.

Yet what is the Church—this is the question Dr. Leithart avoids, crafting his appeals for unity as if there were no true and false Gospel, no true and false church.

When the Roman Catholic church charged the Protestant Reformers with schism, the Reformers faced the charge directly and this response found in the Scots Confession (1560) is typical. Here the Scots Confession begins by teaching that false churches have always existed and that those false churches have done their best to destroy the souls of men and persecute the godly. Therefore it is imperative the godly learn to distinguish between true and false churches ("kirk" means "church")...

Auburn Avenue was where Federal Vision started and Federal Vision theology continues to smolder in a few hamlets, but in the main the theology part of this battle has divided into two streams that now oppose each other—and may the faithful men win.

One camp we call the oatmeal stout Federal Visionists. Led by Dr. Peter Leithart, this group has decayed into the same old sacramentalism which has proven itself over thousands of years to be instinctual to the sinful heart of man which is intent on denying the Holy Spirit distinction between circumcised foreskins and circumcised hearts.

Fondly these men had put their hope in a Lutheran/Presbyterian theological hybrid, but Westminster archivists bludgeoned them with national pronouncements sufficient to warn timid pastors off, leaving their main support among teachers, not pastors, and teachers high enough in the PCA food chain that they could embrace mongrelism with impunity. Such allies at Covenant Theological Seminary and out in Pacific Northwest Presbytery were sufficient to keep Pastor Jeff Meyers and Dr. Leithart from being convicted in their heresy trials, but Meyers and Leithart have their sights set higher than spending the rest of their lives explaining to their other PCAers that their trials are over and they were acquitted.

Dr. Leithart himself has expanded his vision from the PCA to "conservative American Protestantism" where, as we have been showing in this series of articles, he is aiming to move all Protestants back to Rome. And what is his method?

For years he has been "chipping away at the old divisions of dogma," and hence his being brought up on heresy charges.

Those charges failing to be sustained, though, Dr. Leithart is turning his focus toward the formal structures of worship—especially the sacraments and liturgy. What he terms "ritual" will be the vehicle for bringing "ecumenical passion" into staid Reformed churches. He and Pastor Meyers will bring sacerdotalism (the pastor as presiding priest in worship) into Presbyterian Church in America worship. They trust their sacerdotal and sacramental "ritual" may accomplish what their aberrant theology couldn't. This is Dr. Leithart's self-acknowledged "vocation"...

Paragraph Six, "The Future-End of Protestantism":

As we reflect on the future of Protestantism it will not do to say that history is change, that the world is always coming to an end in the straightforward sense that today will become tomorrow. History is not a seamless garment. It has gaps and tears, some quite rough. We know that from our own history. The Reformers reached deep into the Scriptures and the catholic tradition, but they were revolutionary innovators for all that. A world came to an end five hundred years ago, and the Western Church was re- born in an unprecedented form—as Catholic-and- Protestant. New kinds of Christians began to appear for the first time, with new names like "Lutheran" and "Reformed" and "Anglican."

Here we turn to the sixth paragraph of the article in which Dr. Leithart calls us to reflection. But keep in mind that Dr. Leithart's original title for this project was "The End of Protestantism," so the future Dr. Leithart is calling us to reflect on is death. He is calling Protestants to die to our "old habits and ideals," our "old ruts" and our "dead selves." He's not defining those old habits and ideals yet; he's not telling us which ruts we're stuck in. Is it our confession of faith alone and Scripture alone? Is it our faith in "Christ alone" and our clinging to "grace alone" we must forsake? If these are not the ruts Dr. Leithart is calling us to forsake, what are those ruts? What are the old habits and ideals he is calling us to repent of? These are the "alones" or "solas" that have always defined Protestantism over against Roman Catholicism. Surely these are not the "habits," "Ideals," and "ruts" Dr. Leithart is prophesying against?

Then again, maybe I'm wrong? Perhaps it is justification by grace alone, through faith alone that Dr. Leithart wants us to turn away from? Since Dr. Leithart wants Protestantism to end, we must admit there's no better path to take than getting Protestants to abandon the righteousness of Jesus Christ for the Roman Catholic church's good works and sacraments. If the fall of the Church is what's being proposed, there's no better way...

Paragraphs One Through Four, "The Future-End of Protestantism":

Protestants often act as if the Reformation were the end of history, the moment when the Church reached its final condition. For these sorts of Protestants, the future of Protestantism can only be more of the same. This cannot be. God is the living Creator, still at work in his world, and that means that the Protestantism of the future will be something new, and, given the pattern of God's creativity, something better. (emphasis in original)

In the beginning, God created the world in six days, and each day improved on the previous one. He spoke light, separated light and darkness, and said it was good. Come the next day, and first-day good was not good enough, so he separated the waters below from the waters above and inserted a firmament between. After he tore the waters and called earth to fruitfulness, he said that was good too. Another evening and morning, and again good was not good enough, so he spent the fourth day hanging lights in the firmament, the fifth calling swarming things to swarm in the sea and birds to hover on the face of the sky, the sixth filling the earth with animals and creating man male and female in his image. Each day was good, but each was followed by darkness and dawn that made good better. When he finished, Yahweh God pronounced it very good and rested in what he had made.

Something of the same rhythm continues after the Fall, with God's judgment a critical addition, with God tearing down in order to build up. After the scattering at Babel, he tears Abram from among the nations and sends him wandering through a land not his own, offering sacrifices at oaks and oases. The Lord mid-wives his son Israel through the travail of Egypt and carries him to Sinai, where he teaches him to worship in his tent and live in the land of promise. Solomon reorganizes tribes into districts and builds a temple, a well-watered Eden on Mount Moriah, with the king's palace hard by Yahweh's. Divided, the people of God take a new name, Israel-and-Judah, until Yahweh tears them from the land of promise and melds them together in exile into one new man, now all Jews, now all "Judahites," incorporated into the royal tribe. Through the cross and Resurrection, we are all separated from our native tribes and nations and grafted into the people of God, taking the name Christian.

God creates Israel as tribes, then as a kingdom, then scatters them among the nations, then sends them to the nations, each good, each followed by the darkness of the tomb, each bringing good brighter than the good that preceded it. At each juncture, God calls his people to shed old ways and old names, to die to old routines and ways of life, including ways of life God himself has established.

"Each good?" I don't want to be a naysayer, but what does Dr. Leithart mean by "each good?" Sure the phrase is cheerful, but to what does "each good" refer?

"Each good" is simply to say that everything God does is good.

But isn't this a kinda "duh" statement?" Who would argue? Is Dr. Leithart simply saying...

A common refrain lobbed from R2K adherents is a "lack of consistency" on the part of those holding to the historic Two Kingdoms doctrine. If you think God has called you to call sodomites and baby-killers to repentance, why not call on civil government to enforce the worship of the Trinity and punish Sabbath breakers?

At the heart of this complaint is R2Ker's notion of the "spirituality" of the church. What is the spirituality of the church?

Good question. On its face, the term lends itself to being so vague as to be nearly useless. Calvin and others following him use this term much different than R2K men. Hisorically, it wasn't a paradigm.

But R2K has co-opted the term and R2K men are all over the board as to its meaning...