Covenant Grace In Utero
June 3, 2008
“Yet you are he who took me from the womb;
you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts.
On you was I cast from my birth,
and from my mother’s womb you have been my God.” - Psalm 22.9-10
I was studying Psalm 22 with a younger brother at the weekend, and what we noticed was that in David’s distress, a pattern ultimately written large in the suffering of Christ upon the cross, one source of comfort for him, one ground for prayer for deliverance, was his past relationship with God. God had been committed to him from his mother’s womb and so he could faithfully pray, “Be not far from me, for trouble is near, and there is none to help.” Psalm 71.5-6 makes the same point.
It is the normative experience for someone born in the covenant community to grow up trusting in the Triune God and knowing him as his God. This is what God promised Abraham in Genesis 17.7: “And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.” It springs entirely from God’s grace. David says, “You made me trust you at my mother’s breasts.” It is on this basis that we baptise our infants, giving them the sign and seal of God’s covenant, formally establishing that relationship. It is on this basis that we can say with the Prayer Book, on the principle of charitable assumption grounded on the word of God, “We yield thee hearty thanks, most merciful Father, that it hath pleased thee to regenerate this Infant with thy holy Spirit, to receive him for thine own Child by adoption, and to incorporate him into thy holy Church.”
It must therefore be concluded (and this saddens me, for I have dear friends who are of this persuasion) that a conversionist and antipaedobaptist approach to those born within the covenant community, in which they are regarded and reared as outsiders, unbelievers and unregenerate, until such time as they reach a point where they pray a prayer of repentance and commit their lives to Christ, withholding baptism from them until profession of faith, is profoundly out of tune with the hope and experience held before us in the Psalter, to the detriment of their faith and comfort in later suffering.
But it was a great joy on the Lord’s Day, at the annual river baptism service, amongst all the students and similarly aged people being baptised, to hear one family declare their intention for their infant daughter to be a Christian, their belief that the Bible teaches that children should be brought up from their earliest days to know and trust the Lord, and that baptism in the Bible marks the beginning of that process, and consequently their desire for her to be baptised.
June 3, 2008 at 2:55 pm
It really is a surprising text (and it’s not the only one of that sort) for those who would deny that infants can have faith.
I think the significant point you make is that David is basing this on the reality of being brought up within the covenant, and the promises of God therein regarding children. He obviously couldn’t remember trusting in God in the womb. However, he based his relationship with God not on the subjectivity of his own memory, or on a conversion moment, but on the covenantal promises of God. On the basis of God’s covenant we baptise, and on the basis of that we presume our children to be regenerate. It couldn’t be simpler could it?
You refer to the damage done by children being brought up outsiders. I think it is also damaging when children are brought up sort of ‘half in and half out’ - covenant members of a sort, but demanded to produce an adult-stle conversion story before gaining full acceptance into the Church. This often leads to problems with assurance.
June 3, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Pete, I can’t agree with your analysis. No demand is made of children to produce an adult-style conversion story, I think this is unfair to those who bring their children up without baptising them as infants.
If there is any demand, it surely is that children live out the faith they have been taught and week by week grow deeper in their relationship with Christ. And the demand is that they confess Jesus Christ as their saviour, and it is on this confession that (I believe) they should be baptised, however young.
To add that children do not have full acceptance in the Church is, I believe, wrong. They are welcomed, loved and cared for just like any other member of the church family. Obviously they are not treated in exactly the same way as baptised adults - they would not vote in church meetings!
Also, do you know of any cases where post-confessional baptism has lead to problems with assurance? Do you accept that infant baptism can lead people to believe that they are Christians when they are in fact not? I am not making this claim, but I suspect there are more cases of it than those that you cite.
June 3, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Try, Children of the Covenant - What is the Status of the Children of Believers?
To argue that Ps. 22:9, 10 is characteristic of all who are born within the covenant is saying more than we are allowed to for it is simply untrue that all of Israel were regenerated.
June 3, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Daniel, I would like you at some point to point out the baptist who would treat their children in the fashion described in the second last paragraph. Your argument holds much weight without having to resort to placing up a straw man image of baptist theology.
Thank you for your thoughts though.
June 3, 2008 at 10:42 pm
I wasn’t consciously setting up a straw man. There most certainly are those who regard the children of believers as unbelievers and teach such children to think of themselves as such until they pray a prayer of repentance and commit their lives to Christ. I think we probably know some. Happily, of course, antipaedobaptist practice is not always consistent, and I’m sure there are plenty of those who treat children as members of the church family, and love and welcome them. The question then remains as to why such children aren’t given the sign to which they are entitled given that status.
The issue of whether infant baptism leads people to believe they are Christian (assuming Christian is being defined as being decretally elect and having responded to Christ with saving faith) when they are not is I think irrelevant to the question of who should be baptised. Baptism on profession has the same problem - see, for example, Simon Magus. Requiring children to produce an adult-style conversion story (and I think it does happen) does raise issues about assurance - someone genuinely trusting in Christ might not have had a definite moment when they recognised they were a sinner and responded with faith in Christ, and so not think they were saved.
And I didn’t say that these verses from Psalm 22 were characteristic of all those born in the covenant.
June 3, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Apologies if I’ve misrepresented you. The language used seemed to be taking an extreme position, one lying beyond the beliefs and practices of many, may I say the majority, of baptists. Care needs to be taken that you don’t seem to be stating it as the normal view (either you are a loving paedobaptist parent, who cares for their kids, or a snarling baptist who will keep their children in a hutch at the back of the house until they make a profession of faith…
I’m not suggesting that this is what you are saying, but I’m sure that’s how it will come across.
As mentioned before, your arguments are strong, and I don’t have an answer to you objection (excuse me, I am a little in flux in this area, and still finding my feet), you can afford to lessen on the pejorative and really concentrate on the weight of scriptural side of your argument. Apologies if my comments are out of line.
June 3, 2008 at 11:18 pm
Hmmm, maybe. Perhaps the word “outsider” might give that impression. All I meant by it was treating children of believers as not part of the true church. As for the rest of it, I think it probably is fairly widespread, in my experience.
June 4, 2008 at 12:56 am
I think it is too narrow a view of salvation to say that there has to be a definite moment when we say the sinners prayer. My experience of both myself and others brought up in a Christian home is that we gradually grow and commit to following Christ as His word is taught and applied to our lives.
I don’t see any inconsistency in recognising children as part of the church family (by dedication perhaps, involving amongst other things, the church family committing to upholding the child and his/her parents in prayer for their spiritual growth) and baptising such children on confession.
I see more inconsistency in what I thought was the traditional paedobaptist position, namely that baptism symbolises probable future regeneration. I have never heard it claimed before that the children of believing parents are automatically regenerate, and I want to investigate that further. Psalm 22 does seem clear, but I am unsure the extent to which we can take what happens to David and say it happens to everyone.
June 4, 2008 at 8:14 am
I agree entirely with your first paragraph, Greg. Is Scripture to regulate what we do in church? If you’re acknowledging that the spiritual life of Christian children is one of gradual growth, if you recognise children as part of the church family, if you see the need to have some kind of formal ceremony to mark that, why do you want to make one up, rather than use the one God has ordained in Scripture? It does seem to me to be inconsistent to acknowledge all you acknowledge, and then deny the proper sign and seal of those things.
And who is claiming that the children of believing parents are automatically regenerate? Not me, guv.
June 4, 2008 at 9:06 am
Um… Daniel, you’ve made it clear before that you think baptism DOES regenerate children… Something which I think is decidedly Roman.
I’m thinking there is a category of people who are ‘attached to’ or ‘on the fringes of’ the church but are not regarded as ‘members’ because they have made no credible confession of faith - I think that’s what 1 Cor 7:14 is about. I would place ‘church kids’ in that group. But they do need conversion and new birth.
As for the Psalm, I don’t think the peg is strong enough to bear the weight of the doctrine you’re trying to hang on it…
June 4, 2008 at 10:44 am
Interesting stuff Daniel.
However, as one of the “antipaedobaptists”, I have a question: “If a child is baptized as a baby, at what point does their way of living mean that we cease using ‘charitable assumption’?”
What I’m driving at is this: if you look at the vast majority of three year olds born into Christian families, you see them behaving in a selfish, non-Godcentric way, just like your typical three year old from outside a Christian home, and showing fundamentally the same attitudes as older non-believers. There is no evidence of spiritual fruit in their lives. Do you still then treat them as if they are believers? If so, when do you stop doing so?
June 4, 2008 at 1:49 pm
The issue of baptismal regeneration isn’t the issue here, but as I’m sure you remember from my post of a while ago, Daniel, I did make it clear in what sense I thought baptism didn’t regenerate infants, and in which sense I thought we could say of baptised children that they are regenerate.
I believe covenant children, like all people in Adam, need conversion and new birth. That’s not the issue. The issue is whether covenant children are to be treated like pagans and expected to come to a particular moment in their lives when they recognize they’re sinners, repent and put their trust in Christ, i.e. an adult-style conversion. This Psalm suggests not.
Steve, it’s nice to see you’re still reading. I would most certainly treat the children you describe as believers. When they sin, they would be disciplined, they would be taught and they would be prayed for or pray themselves (depending on how old they are) to God for forgiveness through Christ. When would I stop doing so? When they choose to reject discipline, fail to repent, and leave the church, I suppose.
Of course, the situation you describe of the behaviour of the three year-olds at least raises the question of the faithfulness of parents in child-rearing, I think.
June 4, 2008 at 4:10 pm
I still read regularly, Daniel, but don’t usually have enough time to wade-into discussions (if you’ll pardon the pun) :o). But I think this one is worth wading into (not the issue of baby-dunking itself, but the issue of assuming chidlren of believers to be believers).
Another question if I may: how does what you’re proposing square with passages like Eph 2:1-4ish? Paul states that all, including himself, were by nature children of wrath. But he had been circumcised, and received the sign of the covenant! So why did he consider that he had been born a child of wrath? And, as he clearly did consider himself to have been born a child of wrath, shouldn’t we consider our children to be so too, even if we’ve given them the covenant-sign? Perhaps I’m missing something here…?
June 4, 2008 at 5:37 pm
If I can wade in for a moment.
Steve, as the father of 2 young children, and the curate of a church with lots of young families, I’d say that many if not most 3 year olds from Christian families often behave in a self-centred way that is similar to all adult Christians. And they also act and speak in ways that at least appear to demonstrate a love for the Lord Jesus and for others, much like adult Christians. Which is to say, they’re sinful! And, unlike adults, who have over time developed strategies to hide and cloak their sin, little children haven’t, and so sin shamelessly in public in ways I would never dream of…But it doesn’t make them more sinful. Maybe less so, as they don’t add to their sin by hypocritically hiding it?
And wrt Eph 2.1ff - absolutely, by nature children of wrath, sinful from conception (Ps 51); but, by God’s grace why can’t they be regenerated in utero?
June 4, 2008 at 7:30 pm
Steve,
We should not assume that the children of believers are themselves believers, but there is no reason that they could not have faith. They have been born into the covenant community and therefore they are to be raised in the fear of the Lord.
June 4, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Greg
My comments were targeted at inconsistent paedobaptist practice (especially surrounding common practice to do with ‘confirmation’
rather than at Baptists per se, though of course the problem of being brought up half in/ half out can occur in baptistic contexts too. I’m sorry if you felt I was unfair towards baptist practice, my intention was not to mall an all-encompassing sweeping statement, though I was generalising about a problem that I think is very real.
I agree that children should be taught to confess, and that indeed their continued enjoyment of covenant privileges is based in part on profession, as it is with those who come to faith in adulthood. This means, among other things, that covenant children should come under appropriate church discipline. The pastor is their pastor after all.
I have experienced of those brought up in christians homes struggling with assurance, and I think it is exactly for these sort of reasons.
June 5, 2008 at 12:25 am
Pete - thanks for that clarification.
Do ‘reformed’ paedobaptists confirm their infants?
June 5, 2008 at 10:16 am
Rjs1 and Matthew,
Thanks for your comments. I think I have been misunderstood. Rjs1, I am not for a moment suggesting that young children cannot have faith - I am simply saying (and it would appear that you agree with me on this, though the person Daniel referred to having his child dunked didn’t appear to agree with this) that we should not assume that they do. Of course they should be raised in the fear of the Lord, prayed with and for, and educated in all things from a Christian worldview. But we must not treat them as if they are believers until there are evidences of grace in their life, just as we would not treat others so. If we do, we are in danger of decieving them, and being unloving.
Matthew, of course God can regenerate in utero if He so choses, but Paul’s assumption is that that will be unusual. In Eph 2 he speaks of “all of us” (v3)LIVING as non-believers, pre-conversion (which happens in v5). The assumption is that all believers will have had some time where they were not only children of wrath by nature, but living that out here on earth. However young a child might be converted (and that might be very young), they, like us all, spend some time gratifying the cravings of [their] sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts (v3). In this way they are just like pagans. So to work on the assumption that a baby is a believer seems presumptuous and dangerous.
June 5, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Greg
I think Presbyterians do. I know anglicans do (depends on whether you’d call them reformed or not). Can’t comment on the congregationalists.
I think if you’re going to go the covenantal route, you should really go there. Infant baptisms that are ‘wet dedications’ will bring on confusion. If they’re in then treat them as in until church discipline demands other decisions.
But similarly, if you’re going to go the baptistic route, you should do so consistently. Telling them they’re not in until x (where x means - the elders are satisified you have genuine faith, or, you can give a particular account of your conversion, or your profession), but then treating them as if they are, can lead to confusion as well.
I’ve heard it taught that this was part of the problem over assurance and covenant etc. in New England. Admittedly, they were also probably far too prescriptive in the kind of conversion experience they looked for. There’s a case for arguing that this prepared the way for the revivalism of the 18th century and beyond, which has probably not been the best thing for evangelicalism.