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| Monday March 22nd 2004 |
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[6:47 pm]
In connection with the previous post, particularly the concluding point: I would suppose on Phillips' system, John the Baptist did not have a "fulfilled covenant relationship" with God until his parents "evangelized" him and he made a conscious decision of faith. Of course, he was also filled with the Holy Spirit from the womb (Lk 1.15), but without a "fulfilled covenant relationship with God," apparently. |
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| 16 comments |
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I tried that line of reasoning with the school of Presbyterian who would say children need to be evangelized rather than nurtured. I was told that JtB was an exception.
Hmmm...if grace is not conferred without cognitive faith, how is it that firstborn infant Hebrews were passed over that dark night in Egypt?
Posted by Barb on 03.22.04 at 8:15 pm |
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Tim,
May I presume that you thereby think that John the Baptist presents a normative case? If he is not, then your point is of no value. If John is exceptional by virtue of what we are told about him (i.e. that the things told about him do not pertain to the rest of us), then he does not challenge a system that pertains to the rest of us. In other words, this is fine rhetoric but poor logic.
I will say that when I speak of the need to "evangelize" our children, it now occurs to me that some people might read that to mean "proselytize" our children, or otherwise treat them as pagans until they profess faith in Christ. Me genoito! If I have given that impression, please forgive me. But I also hope that your system does not allow for unqualified covenant blessings apart from faith. I hope that you do not believe that heredity grants salvation or that baptism conveys grace in any way except "to the faith" of the recipient.
BTW, I have been blogging on hostile turf lately, not because I love abuse, but because I really think we have to start talking to one another instead of merely mocking one another's ideas. For the most part, I have been encouraged by peoples' congeniality.
Yours sincerely,
Rick Phillips
Posted by on 03.22.04 at 9:54 pm |
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I think the "little child" that Jesus put in the middle of the disciples and the children that Jesus blessed are normative examples. Did they get blessed, or not? Was their blessing contingent on their later being evangelized?
John the Baptist is really only exceptional in that he had perception of Jesus's nature in utero. If every child was granted that, who is not to say that every babe would leap in the womb for joy?
If the parable of the soils teaches it is not the quality of the faith but rather the nature of the one excercizing faith (whether perevering faith or temporary faith) that matters, how can the receptive trusting nature of almost every child NOT be charcaterized as possessing paradigmatic faith (whether it proves ultimately to be temporary or persevering?)
Do we *believe* the new members who have no "conversion" story to tell, but rather speak of their continuous life in dependent faith towards Jesus, with "no memory" of a time when they were not Christians? Or do we have to be skeptical. Even if you think JtB was anomalous, there seem to be more of the anomalies every time new members join the church
Posted by pduggie on 03.22.04 at 10:12 pm |
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I really appreciate the blog interaction, Rick.
Maybe you should get a blog :-)
Posted by pduggie on 03.22.04 at 10:13 pm |
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Maybe Jack Miller's sonship stuff made too much of an impression on me in high school, but I don't have any problem with the notion of evangelizing our children and more than I have a problem with evangelizing myself or evangelizing people who have been faithful saints for 50 years.
We all need to hear the promises of the Gospel afresh. We all need to renew our faith. The Christian life is one of receiving Christ in faith and repentance from beginning to end.
"Evangelism" doesn't necessarily mean attempting to induce some kind of conversion experience, but to proclaim the Good News of Jesus. And we all need that.
Posted by garver on 03.22.04 at 10:22 pm |
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Well, Dr Garver, I of course have no problem with the term "evangelism" or "evangelizing" in its original meaning. I do however, have a severe problem with how Rev Phillips presents it in the context of the paragraph in question in the colloquium paper. I for one am not interested in playing with words, but with dealing with the substance. So it's not the term I object to, but the way it is being employed in context. And what Rick explicitly said in the quotation I gave is that the baptized child does not have a "fulfilled covenant relationship with God."
My disagreement does not mean, Rick, that I think that we do not call upon our children to believe and repent! I find that an almost unbelievable charge against the Federal Vision in terms of its overall.
But what we do say is that grace precedes their ability to formulate things self-consciously, and we nurture them within the context of the already-established relationship. We are not looking for some sort of "conversion experience," because God has already brought them from darkness to light.
Was John the Baptist an exception? In a sense he was, because the gift of the Spirit was not a universal gift of the old covenant, and the particular kind of Spirit-filling he enjoyed has never been universal. But that doesn't mean that appealing to his case is a mere rhetorical ploy. After all, here we have a demonstrable case where we know clearly that a fulfilled covenant relationship is not dependent upon self-conscious faith. I could just have easily appealed to Psalm 22.9-10 to make the same point, and I suppose you would say that is exceptional too, because it is Messianic (although it referred to David first). And then I would appeal to another text, and that would be an anomaly too. So that every text becomes an anomaly, despite what we know clearly from Matthew 19.13-14.
So no, I don't concede the case of John as an anomalous text that I merely appealed to for rhetorical effect.
Rev Phillips, even in your response above, the problem that I have with what you are saying continues to be the same: the indeterminate way you continue to use the term "faith." If you mean self-conscious faith which an infant cannot by the nature of the case exercise, then you are painting yourself precisely into the corner I am talking about. But if, OTOH, you do *not* mean that, but will concede that infants have the requisite faith (which of course they are responsible to continue to live out of as they get older, even as adults are), I simply cannot square that with what you have written in your colloquium paper, either in terms of positively setting forth your own case, or negatively, in terms of the way you opposed the Auburn proponents.
This is why I don't know what you're trying to say. You claim that you don't believe covenant children are little Esaus, but you also say that they are not in a fulfilled covenant relationship with God. Well, that leaves us with an undefined tertium quid that I can't find in Scripture. And even the best face you put on that tertium quid isn't going to square with Matthew 19.13-14, as far as I can see.
Posted by Tim on 03.22.04 at 10:51 pm |
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"...an almost unbelievable charge against the Federal Vision in terms of its overall message." Oops.
Posted by Tim on 03.22.04 at 10:54 pm |
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Reformed theology has often distinguished between faith in its disposition and faith in its exercise (or similar terminology). While infants do not have the exercise of faith, they can have its disposition.
If we are allowing a distinction between "saints in the eyes of God" and "saints in the eyes of the church," then, in virtue of the baptism of our covenant infants, it would seem that they are at least to be regarded as saints in the eyes of the church.
As such, it is not our place to question whether or not they possess faith dispositionally, but to trust the promises of God that they do and raise them in the faith in order that they may quickly come to its exercise.
Posted by garver on 03.22.04 at 11:21 pm |
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PDuggie,
Wow. Now the trusting nature that every child has is defined as saving faith. But it fits your model from Jesus and the children. According to your model, and your definition of faith, every child is saved, whether or not his or her parents are believers.
Please help me to understand how I am misreading you, since I don't think you really mean what I think you are saying,
Rick
Posted by on 03.23.04 at 3:11 pm |
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Joel,
On evangelizing children, self and others, that is my precise point. For some reason, whenever I speak of focusing on faith as the ground for assurance, people think I am aiming for some dramatic conversion testimony. Here is my testimony (in brief form): The Son of God came into this world, lived the life I should have lived and died the death I deserved to die. God raised him from the grace and he now reigns over all in heaven. All this happened so that I might be saved from my sin and to an eternal relationship of love with God.
Rick Phillips
Posted by on 03.23.04 at 3:14 pm |
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Tim,
Yes, you are right that I do not believe that infants possess saving faith as depicted in the Bible and as articulated in the WCF (esp. XIV.2). But that does not mean that I try to engineer some bogus conversion experience for my children! I also expect them to grow in faith in a way that may be almost imperceptible.
The real point is that I will not ground their assurance of salvation (or my assurance of their salvation) in anything other than faith. Might faith begin in a very little child. Yes. But -- and perhaps here is the rub -- we cannot discern faith until it can be displayed, and we cannot stake anyone's claim to salvation apart from faith.
But I'll give you this, Tim: I'm awfully glad you are at least configuring your views of childhood salvation in a way that includes faith. The fact is that I have personally been told by some FV folks that to demand faith in any way is to deny salvation by grace. Hence the alarm that you find dismaying. So, even when I don't fully agree, I am really comforted to see that you are not talking about birth without faith or baptism without faith as the means of salvation. (That's right, isn't it?). I think you are making the case for infants in such a way as to broaden the definition of faith way beyond what the Scriptures merit. But I am glad you are not willing to abandon the necessity of faith.
I am finding that part of the problem is that some folks are trying to make a corrective to much evangelical thinking, so they emphasize baptism. Their way of making the emphasis makes it sound as if baptism is effectual without any consideration for faith. That may not be their intent, but it conveys that impression to many readers. I have had this experience with Rich Lusk's writings on Theologia, where he makes strong unqualified statements about baptism as the means of union with Christ. But just today in an email discussion raging among the FV colloquium members (I think I have received over 300 emails in the last few days in this discussion), Rich told me that he does not believe that baptism conveys grace apart from faith. That was news to me -- welcome news that I gratefully can acknowledge.
May the Lord bless you,
Rick Phillips
Posted by on 03.23.04 at 3:25 pm |
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Pduggie,
About my blogging... My pregnant wife and mother of four is about to demand a halt to my activity! I could never keep up the pace of having my own blog site!
Rick
Posted by on 03.23.04 at 3:26 pm |
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Tentatively:
1. Children, even infants, have a disposition towards the paridgmatic trust toward persons.
2. In Baptism, they meet the person of Christ.
3. So children baptized may be considered to have an attitude of dependence toward Christ, that if they persevere in, is saving.
I did not mean to say that because all human infants are trusting that therefore all are saved. I'm saying all human infants who meet Christ have the capacity to depend upon him. They may and do in fact do so in Baptism.
I think (2) is the more important question before us, and I think that the FVs desire to articulate the objective presence of Christ in the sacrament is the issue.
Posted by pduggie on 03.23.04 at 4:22 pm |
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Pduggie,
Thanks for the clarification, although I take little comfort in it. I would say that the infant child has no idea of the spiritual significance of what is happening when he/she is being baptized. That is why they so often start crying when I sprinkle the water over their head. You say they meet the person of Christ in baptism and they have a paradigmatic trust towards persons. But what they meet in baptism is water, so far as they know, along with a strange man who isn't their father. That is why they cry. This whole approach to faith in infants is such a stretch that by it the whole biblical idea of faith gets washed away (pun intended).
Rick Phillips
Posted by on 03.24.04 at 9:52 pm |
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As many of you who have been baptised into Christ have put on Christ... seems like more than just water to me. Whether or not the child understands the significance of it is beside the point. He has been baptised at God's command, by God's appointed messenger, with God's message that now he belongs to God. That's something more than water.
To cast the vision of baptism through the eyes of the baptised seems to me the wrong way to approach the question. Is baptism something which God does, or is it just something that men do? If the former is primary and the latter secondary, it would appear to be the path of wisdom to approach the question by considering what God has said He does in baptism, and less wise to make God's declarations dependent upon man's understanding.
Jamie, the father of 8 children, one of whose face I hope to see for the first time in the next day or so...
Posted by Jamie on 03.25.04 at 12:27 am |
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My response is on my weblog
Posted by pduggie on 03.28.04 at 8:50 pm | |
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