1. True believer's may be excluded from the Table and Membership over issues of disobedience. So, if Credo-Baptism is what the Bible teaches, then those who refuse to submit to it are excluded for disobeying clear Scriptural teaching.I would offer this in reply: if the Bible explicitly teaches only credobaptism, and only baptism by immersion, in explicit terms, there would be no question that doing anything else would be disobedient.
The problem is that the paedobaptists are not rejecting baptism: they are administering baptism in a historically-valid form through the understanding that a the parent/child relationship bears some spiritual meaning in the life of the church. The Scripture they use to explain this in the WCF bears this out.
They are offering baptism in the context of going forth and making disciples. They are doing it on the basis of God's command and God's promise. They are not violating any explicit statement about baptism. Those facts should be the basis for some manner of visible fellowship and not merely the line in the sand which we draw that separates us from them visibly while giving lip service to accepting them as brothers in Christ theoretically.
2. I have never been persuaded that the Scripture even hints that infants should be baptized. But I am open to persuasion. Until then, I cannot with clear conscience pretend that it can be right.Very frankly, neither have I. I think the truth is that Scripture is utterly silent about the matter, which means we have to tread the ground here with some grace and some humility. I think those convicted that baptism is for those who have made a confession of faith only, and is rightly done by immersion, should not baptize in any other way -- but they should also be honest that the Bible does not explicitly say these things: our conclusions about these matters are based on presuppositions about some verses and some words which do not contain descriptions or definitions are explicit as our doctrinal affirmations have turned out to be.
3. I am not sure about this argument. What I was trying to say in my last comment was that the Church ought to know better than to baptize an infant because neither Jesus nor any Apostle taught it. I do not think that this has anything to do with baptizing a deceived/lying person with CredoBaptism.The second half of your statement is expressly denied in the WCF, and Scripture proofs are given -- Scripture proofs that have as much substance as our affirmation that baptism is by immersion only. Moreover, because the practice has historical roots back to the Apostolic age, we have to admit that the practice does not have the air of innovation that practices like prayer to Mary have. Your argument here, Brad, is that because Jesus never explicitly taught it, I refuse to practice it. That is not a very convincing argument when we understand that Jesus never explicitly taught to use juice rather than wine at the table -- and did explicitly use wine at the table -- yet we baptists have a phobia about using wine for the ordinance. Not everything we do is based on explicit teaching -- and when we are in that territory, we have to look for a little grace because we expect a little grace for some of the things we do.
4. This is the argument that shocked me into this feeble attempt that I have mustered to express my opinion on this matter. The Bible tells us precisely who to baptize and how to baptize them. To change it from credo to paedo with no Scriptural warrant and then say thatwe can do it because it isn't forbidden is just plain bad.I challenge you to provide the Scripture proofs for this. I think you will find that the point you are trying to make here is implicit, not explicit, in Scripture.
Looking forward to more on this topic.
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