Relocating To Elfland

“Unbelief is the sin that doth most easily beset us: there are remainders of it in the best; and it is at the bottom of our many sinful departures from God. Even those who can say, Lord, I believe, have reason to add, help my unbelief. Now, I say, it would be a special help against unbelief, to consider our baptism, especially our infant baptism. . . .

“When we are tempted to distrust God, to question his good-will, and to think hardly of him, then let us recollect the covenant of grace, and our baptism, the seal thereof. Consider [that] by baptism we were admitted into covenant relations. God did then make over himself to us, to be our God; and take us to himself, to be his people; and shall we then ever distrust him? Relation is a great encouragement to dependence. See Ps. xxi. 2. My refuge, my fortress, my God, and then follows, in him will I trust; compare Ps. xviii. 2. As, by baptism, God hath hold of us when we depart from him, so, by baptism, we have hold of God when he seems to withdraw from us. . . . Use this as an anchor of the soul in every storm; and whatever happens, keep hold of thy covenant relation to God: even then, when he seems to forsake, yet (as Christ upon the cross) maintain this post against all the assaults of Satan, that he is my God; my God for all this; and happy the people whose God is the Lord.” (Matthew Henry, A Treatise on Baptism)

“Unbelief is the sin that doth most easily beset us: there are remainders of it in the best; and it is at the bottom of our many sinful departures from God. Even those who can say, Lord, I believe, have reason to add, help my unbelief. Now, I say, it would be a special help against unbelief, to consider our baptism, especially our infant baptism. . . .

On the question of whether children in the covenant community must be regarded as believers, our Reformed forefathers have given some interesting answers. I offer a few of those here, for our reflection.

John Calvin responded thus to the Anabaptists’ argument that infants are incapable of faith:

“But since they think that it would be quite absurd for any knowledge of God to be attributed to infants, to whom Moses denies the knowledge of good and evil, let them only tell me, I ask, what the danger is if infants be said to receive now some part of that grace which in a little while they shall enjoy to the full? For if fullness of life consists in the perfect knowledge of God, when some of them, whom death snatches away in their very first infancy, pass over into eternal life, they are surely received to the contemplation of God in his very presence. Therefore, if it please him, why may the Lord not shine with a tiny spark at the present time on those whom he will illumine in the future with the full splendor of his light – especially if he has not removed their ignorance before taking them from the prison of the flesh? I would not rashly affirm that they are endowed with the same faith as we experience in ourselves, or have entirely the same knowledge of faith – this I prefer to leave undetermined – but I would somewhat restrain the obtuse arrogance of those who at the top of their lungs confidently deny or assert whatever they please.” (Calvin, Institutes, 4.16.19)

Perhaps even more telling is another passage that follows:

“Since God communicated circumcision to infants as a sacrament of repentance and of faith, it does not seem absurd if they are now made participants in baptism – unless men choose to rage openly at God’s institution. But as in all God’s acts, so in this very act also there shines enough wisdom and righteousness to repel the detractions of the impious. For although infants, at the very moment they were circumcised, did not comprehend with their understanding what that sign meant, they were truly circumcised to the mortification of their corrupt and defiled nature, a mortification that they would afterward practice in mature years. To sum up, this objection can be solved without difficulty: infants are baptized into future repentance and faith, and even though these have not yet been formed in them, the seed of both lies hidden within them by the secret working of the Spirit.” (Institutes, 4.16.20, emphasis added)

It is fairly standard in Reformed circles to affirm (as Calvin does here) that it is possible for God to work faith in infants; but should we regard all infants in the covenant as possessing the “seed” of repentance and faith? The Westminster Larger Catechism offers a strongly positive answer to this question when it says baptism is “a sign and seal of our regeneration and ingrafting into Christ, and that even to infants” (Question 177, emphasis added). If baptism seals regeneration (the seed of faith and repentance) to infants, they ought to be regarded (like adult professors) as regenerate, having the seed (at least) of faith and repentance. And this way of viewing the infants in God’s flock has solid support elsewhere. Zacharias Ursinus, for example, one of the co-authors of the Heidelberg Catechism, speaks as follows:

“This is sure and certain, that God instituted his sacraments and covenant seals only for those who recognize and maintain the church as already made up of parties of the covenant, and that it is not His intention to make them Christians by the sacraments first, but rather to make those who are already Christians to be Christians more and more and to confirm the work begun in them. . . . Hence, if anyone considers the children of Christians to be pagans and non-Christians, and damns all those infants who cannot come to be baptized, let him take care on what ground he does so, because Paul calls them holy (1 Cor. 7), and God says to all believers in the person of Abraham that He will be their God and the God of their seed. . . . Next let him consider how he will permit them to be baptized with a good conscience, for knowingly to baptize a pagan and unbeliever is an open abuse and desecration of baptism. Our continual answer to the Anabaptists, when they appeal to the lack of faith in infants against infant baptism, is that the Holy Spirit works regeneration and the inclination to faith and obedience to God in them in a manner appropriate to their age, always with it understood that we leave the free mercy and heavenly election unbound and unpenetrated.” (Quoted in Geerhardus Vos, “The Doctrine of the Covenant in Reformed Theology,” in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos, ed. Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., pp. 264–65)

Centuries later, we find the same conclusion reached by a different path by Herman Bavinck:

“We can no more judge the hearts of senior members of the church than we can the hearts of infants. The only possibility left for us who are bound to externals is a judgment of charity. According to that judgment, we consider those who make profession of faith to be believers and give them access to the sacraments. By that same judgment we count the children of believers as themselves believers because they are included with their parents in the covenant of grace. The likelihood that the baptized are true believers is even greater in the case of children than adults.” (Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, pp. 4.530–31, emphasis added)

Bavinck emphasizes the objective covenant promise of God to children rather than the subjective “seed” of faith within them, but the conclusion is the same – they are to be regarded precisely as we regard adult professors: as regenerate, repentant, believing disciples of the covenant Lord. It is not our place to call their faith into question, but rather to nurture it.

“Believers are willing to look at the disturbing reality of life; they do not scatter flowers over graves, turn death into an angel, regard sin as mere weakness, or consider this the best of possible worlds. Calvinism has no use for such drivel. It refuses to be hoodwinked. It takes full account of the seriousness of life, champions the rights of the Lord of lords, and humbly bows in adoration before the inexplicable sovereign will of God. This almighty God is also, we believe, our merciful Father. This is not a ‘solution’ but an invitation to rest in God.” (Bavinck, p. 2.341)

“Scripture teaches that faith is a gift of God’s grace, a work of God. Though in theory a person may be Pelagian, in the practice of the Christian life, above all in prayer, every Christian is an Augustinian. Self-glorying is excluded, and God alone is given the honor. Even foreknowledge, by definition, is predestination. Either God knows the elect with certainty or not at all. If he does, foreknowledge is redundant. If not, even foreknowledge has to go. The doctrine of predestination, therefore, is a dogma of the entire Christian church.” (Bavinck, p. 2.339)

I began seminary as a Calvinistic Baptist who had begun flirting with so-called “New Covenant Theology.” Within a few months, however, I had become a confirmed Presbyterian. The change was due largely to the dawning of a central insight; and it occurred to me recently that once that early penny dropped, the shape and direction of my subsequent work in covenant theology were largely determined.

The insight was quite simple: I objected, as a Calvinistic Baptist, to the idea that infants should be baptized, because we cannot know whether an infant actually believes in Christ, and faith in Christ is a sine qua non of salvation. But then one day the light went on: this problem doesn’t go away when one baptizes an adult; precisely the same problem arises in connection with everyone who is baptized. Someone comes professing to have been converted, and professes faith in Christ – how do we know this person is “the real thing” (elect and really converted)? The short answer is, we don’t. Or to put it more accurately (using a more biblical definition of “the real thing”): we know all we need to know in order to baptize the person and regard him or her thenceforth as a Christian, a member of God’s covenant people, a child in His family. The warrant for baptizing a person is never some kind of infallible knowledge that he or she is elect, or even truly converted. If a person professes faith, in he or she comes to the number of God’s people – and according to scripture, all his or her seed come in as well. Period. No further inquiry is possible or necessary.

Now, what I didn’t realize at the time is that there exists an odd creature in the Reformed world called a “Bapterian.” Bapterians have a Presbyterian sign on their place of worship; they accept adults who profess faith in Christ as members of the covenant without qualification, and baptize their children; but they place the children of professing believers in a probationary category until they manifest fruits of a genuine conversion – and to this extent they are . . . well, Baptists.

What ends up happening in a Bapterian system is that children, rather than being taught to fulfill their covenantal responsibilities to the Lord like any other Christian (believing, obeying, serving, worshipping, professing), are taught that until they meet particular conditions they really have no right to regard themselves as Christians, as children of God, as objects of divine grace. I would argue there is something Arminian-sounding here, but I digress.

Once I understood that the biblical practice of baptism (and of ecclesiology in general) doesn’t require a hotline to God’s hidden decrees, or any revelation of His secret workings in the hearts of men, it was inevitable that I should reject not only the Baptist system but also the Bapterian. This side of the eschaton, we regard the church as God sets her before us, and leave the hidden things to Him. Where is His church? Look for the professing believers and their seed, baptized into His Triune name. These – all of them – are the saints, the Christians, God’s covenant people, His family. There are no qualifications. There are no probationary categories. You’re either in or you’re out. Some may be removed from the house by discipline (or God’s final judgment), but no one is left standing on the porch.

The power that gave me sight, the existence of my vision, and the clarity or unclarity of my vision, are not what I am to be looking at. Our Calvinistic doctrine of varying responses to God’s Word, and of the divine reasons for this variance in response, has led us (through our own carelessness) to turn from the Word to fruitless investigation of whether we have responded to it.

A vital question, at the core of Christian faith, is the question, “What is my relationship to God?” This is intimately connected to other questions: e.g., what is my standing before God (addressed by the doctrine of justification), what is my identity before God (addressed by the doctrine of adoption), and what is to be my response to God (addressed by the doctrine of sanctification).

As a pastor in the modern theological climate, I am amazed how difficult it is to persuade God’s people that a sure answer to this central, vital question may be found only in the objective Word of God, the Word of God that comes to us from without. The reason for this difficulty of persuasion in Calvinistic circles, I believe, is that we hold passionately to the biblical truth that faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit. We believe that without the internal (subjective) working of the Spirit, the external (objective) Word of God will simply not save.

This is an enormously important biblical truth. The problem lies in what we do with it. When we want to answer the question, “What is my relationship to God?” we turn, not to the objective Word of God (which comes to us in scripture, preaching, and the sacraments) but to the further question of whether we have experienced the subjective working of the Spirit. Notice what has happened here: the means by which we are brought to certainty has been confused with the ground on which that certainty is (indeed, must be) based. There is a world of difference between saying that one comes to know one’s relationship to God (that we arrive at the certainty of faith) through the work of the Holy Spirit, and saying that one attains to such knowledge and certainty on the basis of the work of the Spirit. Put another way, the objective rock on which faith is built cannot be the subjective work by which one is enabled to perceive and rest upon that rock. In seeking to determine what is our relationship to God, we have turned away from the object (what He says He has done for us) to the subject (what He has done or not done in us). No wonder we have problems with assurance.

Someone will surely counter, “But Paul says the Spirit bears witness in our hearts that we are the children of God.” Right, but the Spirit doesn’t point to this internal witness-bearing as the basis for our faith. Our rebirth and conversion (or lack thereof) is not what the Spirit witnesses to us; He tells us we are children of God by illuminating the revelation of Jesus Christ through Word and sacrament.

So stop trying to find evidence of an internal work of the Spirit, troubled Christian. If you begin here, your search will never yield an answer to your vital question. You are to look to Christ as He is set forth in Word and sacrament; and if your eyes are fixed restingly here, you may be sure it is only because of the illuminating, enlivening work of the Spirit. The Spirit works through Word and sacrament to show you Christ; you are closest to the work of the Spirit when you are closest to Word and sacrament, and you evidence the work of the Spirit most when you are rest in the Christ who comes to you by these means. And if you rest, this too will give assurance of salvation (WCF 18.2), but your resting (or anything else in you) can never be your starting point.

How do we know God’s heart toward us? How do we know His posture toward us? How do we know we are His elect, holy and beloved? We know these things only by hearing and resting on His covenant promises in Christ. To look within to what has happened in our own hearts or experience yields no better assurance than looking to a minister of the gospel (1 Cor 4:1) – in both cases the source of true knowledge and assurance, the Word of God Himself, has been confounded with an instrument or organ by which that Word is received. Assurance cannot be grounded in the intellect, heart, conscience, or experience; it can be grounded only in Christ as He is revealed in the Word of the covenant.

Adam was reared in a Reformed home. He was baptized as an infant, but he has been taught all his life (sometimes explicitly, but certainly implicitly) that it falls to him to demonstrate the genuineness of his standing in God’s covenant (whether it be a public profession of faith, some kind of “conversion experience,” or what have you). Because of this, the genuineness of his standing has always been a matter of uncertainty: will he prove himself to be truly one of God’s people? He spends his life watching those who are “really in” and is taught that, if he is one of God’s children, he will behave as they do. Now, in his adolescent years, he has all the normal questions and struggles that accompany the onset of adulthood. These questions and struggles serve to confirm his uncertainty about where he stands with God, and he feels like a hypocrite when he worships with God’s people, because he does not feel the faith and joy and desire for obedience that they apparently do. (In fact, deep down he resents his lack of freedom to enjoy the independent life he is already effectively living.) He has been reared in uncertainty, and the fruit is now an ugly doubt, which manifests itself increasingly as either despair or indifference.

Eve, too, was reared in a Reformed home. She was baptized as an infant, and she has been taught all her life (explicitly and implicitly) that God is her God and Father, that Christ is her Savior and King, and that she is loved with an everlasting love. She has also been taught that because she is so loved – precisely because of her standing in God’s covenant – she has the duty and privilege to embrace the blessings of her God and to live according to His good laws and wisdom. The genuineness of her standing has never been a matter of uncertainty – she has never been “looking in,” but has always known God’s people to be her people – and this has borne fruit in a sense of holy obligation. She understands the expectations of the covenant-bond, and embraces them. Now, in her adolescent years, she has all the normal questions and struggles that accompany the onset of adulthood, but she has the resources to work them out as a child of God. She is not her own, which is for her a source of comfort and purpose. And in the transparency of fellowship with her people, she finds assurance that struggle is inherent in all true discipleship.