Four Questions for my 1689 Brothers

The central debate between 1689 London Baptist brothers and 1646 Westminster Presbyterian brothers is the nature of the New Covenant. Is the New Covenant only made up of regenerate persons or does it consist in some measure of a “mixed multitude” – both believers and unbelievers (as in the Old Covenant in Israel). The argument over whether infants and young children should be baptized on the basis of the profession of faith of their parents highlights this difference. The Presbyterian view holds greater continuity with the Old Covenant, that the promises are for those who believe and their children, while acknowledging that there are still some who come into the New Covenant who do not believe and are not regenerate. 

On the other hand, the Baptist view points to passages like Jeremiah 31 and Hebrews 8 to argue that the promise of the New Covenant is that it will be better than the Old Covenant and not like the Old Covenant, where many did not believe. The strongest argument for this perspective (in my view) points to the efficacious ministry of Jesus as the mediator of this new and better covenant. And if your Calvinism is firing on all cylinders, all of your particular redemption and efficacious atonement theology kicks in, and you might suspect your Presbyterian brothers are going a little wobbly. How could Jesus, the High Priest of this New Covenant, lose anyone He died for? Well, the short answer of course is that He doesn’t: everyone Christ intends to save, He saves to the uttermost and not one person can be plucked from His firm, saving hand. But there are other texts that describe a broader, more universal ministry which some partake of and yet reject which us Presbyterian types would point to as evidence that the New Covenant is something a bit broader than just the company of the elect. But I’m getting ahead of myself… 

Let me add one more thought before jumping in to my questions for my 1689 Baptist brothers. I offer these questions in an honest spirit of curiosity – not gotcha questions at all, and for the sake of clarity. To anyone who cares to reply, thanks much. As someone who has grown up in the Westminster tradition, there are aspects of the 1689 position that are still very foreign to me, but since I consider you all my brothers and comrades in arms, I’d at least like to hear you out. And related to this last point, I serve as a pastor in a community that has worked together with Reformed Baptist families for decades. In fact, I’ve probably done more believers’ baptisms in the last year or so than I’ve done my whole ministry. So this is not at all meant to signal some kind of change to that warm friendship and comradery. These are just some questions that have occurred to me from time to time – questions I assume that 1689 brothers have answered many times but I simply don’t know the answers to. So four questions for you. 

First Question
How do you understand Jesus when He says that He is the vine and we are the branches in Jn. 15? If you are a Calvinist, you do not believe that you can truly come into Christ and then be severed from Him later. You believe in the preservation of the saints. But then in what way may someone be organically united to Christ and yet not bear fruit and be cut out and thrown into the fire? What is that relationship to Christ called? Similarly, the covenant is likened to an olive tree/vine in the Old Covenant (Jer. 11). When Paul describes the Jews being cut out of the olive tree and Gentiles being grafted in, how is that not the New Covenant (Rom. 11)? Furthermore, the warning in Romans 11 is specifically that the Gentile branches not boast themselves against those branches that were cut out since the same God who cut the natural branches (Jews) out is able to do the same again with prideful/unbelieving Gentile branches. Why is the most natural reading of John 15 and Romans 11 not that the New Covenant still admits cutting out and grafting in?

Second Question
How do you understand 1 Cor. 10 where Paul’s warning of the Corinthian Christians rests upon a strong continuity between the Old and New Covenant? Paul tells the Corinthians that Israel was baptized in the cloud and in the sea, and they ate spiritual food in the wilderness and drank spiritual drink, and the Rock that followed them in the wilderness was Christ (1 Cor. 10:1-4). Paul says that the New Covenant Corinthians have what the Old Covenant Israelites had. You have baptism? They had baptism. You have the Lord’s Supper? They had the Lord’s Supper. You have Christ? They had Christ. Those things were written for our examples, Paul says, that we should not lust after evil things as they lusted (1 Cor. 10:6). “Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also temped… Now all these things happened unto them as examples… Therefore let him that think he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:9-12). If the New Covenant, marked by baptism and the Lord’s Supper, does not have unbelievers, how does Paul’s warning apply? How could New Covenant members actually “take heed lest they fall”? 

Third Question
How do you understand the universal saving language of the New Testament? A common objection from Arminians is the claim that the blood of Jesus must be attempting to save everyone since the New Testament so often claims a universal efficacy. Beginning with the most famous Bible verse of all: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world might be saved through Him” (Jn. 3:16-17). How do you understand God’s saving love for “the world”? Or elsewhere Jesus said that if He would be lifted up on the cross, He would draw all men to Himself (and this He said describing what kind of death He would die) (Jn. 12:32-33). How do you understand Christ’s promise to draw “all men” to Himself? Perhaps most pointed would be the notion of “propitiation” not only for our sins, but also for “the whole world” (1 Jn. 2:2). How is Jesus the propitiation for the sins of the whole world? 

The usual Calvinistic answer to these questions is a combination of recognizing that universal language need not be required to be absolutely universal in order to still be true as well as an openness to distinguishing between sufficiency and efficiency. Christ’s sacrifice was sufficient to save every last human being, but according to God’s secret, decretal will, it is only efficient to save the elect. The ultimate impact of Christ’s saving work will be world-wide and in the end, the total number of the saved will so overshadow the number of the damned that “all men” will have been drawn to Christ. I think these are reasonable explanations, but they expand the lexical-theological possibilities of the universal language in the New Testament. Is Jesus drawing “all men” to Himself? Did Jesus die to save the world? And my question is: if you are willing to recognize that the efficacy of the cross can be described in those universal terms, without meaning an exhaustive and absolute universal application, why can’t the same be true of Jeremiah 31 and Hebrews 8? Why can’t those universalizing texts (Jer. 31/Heb. 8) be making a true theological and historical point (e.g. compared to the efficacy of the Old Covenant, the New Covenant will be WAY more efficacious, the ministry of Jesus in Heaven will be WAY more fruitful, and WAY better and therefore not like the Old Covenant in those ways)?

Fourth Question
How do you explain the lack of significant argument and controversy surrounding the new exclusion of children from the covenants of promise in the New Testament? God’s dealing with Israel by households and covenant promises for children and grandchildren were far more central to the Old Covenant than the general exclusion of the Gentiles, and yet the inclusion of the Gentiles takes up portions of nearly every book of the New Testament. How could an even more monumental shift not have required at least another Jerusalem council and multiple mentions in Paul’s letters? Instead, what we have are many clarifications about the change in ceremonial laws (e.g. clean/unclean, holy days, circumcision) and the repeated insistence that circumcision is no longer the marker of covenant inclusion, etc., but not one mention that children are no longer automatically welcomed into the covenant with their believing parents. I suspect that the Baptist would likely point out the repeated emphasis on repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus as the new boundary marker in the New Testament, but to think that first century people would just do that math and come up with profession of faith baptism does not do justice to the training wheels of the Old Testament regarding God’s promises to our children and their inclusion. The Old Testament believers all knew that the true marker of true covenant fellowship was always repentance and faith (cf. Dt. 10:16, 30:6, Gal. 3:6-7, Heb. 11) and yet their children had always been welcome. Abraham was justified by faith and his children were included in the covenant. Emphasis on the necessity of repentance and faith isn’t enough to imply that children are now excluded until they have their own personal profession of faith.

Where are all the clarifying instructions that parents need to be sure of their children’s faith before bringing them to baptism? I know that some of my Baptist brothers wish that us Presbyterians would put far more emphasis on the word “call,” in Acts 2 (the promise is for you and for your children and as many as are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call…) as though Peter assumed that the festival crowd gathered in Jerusalem would simply look up their TULIP cards and realize that they couldn’t be sure of their infants’ “efficacious call” yet and never even thought to bring them to baptism. But anyone who has done much exegetical work on the word “call/calling” knows that it is used in some places to refer to decretal election efficacy but in other places it is used in a broader covenantal sense (e.g. Is. 41:9, 43:1-22, 45:4, Hos. 11:1-2, Mt. 20:16, Mt. 22:14, Rom. 11:29). In other words, even with an emphasis on the word “call” in Acts 2, why was there no need for clarification by Peter or an immediate controversy over the fact that the promise to children would no longer be marked by covenant signs and seals? Shouldn’t a shift that monumental between the covenants be even more present in the pages of the New Testament than whether Gentiles are now included?

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