The Distinctiveness of Baptist Covenant Theology: A Comparison Between Seventeenth-Century Particular Baptist and Paedobaptist Federalism

by Pascal Denault

We propose that covenant theology is that distinctive between Baptists and paedobaptists and that all the divergences that exist between them, both theological and practical, including baptism, stem from their different ways of understanding the biblical covenants. Baptism is, therefore, not the point of origin but the outcome of the differences between paedobaptists and credobaptists.

They rejected paedobaptism based on more than an analysis of the practice of baptism in the New Testament and the fact that no examples of child baptism are found there. This type of argument—regulatory principle, definition of baptism in the New Testament, etc.—was of secondary importance in Baptist apologetics. The debate surrounding baptism involved more than simply sacramental practice. It was a debate about the structure of the Scriptures, the meaning and nature of the different covenants that God made with man, and the continuity and discontinuity in the revelation and carrying out of the plan of God. The very natures of the gospel and of the church were at the heart of this debate.

The issue that made them Baptists was to know who makes up the people of God.

Baptists were born in this context of theological progress; their sudden appearance is in itself a ramification of Reformed thought. In the space of a few decades, Baptists articulated a theology all their own. The objective of our work will be to bring to light the specific nature of this theology, particularly their distinct understanding of biblical covenants.