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February 15 - March 9, 2024
Before asking the question “Who can be baptized?” there was a more fundamental question, namely: “Who is in the covenant?” This is the most fundamental consideration in defining the Baptists’ identity
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.
The question that preoccupied them was not simply to know who could be baptized so as to have a biblical practice of baptism. The issue that made them Baptists was to know who makes up the people of God. This query brought up a host of other questions that gave birth to a covenant theology different from the one inherited from the Reformation.
Anthony Burgess demonstrated that without a covenant of works, the attribution of Adam’s sin to his posterity would have no meaning.
the presence of a promise and of a threat accompanying the commandment in
Genesis 2:16–17
was an indication that this was not a simple law,...
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(1 Cor. 15:53),
The covenant of works was conditional and provided no way to expiate the offence in case of disobedience.
the covenant of works is seen as the foundation for the “retributive” justice of God, whereby obedience begets blessing and disobedience brings malediction.
Under the covenant of works, eternal life cannot be given freely, it must be earned.60 But now, because of sin, the covenant of works is ineffective in giving life; it can only bring death
(Gal. 3:21; Rom. 8:3).
Before the fall, man benefited from a relationship with his Creator wherein, by virtue of the covenant of works, God was his God. While remaining under the obligation of obeying God because of this covenant, fallen man lost his covenantal privileges which ensured him of God’s favour and found himself, from then on, under God’s wrath. While God remained God for all men even after the fall, sin made it so that he was no longer their God in a favourable covenantal connection.
Most of the paedobaptist theologians of the seventeenth century understood that “not under the law, but under grace”
(Rom. 6:14),
simply meant not to be under the covenant of works, but under th...
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(2 Cor. 3)
The Baptists accepted with no problem that the word law, used as an antithesis to the word grace, would refer to the covenant of works.
The Baptists, however, refused to deny the continuity between the covenant
of works and the old covenant. For them, the law/grace antithesis reflected the old/new covenant antithesis.
Keach and the other Baptists believed that the covenant of works was reaffirmed in the old covenant, but for different reasons than when it was initially given to Adam. The terms of the covenant of works
(Lev. 18.5)
were repeated, not to make a new offer of eternal life, but to remind Israelites of the terms of the original covenant of works. Yet some Particular Baptists helpfully clarified that what the old covenant itself did offer upon the condition of works was life and blessing in Canaan. Contrarily to the Presbyterians, the Baptists understood the New Testament law/grace contrast as a contrast between the old and new covenants which was used by Paul to demonstrate the contrast between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. For the paedobaptists, the expression “the curse of the law”
...more
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The covenant of grace, in Reformed perspective, is the covenant that includes all of the saved of all time, from the creation of the world until the last judgment. All those who were objects of God’s grace were in the covenant of grace.
In examining the covenant of grace, two aspects of it had to be brought out: its substance and its circumstance (or administration).
According to the paedobaptists, non-regenerate persons within the covenant of grace benefited from a status among the people of God by being exposed to the preaching of the gospel and in taking part in the sacraments. However, only the regenerate reaped the full benefits of the
substance of the covenant of grace by virtue of the internal efficacy of the Holy Spirit. Hence, there was a natural way and a spiritual way to find oneself in the same covenant of grace.
By separating the substance from the administration and by making a distinction between an external (natural) efficacy and an internal (spiritual) efficacy of the covenant of grace, the paedobaptists justified the mixed nature of the biblical covenants. This notion was palpable in paedobaptist ecclesiology; it manifested itself in the concept of the visible and invisible church.
For the paedobaptists, the normal church included, as part of the institution, both professing people who were regenerated and those who were non-regenerated, as well as the natural descendants of these people.
First, there is one covenant (internal spiritual and invisible substance) under two administrations (external natural and visible circumstance).
In distinguishing between the essence and the form (substance/administration), Ames confines the newness of the new covenant to its external form, its substance being new in nothing. Consequently, for Ames and his paedobaptist contemporaries, there is identity of substance between the old and new covenants.88 On the basis of this continuity, the paedobaptists established their principle of posterity by which the natural descendants of believers are integrated into the covenant of grace.
If the new covenant is substantially identical to the old one, this principle of posterity must continue.
The Baptists did not deny the principle of natural posterity under the old covenant. However, they considered the importation of this principle under the new covenant to be a fallacy dependant on an artificial and arbitrary construction of the covenant of grace.
the unity of substance of the covenant of grace was seen as self-evident (something the Baptists also believed) and sufficient to justify the continuity of the principle of natural posterity through the identity of the substance between the two testaments (which was rejected by the Baptists).
Thus, all paedobaptists considered that the children of believers had God as their God, at least in an external fashion, under the administration of the covenant of grace.
The paradigm of one covenant under two administrations allowed Ball to affirm the mixed nature of the covenant of grace by isolating its external administration from its internal substance and enabled him to import under the new covenant a principle of posterity, belonging, according to him, to the substance of the covenant of grace.
The substance/administration distinction found in the Presbyterian understanding of the covenant of grace allowed Ball to affirm that two categories of people found themselves in the covenant of grace: regenerate and unregenerate.
Blake believes that the man who was not wearing wedding garments corresponds to the unregenerate who are in the covenant of grace.98 He supports his argument using Hebrews 10:29 to show that all those who are in the covenant are not necessarily saved:
Blake once again defends the mixed nature of the church by trying to prove that the New Testament names as believers, saints, disciples, and Christians people who are not regenerated.
he thereby deduces that the New Testament does not apply qualifiers and substantives used to designate those who are in the covenant of grace exclusively to the regenerated. 100 He concludes by explaining that those who confine the covenant to the regenerated are confusing the covenant itself with its condition:
the mixed nature of the covenant of grace is implied by invoking the concept of the visible church (external administration) and the principle of posterity is explicitly affirmed:
In considering the old and new covenants, not as separate covenants, but simply as two administrations of the same covenant, their differences were reduced to being of a quantitative nature. Thus, Peter Bulkeley compared the covenant of grace before Christ and the covenant of grace after Christ only in terms of degree:
Defining the covenant of grace as one covenant under several administrations determined the very nature of the old and new covenants. Most paedobaptist theologians reduced the differences between these two “administrations” not to differences in substance, but to quantitative differences only.
These differences of degree were explained only under the angle of chronology: before Christ and after Christ. The paedobaptists spoke of the covenant of grace “administered in the time of the law, and in the time of the Gospel”104 or “before and after the coming of Christ.”
the differences between the old and new covenants could be explained chronologically and not in substance.
Baptist theology subscribed fully to the notion of there being only one covenant of grace in the Bible, which brings together all who are saved as one people.
The Baptists considered that the covenant of grace started immediately after the fall and that the substance of this covenant, even under the Old Testament, was salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.
Since the substance of the covenant of grace was salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, by stating the uniformity of justification by faith in both Testaments, they implicitly affirmed the unity of the covenant of grace in both Testaments.
Since the church is the people of the covenant of grace and since there is only one people of God in all of the Bible, there was necessarily only one covenant of grace before and after Christ to assemble this people under the same covenant:
By using Owen’s words, Hutchinson demonstrated that the credobaptists shared the same conviction as the paedobaptists regarding the unity of the covenant of grace.
