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

by Pascal Denault

What permitted this flexibility and balance between continuity and discontinuity was the revealed/concluded distinction in the Baptist model of the covenant of grace. There is a continuity because the covenant of grace was revealed starting in Genesis 3:15 until its full revelation in the New Testament, but there is also discontinuity because the covenant of grace was not concluded before the death and resurrection of Christ; the formal covenants that preceded this event had a different substance and were, therefore, abolished and replaced by the new covenant.

Therefore, the continuity of the covenant of grace is maintained at the same time that the discontinuity between the new covenant (faith) and the old covenant (law) is affirmed.

Once again, the Baptist understanding of the covenant of grace allowed for the recognition of the discontinuity between Moses and Jesus Christ without denying the efficacy of grace during Moses’ time.

By separating the internal substance from the external administration of the covenant of grace, one finds oneself with two categories of people in the same covenant: those who are saved, and those who are not. Consequently, for Presbyterians there were two ways to enter into the covenant of grace: one could enter when one was born or when one was born again.

The paedobaptists said that the covenant of grace was established with the elect and that one entered into it through faith in Christ.

However, the paedobaptists did not limit the covenant of grace exclusively to the elect; they also incorporated the posterity of believers into it. Consequently, repentance and faith were not seen as absolutely necessary in order to enter into the covenant.

for the Baptists there was only one way to enter into the covenant of grace: through faith. This notion went along with their vision of the covenant of grace: revealed progressively before being concluded. Because they saw the covenant of grace as a promise (Eph. 2:12) announced then accomplished, the Baptists believed faith was the only way to receive a promise.

For the Baptists, only faith constituted a valid entry into the covenant of grace. They did not consider the covenant of grace to be concluded simply with the elect, but with the converted elect.

On this basis, the Baptists practised the baptism and ecclesiology of believers only.

Inversely, it is because they saw two ways of entering into the covenant of grace that the paedobaptists practised the baptism and ecclesiology of believers and their posterity.

This notion is clearly established in the Confession of Westminster. In 5, the church is seen as both an invisible entity and as a visible entity. These two notions correspond respectively to the two ways of entering the covenant of grace and to the two levels of this covenant, i.e...

Baptist ecclesiology, because it rested on a different federalism, rejected the Presbyterian notion of a visible church made up of professing believers and their posterity.

the Baptists supported the notion of an invisible church made up of all of the elect, but for them, the covenant of grace only included the elect who had been called; it did not have an external administration in which the non-elect were to be found;

Only authentic faith, according to the Baptists, allowed one to enter into the covenant of grace. Therefore, only those who had a credible profession of faith could make up the visible church (which was not seen universally or nationally among Baptists, but locally).

the paedobaptists baptized on the basis of new birth and natural birth,

the Baptists only practised baptism based on new birth.

The paedobaptists did not purport to be in the covenant of grace as the natural descendants of Abraham, but as his spiritual descendants; however they practised a spiritual ordinance (baptism) on the basis of natural generation.

The paedobaptists would not have baptized children without believing that they took part in the covenant of grace.

The Baptists would not have only baptized believers without the conviction that they alone took part in the covenant of grace.

The paedobaptists believed that Christians and their posterity were in the covenant because they saw two different levels to the covenant of grace (internal and external), each of these levels having ...

The Baptists believed that only the regenerated elect were in the covenant because they only saw one level to the covenant of grace into ...

For the Baptists, being in the covenant of grace meant benefiting from salvation by grace and all the privileges it entails.

For the Presbyterians, being in the covenant of grace did not necessarily mean having eternal life.

The Baptists, in order to be able to affirm that all the members of the covenant of grace were regenerated elect, could not separate the covenant from salvation.

The paedobaptists, in order to be able to affirm that the covenant of grace contained people who were saved and people who were lost, had to separate the covenant from salvation.

To be in the covenant of grace was not to be de facto heir of the eternal salvation. By separating the substance from its administration, the Presbyterians did not hold that all the members of the covenant of grace were saved, but only the elect. Since membership in the covenant of grace determined membership in the church, the church was necessarily composed of non-elect.

the Baptists recognized that not all the members of the visible church were elect (LBC 26.3). The non-elect members were only mistakenly considered part of the church from man’s fallible perspective.156 The non-elect were not part of the covenant of grace (1 John 2:3).

the Presbyterians conferred to the non-elect a status of de jure visible members because of the mixed nature of the covenant of grace.

All the Presbyterians separated salvation and the covenant of grace on the basis of the internal spiritual substance/natural external administration distinction;

Generally, the paedobaptists indicated that the privileges of the non-saved members of the covenant of grace were the blessings of belonging to the visible church.

What remained fundamental was that it was conceived that all the blessings of the covenant of grace came directly from the mediation of Christ. It was therefore possible to benefit from the mediation of Christ without being saved, to partially benefit from the effects of his redemption.

The Presbyterians perceived the scope and efficacy of the covenant of grace in a restrained way because they had to maintain an essential characteristic of their ecclesiology: the mixed nature of the people of the covenant. They therefore had to understand the mediation of Christ in such a way as to be able to include the “unconverted” amongst his people. Thus, the efficacy of the grace of salvation could not reach out exhaustively to the people of the covenant even if the people had Christ as a mediator. As a result, the one covenant under two administrations model had a direct effect on the doctrine of expiation.

Arminianism extended the reach of the death of Christ to all human beings while limiting its efficacy to believers. Presbyterian federalism extended the reach of the mediatorship of Christ to all the members of the covenant, but limited its salvific efficacy to the elect. Consequently, within the sphere of the covenant of grace, Presbyterian federalism was comparable to Arminianism.

Owen considered that the old covenant was effective for all of its members, without them all being saved, since, as he explicitly states elsewhere, this covenant did not give salvation.

one cannot partially benefit from Christ’s death; it is fully effective for the totality of the members of the covenant. If someone does not benefit from the salvific grace of the covenant of grace, he is simply not a part of the covenant.

The reach of the grace within the covenant of grace must be extended to all the members.

From a Baptist point of view, a church of mixed nature in which some benefited from salvation and others from partial blessings altered the spiritual nature of the covenant between Christ and his church and profaned the nature and the efficacy of the work of Christ.

Regarding the apostates, whom the paedobaptists saw as transgressors of the covenant, the Baptists considered that they had simply never been members of the covenant (cf. 1 John 2:19).

By limiting the covenant of grace to only the regenerate elect, the Baptists could easily affirm that it was absolutely unconditional.

On the Presbyterian side, several also stated the unconditional nature of the covenant of grace.169 However, how could a covenant from which one could fall be unconditional?

Consequently, Presbyterian federalism had a fundamental difficulty in seeing the covenant of grace as being absolutely unconditional and was confronted with an implacable antinomy. We believe that the tendencies compromising the gratuitousness of the covenant of grace such as Neonomism, the New Perspective on Paul, the Federal Vision, etc., are naturally derived from the Presbyterian federalism which carries within it the germ of a conditional covenant of grace.

The paedobaptist model perceived the beginning of the covenant of grace immediately right after the fall and placed this covenant under two successive administrations called the old and new covenants. By distinguishing between the covenant (substance) and its administrations (circumstance), Presbyterians established a foundation which was essential to them: they could maintain natural heirs and spiritual heirs within the same covenant, the first having part in the administration only and the second having part in both the administration and the substance of the covenant of grace. Paedobaptist federalism and ecclesiology were based on this distinction.

The Baptist understanding rested on another fundamental distinction: one between the phase in which the covenant of grace was revealed and the phase in which it was concluded. The revealed phase corresponded to the period preceding the death of Christ and the concluded phase corresponded to the time that followed. Therefore, Baptists considered that no other covenant besides the new covenant was the covenant of grace. They still recognized that the covenant of grace had been revealed under all the covenants since the fall, but distinguished between the actual substance of these covenants and the covenant of grace itself.

The Scriptures use this expression to designate the covenant concluded between God and Israel upon the exodus from Egypt, the covenant of which Moses was the mediator (compare Jer. 31:31–32 and Heb. 8:8–13).173 For most seventeenth-century federalists, the expression “old covenant” referred to the Mosaic covenant;174 however, it also referred to more than that. According to them, the old covenant included the whole Old Testament period, that is, from the fall until the establishment of the new covenant. Federal theology saw the old covenant as being cumulative.

We believe the establishment of the old covenant started before the arrival of the Sinaitic covenant. This covenant was concluded on the basis of a covenant between Abraham and God (cf. Exo. 2:24; 3:15–16; 6:4–8). Several times, the New Testament presents the covenant between God and Israel (the old covenant) rooted both in the covenant with the patriarchs and in the Mosaic covenant.

The first covenant, therefore, covered the entire period from the fall to the establishment of the new covenant.

Reformed theologians did not see “the covenants of the promise” (Eph. 2:12) as being several covenants independent of one another, but as cumulative covenants.

if one considered the Sinaitic covenant as a covenant of works (i.e. conditional), it became impossible to consider the old covenant as a cumulative administration of the covenant of grace since there would have been an incompatibility between the unconditional nature of the covenant of grace and the conditional nature of the Sinaitic covenant.

Two alternatives were available to the paedobaptists: denying the conditional aspect of the Mosaic covenant in order to associate it with the covenant of grace, or placing the Mosaic covenant aside and isolating it from the covenant of grace.180 These approaches were both aimed at maintaining the one covenant of grace under two administrations paradigm.

the Baptists considered the Sinaitic covenant as a covenant of works that could exist in parallel and simultaneously with the covenant of grace without compromising it.