I particularly liked what Ron D said on the matter. And agreed with him when he said "The reason, I would think, that you want baptism applied to the children of professing believers (which aren’t necessary true believers) is because you believe that God’s word teaches that the children of professing believers are to be baptized. This, however, is not at all the same reason you just gave, which is that you cannot know who the elect are."
Except that Ron placed words in my mouth. I never stated this was a reason to baptize but as an argument against baptism being administered only to the elect. As I have stated, repeatedly, I believe scripture upholds the household administration. I now hope this false claim ends.
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My question is how exactly is the covenant different because it indeed it is. Jer 31
Again, the real question is "who are the proper recipients of baptism?".
God bless,
william
William,
I must deny this charge. You stated, and I quote:
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unless you want to claim to know the elect, this is also your belief whether or not you baptize children.
The necessary inference is that whether we baptize our children or not is predicated upon whether we know they are elect or not. You went on to labor on a later post that we don’t know who are the elect, therefore, we cannot baptize only the elect. Though this is true, it either brings nothing germane to the argument, or it is an attempt to bolster the original quote I’ve highlighted above. In any case, your second quote I've sited was interpreted in light of the first quote. I now understand what you are trying to say, to which I would only repeat that no reasonable baptist thinks that we can ensure an elect visible church through the means of credo baptism.
At the very least, who do you know believes that we only have a chance of baptizing the elect? I, already, showed how the word “for” does not indict the Baptist of any wrong doing or thinking.
Please, we have more important things to do than this. We have a man trying to understand what we both believe is the truth on this matter.
