The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum Continuity in Old and NT

I'm just a little confused here as to how this part of the discussion is going. Joe was responding to what Susan wrote, where she said,

God shows grace only to His elect, so how could an unbeliever even be in that Covenant?

And Joe's reply was,

This is your faulty presupposition that God only shows grace to His elect. The Bible speaks on God revealing His grace to even the non-elect (not effectually of course, but none-the less His grace), as already demonstrated in several posts, including this one.

So, if I still have the ability to comprehend English, it would appear that it was Susan who was espousing what you and Marie have chosen to call "Hyper-Calvinism" and not Joe.

What is even more confusing to me is how anyone can misunderstand what the Scripture says concerning Abraham, the covenant established with him by God, the sign of that covenant given (circumcision), and to whom that sign was to be administered. The facts seem all too clear, IMHO. 1) God established the covenant with Abraham. (Gen 17:1-6), 2) and to his "seed" (Gen 17:7-9), 3) the sign of that covenant was circumcision (Gen 17:10, 11), and 4) the sign of the covenant, circumcision was to be administered to all the male children and those adults living within the broader "household" of Abraham. (Gen 17:12-14)

The proper understanding of this "covenant" is where the divide first appears between the two groups. This covenant has a dual aspect to it, IMHO. There is a "narrow" aspect, where it is salvific in nature (Abraham and his "seed", i.e., first re: Christ Who is the Federal Head of all the elect and secondly all the elect who will believe on Him. And there is a "broad" aspect, where those living amongst those who believe are included and given temporal blessings, shared among the elect and non-elect, e.g., land, providential protection, sustenance, etc.

Now the further issue is whether this dual-fold nature of the covenant established with Abraham was carried over into the church; continuity of the covenant of grace. And this is the second place where the divide appears. If this second (broad) aspect is continuitous, then the paedobaptists are correct in baptizing their children. If it is discontinuitous, then the credobaptists are correct in restricting baptism to adults.

Lastly, and doubtless I could include tomes more, there has been no sufficient answer that has come from the credobaptists re: their adamancy in not baptizing the infants of believers because of their "definition" (significance) of baptism where they maintain that it is "an outward sign of an inward reality". By that definition, EVERYONE who is baptized IS (of necessity MUST BE) saved. Otherwise the definition is senseless. The problem is further compounded as Baptists rightly admit that not everyone who is baptized is saved. Thus baptism CANNOT BE "an outward sign of an inward reality", for there are acknowledged instances where the recipient does not have the "reality" which the "sign" signifies. As "averagefellar" has repeated challenged the Baptists here, if ALL who are in the covenant of grace ARE saved (in the "narrow" sense of the CoG, this is a truism), and if baptism is a sign of membership in that covenant, then everyone who is baptized must be saved. IMHO, it is an indefensible and insurmountable problem.

Suggestion: Baptists should change their definition of baptism. Rather than making it subjective dependent, which is illogical and thus inconsistent and variable, it should be objective dependent and thus consistent and invariable.

In His Grace,