Paedobaptism. A debate

I’ve been working through this topic recently and going through Strawbridge’s book. The argument in there regarding the new covenant in Jeremiah is that the old, just like the new covenant was heart religion enabled by the Spirit of God. To me that doesn’t make sense because what then is the point of the Sprit being poured out at pentecost? If the Spirit already worked that way in the old covenant, there would be no need for the spirit to empower people in the new as there would be no change in this administration.

Over 600 pages . . . This will take a while to digest.

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I’m happy to be able to share this preview from Warhorn Classics—Bannerman’s chapters on the sacraments (although the whole book is worth reading) in a much more usable form:

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The attached PDF is my favorite tool on this topic.

I encourage disciples to start by reading the Bible, before they run to their favorite, less authoritative sources. Whether a new believer or someone struggling with the validity their baptism as a child, or young parents deciding whether to baptize their first child… or stop baptizing for their third… or start baptizing with their fourth.

I am too often quick to teach and slow to pastor (God is merciful) so it took a while for me to realize I needed to follow up. Many enquiring minds simply did not know how to do a word study. The six pages attached is every appearance of the various verb and noun forms or baptidzo in the New Testament. After reviewing these, then we discuss households and confessions and __________.

I am confident that Bannerman, Henry, Luther, Augustin, Pablo and Rocky would bear with this practice :open_book:

Baptism 01 all verses with notes.pdf (198.2 KB)

Ad Fontes

Coming back to this after some time. Speaking as a credo-baptist, I think that there is a lot of scope to improve our practices related to believers’ baptism. The main issue I have with current practice is that pastors are in far too much of a hurry to baptise people on a confession of faith, instead of waiting for that confession of faith to “bed in”. Otherwise, as someone from a baptistic background put it to me, “baptism becomes a rite of adolescent passage”, instead of being part of a deliberate confession of faith. I think this is a major challenge in SBC churches.

I worship in an Anglican church in the UK, which baptises infants but also does a lot of baby dedications as well - too many former Baptists or Pentecostals in the ranks, including the pastor (!) - and a good number of believers’ baptisms too. As with Confirmation, these times are valuable for a public expression of someone’s faith.