Covenant Theology & Infant Baptism…
- 12 January 2014
My own spritual pilgrimage has been difficult at times. I was converted from practicing (i.e. half-hearted) Roman Catholicism to Christ in the spring of 1980 – round about the same time as Bob Dylan I suspect! I attended a pentecostal church together with the brother who’d witnessed faithfully to me. Within a year or so I was questioning the charismatic emphasis & its doctrinal foundation in Scripture. At last I left that movement (somewhat traumatically) with the loss of a good number of friends who must have thought me mad.
Next I had to decide whether Calvinism was the right tributary to follow. It was through extensive reading of Jonathan Edwards that I was finally persuaded. Boat-loads of other ‘brothers & sisters’ again waved me good-bye as I implicitly shunned Armenian theology in pursuit of the Sovereign God who decrees all things whatsoever that come to pass.
I served for several years as an elder in a Reformed Baptist Church where I was formally challenged to think carefully through the Law/Grace controversy. A dear friend steadily walked & talked me through Covenant Theology which, as I look back, was probably the most significant paradigm shift I underwent. I realised at long last that my WHOLE BIBLE was Christian; that God’s Law (10 Commands) were moral & as such, were binding upon all men; that children were a heritage FROM THE LORD; that they are to be received into the visible Church as ‘minors’ among majors within that community by faith ON THE COMMAND of God.
This wonderful debate between two fine reformed thinkers – Wilson (a reformed presbyterian) & White (a reformed baptist) – highlights the distinctive differences between covenental thinking & non-covenantal (baptistic) thinking, etc. I commend it warmly. Bravo Doug Wilson for daring to stand so boldly with our great reformational forbears in these days of simplicity & reductionism.
