Household Baptisms in the New Testament

In support of an 'infant Baptist' position, texts such as Acts 10; 16:15, 33; and 1 Cor. 1:16 are appealed to. The argument basically runs like this:

- A head of a household professes faith,
- The whole household is therefore Baptised,
- Households normally contain infants,
- It is likely that these particular baptised households contain infants,
- Therefore non-professing infants in these households were baptised,
- Therefore, we likewise should baptise non-professing infants of households where the head has professed faith.

I have numerous difficulties with this logic, I shall explain just two here.

First, this argument rests on the premise that some who were baptised were non-professing. I believe the biblical texts tell a different story.
Acts 10-11 - Cornelius and his household are commanded to be Baptised (10:48), however the whole household was told to be saved before the baptism (cf. 11:14)
Acts 16:33 - The Philippian Jailer and all his family were baptised (v.33). However, the word of the Lord was spoken to all who were in his household (v.32) implying all were able to understand it, and further, all rejoiced that the jailer believed in God, implying again a faith in what was spoken to them (v.34) They must hear the word, then respond to it. - as Piper says, this is just as plausible as assuming infants.
1. Cor. 1:16 - The household of Stephanas was Baptised (v.16). However, this household was a household of believers (1. Cor. 16:15).
Acts 16:15 - Here is the only example of a household baptism with a profession of household faith. However, isn't it an exegetical fallacy to apply silence logic from this one verse onto the other three which would seem to contradict this? Is it not more consistent to interpret this in light of every other household Baptisms which wouldn't contradict 16:15?

Second, this argument rests on the premise that there were infants within the households. There is simply no evidence for such an assumption. Further, if we submit to the scriptures above which seem to support household faith, then in order to be consistent, it would seem that an infant Baptist has to insist on the faith of the infant.

Other than these assumptive passages, there is no mention of infant baptism in the Bible, period. Its just not there. What there is in evidence is a very elaborate systematic argument with no 'obvious' working out of such in the apostolic church.

I believe therefore that the household argument as outlined at the top of this post is not a strong argument for the case of infant baptism. It is an argument from silence, an argument open to exegetical issue, and an argument which ignores household faith

Angels.

Why don't we think much about Angels in our evangelical world? This is something I really want to spend some time with. They appear all through the Bible and reveal some of the most interesting Biblical Theology! I generally take there presence as continued, available, and very important to the life of the Christian, particularly to learn from in how to serve and worship God, and to amend context to warm and assure the hearts of believers in Jesus Christ.

Surely we can learn so much from these beings in the Bible. They were created, like us, to Gloryfy God through their love, worship, and service of Him. Is that not our delight also?

I hope next year, after my dissertation is over, to spend some time examining Angels place in the Bible, and subsequent place now in Church life, practice, and teaching. But any thoughts that anyone has would be very much appreciated?

The Unique and Joy-filled time in Salvation History that we are in!

So I have been very busy these past few weeks preparing a piece on John chapter 13 for class, and have spent some wonderful time in the farewell discourse following this (Chs. 14-17).

After spending sometime in John 16 (with wise direction of Dr. Andrew Sach), I have come to focus on the joy in being a Christian at this particular stage in Salvation History.

Jesus Christ has indeed died, and rose again, and further he has ascended to the Father to prepare a place for us. However, the awesomeness in doing this is, he has now sent his Spirit.

Jesus tells his disciples time after time throughout the farewell discourse, particularly in chapters 14 and 16, that is for the disciple inevitable -good- that Jesus leaves them. For if he does not leave, he cannot send his Spirit.

We see throughout the latter half of John (as it has also been expounded in the first half), that the Father gives ALL THINGS to Jesus, the Son (13:3), and the Son has revealed ALL THINGS to the Spirit (16:14), and the Spirit teaches ALL THINGS to the disciples (16:12-15).

What is the task of the disciples? Well, the Spirits Job is the convict the world (16:1-11), and this is through the disciples. And as Jesus prays for His disciples in Ch. 17, so he prays for all who believe (17:20ff.). The disciples, through their preached and written ministry and institution of the sacraments, and instruction in prayer and spiritual gifts reveal ALL THINGS to us now as followers.

We are now in a great place! Better even than the days when Jesus walked the earth. For now he is with us -by His Spirit- and teaches us the ways of all truth. When Jesus was on earth, the disciples only knew so much, and misunderstood so much more, but at the coming of the Spirit, they had been led into all truth. And so we learn the true ways of the Father through their teaching and example.

We now know the truth, the glory of the centrality of Jesus and his work, through the revelation of the spirit. If Jesus did not ascend to the Father, and did not then send the spirit, then where would we be? Praise God, that we are convicted and led into all truth by the Spirit through the Truth of the Word.

Salvation in Romans 9 - The Importance of vv. 1-5

One of my most contested opionions throughout this blog, contested by emails and replies to posts, is my hypothesis allows Romans 9 to talk about Salvation. I have many reasons for this, some you will find if you take the time to scroll down previous posts; however one which I haven't yet bought out as fully as I possibly could is the importance of vv. 1-5. So here is where I do that.
vv. 1-5 is one of the most important and affection-full (tbcontinuted)

The Purpose of Romans 9, 'Has God's word failed?'

Just to make a point a wee bit clearer that I made in passing in a previous post. The key to understanding Romans 9 is the following question:

'Who is Israel?'

Let me bring this out a little bit...

The issue presenting Paul is this: - God made a covenant to his people Israel, yet many ethnic Jews are not believing in Jesus Christ, the Jewish messiah...are they saved? ...are they in the new covenant? And the most pressing and frightening question: - 'Has God's word failed?' (See v. 6), if God cannot keep his 'old' covenant to His people, then how can we trust Him to keep his 'new' covenant with Christians? We cannot be grafted into a dead tree!

Paul is therefore clarifying in Rom. 9 who exactly Israel is, distinguishing ethnic Israel, and the Remnant, the Children of the promise, the true seed of Abraham - and to them God has kept his promises perfectly. Therefore those individuals that he has elected unto salvation just like the remnant, he will keep in his palm, and the covenant will be kept perfectly.

The key to Rom. 9 is not therefore about God 'choosing' his ethnic people Israel over Edom, it’s not simply about Gentile inclusion, and it is not even simply about election unto salvation - although there is certainly an element of all this within the passage. The key is Paul asserting perfectly that God has flawlessly kept his covenant to his people, his word has not failed, and therefore his chosen people in the new covenant can trust his promises perfectly.

Bookchairs are taking over my life!!!

get yours from... www.bookchair.com.

You may notice that these little gizmos are the most expensive bits of wood and cotton you'll ever buy outside of the Queens private doily collection. But what’s worse, because of their design, you actually have to have several of them, as I'm sure the clever design and marketing people at bookchair.com figured. You see, if you have a reasonably crowded desk like me and you’re trying to write a bible study or an essay without endless makeshift paper weights and trips around the room to find all the open books you have decorated every surface with, you have to content yourself with a bookchair. And so you do, and it sits quite happily by your laptop giving your eyes a nice rest and saves you jamming last nights half-eaten cheese butty into the pages so you can see half of the paragraph your trying to read. However after say, three minutes you find you could really use another book ... like a bible, open too. And you must have it open at Gen. 4, or Rev. 13 where it isn't just going to lie flat... so you go to bookchair.com spend another 600 quid and have another happy, innocent looking chappie (maybe in a contrasting colour!) sat on the other side of your laptop. Hmmm...now I can't type... so your back at the website ordering another sturdy bookchair to sit under your laptop to raise your keyboard. At this point your arms are getting tired and you can't see the screen, and worse you cannot procrastinate by watching squirrels duke it out with woodpeckers outside your window. However, you have been so subliminally bought by the bookchair boogie-man, that that is the only option you can cognate. SO you order another bookchair so you can place it on your chair and sit on it...then you realise that now you can't reach your coffee, so you by another to hold a coaster and a cup... and Mr. Bear also needs somewhere to sit, so you by him a bookchair, (in fact you buy him two because he might want to read) and squat him on one of the surfaces you rescued from one of the two books you now have perfect access to earlier. ...and then your happy, content perhaps. However, then you need to turn a page, and your little bookchair legs holding the page open perfectly are too tight...and you didn't think to buy a bookchair for your tool set so you can't reach a screwdriver to loosen it...so you try and work your page around it, and of course it rips...poo.

So be warned, don't do as I have done, beware bookchairs...bookchairs ruin lives! JUST SAY NO!

(n.b. it actually isn't quite that bad, I bought one, then my clever dad got carried away and made three more, but annnnyway.)

Another look at Gen. 50:20

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many [or numerous] people should be kept alive, as they are today. [Gen. 50:20]

A familiar and very beautiful verse, how comforting it is to know that God works all things for good. But note, this verse isn’t simply saying that God brings good out of evil situations, and it isn’t saying that God turns around evil situations to be good situations. The implications of such approaches is God slipped up letting the evil thing happen in the first place and had to use what was available to him, namely the evil event, to re-create good; and, it also diminishes the evil; I.e. ‘don’t worry about the evil, because I will make it good and it will all be ok.’

However, what is going on here is two accomplished intentions of the same event. What Joseph’s brothers meant for evil, namely selling Joseph to slavery out of Jealousy, - this very same event, was intended to happen by God for good, and inevitably a good purpose.

So the paradox between God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility is scripturally compatible in this passage. God intends and ordains this event totally to bring about good, and was in no way the author of its evil. Man, however, authored the event in its evil to bring about evil – and as such is responsible. So God can be totally sovereign over an event and ordain it to bring about its good, yet man authors the evil within it (and within God’s sovereignty) for evil intensions.

A Possible Simple Structure of Rom. 9

(Note, this is an exceptionally simplified structure of Romans 9, and its contextual place within Romans...there is obviously much more to it than this, but such a structure allows us a sound stream through Romans, with this chapter being part of the flow, rather than anomaly or a hindrance.)

All of Romans 9 seems to be a single question ‘who now is Israel’ with the single answer ‘those who God has chosen.’ This is to explain the systematic assertion that though Jesus, and His new covenant, those individuals chosen to make up spiritual Israel, are no longer confided to physical Israel but are found in both Jews and Gentiles, united by faith in Christ.

This chapter epilogues the admonishment to, explanation of, and apologetic for, the developing Church shown in chapters 1-8, and it also prologues the explanation of Israel’s Remnant and Gentiles ‘grafting-in’ found in chapters 10-11. This allows a transition back to the place of the Church in chapters 12-16.

This single question is shown by a developing three-fold questioning, to address the same overarching question several ways (as has been posed by the Church in Rome), and provide several angles of answer to the question. Each sub-question builds on the last and develops the point further, leaving the reader with -no doubt- as to the answer of the question, and their subsequent response to the subject and nature of the question. With that in mind:

vv. 1-5 – Introduction, setting the apologetic and pastoral tone for Paul’s difficult answer(s), it gives us the key themes and peoples involved in the questioning.

vv.6-24 – The three-fold addressing of the question

- vv. 6-9 – Qu. 1 – Has God’s word failed? – Begins to answer with example (Children of Abraham)
o vv. 10-13 – Concludes answer with example (Jacob an Esau)

- vv. 14-15 – Qu. 2 – Is God unjust? – Begins to answer with example (Ex. 33: 19)
o vv. 16-18 - Concludes answer with example (Pharaoh)

- vv. 19-21 – Qu. 3 – Why does God still blame us? – Begins to answer with illustration (the potter and the clay)
o vv.22-24 – Concludes answer with illustration (vessels) and explanation of God’s ultimate purpose (to show the riches of His glory)

vv. 25-29 – Concluding and reasserting the answer with scriptural proof

vv. 20-33 – (smaller-version of whole chapter) Epilogue to Rom. 9, and small Prologue (to emphasis the over-all prologue of Rom. 9) to Rom. 10-11

Possible Election Language in Rom. 9

I use the term election here to mean a decision of God held/instigated primarily in the council of God as seemingly un-swervable by the works or actions of humans. - I am surer about some of these than others. The big question however, is who is elected, individuals or collective groups, and what are they elected to, privilege or salvation. (More later).

'before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad'
'in order that God's purpose in election might stand'
'not by works but by him who calls'
'I will have mercy on whom I have mercy'
'I raised you up'
'It does not therefore depend on mans desire or effort, but on God's mercy'
'he hardens whom he wants to harden'
'For who can resist his will'
'prepared for destruction'
'prepared in advance for glory'
'whom he called'
'I will call them/her'
'I lay in Zion, a stone that causes men to stumble'

Note that there does not seem to be an explicit designation of human choice language (as defined by libertarian free-will theology) to be found to compete with election language in this chapter. There are some things like:

'Gentiles did not pursue'
'Israel pursued'
'They pursed it not by faith but as if it were by works'
'the one who trusts in him'

Which seems to designate a level of responsibility to human choice-making faculties, however, for this to be libertarian free will, you have to isolate them from all the above election language in this chapter. One must take them in context with the sovereignty of God as expressed here and see that God is sovereign, yet paradoxically, man responsible. Both meet in God's covenant of grace, won through the life, death, resurrection, and assertion of his Son Jesus Christ. (for more information on this, see Jonathan Edwards on the the covenant of grace at http://www.the-highway.com/articleMay01.html)

5 Minute Readings for your Edification

Wondering what to do in your coffee break? Got five minutes to spare before you nip off to work/school etc? Need to break up pieces of work? Feeling low and need some Father-centred encouragment? The following are roughly 5 minute readings which I have found particulary helpful and encouraging. They are things which make me step out of myself/my situation for a moment and realise again my orientation to Christ. Enjoy!

The Innkeeper, by J. Piper
http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/NarrativePoems/ByDate/1353_The_Innkeeper/
Jonathan Edwards on Procrastination (Section VI - How to live each day)
http://www.biblebb.com/files/edwards/procrastination.htm (scroll down to Section VI)

The Sinner and the Spider, by J. Bunyan
http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=6702&poem=514742

Acquiring Peace and Zeal for Perfection, From Thomas A' Kempis, the Imitation of Christ (Book 1, Chapter XI)
http://www.leaderu.com/cyber/books/imitation/imb1c11-20.html#RTFToC37 (book 1, Ch. 11)

The religion in heaven consists very much in affection, from J. Edwards, The Religious Affections (Part 1, II, 8)
http://www.leaderu.com/cyber/books/religaffect/rapt1sec2.html (Scroll down to number. 8)

The Affections that make Worship Authentic, from J. Piper, Desiring God, Ch. 3
http://www.desiringgod.org/dg/id45.htm (scroll about a third of the way down to the section entitled 'the affections that make worship authentic)