The other week I wrote about the differences between paedobaptism and credobaptism and argued that credobaptism doesn’t exclude children from covenant relationship as part of God’s people. One response which has come back is that we need to distinguish between an external and visible covenant versus an internal or invisible covenant. In effect, this would align with language about the visible and the invisible church.
I’m going to try and set out the argument as best as I can based on what I’ve picked up from conversations with those advocating it. I hope that I’m doing it justice. The position would go something along these lines. First, that when we baptise a baby, we recognise their admission into the visible church and therefore, they have some form of status as being within God’s covenant people. This is not to be confused with saving faith. They are formally part of the church but we cannot determine whether or not they are yet regenerate.
The basis for this is that whilst Paul in Romans 9-11 and Galatians develops an argument that it is those who have faith and not necessarily those of physical descent who are heirs to the promise to Abraham, those Jews were still, formally within covenant relationship with God and therefore recipients of the covenant sign, circumcision. The argument seems to be that the same might apply to the children of Christians. I would also hazard a guess that expectation is that this is how means of grace function. The promise is to your children, so you can have faith that they will be saved. The context in which you then give them the means to receive salvation is through admission into the covenant people so that you can receive the blessings of the covenant.
I don’t think the approach works and here is why. First in terms of Biblical Theology, I don’t think it works. It is helpful to remember that it is specifically the covenant with Abraham that Paul has in view when he writes Galatians and Romans. It’s that covenant, which Paul argues is specifically about Jesus, Abraham’s offspring and heir. The Covenant with Moses cannot abrogate the covenant with Abraham. Now, whilst it is possible that we might talk about the people being formally within the covenant to Moses, Paul is clear in Romans and Galatians that they don’t belong to the Abrahamic Covenant because of birth/ethnicity or circumcision. You only belong to that covenant through faith because it is only in Christ that you can inherit the promise.
We might also observe that in terms of the covenant with Moses, it came with both blessings and curses. The people, through unfaithfulness had broken that covenant and the result was that the curses fell upon them, curses that can be described in terms of exile and death. What this meant that the people were also out of covenant relationship under the Mosaic one two. Indeed, the point seems to be that the Law offers no way back in. So, the point in Acts when the Gospel is preached is that both Jews and Gentiles find themselves outside of the Covenant, outside of relationship with God. They are not heirs and beneficiaries of the promise and the blessing.
Secondly it is also worth thinking about how those external and visible things function prior to the coming of Christ. It is helpful to think in terms of types and trajectories. The Law is a shadow of what is to come. So, the external and visible things we see in the Torah are meant to point us forward to the inner reality to come through the Holy Spirit. This is why, wen you look at the New Testament, you realise the trajectory is not from circumcision as covenant membership sign to baptism as such, rather it is from circumcision as external sign to circumcision of the heart as inner reality.
This leads us to how we think of the Church today. In passing, we might also note that if the expectation is for someone to be admitted externally/formally into covenant relationship, then we would expect them to also to carry covenant responsibilities and to receive covenant benefits. So, in what ways do children bear those responsibilities and receive those benefits under a paedobaptist approach. Some have followed through logically on this by suggesting that there should also be paedo-communion but that is rare with most waiting for a later event such as confirmation. In other words, children remain excluded in most cases from what the covenant entails and yes that is on an age basis. Even where there is paedo-communion, that seems to be a fairly limited response in terms of what covenant membership means.
Secondly, it seems to me that there is a little bit of a misunderstanding of what it means to distinguish between visible and invisible church. The visible church refers to the members of the church, around the world today, those that are visible as belonging at this point in time. The invisible church refers to the whole of the church, all those who belong to Christ, throughout history, including those now with the Lord.
Now, what this means is that because we cannot read hearts and minds, that there may be some included within the visible church who are not truly saved. This would be true in credo-baptist and paedobaptist circles alike. However, what it doesn’t mean is that we are free to include and admit people into the church without any due regard to whether or not they truly belong to Christ. The visible church is less than the invisible church not more than!
For those reasons, I’m not convinced that the internal/invisible v external/visible distinction is helpful to a conversation on baptism.
Faithroots 