Truth Unites - Why I Reject Infant Baptism (This Convinced Me)

Episode Date: August 11, 2025

Gavin Ortlund explores whether the parallel between circumcision and baptism is overextended in Reformed theology.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/X: https://x.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/MY ACADEMIC WORK:https://truthunites.org/mypublications/PODCAST: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/truth-unitesDISCORD SERVER ON PROTESTANTISMStriving Side By Side: https://discord.gg/MdTt6d5PVsCHECK OUT SOME BOOKS:https://www.amazon.com/Makes-Sense-World-That-Doesnt/dp/1540964094/truthunites-20https://www.amazon.com/Theological-Retrieval-Evangelicals-Need-Future/dp/1433565269/truthunites-20https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Right-Hills-Die-Theological/dp/1433567423/truthunites-20https://www.amazon.com/Retrieving-Augustines-Doctrine-Creation-Controversy/dp/0830853243/truthunites-20

Recently, I did a video on the history of infant baptism. You can see the thumbnail on screen there. That video had a historical focus. It was just a narration of the early church, basically. I didn't get into the arguments for infant baptism. People have asked about this. So this video is going to be sort of a follow-up addressing one particular argument for infant baptism, and that's the parallel with circumcision in the Old Testament. I'll explain that argument in just a moment. And this is just one argument for infant baptism. So if you hold to infant baptism for different reasons than this video won't apply to you. That's fine, just addressing this argument, especially common in the reform tradition, though not only there. Let me reiterate again, maybe I went over the top in the last

video saying this, but it really is in my heart. This is not a gospel issue. It's related to the gospel, but we can have unity in the gospel despite our differences about it. Pytobaptists are my brothers and sisters in Christ. They are godly and wonderful Christians. If I could have this conversation in person, I'd give you a big hug after we have the conversation. It's not personal. It's not from a spirit of rancor or something like that, is to promote peaceable understanding amidst our differences. I'm really proud to be a part of a church that's broadly reformed, but allows for diversity on an issue like this. We practice dual practice. I'll do another video on that sometime as well.

But this hopefully could help someone understand why some of us look at the scriptures and come to a credo-baptist view, which is the position that we delay baptism until a person makes a credible profession of faith. Let's dive in. I'll have five sections. First, we'll explain the Pytobaptist argument from continuity with circumcision. Second, I'll describe the typical Cretobaptist response to that argument. Third, I'll offer an additional, my own Cretobaptist argument, which is somewhat new, I think. Not totally new. And then fourth, I'll anticipate two possible replies. Fifth, I'll give some historical precedent that section. may surprise some people. It definitely surprised me when I uncovered this many years ago.

Thanks to Brandon Adams for helping me on this. A few others helped me back in the day on this. So first, basically, you have a kind of connection, continuity, even some will say equation, between circumcision in the old covenant and baptism in the new covenant among many reformed theologians making this argument and some outside the reformed tradition as well. Here's a great statement from B.B. Warfield. It's long, it's the only, I'm trying to reduce my long quotes. It's the only long one, and it gets at it so succinctly and so eloquently, so we've got to go through this. He says it so well. I forgot quotation marks on this. Hopefully we'll put, Zeff and I, I put quotation marks on this. It's Warfield's words, it's not mine. He says, the argument in a nutshell is

simply this. God established his church in the days of Abraham and put children into it. They must remain there until he puts them out. He has nowhere put them out. They are still then members of his church, and as such, entitled to its ordinances, among these ordinances is baptism, which standing in a similar place in the new dispensation to circumcision in the old is like it to be given to children. The words I emboldened there standing in a similar place, that's what we're going to get into right now and say, well, how similar exactly? And typically, reformed Pytobaptists describe this as a relationship of identity or near identity. John Calvin said, whatever belongs to circumcision pertains likewise to baptism. baptism has taken the place of circumcision to fulfill the same office among us.

John Murray spoke of an essential identity of meaning between circumcision and baptism. Jeffrey Bromily used the word equation to describe the relationship between these two rights, as you can see on the screen. I have done a lot of reading. I grew up in the reform tradition. I'm so thankful for that tradition. That's why I'm trying to speak respectfully. I'm so thankful for all that I benefited from in this tradition.

Truly, praise God for Presbyterians, who taught me so well, who loved me in Christ. So I've read a lot of these. I'm not giving you representative statements. These are from the heavyweights in that tradition. Now, this idea that circumcision and baptism have this kind of relationship of identity or near identity is grounded in the historical interpretation that one has replaced the other. I'll put up two statements to this effect from the Heidelberg Catechism and the Belgic Confession. and think, oh, you know, it's like Steve Young is replacing Joe Montana.

They're both still quarterbacks. One is coming in for the other. Okay, you have this kind of, you know, from point A to point B, circumcision is here. Now, baptism comes along and takes its place. Now, as a result of that, reformed Pytobaptists tend to think that the baptism of infants is established by the mere fact that it's never been abrogated to have infants included in the Covenant community. So Pierre Marcell, another huge figure in these conversations, wrote a really influential book, says if children ought to be debarred from the birthright,

which they enjoyed ever since there was a church on earth, for thousands of years, in fact, there is a need for a positive commandment which enjoins their exclusion. Louis Burkhov says this, for 20 centuries, children had been formally initiated into the church, and the New Testament does not say that this must now cease. Some go so far as to say that any argument against infant baptists, is necessarily an argument against infant circumcision. So I am not trying to straw man here. I'm actually trying to steal man. I'm trying to show the nature of the reasoning here. There's a very strong identity between circumcision and baptism. What we're getting into here is the doctrine of

the church or ecclesiology. That's, I think, the decisive point in this conversation. And in particular, the relationship between Israel and the church and basically continuity and discontinuity. because this is what I think is determinative for the question of Pytobaptism versus Cretobaptism, because baptism is the entrance into the church. Therefore, as our doctrine of the church goes, our doctrine of baptism will follow. And so moving into the second section, we could sum up the Cretobaptist response that is typically given with the three words I'll put on the screen, and that is too much continuity. Okay.

And this isn't because, now, by the way, so in other words, Pytobaptists are saying, look, these are essentially the same, and one has replaced the other. And Cretobaptists come along and say, no, not so much. That's too, that's flattening out the movement a bit, that they're not, that's, that's emphasizing continuity too much and not having enough discontinuity. Now, just to be clear about this, this is not, Cretobaptists are not so far in the opposite direction, like dispensationalists who really want to push against any continuity with the church and Israel. Some contemporary Cretobaptists, of course, believe that, but historically, Cretto-Baptists,

like Historic Baptists, like Nehemiah Cox, for example, in the 17th century, check this book out, really good book. The argument he's making is on the basis of covenant theology, and the basic appeal is, yes, there is overarching continuity from the Abraham covenant to the new covenant, but there's also some development and some crescendo within that unity, such that the meaning of circumcision can't just be carried over wholesale to the meaning of baptism. They're not, they're similar, but they're not identical. Here's how Carl Bart put it. Recognition of the unity between the old and new covenants does not include an immediate transfer of what is said about the Old Testament circumcision to what must be said about New Testament baptism as though the definitions and meaning of the two were simply

interchangeable. This is where what this book is doing. Paul Jewett, Tull of Fuller Seminary for many years. This is a remarkable book. This is basically, what he's saying. He's saying there's an essential continuity throughout the biblical covenants, but he's saying pito-baptism, reformed pido-baptism, that is, tends to stretch this out and flatten out the developments. So it's not just nothing other than continuity. There is some crescendo, some movement, some typological fulfillment, and so on and so forth. And he says, basically, the relationship between circumcision and baptism is similar to the relationship between Old and New Testament more generally, there's a unity, but there's also movement.

And so he says, for that reason, circumcision is neither unlike baptism, so it is similar, nor is it identical with it. I took a picture with my phone about 10 minutes ago of page 2, 39 of this book. I'll put that picture up. You can see these three figures. He's saying it's not figure one, that's too dispensational, but it's also not figure two, where circumcision and baptism are the exact same. That's too Presbyterian for Jewett's standpoint.

He's saying it's more like figure three. There's some movement, there's some honing in, there's some tightening, there's some clarification, there's some fulfillment from the type to the anti-type and so forth. That's his case. There's lots of cases like this, David Kingden, this book on screen is another book that makes this kind of argument. So in other words, the Cretto Baptist is coming along and saying, yes, amen to covenant theology, amen to continuity, amen to a similarity between circumcision and baptism, but it's not identical. That that full platens it out too much. From a Cretobaptist perspective, you have essential continuity, but also movement, just like you have between the Passover meal and the Lord's Supper. They're similar.

One does indeed fulfill the other, but they're not so identical that you can just say, well, children got the old covenant meal, therefore children get the new covenant meal, voila, Pido Communion, and that's it. So that's how it's commonly put. All this is, by the way, just background information. This is just background context so I can set up my own argument, which is going to go a little further. So this way of construing continuity and discontinuity from a Cretobaptist perspective is how you're going to go with the entire people of God, not just the right of initiation, but the entire people of God. And a Cretobaptist view basically would say that the church is the children of Abraham defined in a literal sense in the old covenant,

as you can see Genesis 17 here, and then defined in a type of psychologically fulfilled way in the new covenant, which is basically the children of Abraham are the people who have faith in Jesus. So no longer is the new covenant community. There is some change. That is explicit in Jeremiah 31. It's like the prophet is saying, this covenant is not going to be like that covenant, and there's some changes. And here's one of the changes no longer. Are you going to have one person teaching another to know the Lord for they will all know the Lord? Everybody in the New covenant knows knows the Lord has faith. That's the Cretobaptist vision, a movement and a fulfillment, a clarification, a honing in, the church is more like the remnant of Israel than just all of Israel

as such. So that's all backdrop. You don't have to agree or disagree with anything. The Catholics who are watching, I'm not attacking you. I'm always kind of trying to, you know, word things off here. So this is a conversation happening between, like, you know, some of the congregationalists and the Baptist on the one hand and like the Presbyterians and some of the other content. Reformed on the Other. This is within the Reformed tradition, the Pytobaptists, the Cretobaptists. Okay, that's background context. Now, third section of the video, here's the new argument I want to throw under the table. I hope it could have some broader relevance and just be interesting maybe to the Lutherans watching, even if it's not really retargeting them, just for this discussion

because other arguments, other traditions, too, will talk about circumcision a little bit. They just don't put as much emphasis on it as the reform tradition. So this is an argument I've developed over the years. It's published in the Theology Journal. Themelios, great journal. For anyone interested, I'll leave a link in the video description. You can see a picture of it on screen. Now, my argument, this is something I've developed ever since I wrestle with this so acutely in my own ordination process back in 2006, 2007, that time period. I'm getting old. 20 years. Amazing. This is consistent with what Bart and Jewett are saying. This is consistent with the too much continuity appeal. Okay, it's agreeing

with them that basically figure three is better than figure two, circumcision and baptism from this perspective are similar. They're just not totally identical. Okay, but it goes one step further, and it wants to make this appeal that essentially, even if we did want to identify circumcision and baptism, the result would not be pido baptism as it's practiced in the majority of reformed Pytobaptist churches today. In other words, the problem is not just with the equation here between baptism and circumcision, but with how circumcision has been construed in the first place. Okay? Here's the argument in a nutshell. In Genesis 17, the proper subjects of circumcision are identified as you, that's Abraham, and your offspring or seed or descendants, that's the word

in purple, after you throughout their generation. or for the generations to come. Okay? The purple word there is the Hebrew word, Zara, meaning seed, that's the King James, offspring, that's the ESV, or descendants, that's NIV, N-I-V, NASB, R-S-V, and a few others. These are the intergenerational descendants of Abraham that will come to comprise the nation of Israel. Hence the qualifying phrase, for the generations, plural, to come. or the phrase, a little bit later in Genesis 1712,

every male throughout your generations, okay? The recipients of circumcision are this national and intergenerational body of people. So when we go back to what comes up here then is a worry about an equivocation on the word children. If you go back to Warfield's quote, God establish his church and put children into it. Okay, now we have to ask, well, which children?

and it's not all children in the world. The children who are in view and explicitly identified as the recipients of circumcision in Genesis 17 are the seed of Abraham, and that is quite distinct from the child of one or more believing parents in the new covenant community. Throughout the old covenant, the lines of covenant were never established around particular believing households within Israel, like moms and dads and their kids and servants in that time, but rather around the national family of Abraham that comprised an intergenerational people. To put it simply, people did not get circumcised because mom or dad made a credible profession of faith,

as happens today with baptism. And so what I'm trying to draw attention to here is ecclesiology with the doctrine of the church. I'm trying to say these are different systems. Children of Abraham, on the one hand, children of believers and the other, these seem to me to be different ecclesiologies, different systems that result in different definitions of the word children. Okay. Though the Hebrew word Zara doesn't mean children in the sense of one generation, like mom and dad have a child. And this raises the question, if that's the basis for infant baptism, then, and that was practiced intergenerationally, then why not practice baptism intergenerationally?

In other words, why shouldn't the grandchildren of believers be considered eligible for baptism? Here's a following scenario. John Sr. is a devout saint in a particular Pytobaptist church. John Jr., his son, attends the church on Christmas and Easter nominally, but he has never personally professed faith and is not a member of the church. John III, his child, is one week old. Okay. Question is, should John the third be considered a member of the church and a proper candidate for baptism? Most contemporary Pytobaptists say, no, to this. Historically, they've mostly said, yes, as I will document in section 5 of this video, though that changed over time, but initially. But if the argument for baptizing infants arises

from continuity with circumcision, why not baptize John the 3rd? And for that matter, John the 4th and so on and down the line. If we're truly arguing from continuity with circumcision, on what basis can we distinguish the covenantal status of John Jr. and John the 3rd? And what this highlights is that even if we accepted the premise of covenantal Pytobaptism, namely this kind of equation between baptism and circumcision, it wouldn't actually result in contemporary Pytobaptist practice, where the church is defined as those who believe in their children, one generation. What's being put forward as continuity here is actually its own kind of change. All right, fourth section, this, I've had a lot of conversations about this.

Oh man, do I remember, you know, going out for a drink. St. Louis with my Presbyterian friends and just hammering this out. And so I've heard, you know, I've had a lot of these conversations. So I've come to anticipate how some will experience this. So let's anticipate two possible replies to consider. Number one is someone might say, well, look, the children of Abraham and the children of believers are identical because unfaithful Israelites were excommunicated. So in other words, they're going to just deny that there is any discontinuity here, and they're going to say, look, there was excommunication throughout the old covenant era, and that's true. In fact, there's also Gentiles who can be engrafted in, and then their

children would be circumcised. So that's true. However, it's very difficult to see eligibility for circumcision as conditional on the faithfulness of one's parents, even if there is excommunication for some very high-handed sins. First thing to observe is, I don't think that's the traditional formed view. Calvin, if you read Calvin's commentary on Genesis 17, for example, he's repeatedly emphasizing that the outward right symbolizes the inward reality, but it is not conditional on whether that inward reality has been received. So the sign of circumcision is a perpetual ordinance rumbling on from generation to generation, and that's Calvin's view. And I think he's right because the text doesn't say, circumcision is for you and your seat after you for the generation,

to come whose parents also believe, it just says it's for your seed after you, and that is what Calvin is saying. I think that lines up with what we see throughout the Old Testament in Joshua 5, for example, where you have the entire nation circumcised on certain events. It's just for everybody. It's for the whole nation. You don't have to make a profession of faith in order to become eligible for circumcision if you're a part of the nation of Israel. And I would say that it rumbles on so much apart from faith that you can even have times where later on you're going to find the prophets saying almost everybody is uncircumcised in heart, even if they've been physically circumcised. Here's how Nehemiah Cox, the Baptist 17th century theologian put it.

The right of the remotest generation was as much derived from Abraham and the covenant made with him as was that of his immediate seed and did not at all depend on the faithfulness of their immediate parents. Now, this is not to say that there was no excommunication or that there was no ingrafting of Gentiles, that's true, but excommunication. communication typically happened in response to very specific and high-handed sins like witchcraft and sorcery and blasphemy, particularly egregious forms of idolatry and so forth. So I don't think we can infer that everybody who's not excommunicated had personal faith. Membership in the nation of Israel had

cultural and national and economic and social dimensions and huge numbers of Israelites, remained Israelites without any evidence of personal faith, without any articulation of personal faith. Just think of all the kings throughout Samuel and kings, for example, who remained God's kings over God's people despite total rejection of God's laws. Another response could be to say, but the children of Abraham entails the children of believers, even if it's not identical with it. So here some might respond by admitting that having parents who did not possess faith, not disqualify in Israelite from covenant status, but there's still enough overlap between

the children of Abraham intergenerational and the children of believers, one generation, to establish some kind of precedent for Pytobaptism. But I just would say it's hard for me to know how you'd get from point to point B there. Why would it entail that specifically? Why not two generations, went out three generations. This does seem to be a deviation from the standard Pytobaptist claim that I've tried to document, where you have, you know, people are saying things like, you know, for 20 centuries, it's been this way, so you need a commandment against it to, if you're not going to baptize infants and so forth. And this seems to go against, you know, with those statements from Warfield and Calvin and others. And again, you just wonder, why stop at one

generation. The issue here is, okay, if it entails something, why do we get this particular ecclesiology, those who believe and their children? You're not going to baptize your grandchild or your niece or your nephew or the child across the street. There's a lot of infants you're not going to baptize. You're just going to baptize these ones, those who have a mom or a dad who profess faith. Where do we get that? Okay. And now you might say, well, yeah, that wasn't exactly how was going on in Israel, but the parents were involved in circumcision. And so it's practically the same. And so it's practically the same. Someone could make this, I'm trying to steal man this. So, you know, and it's true that a lot of parents were involved in a child's circumcision. Sometimes the father would perform the circumcision,

not always. But I think we have to distinguish between circumstantial questions like this about a parent having a role from the theological rationale for a child's right to circumcision. The parents were not always involved. Sometimes a priest or another administrator would perform the circumcision, and if an Israelites' parents declined to bring their child to circumcision and an aunt or uncle or neighbor, instead brought them on the eighth day, the presiding priest or administrator would have no grounds to reject that child's legitimate status as a recipient of the Abrahamic covenant. If they're a descendant intergenerationalally from Abraham, they have a right to circumcision. And pointing out the differences here between children of Abraham,

children of believers is not nitpicky, because the whole case rests upon continuity, as I've tried to document. So if they're saying, you know, we've got practice A and we've got practice B, infant circumcision, infant baptism, and they have an essential continuity of meaning. So you just go from A to B unless it's specifically abrogated, then, you know, it's not nitpicky to point out that A and B are different. and the rationale for a child's circumcision is different from those who believe and their children. These are two different ecclesiologies. Now, last section, let me try to defend myself a little bit from where people might feel frustrated with this by giving some historical context to show I'm not completely out to lunch here to wrestle with this.

Because here's a brutal and shocking fact that I'll put out on the table that contemporary Pytobaptists may not even be aware of. I wasn't for a long time. And that is Calvin, John Knox, Richard Hooker, Samuel Rutherford, so many others. They agreed with me. Okay, they argued for intergenerational pito baptism. Let me document this. In 1559, in August, the Scottish reformer John Knox wrote a letter to John Calvin. And he's asking him several questions about ecclesiastical property issues. And one of them, the question is about the administration of baptism. John Calvin wrote a letter, response in November, which we have,

and in his response, he referenced Knox's question as to, quote, whether it be lawful to admit to the sacrament of baptism, the children of idolaters and the excommunicated persons before their parents have testified their repentance. Okay, so you see the issue here. Someone's parents are not members of the church. Do their children still have a right to baptism?

Calvin takes this before his Genevaan colleagues, they deliberate on it, and he reports to Knox that the answer he supplies to him is their unanimous verdict. Quote, it is the proper use of baptism. And here's how he starts, okay. In the proper use of baptism, the authority of God is to be considered, and his institution ought to derive its authority from certain conditions. One of the first things to be considered is who are the persons that God, by his own voice, invites to be baptized. Okay, that last little clause is the whole issue. This is the whole debate. This is the debate between Pytobaptists and Cretobaptists.

Who are the people that God wants us to baptize? That's what Calvin is saying, okay? To answer that question, Calvin stipulates that the proper recipients of baptism are the intergenerational offspring of believers, extending to thousands of generations. Quote, now God's promise comprehends not only the offspring of every believer in the first line of descent, but extends to thousands of generations. Because God's promise in baptism extends intergenerationalally, Calvin concludes,

it is by no means doubtful that an offspring descended from holy and pious ancestors belong to the body of the church, though their fathers and grandfathers may have been apostates. And he went so far as to claim that to withhold the sacrament from children in such a circumstance is to unjustly defraud them of their rights. quote, wherever the profession of Christianity has not been altogether interrupted or destroyed, children are defrauded of their privileges if they are excluded from the common symbol. Each person is not admitted to baptism from respect or regard to one of his parents alone,

but on account of the perpetual covenant of God. Nonetheless, Calvin says you have to have a sponsor, by which he means some member of the child's extended family, who's a legitimate member of the church, and willing to instruct the child in the meaning of baptism, and I'll put up a passage that I'm trying to be sensitive not to overread too much for videos. So you get a sense of Calvin's view there to thousands of generations, right? It doesn't matter if your father and your grandfather were apostate.

If your ancestors, then you and you have an uncle who's willing to bring you, then, okay, this is the dominant view in the early reformed tradition. This Genevaan view that Calvin and his colleagues arrive upon and commend to Knox, This is what comes to hold sway in the early reformed tradition. The Italian reformer, Juralamo Zanke, put it like this. The children of those that are indeed in the church, but because of their unclean way of living, declared that they are not indeed of the church, of the church. If they be offered to baptism, they cannot be debarred there from, nor ought they.

The reason is because though the parents be wicked, yet they're impiety out not to prejudge their children which are born within the church. William Buchanus, who's a Swiss reform. professor at Lausanne in the late 16th century, early 17th, made the same appeal. I'll put this up on the screen. You can read the same thing. Same thing, okay? Now, in the Church of England, so this is not just reformed, because other traditions

will make kind of a similar appeal to circumcision at times. Richard Hooker approved of what he called the answer of the ecclesiastical college of Geneva unto Knox. and he said this is a sound practice, but he disagreed with Calvin's rationale because he said that could imply that all the world may be baptized inasmuch as no man living as a thousand descendants removed from Adam himself. Now that is exactly my question for Calvin's view, and as we'll see, the view of others like Rutherford, is basically this can quickly start to lead into indiscriminate baptism or just kind of baptize any infant that any person is willing to bring into their home. I mean, it comes

really hard to know then, where do you set the boundaries, you know? You have to have really good historical knowledge in some cases to trace back someone's descendants and so forth. But as the reformed tradition develops, Calvin's view, this intergenerational view of baptism, baptized throughout the generations, gets taken up by basically most of those who affirm a national organization of the church. And then the congregationalists are those who frequently will challenge that and say that's not sufficiently reformed. And this becomes a big debate among Presbyterians. versus independence in Great Britain in the period leading up to the Westminster Assembly in the 1640s. One of those who represents the intergenerational view of Calvin in this debate is Samuel Rutherford,

whom I'm named after, my middle name is Rutherford. I love Samuel Rutherford, but if you ever want something to read that's devotionally wonderful, read his letters, they're amazing. But he gives nine arguments to establish the thesis that, quote, all the infants born within the visible church, whatever be the wickedness of their nearest parents are to be received within the church by baptism. And one of the arguments he gives for this is, of course, continuity with circumcision. Quote, there is no more required of the circumcised, but that they were Abraham's seed according to the flesh, and by the same reason, there is no more required of infants that they may be baptized, but that they are born in the Christian church.

So if you have a national church, it doesn't matter if your parents are not believers. You have this intergenerational covenant membership, and the rationality. here is again the same with circumcision. They're just pulling, this is the logical follow-through of the appeal to continuity with circumcision. And so hopefully you can see, you know, that the question I'm trying to put forward here to my Pytobaptist friends who find this argument persuasive is, why not grandchildren? I don't think it's a dumb question because it's exactly what Calvin and Rutherford and others are saying. The debate does rumble forward. okay, you get to the congregationalist churches in Puritan New England, and in my article I discuss

the halfway covenant, and I discuss how this discussion plays out. Eventually, the intergenerational view falls out of favor, and today it's so scarce that there seems to be less awareness of it, even among those who are making the otherwise the exact same appeal as Calvin and Knox and Rutherford and so forth. So my point is, if this historical survey gives legitimacy to my question of why not grandchildren? I don't think that's a bizarre or unwarranted question. I think it springs from the logic of covenantal pital baptism. If the rationale for infant baptism lies in its continuity with infant circumcision, what is the justification for its limitation only to the first generation of the children of believers? If children, why not grandchildren? Okay, that's the video. Stop it there, but I'll say one

other thing, this is off script, so this might not be as quick. You can feel free to click out of the video. That's basically my argument. Respectfully submitted for one of the reasons why I'm just not persuaded of a Pytobaptist ecclesiology. Again, it just looks like, to me, like the church in the New Covenant era is the children of Abraham, i.e. Galatians 3-7. Now, let me address somebody who's maybe watching this, and maybe a lot of my videos are trying to address ecclesial angst and uncertainty, and people are trying to, and someone might be listening to this. I've been doing this long enough to anticipate this. Someone's going to say, how am I supposed to know this?

Maybe someone's watching this and they're 50-50 or they're kind of can see either way, and they're, I'm not sure. I sympathize with that because this is complicated and there's smart people on both sides. Let me finish by sharing a sort of Pascalian wager that I have used in my own life with regard to my own children on this issue. So I have five children, the three eldest have been baptized. It's a little vulnerable to share this because people are going to judge me. Oh, well, whatever.

I hope it helps. The two youngest have not. And let me just share how I've thought about this. So Pascal's wager is about the existence of God, but he's basically saying, look down the road in both directions and see if you're wrong and what are the stakes in either direction. So if I do that with respect to this issue, and I say, okay, what if I practice creedobaptism with respect to my children and I'm wrong?

What is the great harm? And because I don't hold to a super-duper high view of the necessity of baptism and baptism of regeneration, those issues I've addressed in other videos. Even my video recently on high church versus low church, toward the latter half, I get into that a lot. And I explain why I don't believe in baptism or regeneration as just baptism makes someone a believer. Because I know, you know, some Lutherans and Catholics and others are going to watch this video and they're going to say, yeah, we totally agree with your ecclesiology. the new covenant is all believers, and that's why we baptize children, because then it makes them a believer. And if he just put water on in the name of the Trinity, it causes faith, infant faith.

Some say that, or they'll say it regenerates. So I'm not addressing that argument here. I'm just saying I've addressed that elsewhere. But I'm just saying, as I do my Pascalian wager, and I think through, what if I'm wrong about credo-baptism, I'm not persuaded that my children are cut off from salvation until they get baptized. I've explained why in that and that and other videos, why I'm not persuaded of that. So I see, what is the downside? You know, for my three eldest children, I led them to Christ, and then I just taught them

about baptism for about three years. And then we just built up, built up and prepared and prepared, put tons of work into it, treat them like catechumans. And then they were baptized, and I don't see a ton of harm in that. I don't, you know, if I'm wrong, if I'm doing a Pascalian wager and I'm wrong, I don't think they're being hugely deprived by their baptism being delayed by a series of years, because they're still going to get baptized. And the benefit is now they can remember that experience and have been a willing participant in it. In the other direction, I think it's

unfortunate. Let's say I baptized my children when they were one week old, and let's say just, again, for the sake of argument, let's say I'm wrong there. That is unfortunate because now, they're not getting baptism at all as it's intended. You see, a delayed baptism is still a real baptism, but now over here you're having to say, what is this? And I'll do another video sometime, and I've talked about before, the validity of infant baptisms from a Credo-Baptist perspective. Very difficult question. But whatever view you take, you can recognize this is an irregular baptism. This is a problem. This is, I just, you know, I hope it's not too silly to put it this way. It's a little sentimental, but I would just like for my kids to have that experience.

I would like for them to remember what it feels like to get wet in the water. So when Luther's dictum, remember your baptism, you know, so they can actually remember their baptism. I think that's a good thing to experience it and to be aware of what's happening and not just need to be told about it later. Circumcision is a little different there because it's a permanent mark on the body. But baptism, once you dry off, you know, you just have to let people tell you that it happened. So I guess what I'm trying to say is, you know, on a complicated question like this, I think the safer bet. I know that those who hold a real high view of sacramental efficacy and the necessity of baptism, and there will be some who will say your children will not be saved if they die before their baptism.

So I don't believe that. So that plays into my reasoning here. But I don't see as much downside in just waiting a little bit. Okay. So that's, I'm trying to explain for those who are really stuck on this, I would kind of make that appeal. A couple other things to say, now that's from the perspective as a parent. current. Now, another layer of this is in the church. I am so proud, I love my local church so much. It's a broadly reformed church. People often are very negative about non-denominational churches right now,

but a non-denominational church can still be highly theological, highly liturgical, highly historically rooted. We are a broadly reformed church, but we don't make baptism a point of division. And I love that. Because that's how I feel in my heart toward Pidal Baptist. I just think, we can come together around the gospel. don't need to divide over this. And so we make space for that, and we just work together. And so that that's at the level of church as opposed to as a parent. But as a parent, you know, I would say that just delaying the baptism, and last thing I'll say is, I don't delay it as long as some Baptists. And so this is another area. Boy, all these things are tough to talk through because everything's controversial. But a lot of historic Baptists have waited until like 18, 21, 20, even older. And I

would say as an implication from Christ's words, let the little children come to me, that if a child professes faith in Christ and is sincere and gives every reason for you to think, they're genuinely a Christian, and if they want to come to baptism, we should not unduly delay that process. And so that's a point where I push back a little bit on some of the older and stricter Baptists, because I just, I actually think it is a good application of the words of Christ, let the little children come to me, to not unduly delay their baptism. And so that, that plays into my Pascalian wager here as well. So that, that, I hope that could be helpful to someone who might be thinking about this.

This always happens. I go off script and I ramble. That's why I try not to do it. But hopefully for those in the middle or wrestling with this, these final set of comments could be just more practical and useful to reflect upon, on. In the midst of it all, let's try to have peaceable discussion with each other, and I'll welcome pushback and counter arguments, but hopefully the arguments I put forward here, and I'm not aware that the argument I've made has really been made in any kind of sustained way. This is what persuaded me

from my reading, and I put it out there. You get glimmers of it in people like Nehemiah Cox, even Paul Jewett, but this is to some extent an argument I've developed, the why not grandchildren argument. The last thing I'll say is, if you are a reformed Pytobaptist, I would welcome an answer. I would love to hear. Do you agree with Calvin? Is it intergenerational? Should that be practiced today? Why not, grandchildren? I would be curious to hear your answers. I'll read the comments. Thanks for watching everybody. Nothing about baptism for a while. We're going back to apologetics for the next couple of videos. See ya in the next one.