Why Reformed Baptists Shouldn't Become Presbyterians

Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.

My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist.

I am joined today.

I'm excited to be joined today by my friend John Sweat.

John Sweat is a husband to Heather.

He is a father of three girls with a fourth on the way.

He is a veteran of the United States Marine Corps.

He's a graduate of Gordon Conwell Seminary with two master's degrees.

He's a plumbing foreman, a pastor at Covenant Community Church, and he is one of the hosts of Pilgrim Talk podcast.

John, thank you for being with me today.

Absolutely.

This has been in the works for a little bit.

Not the topic, but just us getting together.

So thanks for having me on, brother.

Yes, sir.

I'm very excited to have you.

I'm thankful to have an opportunity to talk to you today about something that I know is near and dear to both of our hearts, and that is the subject of believers, baptism versus infant baptism, or what is more specifically called credo baptism versus pedo baptism.

And recently you joined a Reformed Baptist group.

Can you tell us a little bit about that? This was just recent, right? Yeah.

Yes.

It's the Reformed Baptist Network.

Really, it's an association of churches, but truly an association in the sense of preserving the authority of the local church, but association of like-minded churches who confess the Second Lenten Confession.

But I would say the sort of highlight of this association is it is a charitable confessionalism.

And so they hold to the confession.

They think the confession faithfully summarizes what the Bible teaches, but they do so with a charity in a way that upholds the authority of Scripture.

And so there's sort of, I believe they call it a system subscription to the confession, but there is room for acceptance, allowances, and disagreements with it.

But anyways, great group of churches who basically said, hey, we all confess the same doctrine.

Why wouldn't we not get together for the sake of missions and church planning and also training men for pastoral ministry? Why would we not get together? And while one of us couldn't do very much as a church, especially since a lot of these churches are smaller, why wouldn't we gather to partner together? You know, often Baptist ecclesiology turns into sort of this lone wolf mentality, this lone isolationism.

And that's a shame.

While we want to uphold the autonomy of the local church, there's the beauty of having sister churches that you can partner with, so.

Amen.

Amen.

And I bring that up because it helps affirm what we're going to talk about today, that you and I both are committed in our Reformed theology, but we're also both committed to our Baptistic theology, our Baptistic distinctives.

And we would consider ourselves to be Reformed and Baptist, which some people believe is not possible.

Wouldn't you agree that there are some, especially online, there's a lot of people who take to the internet comment boxes and try to make the argument that if you are a Baptist, that you're not truly Reformed.

But it's interesting that the group you're part of is called the Reformed Baptist Network.

So I just that's why I pointed that out.

You know, you guys totally believe that you can be both Reformed and Baptist.

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

You know, people think that a Reformed Baptist is like calling a circle a square and that you can't do that.

It's illogical.

And that's unfortunate.

You know, I mean, if someone wants to take the label from me, that's fine.

But when I look at the men who helped pen the second line of confession, and even in the preface of the confession, they clearly saw themselves within the stream of Reformed theology.

And they make in their preface, they say, and it's very humble of them to say, we're not here to add new and confusing language to theology, but we're simply here to confess Reformed theology.

I don't think they say it as clear as that, but we're here to confess the theology that's before us.

But we would like to show how that theology has led us to actually come to a different position concerning the nature of the local church, and in particular, the sacrament of baptism.

Amen.

Amen.

And another reason for us wanting to discuss this subject today is not just our own mutual commitment and our own distinctives as Baptists, but also, just recently, there was a sort of a public departure of a man who would have considered himself to be Reformed in his theology and Baptist, and he left one of the larger parachurch ministries known as the Founders Ministries.

Now, I have been a Founders fan for a long time.

Our church has been listed with the Founders for probably the last 15 years, I think.

We've been on their website as a Founders-friendly church.

And Tom Askell, who is the head of Founders, was actually very instrumental in a moment in my life that was very important.

So I say all this to simply say, I have the utmost respect for the Founders for what they do.

I appreciate Tom very much.

And even the man I'm going to mention, the man who left the Founders, his name was Jared Longshore.

He left, and I am in no way going to try to discount him as a brother or say anything bad about him, but he did leave because he has changed his view on the sacrament of baptism.

He has taken the view, according to his own words, that not only believers but the children of believers, the infant children of believers, are to receive the sacrament of baptism, which means that he has gone into the position of the Presbyterian Reformed side, which would be upheld in the Westminster Confession of Faith.

Now, I don't know, again, I've met Jared a few times.

He seems like a wonderful person, certainly probably a very good pastor and father, but in this, this is an area with which we would disagree with him, and we would disagree with others like him who have made the same departure.

And that's what we're going to talk about today, because I'm going to ask the question, I'm going to ask and answer a question, then I'm going to let you, John, share your thoughts.

Why is it that we are seeing this? Because Jared's not the first and he won't be the last.

And unfortunately, I think that this is something that I've seen many times, and I'm not going to name names, but I could go through, my wife and I were talking about this before the show, I could go through at least on my hand enough people that I know personally, who have gone from being Baptists to Reformed Baptists to Presbyterians.

And that's, that's the direction, because a lot of people start out as Southern Baptists.

In fact, let me ask you, John, I know I didn't tell you I was going to ask you this before the program, were you, were you a Baptist before you were a Reformed Baptist? I was.

Okay.

Yeah, because I, you know, I attended a Jacksonville Baptist Theological Seminary, which is a, which is not a Reformed school.

It's a Southern Baptist school, but it's not a Reformed school.

And I was taught, I was taught Calvinism was bad.

It kills churches.

You know, I was taught all the typical things that was bad about Calvinism.

And so I, but I went from that to being Reformed.

And if, if the trend is true, then one day I'm going to be baptized in babies.

I don't believe that, but that's, that's the trend is people will go from being Baptist to being Reformed Baptist, and then they'll take that next step.

And, and, and it got me thinking, why is that the case? Why do men, you know, go in that direction? And my thought, and you tell me if you agree or disagree and listeners, you can, you know, opine in your own mind.

My thought is that when, when you are introduced to Reformed theology, it's an entire well and wealth of information that is somewhat new.

And you begin to hear new names, people that you haven't heard before, solid teachers.

I mean, the one man who probably had more influence on my preaching than anyone else who was a contemporary theologian, R.C.

Sproul.

R.C.

Sproul is honestly, and when I say I model my preaching after his, I don't mean I try to mimic him, but his preaching so affected me that I wanted to preach like him.

I hope that makes sense.

I'm not Ed Litton.

I'm not preaching his sermons, but, but, but, but, but I, I want, when I say his preaching is the kind of preaching I like to listen to, therefore it's the type of, it's the way I want to preach, you know, it's, it's because, and I don't know if you have guys like that for you, but for me, it was a Presbyterian.

So I can see how guys would say, you know what, if my hero is baptizing a baby, why, why should not, you know, and that's my thought about it.

And again, I'm not, I'm not discounting these men's fidelity to scripture.

I'm not saying they have not studied, but as we're going to see later, I think that they're wrong.

So I do have to ask the question.

What is it that, what is the extra step that's helping them take that step? The desire to be more informed, the desire to be more like the heroes that they see as heroes.

That's what I think.

What are your thoughts on that, John, about the reasoning? Yeah.

So let me just caveat that with, if you look at my bookshelf, probably 90% of the books on my shelf are written by men who hold the pedo-baptism, and this is something that, while I am a Reformed Baptist, I struggled with for a long time.

It wasn't, it wasn't, well, I have children, so it was never merely a hypothetical.

If the Lord requires of me to baptize my children, this is nothing trivial.

This is, this isn't like I can just wait till they're adults and then baptize them once they profess faith and say, oh, but I hold the pedo-baptism, you know, I really wrestled with that.

And so I just have great love in it, you know, and to maybe just to maybe sprinkle a little sugar, a little more on there before I kind of give, answer your question.

Probably the, and this is probably cheesy to some, but honestly, when people ask me, what was the most helpful book for you in your study of theology? It was the Westminster Confession.

I went to Trinity Baptist College here in Jacksonville, very Arminian dispensational school.

There, you're taught how to rip the Bible apart, but then you don't know to put it back together again.

You don't know what to do with the things like the law and the gospel.

And as I was wrestling with those questions, I, my wife gave me the Westminster Confession.

She had heard me mention it because I heard R.C.

Sproul mention it and she gave it to me for Father's Day and I read it and it was so helpful for me.

Now, I'm not a Presbyterian.

And so here's kind of four, four, four categories to that question, Keith.

I think first, I think there are some brothers who genuinely, they, they, they believe in scripture.

Now we can argue whether or not they're accurately handling scripture, but they believe from scripture, they are convinced in their conscience, infant baptism is the Bible's position.

But a lot of the brothers that I've ran into who were Baptists and maybe even Reformed Baptists, I don't know their heart, but the trajectory in the conversations that I've had with them, that didn't seem to be the, the punching point.

And so what I often see is, and some people I know, they grew up in very poor churches with very low theology.

They begin to come to Reformed theology, they come to Calvinism, they see that Presbyterians take very seriously theology.

And there's this rich heritage, a rich heritage.

And so somewhere along the way, in their mind, exegesis kind of takes a side seat, the historical theology, and now it's, hey, whatever the reformers said, whatever the Presbyterian, you know, the Westminster Confession says, that's, that's me.

And if they're really consistent, they'll go all the way to the 1646 Westminster and they'll be Covenanters, but not all of them are willing to do that.

The other thing would be that the covenant theology, someone comes to an understanding of covenant theology, they maybe leave something like dispensationalism, and they notice most of the guys who hold the covenant theology are Presbyterians or Dutch Reformed, but, but, or the point is Pato Baptist and they quickly, well, if I'm going to be consistent in my theology, then maybe I'm required to become a Pato Baptist.

And that was what I struggled with for a long time.

In fact, I was in Michael Kruger's class on Hebrews at RTS and I had to write a paper on Hebrews 8 and I was really struggling with baptism.

And I didn't know anything about the Second London.

I didn't know anything about these guys called the Particular Baptist.

I knew I didn't want to be an Anabaptist, and I thought maybe those were the same guys.

And I ran into a book by Pascal Denault, a Canadian theologian, and he compares the Second London's covenant theology with the Westminster.

And so that was kind of the final straw that broke the camel's back.

And I realized that I could be a covenant theologian.

I didn't have to abandon covenant theology or embrace, you know, Pato Baptism.

I could be a covenant theologian and embrace Pato Baptism on the basis of my covenant theology.

Yeah, those would be the big ones.

I said, and Pascal Denault not only wrote an excellent book, but certainly has the coolest name.

I mean, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

Him and Meredith Klein, you got it.

There you go, dude.

All right.

Yeah, OK, so I'm not the only one who thought Meredith was a lady's name.

No, no.

You know, the first time I heard Chris Arnson mention his name, I forgot where I heard him, but I thought, who is Meredith Klein? Well, I was preaching Genesis and Meredith Klein is the framework hypothesis.

And as I was preaching through Genesis one and two, I was discussing the various views.

And I mentioned the framework hypothesis as was popularized by Meredith Klein, a man.

And I said that I said it in my sermon.

I said, Meredith Klein, who's a man.

And afterwards, one of the one of my church members came up to me and he said, listen, my grandfather was named Meredith.

OK, it's not a lady's name.

Like he was like, like he was kind of upset with me.

Oh, my goodness.

And he's like, Meredith is a guy's name.

I was like, yeah, well, you're right.

You know, but, you know, not anymore.

Yeah, not anymore.

So I'm just glad I wasn't the only one, because I did in the sermon.

I said, Meredith is a guy.

OK.

All right.

Well, as we look at the subject of infant baptism, and I think you're right, I think, as you said, on the shelves, you know, and if you look at my shelves, you know, I've got the different guys who reformed Presbyterian and certainly the heroes of the faith in many ways are are Presbyterian.

And I I can honestly say of the of the issues that have that I've had to face, this one has been this is one that I have I've I've I've had to deal with it, but it's not been one that has been as appealing to me as I know some of my brothers say it's appealing to them.

You know, the idea of infant baptism.

In fact, I've had a few people who've told me they've heard me preach and they've heard me teach and they say, oh, well, one day you're going to be baptizing babies.

And I'm like, no, I don't I don't think so.

But again, I pray that I hold fast to this truth and because it's certainly not something that I ever see myself doing.

It's certainly not a direction I ever see myself going, because like you, I feel like I have a biblical and covenantal framework that I can hold to that that maintains the fidelity of believers only baptism that does not require the baptism of the children of believers.

And even that and I don't want to go down this road too much because we have spent another hour talking about this.

But even when you begin to talk about the idea of the baptism of of the children of believers, it's not children of believers, according to Presbyterians.

It's the it's the infant children of at least one believer.

And then you begin to say, well, what if it's a what if it's a 13 year old who hates Jesus? Well, we won't baptize them.

But wait a minute.

You believe in family baptism.

If you believe in familial solidarity.

And, you know, it says in first Corinthians that the child is made holy by the believing parent.

But it also says the unbelieving spouse is made holy by the unbelieving or by the believing spouse.

So if that is the case, would you baptize a believing spouse? I've asked Presbyterians that I've said, would you baptize an unbelieving spouse if they're if they're a Christ hater, but for the sake of their love for their spouse, if they said, well, I'll accept baptism, would you baptize them even though they say, I'm not a believer? I've had both and I've had both answers.

I've had some people say, yes.

Oh, yeah, I've had and I, again, not going to name names, but in conversations I've had people say yes for the sake of familial solidarity, even though they're a Christ hater because they have the spouse that makes them holy.

We would baptize them in this one church and then in another church they said no, because they have denied Christ.

We would not baptize them.

Now, I know that, you know, there's a divide there, like I said, but it just it further solidifies in my mind that there's sort of a there's it's almost like nailing Jell-O to the wall.

There's not a hard and fast, you know, well, we're going to baptize children, but it's got to be children who can't make the decision not to believe.

Well, OK, so is it familial solidarity or not? And again, I know we're going to talk about arguments in a minute.

I've kind of jumped ahead a little.

But if the argument is familial solidarity, which I believe was was something that Calvin himself popularized prior to Calvin, the arguments for infant baptism were more in line with the doctrines of baptismal regeneration, which is certainly what was taught in the Roman Catholic Church still is.

If you go to the Roman Catholic catechism, you get the Roman Catholic doctrines and dogmas.

That's what they teach.

And even Lutheranism still holds to a version, even though they would they would say they believe in in justification by faith alone, they believe in a form of infant baptism.

I'm sorry, baptism regeneration.

So so anyway, I just want to throw that out there when we when we're talking about baptism, it's like it's like trying to nail jello to the wall because we're talking about different different Lutherans are going to hold a different view than Catholics and Catholics are going to hold a different view than the reform.

And certainly we would care most about the reform, but we can't simply discount the other ones because what you'll hear among reforms of reform guys is they'll say, well, this is the historic position and say, well, wait a minute.

The position you hold is not the historic position.

The position that you hold is not in line with all of the people who held it in history because a lot of those historic people that you're citing believe that that actually conferred regeneration on the recipient.

That's not the same thing you believe, because Calvinistic Presbyterians do not believe in.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

They do not believe that baptism produces regeneration in the child.

Is that correct? Would you agree with that? Yeah, yeah.

There is some strand of that still in Dutch reform circles.

You see Kuiper kind of advocating for that and having kind of pushes back on that a little bit.

But you are right in that kind of historical survey.

And the interesting thing is, even if we begin at the Reformation from from Zwingli all the way, let's say let's let's say John Owen, right, kind of maybe the high watermark of the Reformation, the arguments for infant baptism just in that short span of time are wide ranging.

And what baptism does.

Right.

So we baptize our infant.

Where are they at in category in relation to the church, to union with Christ? Are they still in union with Adam? Where are they? There have been different answers to that.

And for a long time it was convincing to me, hey, there's just one historic reform position.

But as I began to study covenant theology, Presbyterians can't even agree over what the covenant, the covenant of grace is and how you deal with what the covenant of grace is in relation to the Mosaic covenant, for example, or the Noahic covenant.

How is the Noahic covenant a covenant of grace when it is a common covenant made with all of humanity, a covenant of preservation merely to preserve creation to God's plan of redemption, which is which promise in Genesis 315 is fulfilled when when Christ returns.

So, yeah, I think you're exactly right there.

It's a bit simplistic to.

Well, it's the argument from church history.

Hey, my position has these guys.

You know, I think we should look to church history.

I don't think we should be snobbish and think that our church and the Holy Spirit and ourselves are the first ones to open the Bible and to read it.

And we shouldn't lean on those who have gone before us.

But it also is quite dangerous to do the other side and say, I can rest assured that my position is right because of all of these people and never wrestle with the text.

Absolutely right.

Absolutely right.

And well, what I'd like for you to do now, John, if you would, as when we talked about this, obviously we had a pre-show conversation and we've been talking back and forth via Messenger.

You provided four points that you believe should be addressed in the conversation on infant baptism.

So this is you having the conversation about infant baptism and the four things that you would say are why you hold to the Baptist distinctive, that there are four major reasons.

And I'd like for you to outline those for us briefly and we can interact on each one.

Obviously, we won't be able to do a whole sermon on each one, but I think the educated listener will be able to pick up on what you're saying and know what it is that you're getting to.

So if you would, I've already seen them, of course, but if you would outline them for the listener and I may ask you a few questions as we go.

Sure, yes, there's lots of places you could go.

There's lots of texts I'm sure people would take you, maybe Acts 2 or the household baptisms of the Book of Acts, and those are places you can certainly go.

And I think there's sound exegetical arguments for those things.

But what I've found in the as I've read the literature and as I've had conversations even with people in my church about this question, there are really four theological pillars that I think must be addressed.

The first one, I think, is you can maybe argue that the second one should be first, but we'll keep them the way that I have.

The first one, I think, is understanding the nature of the New Covenant.

In relation to the Old Testament covenants, and so when you so so the question is, when you go to Jeremiah 31 or you go to Hebrews 8, which quotes Jeremiah 31, 31 to 34, which is the longest Old Testament citation in the New Testament, and when the writer of Hebrews is constantly hammering home this point of Jesus is better, Jesus is better than angels, Jesus is better than Moses, Jesus is better than the priest, Jesus is the mediator of a better covenant, Jesus is a better sacrifice.

When he is talking about better and in relation to what we're talking about, a better covenant, is this covenant only better in quantity or is it qualitatively better? And what we see in this prophecy from Jeremiah is a complete contrast with the Old Testament covenant, the covenant made with Israel.

I'll just read a few here, if that's OK, Keith, I'll read from the Hebrews 8 citation of Jeremiah 31, Hebrews 8, verse 8, for he finds fault with them when he says, and he's quoting Jeremiah here, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

Here's the qualifier, not like the covenant I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, for they did not continue in my covenant.

And so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord.

There's a conditional element to the old covenant, right? If you think back to Exodus 24, Moses gives the terms of the covenant of the people in Exodus 34, they say all that the Lord has commanded us, we will do.

And their privilege and position, the land and their privilege and position as God's holy nation, that he calls them in Exodus 19, was conditioned on their obedience to the covenant.

And the law of the covenant was written on tablets of stone.

But we know from from Paul and Romans that the law could not guarantee that they would obey the covenant, right? Because of their sinfulness, the law could not could not give them obedience.

And we see here in this prophecy to Jeremiah, because they did not continue in the covenant, the Lord showed no concern for them.

Verse 10 of Hebrews 8, for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord.

I will put my law into their minds and write them on their hearts, not on tablets of stone, but on their hearts.

And I will be their God and they shall be my teeth, my people, and they shall not teach each one his neighbor and each one of his brother saying, no, the Lord, for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest.

For I will be merciful toward their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more.

So the writer of Hebrews now is going to give you in verse 13 of chapter 8 his explanation of this text, verse 13.

And speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete.

And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.

So the question I ask, brother, as I'm looking, taking people to the new covenant, I say, which one of the covenants in the Old Testament promise forgiveness of sins? Which one, which which which one of the covenants in the Old Testament guaranteed that that that that they would unconditionally be bound to God and there would be no condition on their part in which they would have to give obedience to remain in covenant with God and not a single one.

Not a single one.

Do you have anything I could go on for a second, but anything to to to note there? One of the things you mentioned it being a better covenant, and I have heard the argument from my Presbyterian brothers that how could how could we call it a better covenant if our children are not included? I've I've heard that argument and, you know, my answer to that and maybe I should let you answer first.

What would you say if someone said, how can I call it a better covenant if my kid if if if my kid's not automatically in it? Yes, what I'd say to them is so so first, are you saying that your your children are no longer in Adam in a need for the gospel because you baptize them and if you grant that they are still in Adam and they need to profess faith and they need Christ, then whether you baptize them or you do as I do and you bring them in church and you raise them in the nurturing and fear and admonition of the Lord, we are both praying for them to be converted.

So by a better covenant, the beauty of the covenant is while the Old Testament covenants were conditional and you could you could be kicked out of the covenant for lack of obedience, this covenant is better because it is God himself who is promised to.

Well, let me back up.

It is God himself who has kept the terms to establish this covenant.

And all those united to his son can never fall out of this covenant.

All of their covenant membership is rooted in Christ's word.

That's how it's a better covenant.

So so if you want to place your assurance in giving your children, wetting them with water as if that's going to bring them to Christ, I fundamentally disagree.

That does not I don't understand how that that weakens the argument of the newness of the new covenant.

I don't know.

What would you say to that? Well, one of the things that I've heard and again, I have some wonderful brothers who are Presbyterian and often they have children and they will tell me, you know, they'll say, Keith, my children are Christians.

Because they've been baptized as Christians, what do you call your children? Do you call your children's do you call your children pagans, Keith? Do you do you do you and I've heard this, maybe you'll laugh, but they'll say my kids can sing.

Jesus loves me.

This I know your your kids, Keith, can't because they are not members of the covenant.

I don't know if you've ever heard that argument, but I've been told that.

And so my my response to that is, are you saying that your children are saved by their baptism and they'll say, no, no, no.

The baptism is not regeneration, but they are.

Under the promise, and I have a promise from God and I say, so wait a minute, so what you're telling me is there certainly going to be saved? Well, I don't know for certain, but but I have a promise that I'm holding to from God.

So again, it comes back to this nailing Jello to the wall.

I have a promise that's not really a promise.

I have a confirmation that's not really a confirmation.

I have assurance that's not really assurance.

So that's really where I take the issue is that I can tell my kids to sing.

Jesus loves you.

I can't, you know, I mean, if we if we I don't know if you sing, Jesus loves me with your kids, but but I mean, I can sing.

Jesus loves me with my children because of because of my belief that Jesus is has a disposition of love and that and I can I can say that God's disposition is that that of love and grace and mercy.

And he says he does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked.

I mean, there are certain things that we learn about God that are that speak of his benevolent disposition.

And and so that but but my answer, if they said, you know, if somebody said to me, you know, your children, it's not a better covenant because your children are not in it.

My answer would be going right to the passage.

You would and I would say, no, it's a better covenant because everyone in it is a believer.

Everyone is.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

Everyone in it is saved, whereas everyone in the Abrahamic covenant was not saved.

Everyone who was circumcised, who was who was who was brought into the covenant family was not saved.

And that's see, that's the problem with covenant theology from the perspective, because they have covenant families, too, and everyone's not saved.

Right.

And so and so, yeah.

Absolutely.

And just while you're while you mentioned it, you know, when you go to the Old Testament, you say, well, if the new covenant is the only God, I don't like the term covenant of grace.

I think it's it has so many different meanings for so many different covenant theology models.

I say new covenant, new covenant.

I say gospel covenant.

None of the Old Testament covenants were gospel covenant.

None of them promised salvation.

They pointed to salvation.

They pointed to forgiveness of sins.

But none of them offered it by by virtue of being a member in the Abrahamic covenant.

The only thing you inherited was the land through your obedience.

By virtue of being a member of the new covenant, you receive a better inheritance.

So so to go to what you said and maybe someone's asking, well, how are Old Testament people saved? They're saved by the new covenant.

They're saved by forward looking faith, seeing the promises, seeing the types, seeing the shadows in the Old Testament covenants that drive their faith forward, looking to this one, the seed of the woman in Genesis three fifteen.

And so they save the same way as we are.

Their faith is forward to the cross.

Our faith is backwards.

But Paul makes very clear that not all of Israel are of Israel and that the true seed of Abraham are those who have faith.

You know, we're jumping to number three.

We'll go and go there.

I think it's just natural.

But Abraham see is is it's a it's a badly abused theological concept.

Right.

So I'll say this controversial thing.

Dispensationalists and Presbyterians both make the same error when they look at the Abrahamic covenant.

They treat the true fulfillment of the Abrahamic seed as.

The descendants of the physical descendants of Abraham, rather than seeing what Paul says in Galatians three, that the true fulfillment of Abraham's seed is Christ, and therefore all who are in Christ are the true seed of Abraham.

And so the point is, it's not as if the church is a plan B and Israel was plan A dispensationalism, but rather it is those who have faith who have always been the true people of God.

And Israel is sort of a parentheses.

The nation of Israel sort of gives us a glimpse of the kingdom of God consummated in at the end of all things.

But is the church is the true people of God that was in seed form in the Old Testament and comes the full blossom, the New Testament that is the true people of God.

And that's what Paul gets at in Galatians nine and in Galatians three and in Galatians four.

That's right.

Christ is the seed, not seeds, plural, but he is the singular seed of Abraham.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And maybe give one more just illustration on that.

If you think of a building being built, a rather large building, and it's got a scaffolding around it.

Well, the scaffolding is important.

Scaffolding helps the builders place each brick on brick and build the building upward and fashion the building to its finished form.

But when that building completed, what happens? The scaffolding dripped away and the beauty of the building is revealed.

And that is what we see when we move from the nation of Israel in the Old Testament to the church in the New Testament.

The nation of Israel provided the scaffolding and the outward form.

But when that building was fully furnished and completed, right, that building.

That scaffolding, excuse me, falls away and there's the building that that scaffolding was always assisting and pointing to.

Absolutely.

Wonderful illustration.

So that was number three, Abraham's seed.

We looked at number one, the nature of the new covenant.

Number three is Abraham's seed.

Take a step back, take a step back and briefly share what number two was.

You said that should have been number one.

And that's your argument from a hermeneutical perspective.

And for those who don't know, and by the way, a shameless plug, Sovereign Grace Academy, our in-house seminary is about to begin a course on hermeneutics next Thursday.

It begins October 6th.

It's an eight week course and it is free.

You only have to purchase your books.

So if you're interested, send me a message at calvinispodcast at gmail.com.

I'll tell you more about it.

All right, brother, go ahead.

All right.

So hermeneutics or or think about it this way, New Testament priority.

And what I mean by that is Jesus Christ is is the center of Scripture.

The Old Testament moves forward and promise to him.

And the New Testament then is the fulfillment of those promises.

And obviously in already not not yet sense.

But when we when we look at reformed theology and the way that the reformers handle Scripture, there was this idea that that the new is concealed in the old and the old is revealed in the new.

And so we go to the New Testament and the apostles and Jesus show us how we're to interpret Old Testament text.

So Presbyterians would agree with us.

We do that with things like the tabernacle.

We do that with the bronze serpent that Moses held up.

We do that with the sacrifices.

We do that with the land of Canaan.

All of us in agreement that those physical things that had actual physical significance in the covenant in which they were given had a particular meaning in that covenant.

And yet it pointed like a sign or a type to something greater than itself.

Amen.

But but for some reason, when Presbyterians get the circumcision.

They they no longer do that.

They say the Old Testament tells us in light of circumcision, how to interpret the New Testament sacrament of baptism.

And I see that as an inconsistency and hermeneutic because the New Testament does tell us the New Testament clearly tells us in Colossians two, what the fulfillment of circumcision is in Colossians two verse excuse me, verse 11 in him speaking of Christ.

Also, you were circumcised with a circumcised circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of flesh by the circumcision of Christ.

Paul here is talking about regeneration, the cutting away of the flesh, the cutting away of the skin in the Old Testament signified a greater cutting away of the flesh, a cutting away of the heart, a regeneration, a new heart, which we saw promised in that new covenant text that we read from from Hebrews eight.

And so if you think about it this way, Keith, you can you can participate in all of the Old Testament types.

You can participate in them without faith and partake of the physical thing in which they were a part of.

So you could offer sacrifices in the temple.

You could enjoy the land, the promised land.

You could well, you would be circumcised.

You could partake in all the feasts and the festivals and you could enjoy the blessings of those things without faith because faith was not a requirement for membership of the Old Covenant.

And so all that to say this hermeneutic thing plays a huge piece in because when we're looking at baptism, we look at baptism and we look at circumcision and we let the New Testament tell us how we're to view circumcision in light of baptism.

That's right.

There is a there is a similarity.

Both of them are signs of entrance into a covenant community.

I agree.

But the covenant communities and the nature of those covenants are not similar.

So anyways, I keep going on in that.

But that's a huge piece.

I think that's a huge inconsistency.

If they treat all of these other things, the New Testament interprets the old and then they get to circumcision and they say, well, that we're going to bring forward and that's going to tell us how we interpret baptism in the New Testament.

That's right.

That was a great explanation.

In fact, I'm not even going to add anything because it was so good.

And I do want to move on to the fourth thing because I do have some things to say about this.

But that was good.

And for, again, anybody who's interested in hermeneutics, that was a that was a very good explanation of the priority of the New Testament, such an important and the understanding of promise and fulfillment is such an important part of rightly dividing the word of truth.

All right.

Number four, which I'm going to mention, you mentioned it is the regulative principle.

Can you tell people in short layman's terms what the regulative principle of worship is? And this is something that's held by Presbyterian reformed and reformed Baptists.

We would all agree with the regulative principle, at least most of us.

I have some friends who who who disagree.

In fact, one of the one of the shows I'm looking forward to doing in the future is I have a I have a reformed Baptist brethren who doesn't hold to the regulative principle and he wants to debate it on my show.

So so I'm looking forward to that.

Yeah, yeah.

But but explain what the regulative principle is and and and then we'll talk we'll we'll talk about it.

Yeah.

So let me give a plug here for a book.

Matt Merker has a little a little book on worship.

It's in the nine mark series, a little small booklets, really easy read, maybe no more than 100 pages.

I think it's the simplest and best treatment on Lord's Day worship.

But even his explanation of the regulative principle, I think, is right where it needs to be.

But basically, the regulative principle is this, that that we believe that the Lord who has instituted the new covenant through the shedding of Christ's blood and his sacrifice dictates to us positively from the New Testament what is permissible in Lord's Day worship.

Right.

The Lord of the Lord's Day gets to dictate how he's to be worshipped.

So, for example, if I were to come into your house, I don't get to dictate to you how you should furnish your house.

Now, you may ask for my advice, but I can't just walk in and go, you know, this is all wrong.

Let me move this picture here.

Let me shift this couch over here.

Let me let me furnish this and organize this in the way that I think is best.

So we have the conviction that Scripture and in particular the New Testament tells us how the Lord is to be worshipped on the Lord's Day.

So things like the preaching of the word, singing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs together to one another, praying, things like that.

And so, yeah, yeah.

So that's that's that would be a short definition I would give there, Keith, for what the regulative principle is.

Yep.

And when we talk about the regulative principle in regard to baptism, at least this is what I think you're saying.

What you're saying is that because the regulative principle would say that we must receive our commands from Scripture, there is no command in the New Covenant.

There's no command in any of the 27 New Testament books to baptize infants.

And the response and I want to just jump in with the response, their response is, yes, but we also believe in good and necessary inference, which is listed in the Westminster Confession, that we derive our doctrine.

Oh, we got it.

We got a guest guest on the program.

We so they would say not only must it be explicitly stated, it can also be stated through good and necessary inference.

And they would say there's reason to believe that infant baptism is inferred in the New Covenant texts.

And that's where we get to those elusive family baptism texts, such as the Philippian jailer, where it says he and his household were baptized.

And the argument I have heard is, doesn't it stand to reason that there would be infants in his household? And my answer to that is no, no, it doesn't stand to reason.

We have a church of, you know, we run about 80 to 90 people, so we have a relatively small church.

But our church is is a pretty good group of people.

We don't have any infants in our church.

You know, I think the youngest baby we have is a year old, maybe.

So, I mean, that's not infant.

Right.

A year is not is not infant.

They're starting to be in the I don't know, not quite toddler age, but they're they're babies.

They're not infants.

So the idea that it would stand to reason I've heard that it stands to reason there would be infants in those those households.

Not necessarily.

There's only a couple of household mentioned.

There's the household of the Philippian jailer.

There's Stephanus and I can't think of any others off the top of my head.

But but in that regard, there is nothing there.

There is no good and necessary inference to say that those that there were infants in those households.

I see you want to you want to add.

So please, please.

All right.

So first off, good and necessary inference.

It has to be both good and necessary.

Yeah, it's not just one or the other two.

I may be totally off on this, but I believe that that that phrase that's both in the Westminster, it's worded a little bit differently in the second line, is not in the chapter dealing with the Sabbath and the regulative principle of worship.

It's it's it's talking about interpreting scripture, surely.

But when we're talking about the regulative principle of worship, we're talking about clear, positive commands.

And frankly, I'm sorry, I am not going to worship the Lord based upon a good and necessary inference.

I'm just not going to do that when talking about scripture.

Sure.

I think there is grounds to do that.

I think that I think that is totally in step with a sound view of scripture and taking scripture and doing theology in a way that's faithful to scripture, as Bavinck calls it, tracing the unity of God's thoughts.

I'm totally on board.

But that has nothing to do with the regulative principle of worship.

Second, the household baptisms exegetically are pretty convincingly proven that that that it is very clear that it's those who believed are those who are baptized.

In fact, even some some Presbyterians, I believe Meredith Klein, argued exegetically, these are bad texts to make a case for infant baptism.

These are very unsound texts.

In fact, arguments from silence, really.

And I would I would.

Same thing.

You mentioned the framework, so I'll bring it up.

I just preached through the six days of Genesis and I was I really appreciate Meredith Klein's framework.

I think there is a a while it is a narrative.

I think there is a parallel, an awesome parallel between days one, two, three and four, five and six.

Oh, yeah, three days of forming three days of filling.

Yeah.

So I can jive with that.

But the Moses could not have written it any more clearly with ordinal numbers and the word Yom together and all places that speaks of a 24 hour day.

And if and if that wasn't God's intent, then God could have inspired Moses to to use a different word to convey that.

And I think the same way, if the point was infant baptism, if if if if God was like, hey, I better make sure they know that in the new covenant, the babies get the water, too, then he would have made it a positive command.

I'll make my argument there from a from an argument of silence.

But I just don't think I don't think the case holds.

I agree.

I agree.

And I remember now that you mentioned the phrase argument from silence, I remember R.C.

talking about this.

He debated R.C.

debated John MacArthur on this and he debated Alistair Begg.

The Alistair Begg debate is the lesser known.

I know a lot of people know about the John MacArthur debate.

But he debated Alistair Begg and Alistair Begg is such a he's such a sweet just I mean, he he's he's so kind.

And R.C.

was, you know, kind of nailing him at a few points because and and Alistair was just sort of being very kind.

And and and one time the phrase argument from silence came up and R.C.

said, yes, but it's a pregnant silence.

And, you know, that's his that's my that's my best R.C.

impression.

But but, you know, he was he was so convinced, you know, it's a pregnant silence.

And I'm like, no, it's not.

It's it's, you know, so but that's it's one of those times where if you if you want it bad enough, you'll see it.

And and I and I and I certainly don't mean that to to discredit their their their heart in this, but but but they are looking for something.

They're looking to prove a point.

And well, here's these households and households.

This must be it.

Now, before the show, you said you had a couple of quotes you wanted to share from infant Baptist believers that you that you thought might be helpful.

And I want to maybe draw to a close to hear those and we'll begin to draw to a close.

Yeah, yeah.

So I'll just I'll just give us one here.

And this is this isn't like I'm not trying to have an agacha moment, but it is helpful when you have quotes from Pato Baptist who kind of admit or or at least concede in one degree the argument that you're making.

Now, they're going to still baptize babies and they're going to change gears or find another way to justify that.

But Charles Hodge, who I esteem him as a great theologian, churchman, who's who served at Princeton.

And he says this.

He says the difficulty on the subject is that baptism from its very nature involves a profession of faith.

It is the way in which by the ordinance of Christ, he is to be confessed before men.

But infants are incapable of making such confession.

Therefore, they are not the proper subjects of baptism.

Let me say that one more time.

Therefore, they are not the proper subjects of baptism.

Amen.

Yeah, yeah.

He doesn't stop there, though.

Amazingly, he says, or to state the matter in another form, the sacraments belong to the members of the church, but the church is the company of believers.

Infants cannot exercise faith.

Therefore, they are not members of the church and consequently ought not to be baptized in order.

Now, listen to this.

In order to justify the baptism of infants, we must attain and authenticate such an idea of church as that it shall include the children of believing parents.

What an admission.

Yeah, that's a powerful admission.

Yeah, I mean, that's yeah.

Send me that one.

I will.

Just for the people that's from Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Volume three.

That's the 2003 print, and it's on pages five, forty six and five, forty seven.

I'll send it to you, though, brother.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I don't know if you know this years ago, I did a debate.

I've done two public debates.

One was with Rob Ham.

We debated the subject of the Sabbath, and the other was on infant baptism.

I debated, but the minister I debated was Episcopalian, not Presbyterian.

So he really didn't present a strongly reformed view.

He tried to present more of the historic view.

And again, the whole nailing Jello.

That's where I got the idea of nailing Jello to the wall, because he was sort of everywhere.

But I only bring that up because that was twelve, thirteen, fourteen years ago.

So it's been a long time, and yet we're still talking about it today.

And the reason why we're still talking about it today is because men still debate this today.

You go online, you go to the Reform Pub or any of these other places online where people have conversations.

And this is one of the conversations that's going to come up.

And I want to say something very clearly, especially if you're a Presbyterian and you've listened to this.

I hope that you would think that we have tried to be gracious, because I would say that we're brothers in Christ.

This is an area I loved, R.C., and I love so many of my Presbyterian brothers.

And I believe we can continue to stand on the gospel together while we disagree on this issue.

We're certainly not kicking you out of the kingdom in any way.

You would agree with that, John, I think.

Amen.

Amen.

Absolutely.

But I firmly believe the Reformers who continued in infant baptism did so because they believed it was the right thing to do.

But just believing something is the right thing to do doesn't make it correct.

Sincerity does not equal accuracy.

And so we can be sincerely wrong.

And when we are saying it is one way and you are saying it's another way, one of us is wrong.

We cannot both be right.

And God certainly knows what is right.

And our goal as theologians, our goal as Christians, our goal as pastors, as both John and I are pastors, is to seek to think God's thoughts after him.

And to seek to know the mind of God so that we can rightly understand his word.

And we do that through the exposition and exegesis of the word of God.

And I do believe this.

I want to add another thought.

Baptists did not violate the Reformation.

In my opinion, I think John would agree.

The Baptists did not violate the Reformation by holding to believers' baptism, but rather they continued the heart of the Reformation by recognizing the need to reform in all areas, even in regard to the sacraments.

And so my heart on this is that we would all be willing to continue to be in the heart of those who would say Semper Reformanda, to be always reforming, always going back to Scripture to find our answers.

And John, I think you've done a great job today of sharing with us what the Scripture says about this.

And I thank you for being a part of the program.

Absolutely.

I enjoyed it very much.

And I hope to have you back.

Maybe you're a Bavinc enthusiast, so maybe one day I'll have you come back on and share what it is that made you so connected to that particular theologian.

Oh, I'd probably be more excited to do that than this one.

So absolutely.

Wonderful.

Well, thank you for being a part of the show.

And thank you, listener, for listening to our show today.

And again, I want to remind you, if you have questions, you may send them to calvinispodcast at gmail.com.

If you have a question for me, please send it there.

If you have a question for John, you can send it to me.

I'll forward it to him.

But you can also find us at our church websites.

My church is sgfcjacks.org.

That's Sovereign Grace Family Church of Jacksonville.

And John, what is your church website? It is covenantcommunity.net.

Covenantcommunity.net.

And you guys are in what? You're in Lake Butler.

Lake Butler, Union County.

There's about 15,000 people there.

There's probably more cows than people.

But a lot of our people drive kind of from the surrounding towns and counties.

But yeah.

Well, again, I want to thank you for coming.

I'm thankful that our churches continue to be united in the faith and standing for the gospel.

And thank you, listener, for being with us today.

And like I always say, thank you for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist.

My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist.

May God bless you.

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As you go about your day, remember this.

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He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through him.

May God be with you.