Episode 71: Paedocommunion, Paedobaptism, and Baptist Covenant Theology

Christ the King and the Church as a Monarchy

Through the Ruled Church podcast.

This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas? You see that one in Pechote, Mexico?

Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy. It's a monarchy.

Christ is king. You can't be Christian without a local church.

You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible-believing church, and spend your life serving Jesus in a local, visible congregation.

You didn't even say anything about my new setup.

Well, I really can't sit. I've got you on a little bitty screen. Yeah, I see you've got a new setup there.

It's not really.

You're comfortable.

I just moved from my desk to my chair, my comfy chair. I got this chair from a former pastor. He's passed away now, but Brother Bill Howard. And one day I went over there. Grandson is our church member.

I've known him for a while. A good brother, faithful brother. As I said, gone to be with the Lord. But I went over to his house one day and he tried to sell me this chair. So I made him an offer that if he gave me 50 bucks, I'd take it to the dump for him.

And so we actually worked out to $0 from both, and he just gave it to me.

Well, hey, brother, have you seen the world that we live in and who right now has the number one song on the hip hop charts, on the Billboard hip hop charts?

Do you know who has the number ones?

You do want to know.

Okay.

It is that rapper, Ben Shapiro.

I saw something about that, but I'm not up on that.

It's crazy. We live in a world where Ben Shapiro has the number one song on the Billboard charts as a hip hop artist, a rap artist.

That's very wise.

I seen a great comment. Somebody left. They said he's the first person to ever rap slower than he talks.

He does talk fast. Okay, I'm gonna try this now, Eddie. Welcome to the Rural Church Podcast. I'm your co-host, Alan Nelson, one of the pastors at Providence Baptist Church in Perryville, Arkansas. With us as usual is Eddie Ragsdale, pastor at Marshall First Baptist Church.

Eddie, I know you've been reading on the Reform Pub. We're gonna talk about that in just a second. You been reading anything else of value lately you want to share?

I tell you, I have been. I've been reading a little book. It's from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and it's really good. Just a little book kind of talking about the Christian life. A really practical, practical kind of book.

So yeah, I've been reading that. It's been pretty helpful.

I just finished, like I don't do this a lot. Some pastors really stress this kind of stuff. I don't, but I read like a secular leadership book called Extreme Ownership by Jocko, is it Willick? Have you ever heard of Jocko?

Actually, I would commend the book. It's good, some helpful, some good principles, just kind of common grace principles of leadership that I think are helpful. So I just finished that up. And then I'm just reading a little bit this morning from John Owen on prayer.

I think one of the coolest investments I have in the library is the works of John Owen. That was product of my wife. I've had it digitally for a while, but I think it was last Christmas, 2022, that my wife got me this set.

I enjoy that. But anyway, brother, you were doing a little bit. I've never been on the Reform Pub. Now my wife has, maybe she still is. And I don't have a problem with being on the Reform Pub, but that's the one where they argue a lot about like all this kind of stuff.

Yeah, I'm never on there. I just happen to, I don't even remember how I got on there. I mean, I've been on there for years and years and years, but I'm in a lot of groups that I don't ever, I'm not on Facebook very often anymore.

But the other day I was just scrolling through and this just popped up in my feed.

Yeah, yeah, it's fine that you're on there. Like for me, I'm not on there because of self-control. Like if I'm on there, because I get messages or screenshots sometimes of what they argue about. So I'm like, I'm afraid if I'm on there, I'd want to weigh in on these arguments, and waste a lot of my time.

But you read this, and I'm still trying to wrap my mind around what's being said here, but you read this and I want you to read it to our listeners. I think it'd be a good discussion. And I'll say this, Eddie, you don't know this, but like maybe I've mentioned this before, but like some of our top episodes are the three episodes we did on Baptist Covenant Theology.

And I know you're teaching through that right now.

Yeah, I'm teaching that on Wednesday nights. I think that we did our youth in it. I do commend to you, The Kingdom of God by Jeffrey Johnson. Other great books, The Mystery of Christ by Sam Renahan, Getting the Garden Right by Richard Barcellos.

This is one lesser known, Covenant Theology, it's called Covenant Theology, a Reformed Baptist Perspective by Philip Griffiths. All of these are helpful, and if you don't have time to read all these, just read Galatians.

So

That's right.

But this will go into that subject. So why don't you read this for us, and let's get to chatting about it.

Yeah, and I just want to state from the outset, I don't know either the, so this was a one person sharing another person's tweet into the Reformed Pope, and I don't know who either one of these men are.

Basically

So I don't want to direct this toward them at all. I just want to read the content.

We're basically in inception right now. We are sharing a post that was a post shared of a shared

Right.

In a group.

Mind blown. Okay, brother.

That's right.

So it says, the paedo-communionist gives his child communion for the same reason the Baptist withholds baptism from his child. Both, in their own way, stress the objectivity of the covenant, and so restrict or permit access to the sacraments upon the presumption of regeneration tied to baptism.

So the post obviously is like a typical, from a typical seems paedo-Baptist. That is, the typical paedo-Baptist is not a paedo-communionist.

Communionist, right.

And by paedo-communionist, we mean giving your unregenerate children the Lord's Supper.

And I'll tell you, not being a paedo-Baptist, but being in some of these groups, I have noticed, just from what little bit I've seen, the paedo-Baptists, your kind of general run of the meal, some of them would even call themselves the orthodox paedo-Baptists.

They have a bigger problem with the paedo-communionists than with us, a lot of times. I mean, this gets under their skin.

Let's end this episode now and keep them fighting now. Let's say this from the outset. I cannot emphasize, and even with some listening to this, we may catch some flack, but I cannot stress enough how blessed I've been in my life.

I would not be the man I am today if not for paedo-Baptist in my life. Particularly, I remember a number of years ago when I discovered, this was like, this had to be 2009, maybe first part of 2010, I discovered the Ligonier app.

And I spent a lot of time mowing it and stuff, listening to that app, tapping into the teaching of R .C. Sproul, chosen by God, the holiness of God, Sinclair Ferguson, I'm not gonna be able to name everybody, Joel Beakey.

And so I am absolutely shaped by, encouraged by the Puritans, people who, George Whitfield, and these all have different views about paedo-Baptism. So I'll just say that from the outset, very grateful.

And we'll be in the new heavens, new earth with these paedo-Baptists. Now there, there'll be credo-Baptists then. But you understood, let me just put that caveat out there. Nothing against our brothers and sisters who are paedo-Baptists, but this is a, I think they're wrong.

Obviously, I think they're wrong, and I think this is important. But here's the first thing I wanna say. When I read this, the first comment I wanna make is I actually think the paedo-communionist is the most consistent paedo-Baptist.

So let's talk about that for a minute, and I'll tell you about, remind me about the, my drawing the other day in, it was actually in Sunday school, but go ahead. Why is the paedo-communionist consistent?

I wanna reiterate exactly what you just shared too about our affinity for these good brothers. You know, next week, I'm going to a Ligonier conference next week. So it's not that I don't think that there's anything that we can learn or that these aren't brothers that are paedo-Baptists.

I'm very thankful for a lesser known guy, a contemporary guy, but Pastor Matthew Everhart in Pennsylvania, love the ministry that he's doing, and he's a Presbyterian pastor, and thankful for his writing and his, the YouTube videos that he puts out and stuff like that, and good preaching of the word.

All that being said, yeah, the paedo-communionist, I actually think is more consistent because if they believe that their children can be recipients of baptism, I don't know why they would not think they could also be recipients of communion.

And probably a man that you're not supposed to say his name, but one famous paedo-communionist who had grown up a Baptist, I once heard him say that once he became a paedo-Baptist, he remembered that when he was a Baptist, one of his big arguments against paedo-Baptists was why don't they give communion to their children if they baptize them?

And so he became convinced that he should give communion to their children. Now I know that paedo-Baptists would come with an argument that that's not their view of the sacraments, but yes, if you think that your children are candidates for baptism, I don't see why they would not be candidates for communion.

And so the argument is, I wanna be fair here, but the argument is from the paedo-Baptists that believers and their children are in the new covenant.

Right.

So the Baptist argument is

In an objective way, which is what this is dealing with.

Yeah, in the Baptist argument, those in the new covenant should receive baptism and the Lord's Supper. From the paedo-Baptist argument, well, from the paedo-Communionist argument, they would actually, Baptists and paedo-Communionists would be in the same, would be in the same agreement, and that is those in the new covenant should receive the ordinances, baptism and the Lord's Supper.

So we're actually, in that regard, we're saying the same thing. Those in the new covenant should receive the ordinances. Now, the other morning, on Sunday morning, we were talking about perseverance of the saints.

And I drew three circles on the board. My drawing is terrible, but the first circle had a, I can describe it, it sounds a lot better than what they actually look like. So the first circle had a gate on it.

So these are all, and inside each circle is new covenant. So first circle had a gate on it. The second circle had a circle inside of it, and both, you had new covenant and new covenant. You had new covenant proper, the regenerate, but then you had those in the new covenant, but not in new covenant proper, right?

And then I drew a final circle and I put razor wire on it, but that was the Baptist circle. Razor wire is like topically, that's the new covenant you're in and you're not getting out. So the first circle represented the idea, I think Lutherans would hold to this, free will Baptists hold to this.

Basically, you could be in the new covenant, but then you can walk out. You can open the gate, walk out if you want. And then of course, Baptists believe that those in new covenant, according to Jeremiah 31, 33 and following, those in the new covenant know God.

They have his law written in their hearts. They have their sins forgiven. So that's our understanding of the new covenant. That is always and only those in the covenant of grace have been the regenerate.

That's our understanding. So we don't believe, for example, that Abraham's circumcised children, or whatever Jewish man you wanna say, they're circumcised children, by the way, not children, but only men, only boys, right?

But anyway, we don't believe they were in the covenant of grace. Only those who are born again are in the covenant of grace. And we believe that's how it's always been.

Yes.

But in the Pado-Baptist system, you have those in, if you wanna call it new covenant proper, they are regenerate and they're in the real new covenant. I don't know if I'm trying to be fair. They're in the center there, but then you have children, unregenerate people, who are counted as external people of the new covenant, but not really in the inter sanctum or whatever.

Yeah, and I think you would have, I think it depends, honestly, on which Pado-Baptist you talk to.

They're gonna have, you know,.

And obviously these brothers in the reformed pub, I'm gonna take the basic view of the pub, would look at, they would definitely look at anybody that had ever held anything like the federal vision, and they would say, that's not Pado-Baptist, that's not what we hold to.

And they would say that about most of the Pado-Communionists as well. They would say they are, I think here in the post, part of the point that we need to deal with is he says both, meaning both the Pado-Communionists and the Baptists, he says both in their own way stress the objectivity of the covenant.

So what they're saying is that if you're understanding the covenant rightly, then there must, you shouldn't stress the objectivity. Is that how you would understand what they're saying there, Quatro? Because they're saying that the problem that we have and the Pado-Communionists has, now we both think they both look consistent, but they say it's that we're stressing the objectivity of the covenant.

So what do you think he means by stressing the objectivity of the covenant?

Hmm, I really don't know because I would think that a lot of Pado-Baptists would agree with that. But I think obviously here's the problem. I'm not sure what he's saying there. I think the problem is when I've heard like R. Scott Clark say this, Baptists have to have regeneration goggles because we only baptize those who are born again.

And I think that's what he's getting at is like, so Baptists are saying, because we baptize you, we believe that you're regenerate. So Baptists are not saying that mode of baptism regenerates someone, we're not saying that, but we're saying we only baptize you because we believe you're regenerate.

And he's saying that that's shared with Pado-Communionists, basically because you're baptized, you're going to be regenerate. But I'm not sure.

And let's be honest, some Pado-Baptists will even use language that sounds like they're saying that their baptized children are regenerate, even from infancy.

Yeah.

Some of them will use language. So, and I think, I'm going to be honest, we're just having a discussion here. It seems to me like the brothers, I'm still going to use the word brothers, who have converted to Pado-Baptism from being Baptists are more likely to use that language.

Just in, I'm saying anecdotally, the guys that I've seen who have, who they were Baptists, who have gone over to the Pado-Baptist side, they were Credo-Baptists, they went over. They seem to be more likely to stress even the idea that their children are regenerate from even from when they're infants.

Huh.

Yeah, I'm not, yeah. I mean, I understand what you're saying, just your observation.

Right, I'm not saying everyone. I'm just saying it seems like that's been, I'm saying that as an anecdote, not as a proof.

Well, here's what I want to say. Here's my issue with this whole thing, is if you only serve the Lord's supper to believers, right, not to children, just to believers, how do you know they're believers if you don't have regeneration goggles?

Right.

Okay, so that's my argument. Like, you want to come at the Baptist and you want to be like, well, you only baptize believers, but you don't know if they're really believers. You know, you don't have regeneration goggles.

Okay, okay, let's admit that. That's true.

Yes.

We can baptize false converts, but there's a difference between knowingly and unknowingly baptizing unregenerate people. Okay, so, but the problem that is levied at Baptist, you baptize unregenerate people.

That does happen, you're right. But how do you know if you really baptize, you have to have regenerate? Well, it's the same problem in the Pato Baptist, those who reject Pato communion.

Yes.

And only serve communion to believers. How do you know if you don't have regeneration goggles? Well, it's the same way that we feel that we know, because the scriptures teach us what a person born again looks like.

They love Christ, they love his word, they are repentant, they are turning from sin, they're not living in unrepentant, habitual sin. They are, they love righteousness. You know, all of these things that the scriptures teach us, that's the criteria we have.

Our fellow pastor and myself, Pastor Jacob and I, we're counseling this lady right now. We were trying to work this out. She came forward on a Sunday, you know, and we don't even extend like come forward, like she just came running down the aisle, basically.

Wow.

Was weeping and, you know, and so we're working through all that right now, working through testimony, we're asking questions. And we know ultimately we can get this wrong, but it's our desire to do our best to try to get this right, because we believe only those born again are in the new covenant, and therefore only those born again should receive the ordinances of baptism in the Lord's Supper.

Now, if you say, again, the argument, if you say children are in the new covenant, then they shouldn't be halfway in, right? They should receive both ordinances. But if you say, no, no, we only give the Lord's Supper to those who are born again, well, I say, well, then you have the same issue that you say the Baptists have, and that is we don't really know.

Well, yes. Well, okay, so all this, you know, flows into our understanding of the church. Like this is just, this is a lot different argument than just about mode of baptism.

Well, it's if baptism, and this would be the language that our Presbyterian brothers would use, if it is a sign and a seal of the new covenant, that would be the language they would use.

Yeah.

If that is what it is, then once again, I just don't see why you would not extend communion to these people who you're stressing that they're included in the new covenant. It doesn't make any sense. But let me ask you another question, Quatro.

Thinking about the idea of baptism and communion, how do you guys fence the Lord's table?

So we are not close communion, but close communion. So we allow members who of other Baptist churches to partake of the Lord's supper with us. We believe. Now, we haven't ever had to deal, we haven't ever really had to deal with actual Hato Baptist, you know, let's just say a godly Hato Baptist is visiting our church.

Well, that's just something we have to talk about. But as a rule, we believe that the Lord's supper is for those born again and who have followed the Lord in believers baptism. Now, John Bunyan would disagree.

He had a strong discourse on that in his works about that that shouldn't bar someone from the Lord's supper. But anyway, why were you asking?

Well, I was asking because, you know, we take Lord's supper weekly. And one of the ways, it's not everything, but one of the ways that we fence the Lord's table is we proclaim when we invite the congregation to come and receive from the Lord's table.

One of the things that I say pretty much every week, and this last week, I actually stressed it a little stronger and went a little more in depth. But I will stress that this is for those who have been baptized by immersion as believers.

Just saying, the people who have accessed this table are the people who have been baptized. And so I'm just thinking about this and thinking it does become much more difficult if you're saying that, well, no, having been baptized does not mean that you should have access to the Lord's table.

Well, then what does? And they would say regeneration. But like you said, well, how do you know? I mean, how do you know that this person is now able to come to the Lord's table? And I know that confirmation and those things, but once again, I just don't see how that they're disconnecting the way that we would fence the Lord's table rightly, using baptism as one of the means to protect and actually to define who has access to the Lord's table.

You understand what I'm saying there about the idea of baptism is actually a means to rightly know who should be able to partake of the supper.

Yeah, both of these ordinances are given to the church. I mean, that's why it's like, I know there's some guys over the years, men I respect well and that have tried to come up with, well, maybe we can just kind of have a church where it's on your conscience about Fredo or Pado, but at the end of the day, we just have a different understanding of the ordinances and the nature of the church.

So again, there's a lot of agreement and I'm grateful and I'm grateful for covenant theology. And we're gonna talk about the covenant of redemption and the covenant of works and the covenant of grace.

Now we obviously have some different understanding there of the covenant of grace, but the point is there's a lot of agreement. We love our Lord Jesus. We love Christ. We love the gospel. There's so much agreement that we have together, but ultimately to be in the same church together would be quite difficult, not to just worship together.

And I know what I'm saying. I'm saying to be active members of the same church together would be difficult because our understanding of these ordinances are so different. And we believe that the church is made up of regenerate people.

It's not that we don't believe there are apostates. We just believe they were never in the new covenant. They were not in the new covenant.

Right.

And they were never truly, okay, to be truly baptized, I hate to even say baptism by immersion. That doesn't even, that's just so redundant. It's like saying immersion by immersion, you know? Yes, yes.

But baptism by immersion after one's regeneration is biblical baptism. Anything else is not baptism. So like as a church, we don't re-baptize people. I try to stress that. If you were baptized as an infant, do you need to be re-baptized?

Answer, no, you need to be baptized, not re-baptized, not baptized again. That's why our Baptist forefathers reject and rejected, and we reject the label of Anabaptist. That's not what we are. We don't re-baptize.

Rather, we are committed to the biblical mode in administration of baptism.

And you know, you said earlier, you guys, you haven't faced that, the issue of, and we haven't faced the issue of like a believing Presbyterian, but we have had scenarios where we've had to, you know, tell people, you know, don't come take from Lord, you know, you're not a, you can't take communion, you know, visitors to the church that they weren't, either they weren't believers, or they weren't baptized believers, and we would have to ask them, you know, we have a different understanding about the new covenant or about baptism than you do.

Please don't come to the Lord's table.

We've had to talk to people too, you know, this is mainly in our church come up between salvation and baptism. So there's been a couple of times where people have been converted, but not baptized. And we've said, don't, you're not ready to partake.

You know.

And a beautiful thing that's happened in our church, and this. Actually, we had another example of this just in the last week or so, but actually we've seen the Lord use our practice of taking the Lord's supper and the fencing of the Lord's table with the statement about baptism to actually open people's eyes to the fact that they need to be baptized.

Yeah, amen.

We've had people who, you know, maybe they'd come out of a, they'd come from somewhere else and nobody had ever stressed to them. They'd heard the gospel and even believed it, but nobody had ever told them they needed to be baptized, you know, and the Lord has used that.

So we've had scenarios where it gave us opportunities to talk with people about the gospel, make sure they understand it, and then to lead them to a biblical understanding of both baptism and the Lord's table, because we were trying to biblically fence the Lord's table and include all the new covenant members in the Lord's meal.

Yeah, yeah. You know, we don't have time to necessarily get into this discussion, but I'll just make this observation. Really, too many Baptist churches, particularly rural Baptist churches, this is the rural church podcast, and my experience has been with mainly rural Baptist churches, I think too many of us diminish the importance of the ordinances.

So we're so set on, you're saved by grace, baptism doesn't bring about your regeneration, the Lord's supper doesn't bring about your regeneration, that we almost consider these as addendums to the Christian life that are, you know, you could take them or leave them.

Baptist of all people, like it's in our name, Eddie. So Baptist of all people should really care about that. Like when someone gets baptized, like we should make a big deal. Let's celebrate it. Like we have them read their testimony before the church.

We try to have a meal, or we've done that a couple of times, having a meal afterwards together. As far as the whole church, like not just, you know, we eat every week in homes, but like saying, hey, let's eat, let's bring food, let's celebrate.

This is a great thing. We used to, a lot of, and a lot of Baptist churches kind of do this just because of practical things. They'll like do baptism, then they'll have their announcements, and then, you know, but we do, we have the last couple of times done baptism at the end of the sermon and to stress, and it doesn't matter when you do it, but it needs to be part of the worship.

Yes.

The gathered worship. It's part of the regulative principle, which by the way, the Pato Baptist has no leg to stand on there. The regulative principle, you can only worship the way that it has been instructed, and there is no instructions on infant baptism.

But anyway, just aside, that one's for free. But the point is that baptism should be part of our worship. Now, the Lord's Supper, and I know you and I have a little bit different practice here. I'm not opposed to weekly partaking of the Lord's Supper.

We're just not at that point, but we have moved the Lord's Supper more regularly. So last year in 2023, we took it 13 times. So we took it once a month. And then in December, we took it twice because Christmas Eve was on a Sunday.

So that evening we also took the Lord's Supper. So we've moved from taking it four times a year to taking it 12 times a year, which I do think is important. But I would say if you're part of a church that's taking it once a quarter, once every six months, to really think about that and consider.

But I just find that issue in typically rural Baptist churches that we disregard the beauty and necessity of these ordinances. Yes, they are symbols in pointing us, but God is working in them to strengthen our faith, to strengthen our unity.

These are important things. Anything you wanna say about that, brother?

Well, I do wanna say, I'm not mad at anybody for taking Lord's Supper less than we do. I'm not trying to lay down a legalistic law. I would just tell everybody, if you're concerned, this is what I hear from everybody.

It's gonna lose its meaning. That has not been our experience. I believe that our church on the whole, I'm sure there are some exceptions in our body, but on the whole, we have come to see the Lord's Supper as more meaningful as we have enjoyed it more often.

I mean, that's just been the case for us. And so I'm not mad at anybody that does it. Man, once a month is so much better than doing it once a quarter. So praise the Lord. But my point is just, I hear so often people say, well, if we did it all the time, it loses, well, why don't we sing once a quarter?

Nobody wanna do that. Right, you wanna sing every Sunday. And I would say, why do you not want to take the Lord's Supper every Sunday? It's just the way I look. Hey, I do wanna add one more thing. The last line of this post says this, and I wanna flip it around because I actually think that it says, and so restrict or permit access to the sacraments, of course we would say ordinances, upon the presumption of regeneration tied to baptism.

And I would actually wanna say, no, it's not regeneration tied to baptism. We would be saying it's baptism is tied to regeneration. The person must be regenerate and then therefore they're baptized. Not they're baptized, therefore they're regenerate.

We would be calling on the person to be born again. And if they are confessing the gospel and they're professing that they've been born again, then they're baptized.

Yeah.

Which I really think he was making it sound more like, like, well, we baptize them so we know they're regenerate. Like you said, we don't know they're regenerate, but we are saying, they're saying they're regenerate and we are saying that we believe they're regenerate as far as we can know.

We're confirming as a church that we're receiving them as a regenerate believer.

But most Baptist churches, you know, preach and teach regularly that if you are being baptized, does not guarantee that you're going to heaven. You must be, you know, so like we're pretty consistent on that.

You know?

Right, right.

Yeah, yeah.

We own the fact, we own the fact that we may be

That there are unbelievers in our churches. Probably. I mean, it could be.

But yeah, but we deny that unbelievers are in the new covenant. There's never, ever, ever, one time ever in the history of the world been an unbeliever in the covenant of grace.

Right, that's right.

That's why I drew the razor wire, Eddie. Once you're in, you ain't getting out.

Right.

And I'm sure that if any Presbyterian brothers have made it this far in listening, they're probably screaming at the top of their lungs. But the covenant of grace extended back to Abraham because they would see both the old and new covenants as different administrations of the covenant of grace.

But what we're saying is, no, the new covenant is the covenant of grace. And God, in his grace, based on the promises given to Abraham, based on the promises that he made to the patriarchs, based on the promises that he gave even all the way back to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 .15, based on those promises, God includes all the saints from the old covenant period.

But they're included in the new covenant, which is the covenant of grace. Which is not based on the old covenant being an administration of the covenant of grace.

Which is ratified in the finished work of Christ.

That's right, that's right.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's good. So we understand some called the dichotomous nature of the Abrahamic covenant. That there is, you know, we were reading Romans nine last night in family worship, but it's not children of the flesh.