Last week I ended my post – An Apologia of Infant Baptism: Formulating a Doctrinal Position - with the following words
In following the apologia of Mark Ross, the case for infant baptism can fundamentally be made from the rightful deduction of two points: (1) The continuity of the Old and New Covenants; and (2) The similarity in substance of circumcision and baptism.
Before I address the first point, I would like to first define covenant. Afterwards, I’ll address the signs that God provided as a means of indicating that someone had entered into a covenant with Him.
What Does Covenant Mean?
Throughout the history of the Reformed Tradition there has been a substantial difference of opinion in regards to the nature of the covenant. Although there is a divergence of opinion, Cornelius Venema believes that these differences converge with the following meaning,
“Its [covenant] origin and administration, is an initiative and work of God’s undeserved grace and mercy” (Covenant Theology and Baptism in The Case for Covenantal Infant Baptism, pgs. 206-207)
This covenant that is initiated by God with man insinuates communion between God and man. In other words, the covenant denotes an intimate and personal relationship between God and man comparable to “the relationship of a “husband to his wife, bridegroom to his bride, or as a father to his children” (ibid., 207).
How Does Covenant Relate to Baptism?
Infant Baptism
In contributing to Counterpoints: Understanding Four Views on Baptism, Richard Pratt Jr. suggests that we consider the two basic covenants that God has made with man and how baptism is an extension and fulfillment of circumcision administered in the first covenant (Reformed View: Baptism as a Sacrament of the Covenant, pg. 64).
The Covenant of Works
In the beginning, God entered into a covenant of works with mankind through Adam. This is observed in Genesis 2.16-17, which reads,
“And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
What we observe within this first covenant is the promise of life conditioned upon Adam’s obedience to God’s command. This observation is implied from the consequence Adam will undergo if he were to disobey God.
Sometime after this covenant was made, Adam disobeyed God and ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 3.6). Consequently, Adam, as well as the entirety of mankind (Rom. 5.12), was and is no longer capable of obtaining eternal life through works as originally promised (Eph. 2.8-9).
In providing a means of restoring the broken fellowship between Himself and mankind, God has enacted another covenant, namely, the covenant of grace that promises eternal life through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ.
The Covenant of Grace
The covenant of grace was first promised by God to mankind after Adam originally broke the first. We observe this in Genesis 3.15 when God declared,
“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his feet” (bold mine).
The offspring (i.e. seed) spoken of here by God was the prophetic announcement of the future birth of His Son, Jesus Christ (Gen. 7.14; Mic. 5.3; Matt. 1.23, 25; Gal. 3.15-18; 4.4). It is through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ that the covenant of grace was ratified by God with mankind. What does this mean?
What this means is that the promise of eternal life and communion with God is promised to everyone who places their faith in Him. (John 3.16; 17.3; Rom. 1.16-17; 3.21-25; 10.6-9; Rev. 22.17). Unlike the Israelites – living under the old covenant – who had to look forward to the promise (John 8.56; Heb. 11.13) today we look back in time to the promise of God found through faith in Jesus Christ.
The Signs of the Covenants
During the time of the covenant of works, God’s covenantal signs – indicating that someone had entered into the covenant with God – were administered by “promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb, and other types and ordinances delivered to the people of the Jews” (2 Cor. 3.6-9; 1 Cor. 10.1-4; Heb. 11.13; John 8.56; Westminster Confession, 7.5). These signs were not an end in themselves, but rather served as a means of pointing the Israelites to God’s promised offspring, Jesus Christ (Heb. 8-10; Rom. 4.11; Col. 2.11-12; 1 Cor. 5.7).
Now that Christ has appeared, fulfilling the promise of God and replacing the previous signs (Col. 2.17), the covenantal signs now administered to both Jews and Gentiles are “the preaching of the Word, and the administration of the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper” (Westminster Confession, 7.6). These signs given by God to man are not an end in themselves, but rather a means of pointing people back to Jesus Christ and the substance of what is promised in the Gospel.
In the end, the Old and New Covenant signs differ only in the means employed (i.e. circumcision vs. baptism) and not in their substance, which is Jesus Christ our Lord (Gal. 3.8-9, 14, 16; Rom. 3.21-22, 30; 4.3, 6-8 (cf. Gen. 15.6; Ps. 32.1-2); 4.16-17, 23-24; Heb. 4.2 (cf. Rom. 10.6-10; 1 Cor. 10.3-4).
In view of the fact that the signs of the covenants differ only in the means employed, I believe that we can agree with Richard Pratt Jr., who said,
“Baptism administers the NT dispensation of the covenant of grace in ways that are analogous to the administration of the OT dispensation of that same covenant” (Pratt, 65).
The sole reason for including infants in the administration of baptism is the covenant itself. Therefore, since circumcision was administered to infants during the OT as a sign and seal of God’s covenant, so too should infants within the NT be administered baptism as a sign and seal of God’s covenant. (Pierre-Charles Marcel, The Biblical Doctrine of Infant Baptism, 199).
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