Francis Turretin, the Reformed theologian of the seventeenth century, carefully distinguishes the Reformed view of infant faith from Lutheran and Anabaptist claims. Anabaptists denied any faith to infants so that they could justify their refusal to baptize them. Lutherans affirmed (rightly) that covenant infants were believers, but made no distinction between that sort of faith that is in infants and that which is possible for those who have matured cognitively and been taught verbally. In Turretin’s terminology, while infants do not possess “actual faith,” they do possess “seminal or radical and habitual faith” (Institutes, 15.14.2, vol 2, p. 583). Actual faith would include a profession of knowledge, intellectual acts, or hearing and meditating upon the word (15.14.3, vol 2, p. 584). Thus, Turretin understands Hebrews 11.6 to refer to actual faith and writes:

When the apostle says, “Without faith, it is impossible to please God,” he speaks of adults, various example of whom he in the same place commemorates and whom alone the proposed description of faith suits (Hebrews 11.1). Now it is different with infants who please God on account of the satisfaction of Christ bestowed upon them and imputed by God to obtain the remission of their sins, even if they themselves do not apprehend it and cannot apprehend it by a defect of age (15.14.7, vol 2, p. 585).

Nevertheless, while Christian infants don’t have or need adult faith in order to be saved, there is some change inaugurated in elect children within the covenant which grows and flowers over time–one which involves the beginning of faith at an infant level: “Although infants do not have actual faith, the seed or root of faith cannot be denied to them, which is ingenerated in them from early age and in its own time goes forth in act (human instrumentation being applied from without and a greater efficacy of the Holy Spirit within)” (15.14.13, vol 2, p. 586).

While Turretin’s major work was a massive three-volume theology that dealt with opposing views, his nephew, Benedict Pictet, publicized his positions in a much shorter and simpler Christian Theology. Pictet deals with the possibility of infant faith under his discussion of infant baptism. (pp 418-420). He divides baptized infants into four classes.

1. Those who grow up unbelieving and impenitent. For these “baptism sets forth nothing and seals nothing.”
2. Those who grow up unbelieving and impenitent until they are thrity or forty years old. For these, “baptism does not disclose or put forth its efficacy before they are actually converted.” (I have no idea why Pictet is so specific about the age. If I was forced to guess I might throw out the possibility that Pictet thinks that someone who is rebellious at the age of twenty may merely be a backslidden rather than a confirmed unbeliever. But again, I am guessing.)
3. Those who grow up as believers. In these, “while reason unfolds itself, piety and faith are discovered, corresponding with the good instruction of their parents. For such covenant children growing up believing, “we may say, that baptism has been efficacious, that God has forgiven their original sin, and given them such a measure of the Spirit, as renders them capable of embracing the offers of the gospel, when reason begins to dawn upon their minds.”
4. Those who die in infancy. In the case of such infants, “we cannot doubt but that baptism … is a public and authoritative declaration on the part of God, that he has forgiven them original sin, and granted them title to life; since infants cannot be saved without forgiveness of sins and sanctification.”

It is in regard to his third class that Pictet elaborates on the possibility of infant faith. It is clear from his discussion that he regards these children, not as converted in youth, but as brought into a saving relationship with Christ while yet infants. He writes:

But should anyone say, he cannot comprehend the operations of the Holy Ghost in these cases; we reply that the thing ought not to be denied, merely because we do not comprehend it. It is not more difficult to conceive the idea of the Holy Spirit restoring the faculties of the infant, and rendering them capable of receiving evangelical objects, as soon as reason shall dawn, than it is to conceive the idea of original sin, which is nothing else but the depravation of those faculties, inclining them to objects of sense. If we can conceive of the principle of evil before any act of it, why not the principle of good before any act of the same? If Adam had not sinned, his descendants would have been naturally innocent; and why cannot it be conceived, that the Holy Spirit places infants, who are born sinful, in some state of regeneration? The cause of our corruption is the proneness of the soul to follow the motions of the body: why then should we not conceive, that the Holy Spirit prevents the soul from following those motions, and gives it the power of directing them aright?

(Readers should note: I doubt that this account of the nature of original sin, as “the proneness of the soul to follow the motions of the body,” is correct.)

While Pictet thinks these considerations are relevant to infant baptism, he doesn’t think that the regeneration of elect infants invariably occurs at the time of baptism. He replies to such ideas that

they may obtain all spiritual blessings from the very moment of their birth, but that these may be confirmed in baptism, which is the seal, pledge, or earnest of them; the infant, indeed, knows not what is taking place, but when he arrives at years of discretion, then he recognizes it, and from the knowledge of it, possesses every motive to holiness. Some infants are regenerated in the womb, and before baptism, others in baptism, others after: we assign no particular period.

Interesting stuff going on. A pastor does a bang-up job defending Schenck and also really pointing out the shift that is taking place in Christian thinking (both Reformed and otherwise) that roughly corresponds to the shift from Des Cartes to Wittgenstein (the later).

Here is a challenge for you: name one relationship that you have that is not “external.” Other than masturbation, there is no such thing (and that sin itself involves remembering or imagining external realities one has learned about). Relationships are with other people and involve communication from outside ourselves. Thus, we are saved by hearing a message preached or reading a printed word with our eyes or being immersed in a new life that originates from “the external world.”

Of course, whether one responds in faith to this message from outside is dependent on the sovereign work of the Spirit. It would be perfectly possible for two identical twins to respond differently to the grace of God manifested in Church and Gospel. But that doesn’t change the fact that we live and breathe and have our being in externals. The only true sign of that saving work of the Spirit is to be found in whether or not one will embrace and live in the grace communicated externally.

I realize the metaphor of “inward” and “outward” to point out the need for sincerityand to warn against hypcritical fakery is a useful metaphor that is used in the Bible. But it has somehow been blended with a modern metaphysic that isn’t supportable from Scripture.

The fact is various people have been butting up against the modernist cage of ontological individualism for years (note: finding a word for tendencies is a dangerous and vague affair. There are good and bad things to say about various forms of “individualism.” Sorry for the lack of precision). One of the major pioneers in this regard, was John Williamson Nevin, of whom D. G. Heart has just written an excellent study: John Williamson Nevin: High Church Calvinist. Of course, being a pioneer, no doubt Nevin traveled down some false trails. Indeed sometimes he seems to out-do anyone else in invoking the external/internal dichotomy. Still, he was greatly helpful both in recoverint the Reformers and the Patristics and in critiquing the philosophical milieu of his day.

I could add to the bibliography but that will need to wait for some other day. The other conversation is at the Boar’s Head Tavern about baptism, paedo v. credo. Oooh. Never have I so wished I was a member. Non-reformed credobaptists and paedobaptists are all uniting against the Reformed for not acknowledging a univocal definition of “saved.” Whether one rejects or accepts “once saved always saved” is the key to whether one should be a paedobaptist or a credobaptist.

What would I say if I had their ear? “Brothers and sisters are you really going to hold your Bible in one hand and insist on a univocal technical meaning for “salvation” and its derivatives on the other?”

Actually, that is just an afterthought. The real thing that struck me was in response to the treatment of the Reformed tradition as some sort of strange anomaly within the Christian heritage as a whole. I seem to remember that Calvin was not the only one to unite double predestination and a sovereign gift of the Spirit guarranteeing final salvation for the elect alone with a baptismal gift that was objective and real. Is it really that surprising that there are still a few Augustinians in the world?

Oh well, it is still an interesting conversation, especially the material from Kierkegaard.

It is hard to remember, when one reads this response, that Thornwell and Charles Hodge were members of the same church and respected one another, even as they disagreed at points, as Christians and as teachers.

I don’t get it. Schenck’s book has been highly recommended by many including Dr. Robert Rayburn of Faith Presbyterian Church. It is not some marginal book suddenly coming from outside mainstream presbyterianism, but has always been there. Granted, from the Reformers, to the Puritans to the Presbyterians there have been many other things in the mix. But why suddenly insist that only one flavor is permitted?

My own opinion is that there is no way anyone can deny a startling shift in the way Christian children during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries involving virtually every Protestant denomination, one that expanded Baptists and shrunk the Presbyterians. The drastic drop of baptisms in Presbyterian Church, and even more in American Puritan (Congregationalist) Churches is a matter of public record. Whatever the heritage he may have been extending, on the practical issues of revising the Book of Church Order regarding membership, I have never seen any response to Schenck’s thesis that Thornwell was the innovator and Charles Hodge the defender of the historic practices. Accusations about motives are no substitute for engagement with the text.

It seems to me that recent suggestions that the Bible mandates we should restore the historical practice of paedocommunion are driving some to place the Presbyterian mainstream much closer to the Baptist heritage. Everyone is moving and shifting the heritage but not everyone is aware of it. That would explain to me why some Presbyterians sound like Kierkegaard.

I repeat: Thornwell and Hodge respected one another. I have always been in presbyteries which expected a wide diversity within the boundaries of the Reformed Faith. I think in our present circumstances especially, nothing else makes sense.

I should point out that I too dislike “presumptive” regeneration. But the fact that children grow up to show themselves and the world that they are unregenerate is no different than the problem of older professing believers who later show themselves and the world that they are unregenerate. By this reasoning, no one should ever be regarded as a Christian (an option some consistent “calvinists” have insisted upon).

Since the season is coming, it is time to provide vaccines to common diseases that spread among Christians during this time of year.

Don’t worry. The medicine is not only helpful, but it tastes good too.

So, when I know I’m alone in the house, and decide I need to pray about something, why do I instinctively whisper? What’s up with that? Can anyone imagine the author of Hebrews reasoning that We all had fathers of the flesh and only whispered to them. Shall we not only whisper to the Father of Spirits when we pray?

Makes no sense at all.

The good news is that the iTunes store is selling TV episodes. The bad news is that Veronica Mars is not available and I’ve missed every single episode of the new season.

Last night, I was in what, to my sense of scale, was a megachurch. It met in what used to be a Target store, was huge, had a gymn and a big room for weight machines and treadmills, etc. I was in a room with a shelf full of Sunday School aids for young children. Out of bordom I started flipping through a 52-lessons workbook.

The first lesson was entitled “ten gifts” and it involved putting writing on pieces of paper and boxing them, wrapping them like they were birthday presents, and delivering them in a bag over one’s shoulder as if the teacher was Santa Clause.

The writing, of course, was the ten commandments from Exodus 20. These are God’s gifts of grace, the children were to be taught, which allow us to serve Him and live in peace with one another.

The church was MO Synod Lutheran and the publisher was Concordia House. Luther’s catechisms continue to bear fruit.

“…do not let that wretched, mutilated thing be thrown between me and the Bible.”

I’m used to the fact that the more one is a stranger to the stream of Biblical Theology in the line of Vos, Ridderbos, Gaffin, and others the more strange the work of N. T. Wright will seem to be. Thus, my first thrill of discovery in him was one of confirmation. Here was a guy using Biblical Theology to do apologetics at both the scholarly and popular levels. And he does it great (bad grammar, but I’m sticking with it). It was like discovering that I had powers that I had not hitherto known about.

But Wright has occasionally taught me something new and different that has helped me understand the Bible much better. The chief among these is how Paul uses the term, “the righteousness of God.” What bothers me is how obvious this was in the Bible but how I had simply never even thought about it. I guess an unjustified sense of satisfaction kept me from seeing the evidence. But whatever the cause of the disease, Wright’s intoduction of new ideas helped me see the light. I say “helped,” because he did not exactly show me much. I ran into this in his way to brief What Saint Paul Really Said which simply does not provide enough argument or explanation. Frankly, Wright sounded weird. So I resolved to try to find out what he meant and why he meant it.

Here are the results in sermons and essays:

• The Righteousness of God: A Sermon on Isaiah 45.21-25
• God’s Righteousness & Our Justification
• The Righteous Judge
• The Great Exchange
• Romans & the Role of Israel in the Atonement

This last essay is my favorite and most embarrassing. I need to go re-edit it for misplaced verse references and other mistakes. A search for the term “rightouesness of God,” will turn up great stuff by Rich Lusk and Derrick Ollif. This, however, shows how Wright has helped me. I am very grateful for his mysterious (to my brain) statements in his little book on Paul because they made me go back and study the Bible. I think I am a better expounder of the Scriptures because of his help.

Hopefully this will help others as well.

Justin Taylor, of Reformation21 fame, writes:

Here are Poythress’s 12 Maxims for Symphonic Theology. Without explanation, some will doubtless come across as cryptic. If that’s the case, you’ll just have to read the book!

Indeed you will. Here it is.

1. PERSPECTIVES IN EVERYDAY LIFE
2. PERSPECTIVES IN THE BIBLE
3. EXAMPLES OF USEFUL BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVES
4. PERSPECTIVES IN THEOLOGY
5. IN DEFENSE OF SYMPHONIC THEOLOGY
6. WORDS AND PRECISION
7. TWELVE MAXIMS OF SYMPHONIC THEOLOGY

While someone once confidently assured me, without argument, that Frame and Poythress were guilty of “relativism” and “pluralism” (if you want to see the tremors of the present earthquake over the so-called “federal vision” just look in the appendices of Frame’s The Doctrine of God and look at all the attacks he had to defend himself from), the fact is that Poythress and Frame simply used the accomplishments of the Reformed Heritage to produce a metatheology that provides the Church with great reasources for dealing with post-modernism (though that is by no means the only advantage of their great work). It is sad this book is not more widely read.