Conference starts in one minute. Stay tuned.

So when I finally got to start moving and get feeling back into … various parts of my body as the plane parked at the San Francisco airport, I noticed the woman sitting next to me closed her book and it was, of course, The Da Vinci Code. Immediately I felt a great deal of remorse for having four hours of opportunity pass me by. If I had only known what she was reading, imagine the possibilities.

But the fact is that it is hardest for me to converse with strangers when they are violating my private space and I theirs. When a plane is sparsely seated, talking feels like one is recognizably reaching out to the distant other. Even when the gesture is not welcomed it is usually understood as a friendly gesture. When one’s elbows and shoulders are shoved next to one’s neighbor, it seems just like an added intrusion. All my conversations in planes that I can remember involved and empty seat between us.

I’m in Seattle now. Hopefully John Barach will show up soon and we’ll drive to the Conference together.

I finally made some real progress in J. I. Packer’s dissertation on Baxter. Lots of stuff to blog but too much–so I’m not going to blog about it.

Other than that, all I can say is that this is the time of the year when visiting Seattle makes me wish I could move back here.

Adam was made upright: “holiness was the primitive, natural constitution of man, and was before sin, and is the perfection or health of nature, and the right employment or improvement of it, and tends to its happiness.” Baxter magnified the glory of man’s original righteousness, as Augustinian theologians have always done. Adam’s reason ruled his will and passions, he followed with all his heart after good and, therefore, after God, his natural inclination led him to cleave to his Maker, and he found supreme delight in so doing. But he was made in via, not in patria, not yet mature and confirmed in holy humanity, and therefore mutable. “We deny not but as to degrees, Adam’s nature was to grow up to more perfection; and that his natural holiness contained not a sufficient immediate aptitude and promptitude which might afterward be required of him; but this was to be obtained in the exercise of that holiness which he had.” God’s purpose was to crown his obedience, when his probation was over, by confirming him in the habit of love.

Faith Like a Child
Children’s spirituality has been getting increased academic attention, with implications for our churches.
by Scottie May

Two new books contribute to this growing field. When Children Became People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity by O. M. Bakke (Fortress Press) and Paedofaith: A Primer on the Mystery of Infant Salvation and a Handbook for Covenant Parents by Rich Lusk (Athanasius Press), both published in 2005, consider the faith of infants and children using biblical texts and sources of church history, implicitly raising sociological and anthropological questions for the reader.

Bakke, a church historian in Norway, begins his examination of children and childhood in the early church and continues through the patristic writings. He uses data from both Christian and non-Christian sources from A.D. 100-500 to draw attention to the fact that Christians, from the time of Jesus on, apparently viewed and treated children differently than did the surrounding dominant cultures. He explores the difference Christianity made in the view and treatment of children in that era.

On the other hand, Lusk is a Presbyterian pastor in Birmingham, Alabama, writing to today’s “covenant” parents. He seeks to encourage them to be vigilant and faithful in their covenantal parenting task, because “the promises of God to our children apply even from the point of conception,” and to clarify the issue of “whether or not infants of Christian parents can have faith.” Lusk argues from the Psalms and the Gospels and then the Reformers—from Calvin on to contemporary Reformed writers—that the covenant promises of Scripture are no different for children than for adults.

Read the rest…

Westminster Larger Catechism #39 reads in part: “It was requisite that the mediator should be man, that he might advance our nature…”

I would love to find some contemporary commentary on this answer.

Below I wrote on

Ursinus & how infants are called

and pointed out that Ursinus’ views on how people are converted by the word preached are views which he specifically limited to the case of adults, whereas infants are saved by a faith given in a different manner.

But Ursinus is the author of the Heidelberg Catechism. What does Heidelberg have to do with Westminster Abbey?

Why much in every way.

According to Drs. Scott Clark’s and Joel Beeke’s essay, “Ursinus, Oxford, and the Westminster Divines,” in the second volume of The Westminster Confession into the 21st Century: Essays in Remembrance of the 350th Anniversary of the Westminster Assembl, edited by Lig Duncan, Ursinus was enormously influential in England and thus iss likely to have had a great influence on Westminster. They say:

Ursinus played a significant role in mediating Calvinism to Oxford. His connection with English Calvinism…lies first of all in the Heidelberg Catechism itself and secondarily in his lectures on the Heidelberg Catechism…. The Catechism was widely used in England and, in January 1579, Oxford University required that it “should be used for the extirpation of every heresy and the preparation of the youth in true piety.” It was the only catechism printed by the University.’ (pp. 9f.). Henry Parry’s 1587 translation of Ursinus’s lectures on the Catechism was the standard textbook in Oxford in the early seventeenth century (p. 12).

With that in mind, you might want to reread my post and ask yourself how likely it is that the Westminster Divines thought that what they said about the cognitive nature of faith and the need of the preached word to convert unbelievers was meant to apply to infants of believing parents being baptized and raised in the Faith.

The fact that the public doesn’t scoff at a novel like the Da Vinci Code, and put it in the category of Hudson Hawk, is because of generations of enculturated anti-Catholicism.

I’ve already linked them once but they keep posting great material! Way to go!

Addendum: See this Post about relevance (from information provided by Matthew in the comments)

One reason I have a son named “Nevin” is that Jennifer ruled out Zacharias Ursinus. Every time I re-read him, I get wistful. His lectures on the Heidelberg Catechism (of which he is the author) are incomparable. William Goode claims that Ursinus thought the elect baptized infants were regenerated at baptism. I can see where Goode gets that idea, but I’m sure it is wrong (at least defining “regeneration” in the way Goode, as an good Evangelical anti-tractarian would define the term). Ursinus insists that the sacraments are not absolutely necessary. I don’t see any way that is compatible with Goode’s view. Plainly, while Ursinus affirms strongly that grace is conferred in baptism, he doesn’t think the children of believers are normally in any danger.

Just as plainly, Ursinus believes the children of Christian are Christians.

That is old news for all Reformed readers, of course. What is interesting is that Ursinus provides interesting information for those who want to claim that any such Christian status of uncomprehending infants is rulled out by the Westminster Confession of Faith:

The grace of faith, whereby the elect are enabled to believe to the saving of their souls, is the work of the Spirit of Christ in their hearts, and is ordinarily wrought by the ministry of the Word, by which also, and by the administration of the sacraments, and prayer, it is increased and strengthened (Chapter 14, paragraph 1).

This is interpreted in a way to clash with Calvin’s claim that baptism is inextricably involved in the ministry of the Word for baptized believers:

I know it is a common belief that forgiveness, which at our first regeneration we receive by baptism alone, is after baptism procured by means of penitence and the keys (see chap. 19 sec. 17). But those who entertain this fiction err from not considering that the power of the keys, of which they speak, so depends on baptism, that it ought not on any account to be separated from it. The sinner receives forgiveness by the ministry of the Church; in other words, not without the preaching of the gospel. And of what nature is this preaching? That we are washed from our sins by the blood of Christ. And what is the sign and evidence of that washing if it be not baptism? We see, then, that that forgiveness has reference to baptism. This error had its origin in the fictitious sacrament of penance, on which I have already touched. What remains will be said at the proper place. There is no wonder if men who, from the grossness of their minds, are excessively attached to external things, have here also betrayed the defect, not contented with the pure institution of God, they have introduced new helps devised by themselves, as if baptism were not itself a sacrament of penance. But if repentance is recommended during the whole of life, the power of baptism ought to have the same extent. Wherefore, there can be no doubt that all the godly may, during the whole course of their lives, whenever they are vexed by a consciousness of their sins, recall the remembrance of their baptism, that they may thereby assure themselves of that sole and perpetual ablution which we have in the blood of Christ (John Calvin, Institutes, IV, 15, 4).

This basic position was still considered orthodox and Reformed as late as the time of Francis Turretin:

Does baptism… take away past and present sins only and leave future sins to repentances? Or does it extend itself to sins committed not only before but also after baptism? The former we deny; the latter we affirm against the Romanists.…

II… [T]he Romansists teach… “The virtue of baptism does not reach to future sins, but the sacrament of penitence is necessary for their expiation.” Thus, the Council of Trent expresses it: “If anyone shall say that all the sins which are committed after baptism are either dismissed or made venial by the recollection of faith of the received baptism alone, let him be anathema (session 7, Canon 10, Schroeder, p. 54)….

XII. …However, we maintain that by baptism is sealed to us the remission not only of past and present, but also of future sins; still so that penitence (not a sacramental work and what they invent, but that which is commanded in the gospel) and especially saving faith is not excluded, but is coordinated with baptism as a divinely constituted means of our salvation (Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, vol. 3).

What is interesting about Ursinus is that he makes statements that sound very much like the statement produced from the Westminster Confession of Faith:

The Holy Ghost ordinarily produces faith … in us by the ecclesiastical ministry, which consists of two parts, the word and the sacraments. The Holy Ghost works faith in our hearts by the preaching of the gospel; and cherishes, confirms, and seals it by the use of the sacraments (Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, p. 340).

Faith is begun and confirmed by the word; by the sacraments it is only confirmed, as in the supper. The word teaches and confirms without the sacraments, but the sacaments not without the word. Adults are not saved without a knowledge of the word; but men may be regenerated and saved without the use of the sacraments, if this omission be not accompanied with any contempt. The word is preached to unbelievers and wicked men; the church should admit none to the sacraments, but such as will have us to regard as members of his kingdom (p. 356; emphasis added)

I’m not going to bother producing the copious quotations of Ursinus explicitly saying that the infants of Christians are those to be regarded as members of God’s kingdom and are not to be considered “unbelievers and wicked.” The requirement that they be converted by some event in which they understand the preaching of the Word is foreign to Ursinus’ way of thinking. They are to be nurtured by Word and Sacrament as believers. Adults are the ones who must be brought to conscious faith through the word, infants can be raised in it.

Thus, A. A. Hodge, a rather famous Westminsterian, wrote:

When the child is taught and trained under the regimen of his baptism–-taught from the first to recognize himself as a child of God, with all its privileges and duties; trained to think, feel, and act as a child of God, to exercise filial love, to render filial obedience–-the benefit to the child directly is obvious and immeasurable. He has invaluable birthright privileges, and corresponding obligations and responsibilities (A. A. Hodge, “The Sacraments:Baptism,” in Evangelical Theology: Lectures on Doctrine [Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 1990], 337, emphasis added).

I am sure that other views were meant to be encompassed by the Westminster Assembly, but there is certainly no reason or method by which Ursinus’ position can be ruled out of court. Consider the Larger Catechism as it applies to someone who was baptized as an infant:

The needful but much neglected duty of improving our baptism, is to be performed by us all our life long, especially in the time of temptation, and when we are present at the administration of it to others; by serious and thankful consideration of the nature of it, and of the ends for which Christ instituted it, the privileges and benefits conferred and sealed thereby, and our solemn vow made therein; by being humbled for our sinful defilement, our falling short of, and walking contrary to, the grace of baptism, and our engagements; by growing up to assurance of pardon of sin, and of all other blessings sealed to us in that sacrament; by drawing strength from the death and resurrection of Christ, into whom we are baptized, for the mortifying of sin, and quickening of grace; and by endeavoring to live by faith, to have our conversation in holiness and righteousness, as those that have therein given up their names to Christ; and to walk in brotherly love, as being baptized by the same Spirit into one body

Notice, pardon is a possession that has already been sealed to you in baptism. You are supposed to grow into assurance of it.

After the Assembly had come and gone, Francis Turretin, the Reformed theologian of the seventeenth century, carefully distinguished 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). Like Zacharias Ursinus, Turrettin did not believe that infants had to be called by the Word in the same way as adult converts. However, “seminal” and infant’s faith might be, it was sufficient for justification.

I have pretty much delagated all personal stuff to Jennifer. I single today’s post out because I had exactly the same thoughts on good behavior rewards but didn’t learn hers until I read her blog. And because I emphatically agree it was great to begin the day with a chapel service and sing “Happy Birthday, God’s Children” to a couple of the ones God has shared with us.