In the Bible, covenant children are encouraged to trust in God because they belong to him.
In our churches today, covenant children are encouraged to trust in God in order to belong to him.
In the Bible, covenant children are encouraged to trust in God because they belong to him.
In our churches today, covenant children are encouraged to trust in God in order to belong to him.
Amen to #1!
Hi Mark,
Great comment. BTW…when can we get you on Covenant Radio!?
Thanks for the defense, by the way, on Scott Clarks blog.
Whenever you want William.
You can email me by my first name at this domain name.
And I’m privileged to defend you. To accuse a layman of latitudinarianism for interviewing pastors in his own denominaiton is simply evil.
I wonder if both sides can converse more productively if we take a step back for our starting point. Above all the belonging and believing stands Christ. Everyone should be able to say that our children ought to trust in Christ because he is Lord of all, our children included (they belong to him at least to this extent). And almost all can say that our children are to gratefully and joyfully trust in him because he loves them (to some degree at least) and is good to them. These are excellent ways to motivate our children to trust regardless of which side we’re on. And for both sides, we must help our children to understand that their assurance isn’t rooted in either a conviction of their belonging or in the sincerity of their faith, but in Christ himself and his character and his promises.
Of course, these promises have teeth and we must search out their implications. But I think this may be a secondary matter in this particular discussion. (Personally, it was actually this starting point above that began to lead me to a conviction that my children do belong to Christ.)
This is not addressed to you, Mark — in fact these are all things of which God has used you to remind me; thank you! I’m just wondering aloud what is the most productive way to speak and to parent past this disagreement. Assuming the disagreement will persist, I think it’s profitable to reflect on just how much we all have to agree upon.
Put another way, what can I say to a church full of dear baptistic friends that they can heartily agree with? Not as a way of sneaking FV in via Trojan horse, but as a way of genuinely encouraging and equipping them in the task of parenting.
If you took the word “covenant” out of that sentence, would it really change the meaning?
Yeah, because pagan babies are in a different category.
I think Josh means, what if we replaced “covenant” with “our” or “baptized”? We Reformed folks tend to overdose on the word “covenant” and “covenantal” to such a degree sometimes that it begins to mean everything and nothing or becomes an abstraction. The phrase “covenant children” can sound like weird jargon to those outside of our tradition.
Right. But I was trying to speak in a known tongue for Presbyterians.
In my opinion, the Bible does a lot with a covenantal structure without using the word all that much. We should probably go and do likewise.