Infant or Believer Baptist?
The following quote is from a prominent pastor. He posted this at an Evangelical blog that receives support from evangelical Baptists and Presbyterians. Can you tell if he is a paedobaptist (infants should be baptized; paedo- as in child) or a credobaptist (baptism for believers;
credo- as in creed, I believe, etc.)?
I am on record as holding the view that the children of believers are not automatically saved. We should believingly employ all the means of grace for our children’s salvation, with holy boldness and confidence in God’s grace. But our children nonetheless do not take personal possession of the eternal blessings of the covenant of grace until they have a personal faith in Jesus Christ. Neither birth nor baptism secure them salvation, any more than did Ishmael’s birth and circumcision. For our children, as for ourselves, salvation occurs through a personal faith in Christ that involves knowledge, assent, and trust.
...Moreover, it is presumed that people like me treat our children as “little heathens” until we have manufactured some crisis experience that will permit us to tell all our friends that little Johnny “has gotten saved”. Really, I don’t know what church they saw such things in, but I’m glad I never went to it. All my children are covenant children who derive vast benefits from God’s covenant love for our family. To inherit all the benefits of the covenant of grace – including the eternal ones – they must come to personal, saving faith, which I cannot manufacture but which I trust God will do through the ordinary means of grace.
The real drama meat of the story, of course, is that the pastor's son was converted. Praise God for sovereign grace.
Go here to find out who wrote this, and what view of baptism they hold:Reformation 21 » My Five-Year-Old's Conversion: From Death to Life
