Baptists and Optimism — Part 2

Our guest blogger, Jay Chambers, is out of town this week attending a family member’s funeral in Alabama. I will use his absence as an opportunity to contribute some thoughts related to the series of posts he began last week (here).

Jay wants to show that adopting an optimistic view of the kingdom of God in history (like inmillennialism¹) does not force us Baptists to abandon our ideas of baptism and the church. We believe that baptism is only for those who profess faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And we want our churches to comprise only those who submit to such believer’s baptism.² These positions complement optimism.

As Jay said, optimistic Christians often believe in pedobaptism—the baptism of infants. In this post, I want to examine this position from a Baptist (and inmillennial) perspective.

First, let’s discuss a few vocabulary words. I use the term “creation kingdom” to describe God’s rule over all things (cf. Dan 4:35). Within God’s creation kingdom, He has a “church kingdom.” By this, I mean His rule over his people through covenants.³

I will use the terms “old covenant” and “new covenant” because of Paul’s language in Hebrews: “In that He says, ‘A new covenant,’ He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away” (Heb 8:13). Christian writers use other terms for these covenants, including the covenant of works (or the law covenant) and the covenant of grace.

Children in the Old Covenant

In the Mosaic age, God ruled Israel—His called-out people (or church, cf. Acts 7:38 KJV)—through the old covenant. They comprised a kingdom (cf. Exod 19:6). 

This church kingdom included all the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They were to circumcise their male children as the sign of their covenant status (cf. Gen 17:10; Lev 12:3).

In this period, God mentioned the difference between circumcision of the flesh and that of the heart. He said to those who had the sign of the covenant in their flesh, “Circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be stiff-necked no longer” (Deut 10:16).

But Jewish children entered God’s church kingdom even though their hearts were uncircumcised.

The Reformation

During the “last days” (Heb 1:2) of the Mosaic age, God reformed how He wanted men to worship Him. Jesus told a Samaritan woman about this change: 

Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father.… The hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:21–24)

Paul said the old covenant worship was symbolic, “concerned only with foods and drinks, various washings, and fleshly ordinances imposed until the time of reformation” (Heb 9:10). The old covenant had many symbols or types. The “reformation” took these elements away and replaced them with the things they symbolized.

For example, God told Moses how to ordain priests and offer sacrifices. But Paul said these served as “the copy and shadow of the heavenly things” (Heb 8:3). Later, he said, “The law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect” (Heb 10:1).

The old covenant saints worshipped God through types that pointed to our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the antitype—the reality—that replaced these things during the reformation: “By one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified” (Heb 10:14). The old covenant priests no longer exist, for we now have the one true High Priest over the house of God (Heb 10:21).

The reformation changed the way people worship God. Under the old covenant, Israel after the flesh (1 Cor 10:18) worshiped through types. Under the new covenant, redefined Israel worships in a new and living way (Heb 10:20). God has moved His people from shadow to substance.⁴

Children in the New Covenant

The reformation also redefined Israel. In the messianic age, under the new covenant, 

He is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: but he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter. (Rom 2:28–29)

Now, a person must possess “circumcision … of the heart” to qualify as a Jew. And such Jews comprise “the Israel of God” (Gal 6:16). They are His called-out people (or, church, cf. Eph 1:22), and they are a kingdom (cf. Matt 16:18–19). 

This redefinition of Israel lies at the heart of the new covenant:

This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. (Heb 8:10–11)

“In the new age all members of the covenant … know the Lord, for their sins [are] perfectly forgiven without the need of a sacrificial system”⁵ (cf. Jer 31:31; Heb 10:9–10, 14). 

Jesus stressed this change regarding birth into the kingdom:

Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, “You must be born again.” The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit. (John 3:5–8)

In the Mosaic age, Jews who were “born of the flesh” took part in God’s church kingdom. In the messianic age, only those who are born of the Spirit do so. 

Paul K. Jewett provides an excellent summary of how this change affects the role of children:

 In the age of type and anticipation, [the promise of the seed made to Abraham] embraced not only those who shared Abraham’s faith but also the whole nation of Israel, which descended from his loins according to the flesh. In the age of fulfillment the promise embraces the true seed according to the Spirit, typified by the literal seed according to the flesh.… Therefore, those who are of faith are to be baptized—which is precisely believer baptism.⁶

We Baptists give the sign of the new covenant (baptism) to our spiritual children who, “as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word” (1 Pet 2:2).

An Objection

Christians who think their infants participate in the new covenant reject this believers-only view of the kingdom. They sometimes use Jesus’ parable of the tares to prove their position:

As the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age. The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness. (Matt 13:40–41)

They say this shows the kingdom has unbelievers in it, and the Lord will not remove them (i.e., the tares) until He comes in our future. They then use other passages to show unbelieving infants are in the kingdom if they have believing parents.

Inmillennialism helps the Baptist cause here.⁷ It says “the end of the age” in the parable is the end of the Mosaic age. The Son of Man changed the makeup of His kingdom through the “great tribulation” (Matt 24:21). He destroyed the temple and its typical services. He cast Israel after the flesh “into a furnace of fire” (Matt 13:42). Now, in the messianic age, “The righteous … shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matt 13:43). 

The wheat and tare mixture in the kingdom of God no longer exists as it did under the old covenant. In the new covenant, as the above Scriptures show, God’s kingdom produces only wheat.

Conclusion

The following diagram summarizes the points I have made regarding redefined Israel:

I want to end this post by affirming my love and respect for Christians who believe in infant baptism. They are my “fellow workers for the kingdom of God” (Col 4:11). My affection for those who preach an optimistic view of the kingdom is strong.

However, I want my Baptist brothers and sisters to know that optimism does not require us to change our baptism and church views.

I look forward to Jay returning to pursue this subject further. 

1. I documented this perspective in Michael A. Rogers, Inmillennialism: Redefining the Last Days (Tullahoma, TN: McGahan Publishing House, 2020). This book is available here in hardcopy and here as a PDF. A free summary PDF document of inmillennialism is here.
2. The image in this post is River Baptism in New Bern (NC) by an unknown photographer at the turn of the 20th century. This file (here) is in the public domain (PD-US).
3. I discuss these terms in The Seven Mystic Figures—Part 2: Exodus.
4. Samuel D. Renihan, From Shadow to Substance: The Federal Theology of the English Particular Baptists (1642–1704) (Oxford: Centre for Baptist History and Heritage, 2018).
5. Andreas J. Köstenberger and Peter Thomas O’Brien, Salvation to the Ends of the Earth: A Biblical Theology of Mission (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2001), 43 (emphasis added).
6. Paul K. Jewett, Infant Baptism and the Covenant of Grace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 236 (his emphasis).
7. See Meditations in Matthew 13: The Weeds.