McAtee Contra the Baptist Fairchild On Baptism

This is from some Baptist Minister in Houston Texas serving at a Mega Church. Like most mega Churches the ministers are long on feel goods and short on doctrine. His name is Rev. L. David Fairchild.

Fairchild writes;

“The fatal flaw in paedobaptism is that it treats the New Covenant like the Old. A mixed bag. Some believe, some do not. But that is not how the Bible describes it. Jeremiah 31 and Hebrews 8 are clear. The New Covenant is made with those who know God. Who have been forgiven. Who have the Spirit. That is not a crowd you get into by birth. That is a regenerate people.

BLMc responds,

This would be true if it were not the case that the Old Covenant is like the New Covenant. The only difference is that the Old Covenant is the New Covenant not yet come to full flower. The Old Covenant is the not yet mature New Covenant.

That the New Covenant is like the Old Covenant in that both covenant are a mixed bad is seen in the fact that in the Old Covenant not all of Israel was of Israel as the Holy Spirit says in Romans 9. Some of Israel belonged to the outward administration of the covenant without having the essence of the covenant. In the same way the New Covenant is a mixed bag. We see this for example in Jesus warnings in Revelation to the seven churches that He would take their lampstands away if they were not faithful. We see this in the book of Hebrews with the warnings against falling away. We see this when John says of unregenerate people of the Church;

“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us.”  I John 2:19

Then there is the Wheat and Tares parable that many a theologian has seen being about the Church having in it both wheat and tares.

So Fairchild’s idea that the New Covenant is comprised only of regenerate people is just a Baptist assumption with no foundation. Now, it is true that the essence of the New Covenant, who is Jesus the Christ, is only occupied by the regenerate but there are many people who are in the administrative outskirts of the New Covenant who do not have the essence of the New Covenant who will say on that day …

22  Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? 23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. Matthew 7

So, clearly it is a Baptist interpretive mistake to say that only regenerate people are in the boundaries of the New Covenant. It has always been the case, both in the Old Covenant and the New Covenant that not all of Israel is of Israel.

In terms of Fairchild’s appeal to the language of Jeremiah and Hebrews Calvin easily dismisses Fairchild’s mis-interpretative ravings on this score;

“It may be asked, whether there was under the Law (Old Covenant) a sure and certain promise of salvation, whether the fathers had the gift of the Spirit, whether they enjoyed God’s paternal favor through the remission of sins? Yes, it is evident that they worshipped God with a sincere heart and a pure conscience, and that they walked in his commandments, and this could not have been the case except they had been inwardly taught by the Spirit; and it is also evident, that whenever they thought of their sins, they were raised up by the assurance of a gratuitous pardon. And yet the Apostle, by referring the prophecy of Jeremiah to the coming of Christ, seems to rob them of these blessings. To this I reply, that he does not expressly deny that God formerly wrote his Law on their hearts and pardoned their sins, but he makes a comparison between the less and the greater. As then the Father has put forth more fully the power of his Spirit under the kingdom of Christ, and has poured forth more abundantly his mercy on mankind, this exuberance renders insignificant the small portion of grace which he had been pleased to bestow on the fathers. We also see that the promises were then obscure and intricate, so that they shone only like the moon and stars in comparison with the clear light of the Gospel which shines brightly on us.”

Calvin’s Commentary
Hebrews 8

L. David Fairchild writes,

“So baptizing someone with no faith, no regeneration, and no profession, like an infant, just does not fit. It breaks the meaning of baptism from the inside out.”

BLMc responds,

In point of fact since regeneration & justification are all God’s work with man contributing nothing baptizing infants is a perfect picture of God doing all the doing in saving helpless man. What Fairchild has done here is what all Baptists do. Fairchild has turned man’s faith into a work that he has to exchange as a work to trade in for salvation. This is justification by faith as a work alone. It is not a particularly Christian doctrine but really does lead back to some kind of pelagian arrangement. Of course it is the Baptist who breaks the meaning of Baptism from the inside out and turns the grace of God into something that is only gracious upon man’s trading up faith for grace.

L. David Fairchild;

I know the argument. Circumcision was the sign of the Old, baptism is the sign of the New. But that logic only works if the covenant structure stays the same. And it doesn’t. The Old Covenant was temporary. Shadows and types. The New Covenant is the real thing. It is better. It doesn’t just get a new sign. It has new membership. Baptism isn’t a repackaged circumcision. It’s the sign of a new creation.

BLMc responds,

1.) This reveals the Baptist propensity to assume discontinuity between the covenants. The Reformed, on the other hand, are disposed to seeing continuity between Old and New Covenant unless explicitly told of discontinuity such as the end of the sacrificial system and the ceremonial law.

2.) To deny that there is sameness between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant suggests that

a.) God isn’t immutable but changes between Old Covenant and New Covenant. This is a serious theological problem. If there is as much change between Old Covenant and New Covenant such as Baptists like Fairchild is positing then we really have a different God in the OT then we have in the NT. This is a problem.

b.) the Old Testament believers were not saved by grace alone just as the New Testament believers are saved. This Baptist thinking posits that the OT saints if saved were saved by a different kind of salvation then the salvation by which the saints are saved by with the coming of the magnificent Jesus Christ.

c.) The reason there is a new sign for the new and better covenant is because the Lord Christ fulfills all the blood shedding required in the old covenant and so the water of Baptism is given as a sign of forgiveness. However, Baptism signifies just what circumcision signified in the Old Covenant. This explains why it is St. Paul seems to mix his circumcision and baptism metaphors in Colossians 2;

¹¹ In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body ^[h]of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, ¹² buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.

The New Covenant has come with Christ and so circumcision is no longer the sign of the covenant as was the case when the Messiah was only anticipated. The reality is that the Old Covenant promised is now realized with the coming of Christ and so the covenant sign that was both anticipatory and yet at the same time proleptic is set aside for the sign (Baptism) that the reality has come. However, inasmuch as the old covenant was a unfolding and growing reality serving as a proleptic harbinger of the new covenant the new covenant remains related to what the old covenant anticipated.

Fairchild writes,

The pattern in the New Testament is painfully obvious. Hear the gospel. Believe. Repent. Then be baptized. That’s it. Over and over. There isn’t one clear example of an infant being baptized. Not one command to do it. Every baptism you can point to involves someone responding to Christ in faith.

 BLM responds,

1.) The problem here is what St. Peter himself says in that Pentecost sermon;

“³⁸ Then Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the ^[k]remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. ³⁹ For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.’”

Now, there is no way in Hades that a 1st century Jew would’ve heard these words and thought … “I can’t bring my children to be baptized.” It is just ridiculous to contend otherwise.

2.) We know from the NT record that the Jews howled and howled about the Gentiles coming in to the covenant and yet we are to believe that the Jews did not raise a peep about their children being excluded from the “new and better covenant.”

3.) There is an abundance of household baptisms in the NT. This gives us conclusive evidence that children should be given the sign of the covenant because household baptisms as practiced in the NT scream at us that if children had been present they would have been baptized since that was the very nature of NT Household baptisms.

4.) There also isn’t one clear command or example of women taking the Eucharist. Does that therefore mean that women today shouldn’t receive the Eucharist?

Baptist logic is so jejune.

Fairchild writes,

When you baptize someone who hasn’t believed, you confuse everything. You blur the line between the visible and invisible church. You give false assurance. You end up with churches full of people who think they’re Christian because water touched their forehead decades ago. That is not the gospel.

BLMc responds,

1.) Whenever Fairchild baptizes anybody he does not know they believe. I bet more Baptists have been baptized who never believed than Reformed Babies have been baptized who never believed.

2.) Who says that a baby can’t believe? John is recorded as leaping his mother’s womb for joy thus signifying his recognition of Jesus. The Psalmist (22) writes even;

9 Yet you brought me out of the womb;
    you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast.
¹⁰ From birth I was cast on you;
    from my mother’s womb you have been my God.

3.) How can Fairchild even talk about a distinction between the visible and invisible church when he has said that he holds that all in the church are regenerate. The whole distinction between visible and invisible church rests upon the reality that not all members who say they are regenerate are indeed regenerate.

4.) The whole idea that paedo-baptist churches give false assurance is just Baptist bloviating. As paedo-baptist churches routinely preach to their people the 1st use of the law there is no false assurance going on.

5.) If Baptists want to talk about false assurance being given they should worry about the false assurance that comes with telling their membership that they are all regenerate.

Fairchild writes,

If you baptize someone who cannot believe, then you either have to say baptism doesn’t mean what Scripture says it does, or that it does something magical without faith. That’s precisely how you slide into baptismal regeneration, whether you admit it or not.

BLMC responds

1.) Scripture does not teach that infants can’t believe. See above.

2.) No paedo-Baptist teaches the Roman Catholic/Lutheran doctrine of Baptismal regeneration. Fairchild writing this just demonstrates the man’s ignorance on the subject once again.