Category: Sacraments

WOKE Has Given Us Gender Neutral “Theybies” …. Baptists Have Long Given Us Religious Neutral Babies

“Theybies” (Rhymes with Babies)

Theybies are babies that are being raised in a gender-neutral environment to defend against gender socialization. The purpose of this parenting strategy is to not push children into gender stereotypes or roles and let them choose what to become.

This is merely Baptist thinking continuing on into gender. I mean compare Baptist reasoning to “Theybie” reasoning,

Baptists are those who raise babies in a covenant-neutral environment to defend against their children being raised with the conviction that they are Christian. The purpose of this covenant-less strategy is to not push children into a covenant commitment so to let them choose what to become in terms of their religion.

Failure in Baptist Thinking


The baptism of infants, no doubt, presupposes that salvation is altogether of the Lord. No infant can be the Lord’s unless it is the Lord who makes him such. If salvation waits on anything we can do, no infant can be saved; for there is nothing that an infant can do. In that case no infant can have a right to the sign and seal of salvation. But infants in this do not differ in any way from adults; of all alike it is true that it is only “of God” that they are in Christ Jesus. The purpose of Paul in arguing out the doctrine of signs and seals, was to show once for all from the typical case of Abraham that salvation is always a pure gratuity from God, and signs and seals do not precede it as its procuring cause or condition, but follow it as God’s witness to its existence and promise to sustain it. Every time we baptize an infant we bear witness that salvation is from God, that we cannot do any good thing to secure it, that we receive it from his hands as a sheer gift of his grace, and that we all enter the Kingdom of heaven therefore as little children, who do not do, but are done for.

B.B. Warfield

Because baptism now replaces circumcision, it follows that every Christian who neglects to have his own children baptized in infancy, cuts them off from himself and from the people of God.  What an awesome sin of omission, then, is committed by some of our dear Christian brethren who refuse baptism to their own little infants and thus despise the sacrament of the saving grace of God!

Dr. Francis Nigel Lee

In the old covenant the first fruits belong to the Lord. The believer’s income belongs to the Lord. The believer’s children belong to the Lord. The meaning behind covenant is that we are God’s possession. Baptism is the New Testament covenantal seal, and sign that was the mark of God’s ownership placed upon every newborn child in the household. This is standard covenant theology. In the Old covenant the children went with the parents and the male child was marked as God’s property by circumcision. In the New covenant, which is more expansive, every child is proclaimed to be owned by God (God’s property) by the placing of the sign of the covenant upon the child.

The Baptists make hash out of the idea of a “new and better covenant” by insisting that while in the old and worse covenant children were included in the covenant community but now those children of believers are not in a covenant that is referred to as “new and better.”

The idea of being God’s property is the meaning of the sign of the covenant, and baptism is a covenant rite. When we fail to baptize our children we are proclaiming either that our children are NOT God’s possession or we are proclaiming that our children might not be NOT God’s possession until they decide first. However, by emphasizing that our children have to be able to make a decision for Christ before the Spirit of Christ is able to make a decision claiming our children sets the meaning of a completely gratuitous redemption completely on its head as Warfield notes in the opening quote. Reformed Baptists not bringing their infants for Baptism gives the contradiction between the idea of “Reformed,” and “Baptist.” In the words of Big Bird on Sesame Street, “One of these things just doesn’t belong. Can you name which one?”

When we present our children for Baptism one hymn we might sing would go like this:

We give thee but thy own
Ordained by thy decree
The gift was given by thee alone
Your favor now we plea

And having now blessed us
We pour on them thy sign
And place in you our trust
For their lives as your design

Baptism is, above all else, the sign of the covenant. Being in covenant is the recognition that we and our children, our income and our possessions are the Lord’s. We are his possession and his property. If it is the case that we, the parents, are the Lord’s property then it only stands to reason that any children we have are the property of the Lord’s as well and so should be given the sign (Baptism) that is God’s brand that signifies His property.

To neglect to give the sign of the covenant to our children is an act of treason against God’s ownership. It is saying … “You may own us God but we will not obey you and give our children the mark that proclaims your ownership of your children.”

Baptists must repent but they need to be reminded that God delights in the repenting of His people. Embrace the Reformed … hold the Baptist.

Dancing With The Baptists On Covenant Theology & Infant Baptism

Of course our disagreement here is NOT primarily infant Baptism, but as you know something far deeper and more significant. The issue is the nature of the covenant. Baptists, like Rev. Bushsong presuppose discontinuity between the old covenant and the new and better covenant. They see the new and better covenant as largely unrelated to the old covenant and because the new and better covenant is a different covenant the Baptist “reasons” that children should not (MUST NOT) be brought to the baptismal font. The new and better covenant is so discontinuous with the old covenant that whereas the old covenant was inclusive of parents and seed the new covenant is inclusive of ONLY “age appropriate” (however that is subjectively defined) confessors. In this commitment to discontinuity the new emphasis finds baptism being primarily about the promises of the one being baptized to be committed to God whereas in the paedo-covenant conviction baptism is NOT primarily about the promises of the one being baptized but is primarily about God’s promises to us to be our God and to take us and our seed as His people. Now surely, as all Reformed Baptism ceremonies communicate, there is a reciprocal promise on the part of God’s people to walk in newness of life. Still, the emphasis for paedobaptists in Baptism is on God is the one doing the saving (and Baptizing) and not, such as one finds in Baptist baptisms, the emphasis being on the communicants resolve to say “I have decided to follow Jesus.” (Hence, the reason that song is so often played in Baptism services.)

One problem here (and there are a multitude of problems) is that all of this presupposes that God works His salvation differently between the Old covenant and the New and Better covenant. In the old covenant, Baptists teach implicitly, God’s salvation was inferior vis-a-vis the New Covenant and therefore a salvation upgrade was required. That salvation upgrade is found in the fact that God has done away with the corporate dimension of salvation wherein the children go with the parents.

When the paedo-Baptists look at the old covenant and new and better covenant they see continuity. They understand “new and better” to be “new and better” because what was only promissory in the old testament is now fulfilled in and with the coming of the magnificent Lord Jesus Christ. Christ did not come to bring in a salvation unrelated to the old covenant but rather Christ comes to fulfill all that was promised in the old covenant. As such, the paedobaptist, understanding the continuity between the covenants, following Scripture, brings God’s covenant seed to the baptismal font in obedience to God’s commands and promises.

The paedobaptist, following Scripture, looks at the history of redemption and covenant history and sees that which each covenantal progression the children and the parents were, without fail, part of the family of God. We see nothing in the New Testament that changes that pattern and steadfastly insist that if there were to be a change to that long established pattern there would be a need for an explicit word in the new covenant that the children are NOT to be included. There is no explicit word to that end. Not even close.

This last point is underscored by the fact there is not one peep in the NT of protest against any refusal to baptize covenant seed and this despite the fact that the Jews were OUTRAGED that the Gentiles were coming into the covenant. So, the Baptists ask us to believe that the Jews were silent in the NT record about their children being kept out of the covenant while the NT record records their outrage about Gentiles coming in? This is an argument from silence but the silence is so loud here that it is deafening.

As to the original post … yes, it clearly is the case that Baptists by disobediently not bringing God’s seed to the baptismal font are assuming that God’s seed given to them are outside the covenant and what else can that mean except that Baptists presuppose their children are vipers in diapers? When Baptists raise their children faithfully in the covenant (and many do) their practice is better than their belief. Felicitous inconsistency, thy name is Baptist.

Paedobaptists believe that there is one uninterrupted scarlet thread of salvation that runs from Genesis to Revelation and and that one uninterrupted scarlet thread of salvation has always included God’s covenant seed. To teach otherwise breaks the unity of Scripture.

More could be said but to what end? It is very seldom the case that Baptists are convicted on this point (though it does happen) and from the Baptist perspective it is also the case that very seldom do paedobaptists decide to believe that their children stand in no relation of belonging to the one covenant of grace since Baptists believe that only the elect belong to the covenant of grace and deny that one can be within the administrative reach of the covenant without being in the covenant and so having the substance of the covenant (Christ).

Rev. Tim Bushsong wrote,

1 & 2: The “newness” of the NC is tied-in with that covenant’s head-for-head integrity; that is, all who are “in” are truly in, salvifically, whereas in the OC, only those who were of faith were *truly* in.

BLMc responds,

This is not true as is clearly taught with Jesus parable about tares and wheat and with the book of Hebrews (6 & 10) warnings against falling away. Also there is I John’s statement,

“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.”  (2:19)

Clearly there was some kind of covenantal relationship as seen in the fact that these folks were part of the community. Paul explains all this in Romans 9 where he says that;

“For they are not all Israel, who are descendants from Israel.”

In the old and worse covenant not all in the covenant had the essence of the covenant and yet they are held responsible as covenant breakers. One cannot break the covenant unless one belongs to the covenant. So in the NT not all who are related to the new covenant have the essence of the covenant (Christ) and so they “go out from us.”

It would be literally impossible to warn against covenant breaking if it was not possible in some sense to break covenant.

Rev. Bushsong writes,

3: That is apples/oranges – spiritual benefits have to do with sin/blessing. You assume what has yet to be proven – that obedience requires baby-baptizing.

BLMc replies,

Obedience requiring Baby baptism has been proven so often and so thoroughly through the centuries that to suggest that “it is not proven” is whistling past the graveyard. As Bahnsen liked to say …”I may not have persuaded you. That is not my bailiwick but I have clearly provided the proof.”

Rev. Bushsong writes,

Look: As I said in the vid, I (Baptist) get all the blessings of covenant theology without diluting the nature of the NC. That’s the line we Baptists will not cross.

BLMc replies,

You assume what has yet to be proven, to wit, that obedience does not require baby-baptizing.

Of course that is quite the charge against the paedobaptist of being guilty of “diluting the nature of the New Covenant.” As you surely understand, we here think the same of y’all.

Tom Hicks On The Glories Of The Baptist Faith … McAtee On Tom Hicks

“The Baptist faith stands squarely against the authoritarian individual, the authoritarian family, the authoritarian church, and the authoritarian state. This is because Baptist doctrine uniquely stands upon God’s authority in His Word over the individual, the family, the church and the state. Other ecclesiologies give too much authority to the individual (modern evangelicalism) or to the church (papacy) or to the family and state (classic Reformed and Lutheran paedobaptism).”

Dr. Rev. Tom Hicks
Baptist Pastor

Hicks would like to think that the “Baptist Faith” is the Nirvana locale of the Christian faith but the man is deluded.

1.) The Reformed Baptist Faith (Hicks subscribes to the London Baptist Confession) because it eliminates the inclusion of infants into the covenant of grace, and because it does not require Christian Magistrates ruling as Christian magistrates yields a Christianity that, despite Hicks assertion, is thoroughly atomistically individualistic. The Baptist faith, because of its individualism, always eats away and tears down the Institutional jurisdictions ordained and revealed by God in favor of the sovereign individual.

This atomistic individualism is most clearly seen in the forbidding of the children being marked with the sign and seal of the covenant of grace. Instead, the Baptist, in effect, tells the child is that God cannot claim them in Baptism until they first claim God upon coming to the years of discretion (whatever that age may be). This is a complete reversal of the idea of God over the individual and instead places the individual over God so that God has to wait on the individual before God can claim him or her. This is atomistic individualism at its zenith. So, Hicks claim to the contrary Baptists do not avoid the authoritarian individual but instead rabidly promote atomistic individualism.

2.) This Baptist emphasis on the authoritarian individual in turn means the breakdown and eclipse of the other jurisdictional realms appointed by God. Because the individual is atomistically sovereign in the Baptist faith Baptist thinking  creates atomistically individualistic culture where the God ordained mediating Institutions (Church, Family, Civil Magistrates) are eclipsed in favor of the almighty individual. This atomization results in a blank slate culture eventually creating a societal vacuum that cannot be sustained over time. Eventually, since man is a social being, the atomistic individualism of the Baptist faith cannot survive with the result being that some corporate entity fills the vacuum and becomes the sole Jurisdictional realm against which all atomistic individuals will define themselves. In our lifetimes that sole jurisdictional realm that has arisen to define all is the tyrant State, and this is largely due to the majority Baptist Christianity that we currently have. Without competing the healthy God ordained Jurisdictional Institutions of Church, and Family, — ordained Jurisdictional Institutions that the atomistic Baptist faith always chips away at over time, the result is the rise of some single tyrant Institution which will insist that it plays the sole role of the other God ordained mediating Institutions. At that point, the Baptist sovereign atomistic individual culture will flip to become a consolidated borg culture.

3.) The idea that the Baptist faith is superior in standing upon God’s Word alone is ridiculous. If Baptists were standing upon God’s Word alone they wouldn’t think that they could find a non-contradictory way to combine Anabaptist ecclesiology with Reformed soteriology. This combination inserts synergism every time into Baptist theology, thus defying God’s Word revealing that the Reformed Baptist Faith is really inconsistent humanism where God waits upon man to make a decision for Him before He can make a claim on man.

Children In The Covenant

“Yes, they’re infants, but they are his members. They’re infants, but they receive his sacraments. They are infants, but they share in his table, in order to have life in themselves.”

~Augustine,
On infant communion

“The NT’s restatement of the Fifth Commandment to honor parents (Eph. 6:2) assumes that children are born as covenant members, and thus parents are bound to to train their children in Christ (Eph. 6:4). When the law was first given to Israel (Ex. 20:12), children were included in the covenant (Gen. 17), and there is no indication that the law can be given to such children if they are not in the covenant. Paedobaptism teaches that Christian parents are bound by covenant to train their children in the faith…”

Rev. Zach Garris 

1.) It is true that there is no indication that the law can be given to such children except that they are in the covenant. However, it is also true that children not in the covenant are responsible to God’s law. Pagan children cannot say, “because I am not a covenant child therefore God’s requirement that I obey my parents does not apply to me.” However, heathen children need to see that they cannot obey their parents unless they are in Christ.

2.) And since Rev. Garris’ statement above is true covenant parents extend to their covenant children the judgment of charity and so extend to their covenant children from the tenderest of ages the privilege of coming to the Lord’s Table to commune. Baptized children of covenant parents have full membership in Christ’s church and so receive Word and Sacrament in both kinds. Rev. Garris properly here appeals to the OT structure to support the contention that children are in the covenant. However that same OT structure that Rev. Garris appeals to found the covenant children receiving the sign of the covenant (which Rev. Garris agrees should continue) and participating in the covenant meal (which Rev. Garris does not agree should continue).

This is called “Covenantus Interruptus.”