Credobaptism or Paedobaptism? Pt. 1 Adriel Sanchez and TheoCast Discuss Baptism and Covenant Theology

This transcript has been lightly edited from an automated transcription for clarity and readability. While we've worked to preserve each speaker's words faithfully, errors may remain.

1. 00:00

   Justin Perdue

   Colossians 2 is an interesting one, because you will go to Colossians 2 to argue for your position. We would also go to Colossians 2 to argue for ours, because we would see in that passage the circumcision made without hands, the circumcision of Christ. And then immediately we go into, you're buried with Jesus in baptism, you're raised with him. And we're seeing the realities of faith and regeneration and baptism all connected there immediately: the canceling of the record of debt, the forgiveness of sins, being made alive together with Christ. And so we would see those things being held together in saying that those who have experienced these things are receiving the sign. And then we would go to Romans 6, which I know we're going to get to at some point, because I think one of our questions for you, Adriel, would be talking about union with Jesus. And what does it mean for you, as you understand you're baptizing an infant into the covenant community? How does that child then relate to Christ?

2. 01:08

   Adriel Sanchez

   Hey, this is Pastor Adriel with Sola Media, and I am excited about the video that we have for you today. I'm joined by Jon Moffitt and Justin Perdue, friends of mine. And this conversation is coming out of—a while back here at Sola Media we released a video on infant baptism. It was a short case that I made for infant baptism, and my friend Jon was kind enough to make a response video to that video. So I thought, oh man, it would be good just to get us together and to have a conversation about this, hopefully as brothers in Christ. It's edifying, but also highlight some of the key differences between the paedobaptist and the credobaptist perspective. And so I'm excited about this.

3. Adriel Sanchez

   The way this is going to work is we're going to do kind of a two-part video. We're going to release the first part here at Sola Media, and then our Theocast brothers are going to release the second half. And I pray it's a blessing and an encouragement to you. Just a couple of things. We were talking before we started recording, and one thing that's kind of neat is each of us are pastors. And so Jon and Justin, I don't know if you would be willing to share a little bit about your churches and the ministry that you guys are doing before we dive in.

4. 02:17

   Jon Moffitt

   Sure. Well, thanks, Adriel, for having us on here. And this is how I wish all conversations in the Reformed world would go. So maybe we could start a new trend: speaking the truth in love as a brother would speak to another brother. So this is good. Yeah, so been in ministry for a while. Planted a church seven years ago, Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. And we are 1689 London Baptist Confession church. And as Adriel, full-time pastor, and we do podcasting stuff on the side, but just excited to be a part of this and partnering with Justin for the last almost—what we going on, six years now? Five years?

5. 02:55

   Justin Perdue

   Yes, six years, man.

6. 02:56

   Adriel Sanchez

   Yeah.

7. 02:56

   Justin Perdue

   Adriel, thanks a lot for initiating this, and it's a great idea to have this conversation. And I echo everything Jon said about maybe we can start a trend, because everything that you see on Christian social media, even in the Reformed world, man, it's a lot of rage bait and food fighting. It's just not good. So hopefully we can maybe set a better tone today. But yeah, I'm Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. So I left Washington, D.C., to be the planting pastor of this church a little over a decade ago. So our church is coming up on 10 years old. And like Jon said, I'm a pastor. That's my full-time job. That's the calling that I've given myself to. And the podcasting thing is definitely a side hustle. We hope it encourages people, but first and foremost concern with preaching Jesus to the saints of CBC. And like Jon's church, we're a Second London Confession congregation, so we subscribe to the 2LCF for a confessional Baptist church.

8. Justin Perdue

   And yeah, so that's really it. And I do think, like we were talking before we hit record, I think that being a pastor is really helpful even in coming to this conversation and to any of these kinds of conversations that we have on a medium like this. So I'm grateful to be here, man. Grateful for Sola Media and everything you guys do.

9. 04:12

   Adriel Sanchez

   And do you guys find—I'm just curious. I know for me, I pastor a PCA church in San Diego, and I have a lot of conversations who are coming to the church about this very question. And there's fireworks on my— I don't know what that was about, but I think I might have said something good. [crosstalk: "That's PCA smiles on the PCA, Adriel."] That's right. But just for you guys—and I actually thought about this when we released the video on infant baptism. Obviously I have these firm convictions, but I kind of felt bad. I was like, man, I hope they didn't have a bunch of guys in their church coming home, like, hey, Pastor—adding more work to you guys. And so is this something that you guys are having conversations about pretty frequently with members in your church who are wrestling through this issue as well?

10. 04:58

    Jon Moffitt

    Yeah, I think it comes and goes in waves, depending on who's there. But I saw the video, and I think I just saw it—I don't know if anybody sent it to me—but I just so appreciated how you handled it. And I thought, man, if he's going to speak this way about it, then this is a great opportunity for me to show our congregation of where the differences are. And we did. I sent it to our church and said, hey, look, this is a— Because we have paedobaptists, infant Baptists, in our church that love our church. There's not a PCA church or anything nearby. We're the only Reformed church in our city. And so they end up coming to our church. And so this helps create some clarity when someone comes to me say, what's the differences? And I was like, oh, well, why don't you listen to Adriel? He explains his side, and then I'll explain mine, and then you can make your decision on what you think is best for you and your family.

11. 05:46

    Justin Perdue

    For me, yeah, this is definitely a conversation, because whenever you encounter people in your congregation that are reading things and they're reading old stuff and they're thinking about Reformed categories or covenant theology categories or any of that kind of thing, they often want to talk about it. And, all right, well, why don't we practice paedobaptism, like so-and-so did, or whatever it may be. And then there's obviously the real visceral things that we feel pertaining to our children and the things that we desire for them. So it's a regular conversation for our church, our elders, and the people that come and visit and people that even end up joining.

12. Justin Perdue

    So, yeah, this is good. And I really—like Jon said, Adriel, appreciate you, man, from a distance. We know each other, but it's been a minute since we talked. Right? But just your posture, not only in the video that you released, but also—we might not get on and have a conversation about this with just anybody, because it wouldn't be warm, it wouldn't be charitable, and it wouldn't be brotherly. But we're excited to talk with you because of the ways that you have talked about this even publicly in this video you just released, and even in the past.

13. 06:55

    Adriel Sanchez

    That's very kind of you, man. And I'm encouraged by you guys and your ministry. And hopefully we can communicate that this is something that, as brothers, we can talk about while also getting into the substance of the differences. And maybe—it sounds like this is something that all of us have studied, but we've come out on different ends of this question. And so maybe just to dive in and sort of piggyback off of some of the things that were discussed in those original videos. One of the things that I talked about initially was just the nature of baptism. And at least for me, how sort of transitioning out of a Baptist church—there was a period of time where I was kind of in the Young, Restless, Reformed movement, Acts 29, and then getting more into sort of Reformed Baptist circles. And it was during seminary that I transitioned out of that and into a PCA church, but embraced the doctrine of infant baptism in particular.

14. Adriel Sanchez

    And one of the things that I mentioned was that for me, there was this kind of shift in terms of seeing baptism as first and foremost a work of God, obviously. And I thought this is something that you highlighted in your video, Jon, was it's not necessarily an either/or. But I think for a lot of people—and maybe it's just broader evangelicalism—hearing the mantra, baptism is an outward sign of my inward faith, and baptism is primarily or only something that you're doing to declare something to the world. This idea that baptism is a work of God—it's a sign of judgment, new creation, redemption, all things that God does—that sort of flips things around. And at least for me, that began to open the door for seeing baptism as something that's not just my public declaration of faith, but actually God being the one who speaks.

15. Adriel Sanchez

    So I don't know that there is— It sounds to me like at least we both want to affirm that it's not an either/or. But I think that you guys would also probably agree that there are a lot of circles in which maybe one side is emphasized to the exclusion of the other.

16. 09:03

    Justin Perdue

    Let me speak for just a second about our fellow Baptists on this, because I agree with you. So Jon and I, we say this in a lot of circles. We were just at a Lutheran conference not that long ago, and we're able to say that, hey, we have more in common with you than we do 90-plus percent of the Baptists on this planet. And I would say the same thing about having a conversation with you, Adriel. You're a part of the PCA, but we have more in common with you than we do most Baptists on planet Earth. In that, you're right. Most Baptists, even Calvinistic Baptists who are serious-minded, the emphasis and the things that you hear all the time are: baptism is obedience to Jesus; baptism is a public profession of faith; baptism, at best, is an outward sign, like you said, of the inward reality; and then it's entrance into the church. But that's about all that Baptists say.

17. Justin Perdue

    And Jon and I are in complete agreement that that is lamentable and is an anemic view of baptism. And I may be inviting all kinds of criticism from our fellow Baptists and saying some of this, but our confession says so. This is chapter 29, paragraph 1. I'm just going to read a couple of sentences here. That baptism—what do we understand it to be? It is a sign of our fellowship with Jesus and his death and resurrection, of being grafted into him, and of remission of sins. And so I often, in teaching our membership class at church, when I'm teaching through the confession, I'll say, now how many times you've ever heard a Baptist talk like that? And people were like, basically never. Never. It's like, but Baptists actually used to talk this way. And so we agree completely that this sacrament that the Lord has given us for our confirmation, for our nourishment, for our good in the Lord Jesus Christ is something that we are passive and receive, and that it is absolutely something that is grounded in what God alone does.

18. 10:54

    Adriel Sanchez

    So for me, that was just something that I think began to open the door a little bit. So maybe reacting to what I was seeing also in this broader evangelical world. But maybe an area where we will find a little bit more of a difference between us is just this idea of continuity and discontinuity between how God administers his grace throughout redemptive history. This sort of gets at the argument that I was making with regard to the burden of proof.

19. Adriel Sanchez

    One of the things that I've often said is, as I was wrestling with this, I always sort of approached it thinking that the burden of proof was really on the paedobaptist to give me the silver-bullet passage of Scripture that showed, here's where Lydia baptized her baby, her infant, or where Peter sprinkled water on a child or something like that. But more and more I felt like, as I read Scripture, it seemed to me like, well, actually God has always included the children of believers in the visible church—at least certainly in the Old Testament, they're a part of the worshiping community. And so there was sort of another shift that happened for me with regard to the burden of proof, in seeing it not so much on the paedobaptist but on the Baptist, in order to supply—to bring forward reasons why now God was no longer including the children of believers in the visible church. And does the New Testament—can you supply that evidence from the New Testament?

20. 12:25

    Justin Perdue

    So the way I would begin this is by talking about covenant theology. And there's no way around it. So we, like you, Adriel, would affirm the tri-covenantal framework of covenant of redemption, covenant of works, covenant of grace. And we would affirm the distinction between the covenant of works that God made with Adam—that arrangement where Adam has before him life and blessedness or death, and it is contingent upon his obedience, his works—and then the covenant of grace that's promised in Genesis 3:15, the seed of the woman who's going to come and crush the serpent's head. And then where we would begin to differ, our view and yours, would be how we view the covenant made with Abraham. And so we do not understand that the covenant God made with Abraham is the—definite article—covenant of grace, or the establishment of the covenant of grace, though.

21. Justin Perdue

    So we would think that there's two things going on with Abraham rather than maybe that one thing. We would say that there is the covenant God makes with Abraham. Circumcision is its sign. And that covenant pertains to Abraham's physical offspring—the nation that will come from him, the descendants that will come from him, the land that they'll be given, kings will come from him, and the like. And then there's the promise of the covenant of grace, the gospel preached to him. And so that's significant to say, because for us, we're going to see a trajectory even through the Old Testament, where the covenant of grace is revealed to us by farther steps in the subservient covenants of Abraham, Moses, David, and then established with the coming of Christ in the new covenant. So we have a little bit more discontinuity baked into our covenantal theological framework than you would, which is where we're going to get at the New Testament passages and the new covenant era a little bit differently. We affirm one covenant of grace in all of Scripture, but we see it unfolding—kind of the promise, the unfolding, and the establishment of it—slightly differently, which would then mean some things downstream.

22. Justin Perdue

    So that's enough of that theology nerd stuff. But we can get to some of the particular things, maybe even some of the passages. But I think this matters for even that burden of proof question, because that's a legitimate one. It's a really good argument. And I think for the listener out there, what'll be important is we as covenantal Baptists want to take Adriel as a paedobaptist on his arguments on his own terms and evaluate them, and then the same would be needed in return. Because I think how we view covenant theology respectively has a lot to do with that burden of proof question. That's a legitimate one to raise.

23. 15:02

    Jon Moffitt

    Yeah. I think if I were to summarize it real quick, the discontinuity versus continuity, the way we would see it is that the sign that was given to the children was for the nation of Israel. So this is a typology given to us, what is to come. Right. They're bringing us the Messiah. It's a type of Christ, type of the church. But this sign is included for children inside of the nation of Israel. When you get to the church, the discontinuity would then be that we're no longer talking about a nation, but we're talking about all nations, all people, and they're brought in by a different sign. And therefore there's a discontinuity that's going to be there, which is— We would even say there's a discontinuity in the sign. Right. Because the sign is given to the seed or the head. This would be given to the male. And then in the new covenant, there's no discrimination. Right. So it's given to male and female. And so there's not only a discontinuity in who it's applied to, but how the sign is applied originally. So two different signs for two different groups of people would be the discontinuity that we would see.

24. 16:08

    Adriel Sanchez

    Okay, no, this is great. And I think it gets us at least into the important question of circumcision in particular and how it functioned for Abraham. And I think for me—and I'm trying to understand where you guys are coming from. I know in conversations with other Baptists in the past, it did seem like there was more of an emphasis on circumcision being associated with Israel, associated with these sort of temporal blessings or benefits, as opposed to the promises of the new covenant in particular. But it seems to me like in Scripture, while circumcision was associated with many of those things, that it ultimately had a spiritual focus at its center. So passages like—you're familiar with Deuteronomy 10:16, where God is telling his people to circumcise their hearts, or later where he gives them essentially the promise of the new covenant in Deuteronomy chapter 30, verse 6. And he says, I'm actually going to do that for you. I'm going to circumcise your heart. That language is very similar to what we find in places like Ezekiel chapter 36, where you have this promise of the new heart.

25. Adriel Sanchez

    And then even getting right into the New Testament, as Paul is beginning to unpack these concepts in places like the book of Romans, and Romans 2, where he says it's not the circumcision of the flesh that matters as much as the circumcision of the heart. It's faith. It's that union with Christ. And so circumcision as this sign, as this sacramental sign for the people of God under the old covenant, communicated all sorts of things. But at the heart of what it's communicating is this reality of the new birth, or regeneration, or the blessings that come through faith. And so in that sense, it's coupled with— And that's one of the reasons why I think it's coupled with baptism in places like Colossians chapter 2.

26. Adriel Sanchez

    And obviously I'm bringing up a lot of passages right now at some point— [crosstalk: "Sure, sure."] But if in fact circumcision—right, the way in which it's functioning is also to point us to this reality, the reality of the righteousness that is by faith in Jesus Christ, the reality of the new heart—then why is Abraham commanded to circumcise his infant children? And couldn't the objection that present-day Baptist brothers make about the necessity of faith—and a profession of faith at least—going into baptism, couldn't that same objection have been made by Abraham, who was commanded to give this sign to his infant children? His infant sons, obviously. Right. We would both agree that there are areas of discontinuity with regard to this question. [crosstalk: "Sure."] But yeah. So I guess I'd just be curious in terms of hearing you guys unpack a little bit more how you understand those texts of Scripture that seem to emphasize the spiritual reality of what circumcision was pointing to.

27. Adriel Sanchez

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28. 19:21

    Adriel Sanchez

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29. Adriel Sanchez

    [Conversation resumes]

30. 20:17

    Justin Perdue

    So I want to agree with you on several things, Adriel. First—so we do. We would agree that the fulfillment of circumcision—if this is what you're saying, and brother, correct me if this is not what you're saying—the fulfillment of circumcision is not baptism. The fulfillment of circumcision is regeneration, like circumcision of the heart. That's how we would articulate it. So I would agree with a lot of the things that you just said typologically, and certainly that it's a pointer to this new covenant reality.

31. 20:48

    Adriel Sanchez

    Would you also say that that's the fulfillment of baptism, the circumcision of the heart, or the new birth? In terms of what it's a sign of.

32. 20:59

    Justin Perdue

    In particular, what it signifies. Yes. But then—we would not understand that circumcision is the sign of the covenant of grace in the old administration, as you would articulate it. We would say that it was—not to repeat, so I don't want to say much—but it was the sign of the covenant given to Abraham that pertained to, like you said, you've heard other Baptists say, more temporal, physical things that God did. Everything he said he would do for Abraham—like the language of Nehemiah—everything that he promised he would do for Abraham, he's done it.

33. 21:30

    Jon Moffitt

    But it wasn't limited to that.

34. 21:32

    Justin Perdue

    No.

35. 21:33

    Jon Moffitt

    And so typological in nature as well.

36. 21:35

    Justin Perdue

    Typological in nature. And the fulfillment of circumcision is a spiritual reality in terms of circumcision of the heart, which we would understand to be regeneration. And so then for us, because of the ways that we understand some of those passages that you outlined, like Ezekiel 36, for example, we would understand that that is the new covenant reality—that those who are part of the new covenant in Christ, they experience this new birth, that they now have a new heart given to them, they now have God's Spirit taking up residence within them. And then we would say that we administer the sacrament, the sign of the covenant of grace, which is established in the Lord Jesus Christ in the new covenant, to those who have experienced that reality.

37. 22:18

    Jon Moffitt

    Yeah, I would say one of the areas—sometimes, I know I grew up this way, where kind of baptism really started in the New Testament. And that's where the introduction to baptism becomes the reality. But that's not necessarily true. Baptism has been a part of the people of God all the way back to the Levitical law. Right. This baptism is a rite that was put upon the priest as kind of their final rite, inaugurating them into the priesthood. Which is why when John's in the water and Jesus shows up and he says, baptize me, and John's like, no, you need to baptize me. And then Jesus says, this is to fulfill all righteousness. And John stops. He doesn't argue anymore, and he baptizes Jesus. And it's at that moment that Jesus has fulfilled his priestly role and he starts his ministry.

38. Jon Moffitt

    And so when you get language later on from both Paul in—or, sorry, Peter in 1 Peter, when he talks about we are a part of the royal priesthood, or Paul in Galatians, when he talks about we've been robed with Christ, or we've been baptized into Christ and we've been robed as a priest—then I think there's more continuity between the priestly baptism of the Old Testament, because we are receiving basically Christ's robe. Like the way in which Paul says it in Galatians 3, when he says, you've been baptized into Christ, or of Christ. In other words, Christ is the one who's baptizing us and he's robing us. He's bringing us into this role as royal priests. Now there's more continuity there than I would see between circumcision and baptism, just because baptism isn't new. It's not like the people of Israel wouldn't have known what baptism was.

39. 23:54

    Adriel Sanchez

    Yeah, I think we would both agree that in terms of the sort of types and shadows of the Old Testament, both with the Lord's Supper and with baptism, there are all sorts of things that you can point to, to say, whether it's the priestly baptisms in the Old Testament or going through the Red Sea or circumcision even—

40. 24:10

    Justin Perdue

    Or even Noah's ark.

41. 24:11

    Adriel Sanchez

    Or Noah's ark. Yeah. The reason I think circumcision is interesting is because it is a sign of entrance into this visible worshiping community that's applied to infants. But it does seem to me like, in terms of the reality that both signs are getting at, they're both getting at the reality of the new heart. Circumcision is ultimately pointing to that. They're both these entrance signs into the visible church, which I think we can agree with. Obviously circumcision has been abrogated, so sort of de facto, right, baptism is replacing this, but it's more all-encompassing in terms of who it's given to, which is sort of fitting with our understanding of the new covenant and the Gentile inclusion and so forth.

42. Adriel Sanchez

    And so I guess I would just want to push back to some extent and say, no, it seems like actually circumcision as this sign pointing to regeneration or the new birth, a new heart, at least also a sign that is associated with sanctions too. Sort of like baptism, right, where it's a picture of the new birth or the cutting away of the heart. But also if you turn away, you're cut off from the people of God. And so it's a sort of double-edged sword. And baptism also functions in a very similar way, I think, in the New Testament and also in the types that you see in the Old Testament. It's this picture of salvation through judgment. And if you turn away from the covenant people of God—right, you're cut off from the people—circumcision becomes a sign of judgment. And of course, baptism functioned in that way as well.

43. Adriel Sanchez

    Again, part of me feels like, man, all of the objections that Baptist brothers and sisters make with regard to why we don't want to apply this sign to— And feel free to correct me, obviously. [crosstalk: "Sure."] Why we don't want to apply this sign to our infant children: they have not yet made a profession of faith, they've not shown the evidence of faith or whatnot—that those same objections, if circumcision actually does signify these greater spiritual realities that are also signified in baptism, the same objection could have been made by Father Abraham and others. And so I think I would see more—even though there are obviously differences, I would see more lines of continuity in terms of what both of these signs, these visible signs, are pointing us to, ultimately being the death of Christ and union with him and new birth.

44. 26:54

    Jon Moffitt

    Yeah, yeah, no, I'd agree. I guess this is more of kind of a practical question: how would you then explain— It's like there's a clear change. And where is that change instituted on who it's applied to? Because you can see why it's applied to the seed. Because this is based off of a family. Right. So it's the heads of the family. They're putting it upon their children. It's not applied to the women, not applied to the daughters. So how then is it applied to the daughters? And where would you argue for that change? Because we're talking about a new covenant and a different sign, or a different covenant—or you guys would say an expanded covenant. And yet now we're applying it to a greater amount of people than it was applied to before.

45. 27:41

    Adriel Sanchez

    Yeah. It seems to me like obviously that change is embedded in the reality of the fact that the new covenant is— When you look at so many of the prophecies, I think of just Joel 2 come, off the top of my head now. It's like, the promise of God's Spirit and so forth—this isn't just relegated to the kings and priests in Israel now. It's your sons and your daughters, young and old, servants and so forth. This promise of the new covenant. And I think this is part of the paedobaptist argument. Recently, you guys probably saw the clip of—what was it—John Piper and Kevin DeYoung. Settled the debate right there. Right. I was—

46. 28:18

    Justin Perdue

    I have not seen that clip. I'm sure. Yeah, sure it did, though.

47. 28:21

    Adriel Sanchez

    Yeah. No, but just the idea of already, with even these prophecies you find in the Old Testament with regard to the new covenant, the floodgates are open—no pun intended. Right. Now we are welcoming in the Gentile nation. So it seems like it's just a part of that reality that the doors are now open. So that—and I know you guys have heard this argument before—so that now to exclude children would go against the current of these covenantal promises. Obviously, again, we're seeing some differences in terms of the sign, in terms of who it's applied to, but with regard to this idea of infants or children being the proper recipients, it seems to me like that's still there.

48. Adriel Sanchez

    A couple of the other texts that I brought up, obviously, as we're thinking about this sort of burden of proof question and continuity and discontinuity: we were talking about the household baptisms earlier, and it seemed to me, Jon, like in your response video, you said, well, the burden of proof is on the paedobaptist because we're not told whether or not there are infants there. We don't know definitively if there are babies in the context of those baptisms that are taking place, those household baptisms. But for me, the compelling argument has never been—it's never been like, well, maybe there are babies or maybe not. In my mind, that doesn't even matter.

49. Adriel Sanchez

    What matters is the fact that Luke, who understands this language, is using covenantal categories. He's using the language of household in the context of the administration of the new covenant sign. And so, again, getting to the question of the burden of proof, if Luke doesn't think that now the new covenant sign is administered in the context of households, or that now children or infants are not the proper recipients, why is he using this kind of language that is freighted with meaning in the context of his descriptions of baptisms in the New Testament church? Is the same kind of argument that I was trying to make with regard to 1 Corinthians chapter 7, right—this language of the children of at least one believing parent being holy. These terms like household, holy—these words mean something in the context of redemptive history, and they're defined by, in particular, the Old Testament context where they're coming from, especially words like holy. You think of the book of Leviticus and so forth.

50. Adriel Sanchez

    And so it seems to me, when you look at all of this, when you look at the New Testament data together in aggregate, that if the question is one of continuity and discontinuity, then it seems to me like what we're seeing is continuity with regard to the language that's used with regard to families, and also the administration of covenant signs being associated with households and so forth. So I guess a question for you would be: how would you respond to the argument being Luke is using this language that has clear meaning and he's tying it to baptisms in the New Testament? How would you respond to the argument that I've just made, that it seems to me like if he didn't believe children were the proper recipients, that would be at least improper to use that same type of terminology?

51. 32:08

    Adriel Sanchez

    Yes, that makes sense.

52. 32:09

    Jon Moffitt

    Yeah, yeah. No, it does. It makes great sense. I think you articulated it well, too. Again, you would agree with this statement that this is a presupposition on the text. Right. So we're presupposing a continuity—that the language here is carrying over and that there is a continuity between circumcision and baptism. So therefore, we're going to be naturally seeing this connection with the baptisms in the families and using the families.

53. Jon Moffitt

    Some of the arguments I would have against that is that if you don't have that presupposition and you're just reading the text as it is—and I kind of went through some of these in the video—but you'll notice that there's maybe one exception where there isn't a clear indication that the household passages were indicating that these were people who were cognitively involved inside of the believing aspect and baptism. So Acts 10 and Acts 18—I went through all of them; you can go back in the video—but they're either rejoicing, they're participating. You're not seeing language where it's not is necessarily really kind of pointing us to what I would say infant inclusion in any of these passages, other than maybe one where it's vague at best.

54. Jon Moffitt

    And then the second thing I would say to that is, for me, baptism was already a part of the culture. They already knew what baptism was for. And so we're almost giving it a new designation, which is—we are trying to connect it to circumcision. I'm not convinced that they were necessarily connecting the sign to circumcision, and therefore the administration of it isn't necessarily going to be a household administration. Yeah. So that—I don't want to take up the whole time here. I'll let JP respond to that. But this is where I would say there's probably some presuppositions here, reading it into the text, if you don't— If you understand that the children were included in the visible Israel church, or I would say the nation of Israel, and you don't necessarily see that language in the new. And I know we're going to get to the passages on 1 Corinthians on the families being holy. So we'll get to that in a minute.

55. 34:22

    Justin Perdue

    Yeah. Like I said before, I think, Adriel, that your arguments, taken on the terms of your understanding of covenant theology and biblical theology, make entire sense. And then I think ours in turn do also, in that we see more discontinuity between the old covenant and the new covenant. We don't use the language of one covenant, two administrations. We will say one covenant of grace, but that that's not established until Christ comes, formally. Right. So I think there is a different kind of way that we approach even Luke from a hermeneutical perspective that would probably—that I know does not cause us to ask the same question that you are.

56. Justin Perdue

    And so for us, then, we would say in the text itself, the household baptism is recorded in Acts. Given our covenantal theological convictions, et cetera, our question is maybe a different one: if we're going to say with confidence that there are infants being baptized with these households, to us it would be more of an argument from silence, taking it from just the context of Luke itself. And then we would also point to the fact—and I think Jon did this in his video, so I don't need to labor this much—that particularly, I believe it's the Philippian jailer, when he's baptized, his household rejoices with him. And so we would say, okay, the rejoicing with someone who has been baptized in the household does seem to convey in this instance that people are aware of what they're doing and the like.

57. Justin Perdue

    And I think for us, when it comes to a theology of baptism, we're going to go—like you do too, brother—we're going to go to other passages in the New Testament and looking at passages from the Old Testament as well. Many of them have already been referenced: passages relating to circumcision, but especially Jeremiah 31, Ezekiel 36 kind of passages. We're going to go there, and then we're going to go to various places in the New Testament, including— Colossians 2 is an interesting one, because you will go to Colossians 2 to argue for your position. We would also go to Colossians 2 to argue for ours, because we would see in that passage the circumcision made without hands, the circumcision of Christ. And then immediately we go into, you're buried with Jesus in baptism, you're raised with him. And we're seeing the realities of faith and regeneration and baptism all connected there immediately: the canceling of the record of debt, the forgiveness of sins, being made alive together with Christ. And so we would see those things being held together in saying that those who have experienced these things are receiving the sign. And then we would go to Romans 6, which I know we're going to get to at some point, because I think one of our questions for you, Adriel, would be talking about union with Jesus. And what does it mean for you, as you understand you're baptizing an infant into the covenant community? How does that child then relate to Christ, et cetera? We would love to ask you those questions.

58. 37:33

    Jon Moffitt

    Probably in a minute I'm going to throw it back over to Adriel to close this thought out. But before I do, I think, personally, Adriel, that Jesus made it very clear that when he came, it would cause fracturing. It's going to divide mother from father and brothers and sister. And so I think Luke's rejoicing, like, oh, the whole house got saved, versus there being a fracture in the family where only one member of the family believed and they got kicked out of the house—kind of like the man that was born blind and kind of got rejected by his family. Luke was like, hey, this is an example of where the whole family became a believer. That's the narrative I would put into it, versus Baptist—

59. 38:11

    Adriel Sanchez

    Yeah. And for me, maybe just to summarize again, when we're thinking about continuity and discontinuity with regard to the proper recipients of covenant signs—and here in particular, children in baptism—for me, so much of it comes down to: well, how does the New Testament speak? What kind of language is Luke using, is Paul using? Are they adopting the same kind of terminology that we see with regard to this idea of covenantal holiness, or employing the language of household in the context of baptism? So for me, I don't even necessarily see it as much as, well, I'm presupposing a certain reading of the text, and that's why I'm asking these questions. I see it more as: these words actually have a kind of meaning that's defined by, first and foremost, the Old Testament background and context. And the New Testament writers are picking these words up as they're talking about our children and as they're talking about the administration of baptism. And so, given that reality, that seems to point toward not discontinuity but continuity, at least on that particular question.

60. Adriel Sanchez

    And having settled it, maybe we can end right there. Just— That was a joke. But maybe we can end right there. Justin, you brought up some other great things to get into in terms of the new covenant and the nature of the new covenant. And so maybe that's what we can tackle in our next video together