Category: Church

Ministry, the Spirit, and the Church (5): The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church in Romania

12/29/2017

Allen’s thoughts align very well with what God has been teaching Catalina and me. While we are organized, goal driven, intellectual, philosophical, theological people – God has put those things asunder time and time again. Those things we love, which can be great goods if we make them a means, are terrible ends. But all too often, we end up placing the aforementioned things before God and believe that we are implementing them and using them for him. In reality, we end up subverting God’s means and ends so that we can maintain our methods and our control.

The Argument for Infant Baptism and Sprinkling (6): Counter-Rebuttals

12/29/2017

Possible Rebuttals:
- I see several ways one can try to avoid the great weight of the cumulative case I have laid out above. The first is to argue that Israel and the church are different entities. This is how John Piper argues. I think the multitude of passages that call us Abraham's offspring, the true Israel, etc, should be weighty enough to determine that there is at least a huge similarity which warrants a continuation of such an important directive as that of marking the visible covenant community. In fact, we know there is. Even if baptism isn't a direct continuation of circumcision but rather a new way of marking God's people, both ideas are still accomplishing the same type of thing. Even if the church is distinct in some ways from the covenant community of Israel, I don't see how we escape the similarity of the requirement to mark community members, and I don't see how we can mark members in a way that is less inclusive than before. The marking of the covenant community now includes women and anyone who professes faith. The gospel expands, not contracts the scope for inclusion. How sad for the covenant community of Christ to expel those whom God formerly included in his community - infants and children - from the markings of the visible community.

Ministry, the Spirit, and the Church (1): Losing Control

12/29/2017

The phrase “losing control” tends to have negative connotations. We often use such a phrase when describing someone under the influence of anger, drugs, alcohol, or stress. When we are no longer in control, we tend to gravitate towards disorder or destruction – of ourselves or of others. It is only our maintenance of control that guides our steps along an appropriate, productive path. I would like to suggest, however, that “losing control” gets a bad rap. In our self-focused humanity and our independence-focused culture, I think losing control is actually of the utmost importance.

Ministry, the Spirit, and the Church (4): Overbearing Morality

12/29/2017

The first two problems we’ve already addressed are pretty big hang-ups for we Westerners. But I have to say, I think this final problem- the problem of imposing our morality - is probably the most difficult for us to overcome. I believe this is because we tend to find our biggest sense of validation in our perceived morality as it compares to others. God is holy and it is my sin that separates me from God, therefore if I am holier (which is equated with being more moral), then God must love me more and I must be a better Christian. An imposition of our moral standards is done in large part for our own validation. But it is also done because it provides us with a sense of direction and control as we guide new believers and churches.

Ministry, the Spirit, and the Church (2): Overbearing Doctrine

12/29/2017

Rewind missions several hundred years and you’re likely to picture conquistador style missions. When the political arm of the state would go to take territory for the kingdom, they’d send along spiritual representatives to take souls for the Kingdom. Hindsight makes it very clear that all those missionaries did was impose their political philosophy over top of their Kingdom philosophy. In reality, all that they did in the name of the Kingdom was done not for God, but for nation. They conflated the Kingdom with the kingdom. Fortunately today we have learned our lesson and never superimpose our political means, goals, and ideals over God’s…

Ministry, the Spirit, and the Church (3): Overbearing Methodology

12/29/2017

Cleanliness is next to godliness, as the saying goes. Though most Christians I know could identify that quotation as a falseism and not a quotation from the Bible, I truly think most of us in our inmost being believe such a statement. Now, we may not believe it in its proper form. We may socially judge someone with a dirty car or a dirty house, but we likely wouldn’t consider them less godly on this account. But if we expand the strict definition of cleanliness to a broader definition of order and organization, it would be hard for many Christians I know to deny their belief in the above quotation. God is a God of order. The stipulation of an elder requires that they have order within their family. Order is opposed to entropy and chaos, two antitheses of God. These notions extend themselves and in our culture come up most notably in regard to finances. In the conservative circles I used to and still do run in, financial struggle is often thought of as financial disorder, and is very often subconsciously linked to ungodliness. Conversely, the leaders of the churches I’ve observed tend to all be intellectually and financially ordered very well. We value order – particularly order of the financial and intellectual kind.

The Argument for Infant Baptism and Sprinkling (3): A Family Set Apart

12/29/2017

Why Children of Believing Parents Can Receive the Sign of the Spirit: If the sign of baptism is immersion and given based on our profession alone, then infants should not be baptized. But if, as I have made the case above, the sign of baptism is moreso a sign of what God is to do to us and for us through his Spirit, then it seems quite appropriate to baptize the children of believers. Children of believers have been given the mark of God before faith since the time of Abraham, but they were only ever given the mark because of faith - the faith of their parents. The Psalmist discusses in several places his connection to God from childhood or before his birth. Paul says that he was set apart by God even before he was born (Galatians 1), and says that all believers were chosen in God before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1). The idea of God's covenant with us and his salvation unto us as being done at a moment in time is true from a particular perspective, but God's promise and his call on us, while not effected until later in our lives, is placed upon us from even before our birth. It makes sense, as with circumcision, to mark the children of believers - children for whom God's covenant holds true, and for whom their faith should be anticipated and expected. In their own right, children of believers are set apart because they join in the visible community of God, at least for a time, even if they eventually apostatize or never come to true faith.

The Argument for Infant Baptism and Sprinkling (4): Contextual Evidence

12/29/2017

Contextual Evidence Shedding Light on Baptism: Contextual evidence is, in my mind, the weakest of all the arguments I will put forward. In and of itself, context of the distant past often involves a bit of conjecture. We have to fill in the gaps with what we think we know of the time, place, and people, as details of the text are often too sparse to paint a whole picture. However, when you add contextual evidence to the rest of the cumulative case, it tends to be the glue that holds everything together. If you can interpret a passage two different ways, then you get a story that applies some of the concepts in a real life example, that story can sometimes provide the context to shed light on unclear passages. The passages where we see baptism applied can help to shed light on what is actually said in the unclear passages, as we get to see what the authors of the NT actually did (or may have done). I provide several instances below that hit on both the mode and the object.

The Argument for Infant Baptism and Sprinkling (5): Church History

12/29/2017

Church History: When looking at church history it's important to note that just because a respected church father wrote something about a topic and just because something was common practice early on doesn't mean it was right. The theology of the trinity is a great example, as it wasn't fully fleshed out until several centuries after the Apostles. There were many who held some strange views early on as they wrestled through difficult doctrine. That being said, there are a few important ideas we can draw from the church history about baptism that we see below.

The Argument for Infant Baptism and Sprinkling (1): Circumcision and Baptism

12/29/2017

I wrote an article several months ago about infant baptism. Having just had our church's first infant baptism, and understanding that many who know us have never thought much about infant baptism (also called paedobaptism), I decided to share some of what I found beautiful about it as opposed to the baptism only of new converts (known as believer's baptism or credobaptism). I did not at all intend for my former article to be an exhaustive defense of infant baptism, but rather an expression of ideas to get the wheels turning for people - to be exposed to what may be a new idea for some, and for others, to help them think through what they may have just assumed is the case due to their upbringing. But while that post served its purpose, I have felt the need to lay out a more exhaustive case for infant baptism, particularly as we look to baptize our son here in the near future.