“So then we must ever come to this point, that the Sacraments are effectual and that they are not trifling signs that vanish away in the air, but that the truth is always matched with them, because God who is faithful shows that he has not ordained anything in vain. And that is the reason why in Baptism we truly receive the forgiveness of sins, we are washed and cleansed with the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are renewed by the operation of his Holy Spirit. And how so? Does a little water have such power when it is cast upon the head of a child? No. But because it is the will of our Lord Jesus Christ that the water should be a visible sign of his blood and of the Holy Spirit. Therefore baptism has that power and whatsoever is there set forth to the eye is forth accomplished in very deed.” — John Calvin, Sermons on Deuteronomy
There’s an inconsistency between the soteriology and the ordinances of the Reformed Baptist Church; if applied completely, this dualism drives wedge through the heart of Reformed Theology. The ordinance of baptism is completely disconnected from salvation. Sovereignty is located only in God’s purpose to save individuals, meanwhile this same sovereignty is walled off from giving real grace through the sacraments. Put another way, God’s prerogative reigns in the act salvation, but authority in realm of the sacraments is reserved for the rule of the individual intellect. This dualism is the struggle between the primacy of God and the primacy of the individual. Such dualism attempts to retain both the reality of the covenant and an Enlightenment understanding of contract. These two will not mix. Sovereignty is never divided. To be clear, it seems to me that the Reformed Baptists are influenced by a covenantal type of soteriology, then attempt to restrict the idea of the covenant and it’s implications to the particularized sphere of personal salvation. Failing to allow covenantal thinking to influence their understanding of the sacraments, contract theory is left to bear the burden of imparting power to the sacraments. The battle is over the means of the sovereign application of grace. Is this sovereignty only internal and immediate, or is there real power in the external covenant seals?
Contract assumes a sort of equality between the parties involved, such equality does not allow for the imposition of a contract. Imposition negates the very consent required to facilitate the contract—the binding authority of the contract assumes this consent. Consent is often expressed by the signatures from the parties involved, often signing onto the contract itself. This paperwork shows the terms of the agreement, while the signatures document the consent and cognition of the signers.
Contracts are only between individuals. If someone points out that there are times when an agent signs a contract on behalf of a non-present member, it must be answered that the authority wielded by the agent was made legitimate only by a previous contractual agreement. An agreement between that agent and the person he now represents. As far as I can see, personal consent has been the foundation of contracts.
Let me now describe my understanding of biblical covenants by commenting on one of it’s characteristics that I find interesting. This one characteristic is diametrically opposed to the notion of contract listed above. This one example should suffice to make the claims of compatibility between contract and covenant theology seem dubious at best.
The one observation is this, covenants are never made between individuals. You may say, “but what about the covenant made between Jonathan and David?”
To this it must be pointed out, after the death of Jonathan the covenant continued, it is shown to be continuous by the fact that David sought out the House of Jonathan so that he could honor the covenant. He did this by showing mercy to those whom Jonathan represented. It may be better stated that the binding nature of covenants always extends beyond the men that act to cut the covenant. The stipulations of the covenant are applicable to those who are physically present and to those who are representatively present. In biblical covenants, a great deal of weight is placed on the representative position of the father. For example, the House of Jonathan is spoken of as a real entity, a whole that can be represented by an individual father, a man named Jonathan. This idea of a legitimate representative carries weight from the father downward, from the original covenant representative into the future. The Western notion of the primacy of individual turns this example onto it’s head, establishing legitimacy by directing the consent of the sons backwards in time to the commitments of the fathers. Think of the attempts to legitimate the acts of the American signers of the Constitution. Outside of covenantal thinking, the actions of the signers were open to critiques from the anarchists as going beyond the limits of consent. Lysander Spooner attacked the authority of the American State as being based upon agreements which were made prior to the lifetime of any man now supposedly bound by that document. Against this type of argument arose the notion of tacit consent, which seeks to make the commitments of the Founders binding upon modern men. Current day consent must be found somewhere, even if tacitly. Previous representation is legitimate only insofar as consent is now present.
If covenants are never made between individuals, it seems to follow that covenantal responsibilities will fall upon men regardless of their choice and outside of their consent. An example of a covenant binding sons who never consented is found in 2 Samuel chapter 21. A 3 year famine comes upon the land of Israel. David asks, why is this famine upon the land? God replies that it is a curse upon the bloody house of Saul. Specifically the famine arose as punishment for Saul’s slaughter of the Gibeonites.
This famine was God’s recognition and upholding of the sanctions imposed by a covenant made between the people of Israel and the people of Gibeon. Joshua chapter 9 lays out that story. As the Israelites were conquering the land of promise; they were deceived by the men of Gibeon into making a covenant. This covenant ensured that that Gibeon wasn’t destroyed in the conquest. Joshua made a league with them, only later to discover that these men weren’t from far off lands, but rather they inhabited the Promised Land which Joshua was supposed to conquer. Despite the deceit, the covenant was upheld. The men of Israel did not destroy the Gibeonites, because of the oath which they swore to them before the Lord. This covenantal oath bound not only those originally present, but the ethical stipulations bound the House of Israel and the House of the Gibeonites. This was the covenant that Saul violated when he slaughtered the Gibeonites. Interestingly enough, the punishment for this covenantal breach fell upon “seven men of his [Saul’s] sons.” No doubt these men had never given their individual consent to the league with the Gibeonites, nevertheless the covenant required their lives, indeed the Lord required their lives. The punishment upon the House of Saul wasn’t done in secret, the passage says that the sons of Saul were turned over to the Giebeonites and that they were hanged before the Lord.
In the act of salvation, a picture of the sovereign imposition of grace is embraced by Reformed Baptist. However, their position limits the sovereign act of God to the salvation of a particular individual. All of this happens prior to consent; the person is being acted upon. This must be prior to consent, as consent prior to the sovereign imposition grace would be impossible given the moral bondage of the will. All of this is turned upside down in Baptist sacramentolgy, where baptism does not engraft anyone into Christ, rather it becomes an ordinance that one does only after he proves a rational understanding of what it is that he’s doing. No longer suitable as the seal of salvation and no longer a real means of real grace, it becomes an act of obedience. This is the shift from sacrament to ordinance. The emphasis is changed from recipient to actor, from passive to active. Hence nothing is really delivered through the sacraments, apart from the power of the human disposition; a disposition which is now charged with the task of filling the sacraments with meaning. Thus the holy claim of Christ—by the washing of water—is superseded by the mental capabilities of a man acting out his personal profession through the ordinance of baptism. This personal profession begins and ends with the individual. A strictly personal salvation that is the antitheses of a covenant
If the house is held responsible prior to consent, which is essentially what the household baptism position says, then personal freedom was violated. And from the Baptist position, this personal liberty must be maintained in order to give meaning to the sacraments. This order, like the flow of authority from father to son, is reversed, the consent of the son now gives legitimacy to prior agents. And these agents aren’t even to be considered effective until the consent of the son is given. Water baptism becomes separated from the actions of the Spirit, relegated to the position of an insipid visual aid. In an attempt to preserve meaning, baptism is linked to the cognition of the individual. What the individual holds to be intellectually true becomes paramount, rather than the grace that is actually conferred in the sacrament. Think the right things, mentally assent to the right things, then one may become a candidate for baptism. This notion is a 180 degree turn from the soteriological position of salvation by grace alone.