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The United Free Church of Scotland General Assembly 2001 Panel on Doctrine Report on Baptism, chapter 4.

This page is a copy of the text of www.ufcos.org.uk/ga01/panel04.htm

The baptism of children: Old Testament evidence

First half of this chapter: Family.

Covenant

The teaching of the Old Testament on the overarching topic of covenant was of fundamental importance at the time of the Reformation for Reformers such as John Calvin and John Knox. It was particularly important for their understanding of baptism. Here it is necessary to explore the biblical concept as we have it in the Old Testament.

In the Old Testament the relationship between God and his people is expressed in a variety of ways, two of the most important being (a) covenant and (b) fatherhood and sonship (God is the father of Israel, Israel is the son and heir of God ). In both concepts the relationship was initiated and sustained by God . They are his people because he set his love upon them and chose them for himself (Deut 7.6-7). In both concepts there is an obligation laid upon the people by God. According to C J H Wright "it is Israel's sonship which united the indicative and the imperative" [God's People in God's Land , Paternoster 1997, p 21]. i.e. God's gracious choice of Israel and the obligations laid upon Israel. The following comment of J McCarthy on Jer 31.9 emphasises the close connection between the covenant relationship and the father-son relationship and, therefore, the personal nature of the covenant: "The restoration of Israel is the restoration of the father-son relationship. This is the context governed by 31.1, that is, by the proclamation of a new and better union between Yahweha nd Israel based on a new covenant. Thus, in the mind of Jeremiah the covenant relationship and the father-son relationship were not incompatible, they were essentially the same thing" [Notes on the Love of God in Deuteronomy and the Father-Son Relationship between Yahweh and Israel, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 27 (1965), pp 144-147, Quoted by J H Wright, God's People in God's Land, Paternoster 1997, p21].

The covenant between God and his people had its origin in God and in God's dealings with Abraham. It came about through God's initiative. He established it. It was his grace that brought it into being. The covenant however had its obligations: "you must keep my covenant" (Gen17.9). While the descendants of Abraham did not become God's people by keeping the obligations they could renounce God and his covenant and take themselves beyond the pale of his covenant. There is no such thing as a covenant without obligations. As Jesus said, "If you love me, keep my commands!" (John 14.15).

It can hardly be overstated that fundamental to the covenant is the unique relationship which God established between himself and the people he brought into existence. It was essentially a spiritual covenant. There were material benefits, primarily the promise of land (i.e. the land of Canaan) for their inheritance. But the material benefits were secondary to the extraordinary benefit of God's personal commitment to Abraham and his descendants: "to be your God and the God of your descendants" (Gen17.7,8). Asking the question, "What was the Abrahamic covenant in the highest reaches of its meaning?" John Murray responds, "Undeniably and simply, 'I will be your God, and you shall be my people.' " [Christian Baptism, Presbyterian and Reformed 1880, p 47]. A more literal rendering of Gen 17.7 would be, "I will be God for you…" Hence in Deut 7.6 we read, "you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession."

The covenant made with Abraham was inseparably bound up with Abraham's faith. In Genesis 12 we read of Abraham's faith and obedience as God instructed him to leave his country and his people to go to a land that God would show him. At that time the promise was given that all people on earth would be blessed through Abraham. In Genesis 15 God promises what was humanly speaking impossible, a son who would be Abraham's heir. It was further promised that Abraham's descendants would be as numerous as the stars. Abraham believed God, we are told, and "it was reckoned to him as righteousness" (v 6). The account in chapter 15 concludes: "On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham …" (v18). Significantly, Abraham was to become known as the father of all the faithful. In Genesis 17 God confirms (v17) his covenant with Abraham and expands on it: Abraham was to be the father of many nations; the covenant was to be an everlasting covenant (v7); God was to be Abraham's God and the God of his descendants (v7); the sign of the covenant was to be circumcision (v10f); circumcision was not to be optional (to be uncircumcised was to be cut off from God's people (v14) ). Not only was Abraham himself to undergo circumcision so too was every member of his household, whether son or slave, ("whether born in your household or bought with money" (v13) ). Hamilton puts this in a striking way, "The firstborn son is no more in the covenant tradition than the slave. Hierarchialism gives way to egalitarianism" [The Book of Genesis Chapters 1-17, Eerdmans 1990, p 473]. Every male child born into the household was to be circumcised at the age of eight days (Gen 17.12; Lev 12.3). Not only slaves but all foreigners who wished to join the covenant people werealso required to undergo circumcision (Gen 34.13-17). In fact only those who had been circumcised were allowed to take part in the celebration of the Passover (Ex 12.48f) which was a feast for the covenant community. All this illustrates how close was the relationship between the covenant and its sign, so close in fact that circumcision can be spoken of as the covenant, "My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant" (Gen 17.13b). Hamilton observes: "The designation of circumcision itself as a covenant is a synecdoche* for covenantal obligation: 'this is [the aspect of] my covenant you must keep' " [The Book of Genesis Chapters 1-17, Eerdmans 1990, p 470].

In the context of the covenant with Abraham (Genesis 17) reference is made to Abraham's descendants six times (v7-10,19) and to the "generations to come" three times (v7, 9-10). It is a covenant established by God with Abraham and Abraham's descendants (v7). We discover, when we reach the New Testament, that there is more to this than originally met the eye. We may at least anticipate that Abraham's descendants would include God's people under the New Covenant every bit as much as they included God's people under the Old: "the natural children … but the children of the promise…" [J Stott, The Message of Romans, IVP 1994, pp 266f].

It is of particular interest that Abraham, under God's direction, should have circumcised Ishmael. According to the angel announcing his birth Ishmael would be "a wild donkey of a man" (Gen 16.12), i.e. "a forlorn and friendless figure" [Hosea, Anchor 1980, p 505]. The wild donkey is the onager whose habitat is in waste places (Job 39.5-8; Is 32.14; Hos 8.9). Anderson comments, "We should not take it for granted that in Israel the ass was proverbial for stupidity …" More crucially Ishmael and his descendants would not feature in God's covenant purposes. The Jewish people were descendants of Isaac, not Ishmael. God established his covenant with the descendants of Isaac, not those of Ishmael. So far as the covenant is concerned it is the descendants of Isaac not of Ishmael who were the heirs of promise. According to God it was through Isaac that Abraham's covenantal offspring would be named (Gen 21.12). Ishmael and Isaac were both circumcised as children of Abraham yet there is a great gulf between the two in the biblical perception of them (in both Old and New Testaments). A major argument of Paul in Galatians 4 (under law or under grace, vv 21-31) depends on the difference between Isaac and Ishmael in God's purposes. The significance of this for our discussion together with the significance of the difference between Jacob and Esau (sons of Isaac) in God's purposes is well summed up by C Buchanan:

"The difference between the two sons in each generation is perfectly clear. The sheer fact of birth to a family which had been specially called of God did not of itself confer any automatic membership of the elect people of God. The fathers in each case circumcised both sons … but the circumcision, although it carried a divine significance, did not attest any automatic inheritance … (Circumcision) is not a fleshly, earthly sign, of a fleshly, earthly people of God. It is from the beginning the sign of God's election, which is given to the offspring of God's people without distinguishing at the point of birth how they are to grow up in the purposes of God. And here, perhaps, is a very cogent model for an understanding of the role of infant baptism" [A Case for Infant Baptism, Grove Books 1973, p11].

Commenting on Esau and his twin brother Jacob, J G S S Thomson writes: "Esau symbolises those whom God has not elected; Jacob typifies those whom God has chosen" [The Illustrated Bible Dictionary (Ed. J D Douglas), article on Esau, IVP 1980]. Yet Esau, ancestor of the Edomites, was circumcised along with his brother. Macleod has a perceptive comment on the significance of the circumcision of Ishmael and Esau for the baptism of infants:

"Why do I baptise children? Is it because I believe that the infants of all believing parents are elect? No! Is it because I believe that the infants of all believing parents will one day be born again? No! Is it because I believe that one day they will all accept God for themselves? No! It is because God gave me an ordinance: Put the sign of the spiritual covenant on the physical seed. At the very beginning of this arrangement God put Ishmael and Esau there to remind us that we were not to do this on the ground that we knew theologically how the thing worked. We were to do it because God said it. In the case of Ishmael and Esau it seemed not to work. It wasn't related to any rationale of its effectiveness. It was done (and it is still done) on the ground that God said, 'Put the sign of my promise not only on yourselves but also on your children' " [A Faith to Live By, Christian Focus 1998, pp 219f].

There is an interesting question with respect to circumcision as a sign which is not without relevance to baptism. For whom was it a covenant sign? [The Book of Genesis Chapters 1-17, Eerdmans 1990, p 470]. There are three possibilities. (a) The outsider. In Gen 4.15 the sign on Cain identifies him to the outsider as one under divine protection. (b) God. In Gen 9.16 the sign of the rainbow is a reminder to God: "when I see it, I will remember". In Ex 12.13 the blood on the door-posts at Passover is also a sign to God, "when I see the blood, I will pass over you". (c) The person circumcised (including his family). Signs generally in the Bible are for the people to whom they were given, e.g. the sign of the Sabbath in Ex 31.12-17. (a) The outsider, is slightly problematic in view of the fact that circumcision did not identify Israelites as such. Many who were not Israelites practised the same rite (sometimes as a puberty rite sometimes as a marriage rite) though not usually with reference to babies. As Hamilton observes, however, "The Hebrews alone focussed on the intimate relationship between a covenant from God and circumcision as a mark of that covenant" [The Book of Geneses Chapters 1-17, Eerdmans1990, p 472]. (b) God, is a strong contender. (c) The person circumcised, is likewise a strong contender. The fact that circumcision is a sign of the covenant, i.e. of the special relationship between God and his people, leaves open any or all of the three possibilities.

Psalm 74 refers to a national disaster of catastrophic proportions. It refers specifically to the destruction of the temple and is generally held to reflect the Babylonian devastation of Jerusalem followedby the Babylonian exile (cf. Ps 79). It is a lament, full of pathos. It seemed that God had forgotten, even rejected, his people. The Psalmist writes out of the utmost perplexity and desperation. And in the latter part of his desperate prayer he begs God, "Have regard for your covenant" (v 20). In his desperation he remembers that he is a child of the covenant, that he bears the sign of the covenant on his own body, that God's covenant is for ever, that God cannot ignore or break his own covenant and desert or reject his own people. And so he pleads the covenant. He reminds himself of the covenant and he dares to remind God of the covenant. Spurgeon described this verse as "the master key" to the Psalmist's pleading [The Treasury of David, vol 2a, 'Psalms 58-87, Zondervan 1966, pp275f. See also P Marcel, The Biblical Doctrine of Infant Baptism, James Clarke 1953 (trans. PE Hughes), p110f]. God's covenant with its sign was not intended for theological reflection but for personal and corporate appropriation. The Psalmist's experience is not unlike the experience of Martin Luther when he, also in the depths of despair, was able to plead his baptism and all that it represented: "I have been baptised!"

It may be helpful to summarise the salient points already made and to add others which do not require detailed discussion.

1. The covenant had its origin in God's dealings with Abraham. It was a covenant of grace established and maintained by God.
2. The covenant was inseparably boundup with Abraham's faith through which God accepted him as righteous.
3. Although there were material benefits the covenant was essentially spiritual and personal, God would be God for his people.
4. The covenant was an everlasting covenant with permanent significance.
5. To be included within the covenant necessarily carried with it obligations to the God and people of the covenant.
6. The sign of the covenant, circumcision, was not a private, individualistic experience, it was to be administered to every male member of the household: sons, servants and other members of the extended family.
7. Children were to receive the sign of the covenant on the eighth day after birth solely because God had commanded it.
8. Females had no sign corresponding to circumcision. (An Introduction to the Old Testament: A Feminist Perspective , Fortress 1988, pp 62-64 notes that the further directive in Scripture (e.g.Deut 10.16; 30.6) about the circumcision of the heart transfers a physical act possible only for males, to a symbolic act, possible for all human beings. See the footnote in Hamilton, p 470.) They were included in the covenant as members of the family.
9. The mark of the covenant was ineradicable. It could not be undone. Not only was the covenant to have permanent significance, so too was the sign of the covenant. For those who remained within the covenant it would be a reminder of God's blessing. For those who took themselves outside the covenant it would be a reminder of their alienation.
10. The sign of the covenant was a sign possibly to God, possibly to his people, possibly to the world at large.
11. Abraham's descendants were to include God's people under the New as well as the Old Covenant.
12. The Covenant with its sign provides the basis for faith and hope in hard days.

It would be difficult to explore the topic of covenant as we have it in the Old Testament without reference to the Mosaic covenant established with Moses at Mount Sinai (Ex 19.5) and renewed in Moses' final charge to the nation prior to his death (Deut 29.1). The Mosaic covenant has sometimes been presented as though it supplanted the covenant made with Abraham. Perhaps the most popular expression of this approach is to be found in dispensationalist theology, particularly that of the Scofield Reference Bible which describes the Mosaic covenant as a "covenant of works" whereby salvation depends on obedience to the law. It is more in keeping with the biblical narrative to regard the giving of the law at Sinai as a provision of grace. The law was given to regulate the life of those who were already the people of God, not to establish a new way by which the Israelites could be accepted as God's people. When the people of Israel resorted to the idolatrous worship of the golden calf, after the giving of the law, it was on the basis of the Abrahamic covenant that Moses successfully based his plea for God to avert his anger. Of course, every covenant has its obligations as well as it privileges, including the New Covenant. The conditional "if" is as important to the New Testament as it is to the Old. We demonstrate the reality of what we are by keeping his commands. The mark of the covenant in the Old Testament was always a sign of God's gracious dealings with his own people – both before and after Sinai. As Paul makes abundantly clear in Gal 3.17f: "The law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise. For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on promise; but God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise."

Covenant obligations with respect to children

The family had a vital role to play in Israel's ongoing relationship with God, especially "as a vehicle of continuity for the faith, history, and traditions of Israel" [Ibid, p 81]. Fundamental to this role was the responsibility of the father (or whoever was the head of the household) to instruct children within the family in the ways of God, as God himself had revealed them. Such instruction was regarded as a "solemn obligation". There are instances in the Old Testament where this obligation is placed fairly and squarely on those responsible for such instruction:

• Deut 6.6-7: "These commandments thatI give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up."
• Deut 11.18f: "Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up."
• Deut 32.46: "Take to heart all the words I have solemnly declared to you this day, so that you may command your children to obey carefully all the words of this law." Their future would depend upon it.

• Passover. "When your children ask you, 'What does this ceremony mean to you?' then tell them, 'It is the Passover sacrifice of the Lord…' " (Ex 12.26f)
• Consecration of the first born. "In the days when your son asks you, 'What does this mean?' say to him, 'With a mighty hand the Lord brought us up out of Egypt … When Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord killed every firstborn in Egypt … This is why I sacrifice to the Lord the first male offspring of every womb and redeem each of my firstborn sons …' " (Ex 13.14)
• Laws commanded by God. "When your son asks you, 'What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws the Lord our God has commanded you?' tell him, 'We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand …The Lord commanded us to obey all these decrees and to fear the Lord our God, so that we might always prosper and be kept alive …' " (Deut 6.20-24)
• Crossing of the Jordan. "When your children ask you, 'What do these stones mean?' tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord …" (Jos 4.6-7) and "When your descendants ask their fathers, 'What do these stones mean?' tell them, 'Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground…' " (Jos 4.21f)

As Wright observes the catechetical pattern was introduced to " 'prime' the child with questions as a 'springboard' for the teaching of specific religious history and belief" [Ibid, p83, quoting J A Soggin, Legends and Catechesis, p 76]. Whether the teaching of children was didactic or catechetical it was a solemn, God-ordained obligation for the well-being of both family and nation.

Israel and the Christian Church

While it is possible to be over-simplistic in describing the relationship between the nation of Israel and the Christian Church, i.e. the people of God under the old covenant and the people of God under the new covenant, most Christians recognise that there is a close relationship between the two and that the latter is the fulfilment of the former. In a book that deals not with a New Testament theology of the church but with the "socio-economic life of ancient Israel" C J H Wright draws attention to the profound relevance of Israel for Christians: "In New Testament theology the Christian Church, as the community of the Messiah, is the organic continuation of Israel. It is heir to the names and privileges of Israel, and therefore also falls under the same ethical responsibilities – though now transformed in Christ. Therefore the thrust of Old Testament social ethics, which in their own historical context were addressed to the redeemed community of God's people, needs to be directed first of all at the equivalent community – the Church. The New Testament concept and practice of fellowship, the local church community as a household or family, the principles of financial sharing and mutual support all have deep roots in the social and economic life of Old Testament Israel …" [Ibid, pp xviif]. In his Theology of the Old Testament, Edmond Jacob quotes Calvin with approval, "The Church which was among the Jews was the same as ours, but it was still in the weakness of childhood …" [Theology of the Old Testament (trans. AW Heathcote & PJ Allcock), Hodder 1958, p 18]. There is continuity, hence Stephen is able to speak of Israel in the wilderness as 'the church' (ekklesia), and there is discontinuity, hence the atoning sacrifices offered daily under the old covenant have been replaced by the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ under the new covenant. JI Packer has highlighted both the continuity and discontinuity as follows:

"The church exists in, through, and because of Jesus Christ. Thus it is a distinctive New Testament reality. Yet it is at the same time a continuation, through a new phase of redemptive history, of Israel, the seed of Abraham, God's covenant people of Old Testament times. The differences between the church and Israel are rooted in the newness of the covenant by which God and his people are bound to each other. The new covenant under which the church lives (1 Cor 11.25; Heb 8.7-13) is a new form of the relationship whereby God says to a chosen community, 'I will be your God; you shall be my people' (Ex 6.7; Jer 31.33). Both the continuity and the discontinuity between Israel and the church reflect this change in the form of the covenant, which took place at Christ's coming. The new features of the new covenant are as follows: First, the Old Testament priests, sacrifices, and sanctuary are superseded by the mediation of Jesus, the crucified, risen, and reigning God-man (Heb 1-10), in whom believers now find their identity as the seed of Abraham and the people of God (Gal 3.29; 1 Pet 2.4-10). Second, the ethnic exclusivism of the old covenant (Deut 7.6; Ps 147.19-20) is replaced by the inclusion in Christ on equal terms of believers from all nations (Eph 2-3; Rev 5.9-10). Third, the Spirit is poured out both on each Christian and on the church, so that fellowship with Christ (1 John 1.3), ministry from Christ (John 12.32; 14-18; Eph 2.17), and foretastes of heaven (2 Cor 1.22; Eph1.14) become realities of churchly experience. The unbelief of most Jews (Rom 9-11) led to a situation depicted by Paul as God breaking off the natural branches of his olive tree (the historical covenant community) and replacing them with wild olive shoots (Rom 11.17-24). The predominantly Gentile character of the church is due not to the terms of the new covenant but to Jewish rejection of them, and Paul taught that this will one day be reversed (Rom 11.15, 23-31)" [Concise Theology, IVP 1993, Article on 'Church', p199ff].

Another new feature of the new covenant is that the sign of the covenant is given to males and females whereas under the old covenant it was restricted to males [Baptism, Hodder 1987, p 86.; Mary Evans, Woman in the Bible, Paternoster 1998, p27; C Buchanan, A Case for Infant Baptism, Grove Books 1973, p 12 (footnote 3)]. It may be noted that it is after Paul has described Christians as "children of Abraham "(Gal 3.7) and in the context of baptism (3.27) that Paul writes, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (3.28). Of course, Paul does not mean that the distinction between male and female has been obliterated, rather that it does not matter. We are brothers and sisters together in the one family. As JRW Stott has put it: "we belong to each other in such a way as to render of no account the things which normally distinguish us" [The Message of Galatians, IVP 1968, pp 99f], and, we may add, the things which did distinguish people in the old era. Our common baptism represents a common 'belonging'. FF Bruce has put this well: "Paul may have had in mind that circumcision involved a form of discrimination between men and women which was removed when circumcision was demoted from its position as religious law, whereas baptism was open to both sexes indiscriminately. But the denial of discrimination which is sacramentally affirmed in baptism holds good for the new existence 'in Christ' in its entirety" [The Epistle to the Galatians, Paternoster 1982, pp189f].

Next chapter: New Testament.

(*synecdoche - a figure of speech in which part is named but the whole is understood.)

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