? about infant baptism

[Anulyra]

Okay, where do I start? Um. I just found this place and joined. I was born again 19 years ago and I have attended a LCMS church for about 12 years. In spite of that, I've often held to sort of a non-denominational/baptist world view. I've only recently started reading things like church and liturgy history, the book of Concord and the like. I just can't wrap my head around infant baptism. We have a 2 year old daughter and we had her baptized. We took a baptism class and I heard a compelling argument for infant baptism, but I can't remember what it was. I was reading the large catechism today (not all of it) and haven't found what we we taught (yet).

All this reading about baptism is on the tail of reading about the Lord's Supper in the Formula of Concord. I used to think that communion was just a remembrance and that the bread and wine were symbolic, but now I'm convinced that the body and blood are present.

Okay, here's my question:
If we're so concerned about communing only with those who share our doctrines, why do we baptize those who can't make a confession of faith? Why is faith necessary for one, and not the other? It's not okay to eat and drink judgment on oneself, but what of baptism? How can is it okay to enter that unexamined? It seems contradictory to me. Either both should require confession, or neither should require confession. Why doesn't the Lutheran church also have infant communion?

I'm not sure if I'm making a clear argument here. I've been reading all afternoon and it's all running together in my head at this point.

Thanks

 

[filosofer]

[FONT= "Book Antiqua"]
Howdy, and welcome. Glad to read that you are studying these matters.

Actually faith is also required to receive Baptism. From Luther's Small Catechism:

How can water do such great things?--Answer.

It is not the water indeed that does them, but the word of God which is in and with the water, and faith, which trusts such word of God in the water. For without the word of God the water is simple water and no baptism.

Part of the problem is that we sometimes confuse faith with intellectual and verbal capacity. But faith is more than that. I always like to remind parents about this: When the baby is 6 weeks old, can the baby tell whether mom is holding her or someone else. The mom always says, "Of course, the baby knows it is me!" - even without expressing a word.

The key thing is that baptism is something that God does and faith receives. There are no restrictions on the age of a person...

Which one is correct for Matthew 28?

"make disciples of all nations over the age of accountability"

or

"make disciples of all nations"

On the other hand, with the Lord's Supper, Paul specifically tells Christians to "examine themselves" prior to receiving the Lord's Supper.

In Christ's love,
filo
[/font]

 

[Anulyra]

Well, if they have faith without the ability to speak, then why not give them communion also?

When I look at the arguments for infant baptism, it only makes sense that they also apply to communion. It seems to me we should do both or neither.

 

[filosofer]

[FONT= "Book Antiqua"]
Scripture does indicate that those who receive the Lord's Supper examine themselves, which implies the ability to reason, speak. Scripture does not indicate an age, however.

In Christ's love,
filo
[/font]

 

[DaRev]

Baptism and Communion are two seperate sacraments.

Baptism does not require a confession of faith. It only requires faith, which is given by God and worked by the Holy Spirit.

Communion, on the other hand, carries with it a condition, that being the ability to examine one's self, and to be able to make and agree with the Confession of faith confessed at that altar.

 

[Anulyra]

I want to post a link but I can't. I'm going to quote it.

______

As a Greek scholar, I was disappointed by the scholarship of George Knight's article against paedocommunion. For instance, he claims that Paul's use of "hos' an" ("whoever") makes Paul's commands about the supper universal, and then concludes that the sentence in which it occurs -- "whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord" -- therefore applies to children too. But hos an + subjunctive is not a universal. It is an indefinite. It simply means that Paul is referring to everyone he has in mind, not every Tom, Dick, and Harry that we could possible imagine. It does not help establish that Paul has children in mind.

Or, again, Knight says, about verse 28:

This verse is very instructive. It reads “Let a person examine himself, then,and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.” The instruction is very personal and very direct. It calls on every human being to engage in this examination of himself. And it uses a verb (dokimazo) which expresses that in the third person singular “let him, i.e., a human being, examine himself.” Every person individually is to look into his own being to determine if he or she is taking the Lord’s Supper in an unworthy manner.​

But "dokimazo" does not seem to mean "look into one's own being". I can turn up no such usage in either the LSJ nor the Thesaurus Linguae Gracae. Demosthenes 18.266 says "I am being examined for a crown," and then talks about how he is judicially innocent of all crimes. This is not introspective. Again, in Plato's Laws, 759D, some officers called "Expounders" are being examined. The scrutiny in question, the test indicated by "dokimazo", is "to see that a man is healthy and legitimate, reared in a family whose moral standards could hardly be higher, and that he himself and his father and mother have lived unpolluted by homicide and all such offences against heaven." In other words, it is again objective, not a matter of "looking into one's being." Again, in Thucydides 6.53, we see criminal informers being tested; in this case, "dokimazo" indicates a double-checking of the facts of their reports. Or in Xenophon, Memorabilia VI.1, we find talk of testing friends, where the test involves asking whether a person is "master of his appetites, not under the dominion, that is, of his belly, not addicted to the wine-cup or to lechery or sleep or idleness" and whether he is a debtor or quarrelsome.

But I cannot find a single occurrence of the word where it might mean "look into a man's being." On the face of things, it seems impossible that in 1 Cor. 11, the fact that a reflexive pronoun is the object should suddenly mean that introspection is the means by which "dokimazeto seauton" is accomplished. Indeed, a survey of the uses of the word in Greek literature lends great plausibility to the suggestion of the OPC Majority report on paedocommunion, Tim Gallant's book Feed My Lambs, and various other sources, that the test in view in 1 Cor. 11 is whether one is living in love and unity with one's fellow believers. This would be, again, objectively knowable and would seem to involve no introspection -- in short, a requirement that babies do not even have the ability to break yet.

Leithart's reply article, though fairly good theologically and gracious in tone, was not sufficiently tough on Knight's Greek exegesis.

But the biggest kicker is this: I really don't understand why Knight bothered to write the article without even reading Tim Gallant's book. Gallant does a good job with dokimazo on pp. 90-103 of Feed My Lambs.

 

[DaRev]

I am confused as to why you are posting this. It only speaks of one aspect of communion. What is your question?

 

[Jim47]

Another way to look at this is to try to defend the Baptist teaching. There is no scriptural support for the age of accountability and no where does Jesus tell anyone to refuse little children, on the contrary He states that His kingdom is made of such as these.

Here is another bible verse often over looked.

Acts 2:38Peter replied, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call."