I’m not sure either of those is an import from the old covenant.
The regulative principle doesn’t seem directly Biblical. It’s based on the idea that we can know of God only what he tells us. I don’t see why that’s particularly limited to the old covenant. Jesus is, after all, the supreme example of God revealing himself because we're unable to understand otherwise.
hedrick, I'm not sure that is a good definition of the RPW which is better understood as "we shouldn't worship God in a manner He hasn't revealed to us."
Baptism is a Christian institution. Certainly circumcision is used as an analogy, but most discussions of baptism speak of it as God declaring us as his, and connect it with Jesus’ inclusion of children, and 1 Cor 7:14.
That's a good place to start. The concept of child inclusion in the new covenant is based on an imported idea from the old covenant and not found in the 1 Cor. 7.
Here's why:
Quote,
"A great deal of confusion has arisen over this passage because interpreters have failed to consider the nature of Paul's logic in the passage. The common baptist and paedobaptist views both understand Paul to be making a cause/effect argument. In their view, Paul is arguing from the presence of a known effect to the presence of its cause or necessary condition.
The argument can be stated in the form of a syllogism:
Major premise: Sanctification of the unbelieving spouse is necessary for the holiness of your children;
Minor premise: Your children are holy;
Conclusion: Therefore, the unbelieving spouse is sanctified.
This construction of Paul's reasoning is an assumption unwarranted by the text. In my view, Paul considers the case of the children to be parallel to that of the unbelieving spouse. He is arguing from analogy rather than by cause/effect. If the unbelieving spouse is holy, the children are holy; if the unbelieving spouse is unclean, the children are unclean -- not because one causes the other but because they are like cases. This view was proposed by John Dagg (
Manual of Theology, Part II, pp. 155-156, and "A Decisive Argument Against Infant Baptism, Furnished by One of Its Own Proof-Texts") in the mid-1800's and was adopted by several of his contemporaries. However, it appears to have fallen into obscurity in later years; I have not seen it so much as mentioned in any discussion of the passage published after the mid-1800's. It is time then to blow the dust off this view and give it the consideration that it deserves. In the discussion that follows, I rely heavily on Dagg's work.
According to Dagg, Paul considers the question and decides that a believer and an unbeliever may lawfully dwell together...The intercourse of a married pair with each other, and that of parents with their children, must be regulated by the same rule. An unconverted husband or wife stands on the same level with unconverted children. If intercourse with the former is unlawful, intercourse with the latter is equally unlawful. [The contrary decision] would sever the ties that bind parents to their children, and [force them to leave their children]. By showing that this monstrous consequence legitimately follows from the doctrine, he has furnished an argument against it which is perfectly conclusive. Is there evidence for a parallel argument as Dagg advocates? Yes. The language of the passage points strongly in this direction. First, there is the pronoun "your" (plural in the Greek). Virtually all commentators assume without question that "your children" are the children of the mixed marriages being discussed in the passage. But why would Paul say "your children" instead of "their children", since in the immediate context he is referring to the marriage partners in the third person? Paul is in the middle of a section in which he is dealing case-by-case with various questions that had been addressed to him by the church as a whole (v. 1). He is addressing the church as a whole in his answer, even though he is discussing the cases of various subgroups within the church. When he says "your children", he is signifying the children of those whom he is addressing, that is, the children of the church members as a whole, not the children of the mixed marriages exclusively.
In v. 8, he addresses a specific subgroup with the statement, "I say to the unmarried and to widows". Yet he goes on to address them in the third person -- "it is good for them if they remain even as I". He follows the same pattern in v. 10 and again in v. 12. In vv. 13-15 on both sides of the pronoun in question, Paul consistently uses the third person to refer to the believing partner. Following the same style, Paul would have said "otherwise their children are unclean" if he had been referring exclusively to the children of these mixed marriages. In v. 16, he addresses the believing partner in the second person, but he explicitly states the party that he is addressing, and even here he uses the singular.
In v. 5 Paul uses the second person to address a specific subgroup without a formal notice of the restricted audience. However, in this context he is addressing a general concern touching the church as a whole (see vv. 1-2 and v. 7). He is issuing a directive, which makes the shift to the second person natural and expected. This is an extended statement whose intended audience is utterly unambiguous. It applies to all who were married just as "your children" applies to all who had children.
Finally, if we insist on finding a reference to "your" in the immediate context, the logical referent is the unbelieving spouse. The unbelieving spouse is the subject of the previous sentence and is more prominently in view than the believing spouse. But is it likely that Paul addressed those outside the church with "your" when in the broader context he is addressing specific questions of the church?
These considerations point us to the conclusion that "your children" refers to the children of all the church members and not to those of mixed marriages exclusively. But how does this bear on the nature of Paul's argument? If some of "your children" are not the fruit of mixed marriages, then we cannot explain how they could hypothetically be unclean as the effect of an unsanctified unbelieving parent. In other words, the argument must be understood as an argument of analogy rather than of cause/effect.
Another evidence that Paul was arguing from parallel cases is the tenses of the verbs in the passage. Literally, we have the following translation: "The unbelieving [spouse] is made holy in the [believing spouse]; otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy." The verb "is made holy" is in the perfect tense, and "are" is in the present. The implied major premise is: If the unbelieving spouse is not made holy, your children are unclean. In contrast, cause/effect arguments ordinarily use a temporal progression in their verb choice to signify a dependent consequence. In such a case, a more natural choice for the implied major premise would be: If the unbelieving spouse had not been made holy, then your children would be unclean. The passage would then read: "The unbelieving spouse is made holy in the believing spouse; otherwise your children would be (or "were") unclean, but now they are holy". (Regrettably, this word choice appears in many translations, although there is no warrant for it other than the mistaken notion that Paul is making a cause/effect argument.)
The use of "would be unclean" is the most natural wording for the situation in which the contrary is an established fact to the audience. When Christ said to the Pharisees, "If God were your father, you would love me", the contrary fact "you do not love me" was established and known to the audience. Christ did not need to say explictly "but you do not love me" since this fact was known to both him and his audience. On the contrary, in I Cor. 15:16, when Paul said "If the dead are not raised, then neither is Christ raised", he did not assume that his audience accepted Christ's resurrection. Instead, he went on to show that the denial of the resurrection leads to absurdity to complete his argument. In Dagg's argument, the cleanness of the children is not so much taken as an established fact; instead, the contrary notion leads to absurdity. Paul's use of "is unclean" and his conclusion with the statement "but now they are holy" more naturally suggests that his argument does not assume the children's cleanness as an established fact. Therefore, it suggests that the common cause/effect interpretation is in error.
Another phrase in the passage also suggests a parallel argument. We note that the Greek phrase "epei ara" translated "otherwise" is only used one other time in the New Testament. The other occurrence is in a nearby passage, I Cor. 5:10, where Paul makes a similar argument concerning a similar issue. He argues that we are not to avoid contact with immoral people as a class; otherwise, it is necessary for us to go out of this world. In this passage Paul is arguing using parallel cases. He argues that if we avoid contact with immoral people, then we must also avoid contact with other people to whom we need to relate. The similarity of word choice and issues in the two passages suggests that the nature of the argument is similar too.
None of these arguments is conclusive in itself. Taken together, however, they form a strong case for understanding the argument as one of parallel cases rather than cause/effect. Furthermore, even if all of these arguments can be overthrown, it would not provide any positive evidence for the opposing view. In fact, the parallel cases view would still be preferable simply because of its natural accord with the passage and the insurmountable difficulties of the alternative. This interpretation is strong in exactly the ways in which the others are weak. It assigns an identical meaning to the holiness of the children and the sanctification of the unbelieving spouse. Furthermore, it accounts for the fact that the holiness of the children is accepted as true, for the contrary would call into question the relation between all believing parents and their children, which the Corinthians agreed was contrary to all Christian principles. Finally, it gives cogency and strength to Paul's logic. It applies directly to all mixed marriages, whether there are children or not. And the effect of the opposite conclusion would be so horrible that it compels agreement with Paul's decision." (end quote)
Source
The case for infant baptism is simply not found in the NT but remains a theological construct. Don't get me wrong, this doesn't mean it's not a valid practice, I'm simply asking at which point do we stop constructing our theology from former covenants. Is there a one to one ratio of importation we are supposed to use for everything found in the old covenant?
Yours in the Lord,
jm
