A quick update here. Grudem responded to Piper’s rebuttal of Grudem’s change of his position on baptism and church membership. (That sentence is a mouthful!)
Then Justin Taylor followed that up by highlighting two helpful articles by Vern Poythress. The first one is called “Indifferentism and Rigorism in the Church: With Implications for Baptizing Small Children“, and explores two attitudes to church membership and the nature of faith in little children (ages 2 and up). What Poythress says concerning the church in that paper is worth thinking through irrespective of the baptism position altogether — especially for us fundamentalist types.
The second paper is more overtly connected to paedobaptism (Vern Poythress is paedo), and is entitled “Linking Small Children with Infants in the Theology of Baptizing“. It explores the implications of Jesus’ reception of the little children and the nature of our experiencing Jesus in the company of the saints every time we gather in corporate worship.
Both of the articles by Poythress are well worth your time. He is very humble and brings up some excellent points. What he says can also be taken to heart even without opening membership to those of the opposite baptismal position. I’d be interested to hear any of your thoughts on the articles!
Good looking new site, Bob. But you need less sidebar to make a more balanced page, if you’re going to reduce previous posts to a series of links, if you don’t mind my constructive criticism. After all, I’ve no experience with changing my look, because there’s not enough “old book” looks out there (I’m an “old-book-o-phile)–yes, I’m aware WordPress has one. I checked it out for a few days, but still don’t know how to transport all my content to the new site were I to decide to change, but I don’t want to waste the time studying the new site. That’s why I keep bugging you by email for Q&A on stuff I don’t know how to do.
All that to say, Bob’s Blue Baptist Blog is . . . Beutiful!
John,
You gotta come to WordPress, man! Under the Manage tab, select “import”, and it will import the whole kit and kaboodle into the new blog. You can try it, and tweak it a little, but it should work. The only thing it won’t capture is your sidebar, but if you choose a WP theme with widgets, the sidebar is awesome, and super easy to maintain.
Hey you could easily have videos on your blog and all kinds of stuff. And you and I could email back and forth until you get it right! 😉
As for the redesign here, the single post thing is what has kept me away from this theme for a while. But if you check out my first Baptism post here from a couple days back, or if you check out my Barry Bonds post, you’ll see the sidebar looks just fine, when the comments are displaying.
I did do more work on shortening the sidebar, and succeeded to some extent. I think I’m happy with it now. I just have to work on the new pages I created. That’s another awesome WP feature: pages!
Alright, advertisement over!
Let me make the distinction between informal fellowship, such as a neighborhood bible study, and the formal fellowship of a congregation. I can easily participate in the former with someone who holds differing views (I am a Presbyterian), because I see it as a disagreement among brethren. That is a far cry from an issue such as the nature of the scriptures, or the trinity, just to name two off the top of my head. However, I would see congregational membership differently, because baptism isn’t really about the water. Rather, paedobaptism and credobaptism are differing views on the nature of the church, the covenant, and accountability. Church membership MEANS something DIFFERENT to holders of the two views.
And a more fundamental question comes up when you have an inter-baptismal (cross-baptismal, bi-baptismal?) marriage. If the spouses disagree on this issue, how do they decide as the children come along? Alternate? That runs into the same issues I mentioned above. Compromise? How do you half-baptize an infant? The rule of the husband? I’m not comfortable with giving him power to wound his wife’s conscience that way. Surely the ideal would be for one spouse to convince the other, but that doesn’t necessarily happen.