Calvin's Institutes 4.16.7. to 4.16.13.

INSTITUTES
OF
THE CHRISTIAN
RELIGION
By
John Calvin

BOOK FOURTH.
OF THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH

CHAPTER 16.
PÆDOBAPTISM. ITS ACCORDANCE WITH THE INSTITUTION OF CHRIST, AND THE NATURE OF THE SIGN.

4.16.7. - 4.16.8.

With great esteem I read Calvin. But as he continues his defense of infant baptism one can readily see that he too is a man of clay feet. However one must understand his point even if we disagree. He takes us to Christ's reception of children in Matthew 19 and makes this connection: " If it is right that children should be brought to Christ, why should they not be admitted to baptism, the symbol of our communion and fellowship with Christ? If the kingdom of heaven is theirs, why should they be denied the sign by which access, as it were, is opened to the Church, that being admitted into it they may be enrolled among the heirs of the heavenly kingdom? How unjust were we to drive away those whom Christ invites to himself, to spoil those whom he adorns with his gifts, to exclude those whom he spontaneously admits." I have some obvious problems with the leap he takes from "children" to being "like children" but this appears to be an important argument if you are a paedobaptist! It is by these arguments (including a family baptism in Acts 16) that he makes this [over]statement: "Every one must now see that pædobaptism, which receives such strong support from Scripture, is by no means of human invention."

4.16.9.

To what promise do those who baptize babies expect to see? Calvin would say, "For the divine symbol communicated to the child, as with the impress of a seal, confirms the promise given to the godly parent, and declares that the Lord will be a God not to him only, but to his seed; not merely visiting him with his grace and goodness, but his posterity also to the thousandth generation." To what are the parents to think when bringing their children for baptism? "Let those, then, who embrace the promise of mercy to their children, consider it as their duty to offer them to the Church, to be sealed with the symbol of mercy, and animate themselves to surer confidence, on seeing with the bodily eye the covenant of the Lord engraven on the bodies of their children."

Paedobaptists not only trust in God's mercy to rest upon this child, in parallel to circumcision they believe that the child is then made part of the Church, the covenant community. "Children derive some benefit from their baptism, when, being ingrafted into the body of the Church, they are made an object of greater interest to the other members."

What is required of the child? "Then when they have grown up, they are thereby strongly urged to an earnest desire of serving God, who has received them as sons by the formal symbol of adoption, before, from nonage, they were able to recognise him as their Father."

4.16.10. - 4.16.11.

Calvin now addresses the objections of us baptists! We do not view the sign of circumcision and New Covenant baptism as parallel. Nor do we view the promise as the same. Calvin is right when he writes, "Whenever we quote circumcision and the promises annexed to it, they [the baptists] answer, that circumcision was a literal sign, and that its promises were carnal." Calvin does two things: One, he takes the reader to Colossians 2:11-12:

11 and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; 12 having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.

The interpretation of Calvin is "what do these words mean, but just that the truth and completion of baptism is the truth and completion of circumcision, since they represent one thing? For his object is to show that baptism is the same thing to Christians that circumcision formerly was to the Jews;" and

Secondly, he contends that " it is absolutely certain that the original promises comprehending the covenant which God made with the Israelites under the old dispensation were spiritual, and had reference to eternal life . . . [and] all the terrestrial promises which were given to the Jewish nation, the spiritual promise, as the head to which the others bore reference, always holding the first place."

4.16.12.

Calvin addresses the argument of some that the children of Abraham are different than those regenerated under the New Covenant. Calvin responds that "we certainly admit that the carnal seed of Abraham for a time held the place of the spiritual seed, which is ingrafted into him by faith (Gal. 4:28; Rom. 4:12)." But he adds, "All who in faith receive Christ as the author of the blessing are the heirs of this promise, and accordingly are called the children of Abraham."

4.16.13.

Calvin agrees as we all do that at Pentecost the boundaries of grace extended to all nations including the Gentiles. Paul in Romans is noted as saying "expressly that Abraham was not the father of those who were of the circumcision only, his object was to repress the superciliousness of some who, laying aside all regard to godliness, plumed themselves on mere ceremonies. In like manner, we may, in the present day, refute the vanity of those who, in baptism, seek nothing but water."

For a good critique of paedobaptism and the position articulated by Calvin, go to http://www.founders.org/library/welty.html