Baptism in the Belgic Confession

Article 34: The Sacrament of Baptism

• We believe and confess that Jesus Christ, in whom the law is fulfilled, has by his shed blood put an end to every other shedding of blood, which anyone might do or wish to do in order to atone or satisfy for sins.Having abolished circumcision, which was done with blood, he established in its place the sacrament of baptism. By it we are received into God’s church and set apart from all other people and alien religions, that we may be dedicated entirely to him, bearing his mark and sign. It also witnesses to us that he will be our God forever, since he is our gracious Father.

  Therefore he has commanded that all those who belong to him be baptized with pure water in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.^76

  In this way he signifies to us that just as water washes away the dirt of the body when it is poured on us and also is seen on the body of the baptized when it is sprinkled on him, so too the blood of Christ does the same thing internally, in the soul, by the Holy Spirit. It washes and cleanses it from its sins and transforms us from being the children of wrath into the children of God.

  This does not happen by the physical water but by the sprinkling of the precious blood of the Son of God, who is our Red Sea, through which we must pass to escape the tyranny of Pharoah, who is the devil, and to enter the spiritual land of Canaan.

  So ministers, as far as their work is concerned, give us the sacrament and what is visible, but our Lord gives what the sacrament signifies– namely the invisible gifts and graces; washing, purifying, and cleansing our souls of all filth and unrighteousness; renewing our hearts and filling them with all comfort; giving us true assurance of his fatherly goodness; clothing us with the “new man” and stripping off the “old,” with all its works.

  For this reason we believe that anyone who aspires to reach eternal life ought to be baptized only once without ever repeating it– for we cannot be born twice. Yet this baptism is profitable not only when the water is on us and when we receive it but throughout our entire lives.

  For that reason we detest the error of the Anabaptists who are not content with a single baptism once received and also condemn the baptism of the children of believers. We believe our children ought to be baptized and sealed with the sign of the covenant, as little children were circumcised in Israel on the basis of the same promises made to our children.

  And truly, Christ has shed his blood no less for washing the little children of believers than he did for adults.

  Therefore they ought to receive the sign and sacrament of what Christ has done for them, just as the Lord commanded in the law that by offering a lamb for them the sacrament of the suffering and death of Christ would be granted them shortly after their birth. This was the sacrament of Jesus Christ.

  Furthermore, baptism does for our children what circumcision did for the Jewish people. That is why Paul calls baptism the “circumcision of Christ.”^77

  ^76 Matt. 28:19 ^77 Col. 2:11

No additional commentary is needed, except to say that I read the Westminster Confession of Faith to be teaching the same doctrine that is here laid out, especially on the point about the baptism lasting one’s whole life.   That’s what “not limited to the time of administration” means.  This is in Calvin, Vermigli, Ames, Burgess, and others too.   It is a shame it isn’t in more places today.

Atonement and Offer in the Canons of Dort

Second Head Article 1: The Punishment Which God’s Justice Requires

God is not only supremely merciful, but also supremely just. His justice requires (as he has revealed himself in the Word) that the sins we have committed against his infinite majesty be punished with both temporal and eternal punishments, of soul as well as body. We cannot escape these punishments unless satisfaction is given to God’s justice.

Article 2: The Satisfaction Made by Christ

Since, however, we ourselves cannot give this satisfaction or deliver ourselves from God’s anger, God in his boundless mercy has given us as a guarantee his only begotten Son, who was made to be sin and a curse for us, in our place, on the cross, in order that he might give satisfaction for us.

Article 3: The Infinite Value of Christ’s Death

This death of God’s Son is the only and entirely complete sacrifice and satisfaction for sins; it is of infinite value and worth, more than sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world.

Article 4: Reasons for This Infinite Value

This death is of such great value and worth for the reason that the person who suffered it is–as was necessary to be our Savior–not only a true and perfectly holy man, but also the only begotten Son of God, of the same eternal and infinite essence with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Another reason is that this death was accompanied by the experience of God’s anger and curse, which we by our sins had fully deserved.

Article 5: The Mandate to Proclaim the Gospel to All

Moreover, it is the promise of the gospel that whoever believes in Christ crucified shall not perish but have eternal life. This promise, together with the command to repent and believe, ought to be announced and declared without differentiation or discrimination to all nations and people, to whom God in his good pleasure sends the gospel.

Article 6: Unbelief Man’s Responsibility

However, that many who have been called through the gospel do not repent or believe in Christ but perish in unbelief is not because the sacrifice of Christ offered on the cross is deficient or insufficient, but because they themselves are at fault.

Dort states the need for God’s justice to be satisfied, and then it goes on to show the infinite value of Christ’s satisfaction. Right away this means that there is no “limit” in the satisfying content of Christ’s death. It can neither go up nor down. It is infinite, and this is because God died in Christ.

We are also told that the gospel of Christ crucified, and I would suppose that we are allowed to connect this to the previously stated fact that this crucifixion is more than sufficient to atone for the sins of the entire world, is to be preached to all without discrimination. There’s your free offer of the gospel.

Later in the third and fourth head, the canons of Dort say this:

Article 8: The Serious Call of the Gospel

Nevertheless, all who are called through the gospel are called seriously. For seriously and most genuinely God makes known in his Word what is pleasing to him: that those who are called should come to him. Seriously he also promises rest for their souls and eternal life to all who come to him and believe.

Article 9: Human Responsibility for Rejecting the Gospel

The fact that many who are called through the ministry of the gospel do not come and are not brought to conversion must not be blamed on the gospel, nor on Christ, who is offered through the gospel, nor on God, who calls them through the gospel and even bestows various gifts on them, but on the people themselves who are called. Some in self-assurance do not even entertain the Word of life; others do entertain it but do not take it to heart, and for that reason, after the fleeting joy of a temporary faith, they relapse; others choke the seed of the Word with the thorns of life’s cares and with the pleasures of the world and bring forth no fruits. This our Savior teaches in the parable of the sower (Matt. 13).

This states that God genuinely desires for all who are called to come to Him. If people do not come to faith is wholly their own fault. They did not receive the gospel.

Of course Dort goes on to explain how the Spirit heals and revives the fallen will, allowing it to actually accept the gospel message, so that just as the faith is a gift of God, it is also truly done by the human. There’s no monothelitism at work here.

I do not believe that Dort says all that can be said about the various degrees of temporary and fleeting faith, nor does it sufficiently explain those who might seem to be worked upon by the Spirit for a season, but then fall away. Any failings it has in this area are in the realm of omission though, and so I am not objecting to the words given. I am more and more satisfied with them actually.

The Free Offer of the Gospel

One Presbyterian position that not many people seem to be fully aware of today is what is known as “the free offer of the gospel.” One of the foremost representatives of this teaching is John Murray, and he authored an influential essay by that title.

Dr. R. Scott Clark explains its thesis when he writes:

“Murray understands rightly that this sovereign God is also free to reveal himself as desiring certain things which he also reveals that he has not willed decretively. Here Murray invoked an ancient distinction in Christian theology, between God’s will considered decretively and preceptively. That is, it is not that God has two wills, but that, given the archetypal/ectypal distinction, there is a distinction to be made in our understanding of his will.”

Now to Murray’s words:

It would appear that the real point in dispute in connection with the free offer of the gospel is whether it can properly be said that God desires the salvation of all men. The Committee elected by the Twelfth General Assembly in its report to the Thirteenth General Assembly said “God not only delights in the penitent but is also moved by the riches of his goodness and mercy to desire the repentance and salvation of the impenitent and reprobate” (Minutes, p. 67). It should have been apparent that the aforesaid Committee, in predicating such “desire” of God, was not dealing with the decretive will of God; it was dealing with the free offer of the gospel to all without distinction and that surely respects, not the decretive or secret will of God, but the revealed will. There is no ground for the supposition that the expression was intended to refer to God’s decretive will.

He concludes:

The full and free offer of the gospel is a grace bestowed upon all. Such grace is necessarily a manifestation of love or lovingkindness in the heart of God. And this lovingkindness is revealed to be of a character or kind that is correspondent with the grace bestowed. The grace offered is nothing less than salvation in its richness and fulness. The love or lovingkindness that lies back of that offer is not anything less; it is the will to that salvation. In other words, it is Christ in all the glory of his person and in all the perfection of his finished work whom God offers in the gospel. The loving and benevolent will that is the source of that offer and that grounds its veracity and reality is the will to the possession of Christ and the enjoyment of the salvation that resides in him.

The free offer of the gospel is crucial for all Calvinists who hold to what is known as “limited atonement.” Typically denying this is enough to get one labeled a hyper-Calvinist, though of course there is always more to the discussion. All atonement debates aside, the mainstream orthodox conservative Presbyterian position is that God desires the salvation of all men.

As far as Reformed preaching goes, the gospel (ie. forgiveness of sins, justification, adoption- the whole thing) should be set forth indiscriminately to the congregation, and the single condition is that it must be received by faith.

Faith is not a work, but a receptive instrument, and thus the atonement is objective and real, and the application is subjective and conditioned. In my opinion this answers many problems and keeps a consistent systematic theology in line with our understanding of union with Christ and the sacraments. The reality is there, and it must be received by faith.

No Longer Under Angels

As we saw in the previous Jacob account, angels stood between God and Man in the Old Creation.  Paul tells us that the Law was handed down by angels as well, and thus our no longer being under the law corresponds with our no longer being under angels.

Paul also mentions that we establish law and have the authority to judge the angels.  Because of this we are not to go to pagan courts, but rather the Church serves as the court.  Thus the new creation people of God are those who can hand down judgment.  They are the new angels handing down the new law.

All of this movement seems to be important for a proper eschatology, not to mention a proper understanding of the law’s role in that eschatology, and I am continually disappointed in how little work is done in the area of angels when commentators discuss the place of the law in the New Testament.  Other constructs are hauled in to help us understand the law, but almost always these constructs merely help us get away from the text.  Merit Pactums, suzerains, dialectics, and existential crises are all stimulating philosophical exercises, but they are just not what the text gives us.

The text gives us Jews, Gentiles, circumcisions, sabbaths, idols, meats, meals, and angels.

I haven’t unlocked all the secrets of the New Testament (yet ), but one thing is abundantly clear.  We are going to have to start dealing with the weirdness that the text sets before us.

Eucharistic Vision

The firmament-sea separates heaven from earth, just as the temple veil separated the holy of holies from the holy place. God’s throne is in this inner sanctuary, of which the earthly temple was but a copy, and Jesus Christ has taken his seat upon this throne after his ascension into the heavens. You can see this in Revelation (and all the awesome havoc that it caused), as well as in several different Old Testament illustrations.

When we have the presence (parousia) of Christ in worship and the Eucharist, this is due to the Holy Spirit raising us up to the highest heavens. We are seated in the heavenly places (like for real), and this is how we come to meet the man Jesus Christ.

We see the beginnings of this theology when Jacob builds his rock-altar after seeing his vision of heaven. He says that surely this is the house of the Lord, the gateway to heaven. The angels were ascending and descending the ladder to heaven, just as we do now, since we have replaced angels as God’s true army.

Once the temple was built, on a mountain of course, this was all quite obvious. When one entered the temple he saw cherubim and angelic beings all around. He had to “go up” to Jerusalem, but of course he was still limited to the copies of the heavenly reality. Thanks to Jesus Christ’s entry into the real heavens, we too may enter the real deal.

We do this every Lord’s Day in worship, which is why we begin with an ascension offering and the sursam corda (IMO we should put it at the beginning of the whole of the service, not just the eucharist). The Holy Spirit makes us flesh of Christ’s flesh and bone of his bone in the marriage supper of the Lamb.

Trojan Horse

Now Dinah the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne to Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land. And when Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, prince of the country, saw her, he took her and lay with her, and violated her. His soul was strongly attracted to Dinah the daughter of Jacob, and he loved the young woman and spoke kindly to the young woman. So Shechem spoke to his father Hamor, saying, “Get me this young woman as a wife.”

And Jacob heard that he had defiled Dinah his daughter. Now his sons were with his livestock in the field; so Jacob held his peace until they came. Then Hamor the father of Shechem went out to Jacob to speak with him.And the sons of Jacob came in from the field when they heard it; and the men were grieved and very angry, because he had done a disgraceful thing in Israel by lying with Jacob’s daughter, a thing which ought not to be done. But Hamor spoke with them, saying, “The soul of my son Shechem longs for your daughter. Please give her to him as a wife. And make marriages with us; give your daughters to us, and take our daughters to yourselves. So you shall dwell with us, and the land shall be before you. Dwell and trade in it, and acquire possessions for yourselves in it.”

Then Shechem said to her father and her brothers, “Let me find favor in your eyes, and whatever you say to me I will give. Ask me ever so much dowry and gift, and I will give according to what you say to me; but give me the young woman as a wife.”

But the sons of Jacob answered Shechem and Hamor his father, and spoke deceitfully, because he had defiled Dinah their sister. And they said to them, “We cannot do this thing, to give our sister to one who is uncircumcised, for that would be a reproach to us. But on this condition we will consent to you: If you will become as we are, if every male of you is circumcised, then we will give our daughters to you, and we will take your daughters to us; and we will dwell with you, and we will become one people. But if you will not heed us and be circumcised, then we will take our daughter and be gone.” And their words pleased Hamor and Shechem, Hamor’s son. So the young man did not delay to do the thing, because he delighted in Jacob’s daughter. He was more honorable than all the household of his father.

And Hamor and Shechem his son came to the gate of their city, and spoke with the men of their city, saying: “These men are at peace with us. Therefore let them dwell in the land and trade in it. For indeed the land is large enough for them. Let us take their daughters to us as wives, and let us give them our daughters. Only on this condition will the men consent to dwell with us, to be one people: if every male among us is circumcised as they are circumcised. Will not their livestock, their property, and every animal of theirs be ours? Only let us consent to them, and they will dwell with us.” And all who went out of the gate of his city heeded Hamor and Shechem his son; every male was circumcised, all who went out of the gate of his city.

Now it came to pass on the third day, when they were in pain, that two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brothers, each took his sword and came boldly upon the city and killed all the males. And they killed Hamor and Shechem his son with the edge of the sword, and took Dinah from Shechem’s house, and went out. The sons of Jacob came upon the slain, and plundered the city, because their sister had been defiled. They took their sheep, their oxen, and their donkeys, what was in the city and what was in the field, and all their wealth. All their little ones and their wives they took captive; and they plundered even all that was in the houses.

Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have troubled me by making me obnoxious among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and the Perizzites; and since I am few in number, they will gather themselves together against me and kill me. I shall be destroyed, my household and I.” But they said, “Should he treat our sister like a harlot?”

All the old wars were fought over a woman. Helen of Troy is the figure that stands atop all other literary examples, but she is really an imitation pointing further to Yahweh’s bride that must be rescued. The story of salvation is the true Trojan war.

The atonement cannot be captured in any one metaphor, and we could look at Ruth and Hosea for a few more perspectives on the redemption of the Woman, but the Dinah account has all of the basics of the ransom theory.

The Woman is taken away by a rival family (seed) and is defiled. Her family rallies to restore her honor, and just like the end of the Iliad, we have a victory through deceit. The sons of Israel convince their enemies to be circumcised, and then they proceed to take advantage of their period of weakness. This is analogous to the Trojan Horse that leveled Troy, but again it points on to Jesus’ deceiving of Satan. Satan thought that he would receive a dead messiah. Jesus came in the form of death, but much to Satan’s surprise, death could not hold him. Like the renewed Samson, or more familiarly, the restored Aslan, Jesus turns the tables on Satan and leaves his house desolate. He plunders Hades and takes the captives who were trapped there up to the heavens.

Of course this is where Athens and Jerusalem part ways. The Greeks never made it home after they sacked Troy. They couldn’t even take their own throne-seats back, let alone restore captives to places that had never belonged to them. Odyssues’ end is somewhat tragic, even amidst his homecoming.

But the Christian drama is no tragedy.

The Christian drama is the ultimate comedic and epic victory to which all other imitators could but point.

Calvin on the Godman

He has more to say than you might expect:

It deeply concerned us, that he who was to be our Mediator should be very God and very man. If the necessity be inquired into, it was not what is commonly termed simple or absolute, but flowed from the divine decree on which the salvation of man depended. What was best for us, our most merciful Father determined. Our iniquities, like a cloud intervening between Him and us, having utterly alienated us from the kingdom of heaven, none but a person reaching to him could be the medium of restoring peace. But who could thus reach to him? Could any of the sons of Adam? All of them, with their parents, shuddered at the sight of God. Could any of the angels? They had need of a head, by connection with which they might adhere to their God entirely and inseparably. What then? The case was certainly desperate, if the Godhead itself did not descend to us, it being impossible for us to ascend. Thus the Son of God behoved to become our Emmanuel, the God with us; and in such a way, that by mutual union his divinity and our nature might be combined; otherwise, neither was the proximity near enough, nor the affinity strong enough, to give us hope that God would dwell with us; so great was the repugnance between our pollution and the spotless purity of God. Had man remained free from all taint, he was of too humble a condition to penetrate to God without a Mediator. What, then, must it have been, when by fatal ruin he was plunged into death and hell, defiled by so many stains, made loathsome by corruption; in fine, overwhelmed with every curse? It is not without cause, therefore, that Paul, when he would set forth Christ as the Mediator, distinctly declares him to be man. There is, says he, “one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus,” (1 Tim. 2: 5.) He might have called him God, or at least, omitting to call him God he might also have omitted to call him man; but because the Spirit, speaking by his mouth, knew our infirmity, he opportunely provides for it by the most appropriate remedy, setting the Son of God familiarly before us as one of ourselves. That no one, therefore, may feel perplexed where to seek the Mediator, or by what means to reach him, the Spirit, by calling him man, reminds us that he is near, nay, contiguous to us, inasmuch as he is our flesh. And, indeed, he intimates the same thing in another place, where he explains at greater length that he is not a high priest who “cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin,” (Heb. 4: 15.)

This will become still clearer if we reflect, that the work to be performed by the Mediator was of no common description: being to restore us to the divine favour, so as to make us, instead of sons of men, sons of God; instead of heirs of hell, heirs of a heavenly kingdom. Who could do this unless the Son of God should also become the Son of man, and so receive what is ours as to transfer to us what is his, making that which is his by nature to become ours by grace? Relying on this earnest, we trust that we are the sons of God, because the natural Son of God assumed to himself a body of our body, flesh of our flesh, bones of our bones, that he might be one with us; he declined not to take what was peculiar to us, that he might in his turn extend to us what was peculiarly his own, and thus might be in common with us both Son of God and Son of man. Hence that holy brotherhood which he commends with his own lips, when he says, “I ascend to my Father, and your Father, to my God, and your God,” (John 20: 17.) In this way, we have a sure inheritance in the heavenly kingdom, because the only Son of God, to whom it entirely belonged, has adopted us as his brethren; and if brethren, then partners with him in the inheritance, (Rom. 8: 17.) Moreover, it was especially necessary for this cause also that he who was to be our Redeemer should be truly God and man. It was his to swallow up death: who but Life could do so? It was his to conquer sin: who could do so save Righteousness itself? It was his to put to flight the powers of the air and the world: who could do so but the mighty power superior to both? But who possesses life and righteousness, and the dominion and government of heaven, but God alone? Therefore, God, in his infinite mercy, having determined to redeem us, became himself our Redeemer in the person of his only begotten Son.

Institutes 2.12.1-2

Christological Partaking in Calvin

Commenting on John 6:51, Calvin says thusly:

As this secret power to bestow life, of which he has spoken, might be referred to his Divine essence, he now comes down to the second step, and shows that this life is placed in his flesh, that it may be drawn out of it. It is, undoubtedly, a wonderful purpose of God that he has exhibited life to us in that flesh, where formerly there was nothing but the cause of death. And thus he provides for our weakness, when he does not call us above the clouds to enjoy life, but displays it on earth, in the same manner as if he were exalting us to the secrets of his kingdom. And yet, while he corrects the pride of our mind, he tries the humility and obedience of our faith, when he enjoins those who would seek life to place reliance on his flesh, which is contemptible in its appearance.

But an objection is brought, that the flesh of Christ cannot give life, because it was liable to death, and because even now it is not immortal in itself; and next, that it does not at all belong to the nature of flesh to quicken souls. I reply, though this power comes from another source than from the flesh, still this is no reason why the designation may not accurately apply to it; for as the eternal Word of God is the fountain of life, (John 1:4,) so his flesh, as a channel, conveys to us that life which dwells intrinsically, as we say, in his Divinity. And in this sense it is called life-giving, because it conveys to us that life which it borrows for us from another quarter. This will not be difficult to understand, if we consider what is the cause of life, namely, righteousness. And though righteousness flows from God alone, still we shall not attain the full manifestation of it any where else than in the flesh of Christ; for in it was accomplished the redemption of man, in it a sacrifice was offered to atone for sins, and an obedience yielded to God, to reconcile him to us; it was also filled with the sanctification of the Spirit, and at length, having vanquished death, it was received into the heavenly glory. It follows, therefore that all the parts of life have been placed in it, that no man may have reason to complain that he is deprived of life, as if it were placed in concealment, or at a distance.

Calvin on Psalm 22:22

Speaking of the relationship between the atonement and its application, Calvin has this to say:

I have already repeatedly stated, (and it is also easy to prove it from the end of this psalms) that under the figure of David, Christ has been here shadowed forth to us. The apostle, therefore, justly deduces from this, that under and by the name of brethren, the right of fraternal alliance with Christ has been confirmed to us. This, no doubt, to a certain extent belongs to all mankind, but the true enjoyment thereof belongs properly to genuine believers alone. For this reason Christ himself, with his own mouth, limits this title to his disciples, saying,

“Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God,”
(John 20:17.)

The ungodly, by means of their unbelief, break off and dissolve that relationship of the flesh, by which he has allied himself to us, and thus render themselves utter strangers to him by their own fault. As David, while he comprehended under the word brethren all the offspring of Abraham, immediately after (verse 23) particularly addresses his discourse to the true worshippers of God; so Christ, while he has broken down “the middle wall of partition” between Jews and Gentiles, and published the blessings of adoption to all nations, and thereby exhibited himself to them as a brother, retains in the degree of brethren none but true believers.

The unbelievers are broken off from Christ by their own fault. That’s worth thinking about.

Why Hebrew is So Fun

Genesis 25:29-30

Now Jacob cooked a stew; and Red Esau came in from the field, and he was weary.  And Esau said to Jacob, “Please feed me with that same red, for I am weary.” Therefore his name was called Red.

The red guy wants the red stuff, and thus is known for his food-folly.