Thanks to the wonderful folks behind the Reformational Publishing Project, I've been reading S.G. DeGraaf's four-volume work, Promise and Deliverance, an extended overview of the biblical story with a particular focus on the themes of the covenant and the plan of redemption. DeGraaf makes the case for the significance of the covenant early on in the first volume:

We must never lose sight of the great significance of the covenant. Without covenant, there is no religion, no conscious fellowship between man and God, no exchange of love and faithfulness. Without the covenant, man would just be an instrument in God's hand. When God created man, He had more than an instrument in mind: He made a creature that could respond to Him. Only if man was capable of responding would he be able to assume his position as partner in a covenant. Without a covenant, God would have only claims and man only obligations. But as soon as God gave man a promise, man also had a claim on God, namely, to hold God to that promise. And God then had an obligation toward man, namely, to fulfill that promise. Once the promise is given, we can speak of a covenant, for a covenant, after all, is an agreement between two parties in which the claims and obligations are spelled out. Of course we must never forget that the covenant was initiated by God and that God's promise elevated man to the rank of covenant partner.

Many different problems arise when the Bible is read without the framework of the covenant in place. We simply cannot understand our relationship to God apart from the covenant.

Numerous times I have expressed my concern for escapist theology on this blog, by which I mean the theology that anticipates complete destruction of the physical world and for God to take the souls of his people away to live with him for eternity in some sort of disembodied, spiritual existence. Aside from the fact that there is explicit biblical teaching to the contrary, it occured to me today that there is also a pattern in God's redemptive work in history that defies this all-to-common theological error.

God comes to us.

All throughout redemptive history, God comes to his people. It is never the reverse. God is the Creator, and we are the creatures, and we have no access to God unless he first reveals himself to us. An infinite gulf separates man from God, a gulf that only God can bridge.

God creates man, and comes to him to make a covenant with him (Gen. 2). When Adam and Eve fall into sin, God comes to them with a promise of redemption (Gen. 3:15). God comes to Abraham to make a covenant with him and to call to himself a people, Israel (Gen. 12:1-3; 17:1-8). The nation of Israel is led into slavery in Egypt, but God comes to bring them out Egypt (Ex. 20:2) and lead them through the desert into the Promised Land. God comes to dwell with his people in the tabernacle and later the temple (1 Kings 8:10-11), and in the most significant act of human history, God comes to dwell among his people in the person of Jesus Christ (John 1:14). After Jesus' ascension into heaven, God comes again in the Holy Spirit to be with his people (Acts 2:1-41). The pattern is the same, over and over: God comes, God comes, God comes.

The eschatological implications for this should be obvious – in the final act of redemptive history, Christ returning to consumate his Kingdom, God again comes to us. He comes to us that we might dwell with him forever. He comes to us to cleanse us from all sin and unrighteousness, to make us holy. He comes to us, as Paul writes in Philippians 3:21, to 'transform our lowly [bodies] to be like his glorious body.' He comes to us to make us complete in him, to be everything we are intended to be as images of God.

But there is more. Because Christ's return is the pinnacle of redemptive history, his salvation will then be complete and extend as far as the curse is found. His creation 'will be liberated from its bondage to decay' (Romans 8:21) – renewed, restored, and glorified. God comes to earth to reclaim his good creation, to free it from the strangling grip of sin and death, and to make all things new (this is beautifully portrayed in so many parts of Scripture, but particularly notable are Amos 9:11-15, Isaiah 62; 65:17-25, and, of course, Revelation 21-22).

God comes to us. Understanding this pattern is key because it impacts all aspects of our theology, our worship, and so much more. We serve a sovereign Lord, the Creator of heaven and earth. Let us rejoice in a God who comes to us, calls us his own, and dwells among us.

Mark Driscoll apparently made a comment once something to the effect of it being ridiculous that people could sprinkle babies with a few drops of water and call it baptism. Let me make clear, though, that I can't verify he actually said that, and so by no means claim that he did—indeed, it would surprise me; I understand that the Acts 29 Network includes both paedo- and credo-baptist churches—but I know these sentiments exist (if you'd like to read something delightfully inflammatory, read this from Spurgeon on the "abomination" of infant baptism).

I grew up in paedo-baptist churches, and have long held to the conviction that infants should be baptized, although there was a period when I wrestled quite extensively with the question of who are to be the subjects of baptism. In the last few years, however, I have found my conviction that the infants of believers must be baptized strengthened, especially in light of the covenant. In volume four of his Reformed Dogmatics (yes, this will be an oft-quoted text on this blog), Herman Bavinck makes a number of arguments in favour of the baptism of children. I find his discussion of the relationship between baptism and the covenant particularly important:

The covenant of grace established with Israel, though it changed in dispensation, remained the same in essence. The church (ἐκκλησία, ekklēsia) has replaced the Israel of the Old Testament. It is now the people of God, and God is its God and Father (Matt. 1:21; Luke 1:17; Acts 3:25; Rom. 9:25-26; 11:16-21; 2 Cor. 6:16-18; Gal. 3:14-29; Eph. 2:12-13; Titus 2:14; Heb. 8:8-10; 1 Pet. 2:9; Rev. 21:3). As was the case in the Old Testament, so now too the children of believers are included among the people of God. The church of the New Testament, after all, is not a collection of individuals, but an organism, a body, a temple, and as such, as a people, it took the place of Israel. As wild olive shoots—since some of the branches of the old olive tree have been broken off—they have been grafted onto the trunk of the same olive tree and so share in the nourishing sap from its root (Rom. 11:16-17). Hence at times entire households converted to Christianity. The household itself is an institution of God, an organic whole, which shares in a common blessing or a common curse...[Peter] says that the promise of the old covenant that God would be the God of believers and their children passed into the dispensation of the New Testament (Acts 2:39) [528-529].

Bavinck goes on to note that children are sanctified by virtue of their parents, citing Paul's discussion of believing and unbelieving spouses in 1 Corinthians 7:14ff. He observes that when Paul speaks about the holiness children receive from a believing parent it is not a subjective and internal holiness, but a "theocratic kind of holiness." As such,

it teaches that the whole family is regarded in light of the confession of the believing spouse. The believer has the calling to serve the Lord not only for oneself but with all that belongs to oneself and with one's entire family. For that reason the children of believers are admonished by the apostles as Christian children in the Lord (Acts 26:22; Eph. 6:1; Col. 3:20; 2 Tim. 3:15; 1 John 2:13)...Scripture knows nothing of a neutral upbringing that seeks to have the children make a completely free and independent choice at a more advanced age. The children of believers are...children of the covenant and are holy, not by nature (Job 14:4; Ps. 51:5; John 3:6; Eph. 2:3) but by virtue of the covenant...The basis for baptism is not the assumption that someone is regenerate, nor even that [there is] regeneration itself, but only the covenant of God (529-531).

It is a significant point, I think, that in the New Testament we always see a heightening in the fulfillment of something from the Old Testament. That is the case with typology, for instance, and so it is the case with the covenant. The promises of the covenant are fulfilled in a much greater way in the New Testament. To restrict the promises of the covenant, then, to those who are able to make a verbal profession of faith, seems to be a regression and not a heightened fulfillment. In the Old Testament, if the promises of the covenant were to "you and your seed," how much more should they be in the New Testament and subsequent ages! Additionally, one's incorporation into the covenant is never an autonomous act, but always and only an act of God bringing that person into the covenant family.

Of course, this by no means exhausts the case for infant baptism, but for me it is the most powerful argument in favour of it. Thoughts?

This past semester was the first time I spent any extensive period of time studying the thought of N.T. Wright. Previously I had dealt with various bits and pieces, but to engage in a deeper reading of some of his material was beneficial. This is especially the case as the Piper-Wright debate has come to the forefront with Wright's recent publication of Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision.

One of the things I appreciated was the careful way in which we worked through his theology this spring, recognizing both its strength and weaknesses. In no way do I consider myself an expert on Wright and to take this approach was helpful, particularly as a greater divide seems to be growing between those who side with Piper and those who side with Wright on issues like justification and election. But that's an issue for another time.

What stood out to me especially was Wright's continual effort to keep in mind a more holistic view of the covenant and redemption. This, from his book, Paul: In Fresh Perspective, I found helpful:

But the word 'call' itself [in Romans 8:30], and the fact that 'justification' is not about 'how I get saved' but 'how I am declared to be a member of God's people', must always have an eye to the larger purposes of the covenant. Indeed, to forget this, as has often been done within western theology both Catholic and Protestant, is to make a mistake not too unlike that for which Paul chides his fellow countrymen. The point of the covenant was to deal with idolatry and sin in order that the world as a whole could be rescued—and there is no question, once we read Romans 5-8, that that is where Paul intends his argument to go. Thus the point of human beings being called by the gospel to turn from idolatry and sin to worship the true and living God is that they might themselves be rescued and that through their rescue, and the new community which they then form, God's purposes to rescue the whole world might be advanced. This is why, in Romans 5:17, Paul speaks of the justified 'reigning in life'; the aim is not simply that they should themselves be rescued from disaster, but that through them God would rule his new creation. And this is why, too, the coming together of Jews and Gentiles in the one family is so central to justification. It is not simply about making life easier for Gentile converts who might not like the thought of circumcision, as some have said in trying to pour scorn on the 'new perspective'. It is, as Ephesians 3 saw so gloriously, that through this creation of a Jew-plus-Gentile family the living God might declare to the principalities and powers that their time is up, and might launch the whole project of a new creation (122).

Since I have written before of the tendency of evangelicalism to reduce salvation to something merely individual, I won't add to it here. This brief excerpt from Wright is just a good example of the helpful correctives that we ought to give due attention to.