Category: Word/Sacrament

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Psalm 8:3 and Silencing Foes

What does Psalm 8:3 teach? Verse 3 can be divided in this manner:
The infant voices (musical/war-like tools) are sufficient to 1) establish strength and 2) silence/still foe and avenger. Hence, Psalm 8 teaches that the music of God is composed of every covenant member. Not that adult voices do not frighten Yahweh’s enemies, but that even the infant voices cause the same affect. The seed and the tree are kingdom (Matthew 13). The seed grows into kingdom maturity, but the seed is already kingdom.
Naturally, this is also a messianic passage. The God/Man was the ultimate babe who silenced every foe and avenger.
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Baptism Random Notes

A theology of Bridal maturation would not dichotomize, but rather strengthen the spiritual and fleshly nature of the covenant under a new creation.

Also, covenant theology is also expansion theology. By making limitations to the New Creation one is decreasing the glory of the new. Hebrews makes the point that the New Creation is more glorious and greater than the Old Creation by making it more inclusive.

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Baptistic Conclusions

Doug Wilson observes:

“Many Christians have come to baptistic conclusions because they simply took a Bible and a concordance, and then looked up every incident of baptism in the New Testament. This is objectionable, not because they studied these pasages concerned with baptism, but because they did not look up all the passages that addressed parents, children, generations, descendants, promises, covenants, circumcision, Gentiles, Jews, olive trees and countless other important areas. In other words, the subject is bigger than it looks” (To a Thousand Generations, p. 11).

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What the Liturgy does…

Liturgy transports worshipers into the eschaton. The corporate expression of God’s people on the Lord’s Day is an eschatological experience. In worship, the Spirit pulls us from earth to experience a taste of the world to come in heaven. When we pray “Thy Kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven,” we are praying for the interruption of our earthly lives with a heavenly reality; a reality, which is not fully yet, but that is being realized.

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From Bread to Wine

Jim Jordan observes:

“Biblical liturgies, and for us this means the Lord’s Supper, encapsulate the sequence of biography and history. Because we have rejected God, we have also rejected the life He has planned for us, both individually and as churches, cultures, and world history. Biblical rites are designed to insert us back into God’s guidance of our lives, to plug us back into God’s true history so that our lives and cultures can develop properly.”

James B. Jordan, From Bread to Wine, Toward a More Biblical Liturgical Theology. Available from www.biblicalhorizons.com

{Thanks to Mike Bull}

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The Anglican Church of Canada says “no” to communion without baptism

In a rare moment of sobriety, the Anglican Church of Canada has rejected a call to give non-baptized people access to the Lord’s Table. From what the article expresses, many churches already allow the non-baptized to partake. The logic is that by opening the table, the Church is expressing hospitality to those outside, thus leading and encouraging them to pursue baptism. However logical it may appear–and it does not in my estimation–biblically, this pattern is reversed. One needs to be washed before partaking. Ushering non-Christians to heaven (ascension) to receive Christ in bread and wine is an impossible journey. Heaven’s gates are shut for who have not crossed the Red Sea in their baptisms. Tasting of the heavenly gift demands prior tasting of heavenly grace.

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Word and Broken Bread

“The word without the bread is not enough to open our eyes to the living, risen Jesus. The Word without bread is detached from real life; the bread without the Word turns into a magic act. But when the scriptures are taught and the bread is broken, then Jesus can be known.”–Peter Leithart, The Four

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Every Baptism is Infant Baptism

Peter Leithart observes:

The man born blind in John 9 is reborn by clay, spittle, and a bath in Siloam. He is so transformed that people don’t know if he’s the same man (v. 9). At this point, he barely knows who Jesus is. Pressured by the Pharisees, he confesses Jesus as a prophet (v. 17), but he doesn’t explicitly confess faith until Jesus reappears to him after he’s been cast out of the synagogue (v. 38). This is an infant baptism: Not baptism of a professing believer, but baptism of one who later comes to an explicit confession of faith.