Think Wink.

1 Chronicles 16:27

Division on Baptism

August 09th, 2007 | Category: Ecclesiology

John Piper writes a very loving response to Grudem’s revision of Systematic Theology on pages 982-983 in which Grudem seems to be willing to deny membership to a paedobaptist in a credobaptist church (and I guess that if he here were a baby-baptizer the implication would be that he would not let a credobaptist join his church…I guess?). This is an interesting question: should we break fellowship or even deny fellowship to those who hold a differing view of baptism? I think that Piper is right in that I could never tell guys like Phil Ryken or R C Sproul or Ligon Duncan that they cannot join my church–which would be a credobaptist church–because they are paedobaptist. I think that I would try to pursuade them to see the error in their understanding of baptism and encourage them to be baptized to be fully obedient to Jesus. But if there is plain evidence of the paedobaptist having saving faith, he would be admitted into the fold of church membership. You should check this article out and ponder the question, is one’s understanding of baptism worth breaking fellowship over?


Related posts:
    Fixing the BCS?
    Original Sin and Infants
    Grudem’s Response to Piper

1 Comment so far

  1. Henry (Honzo) Imler August 15th, 2007 5:36 am

    As surprising as this may be, I loved his response. Not only in content, but also in his tone.

    When I weigh the kind of imperfection involved in tolerating an invalid baptism because some of our members are deeply persuaded that it is biblically valid, over against the kind of imperfection involved in saying to a son or daughter of the living God, “You are excluded from the local church,” my biblical sense is that the latter is more unthinkable than the former. The local church is a visible expression of the invisible, universal, body of Christ. To exclude from it is virtually the same as excommunication. And no serious church takes excommunication as an invitation to attend the church down the street.

Leave a reply