Fred,<br><br>I don't believe you really engaged at the core of the debate, but merely repeated much of what I addressed in my first post. The fact that you can find examples that agree with your position does not grant preference to your position over mine if I can just as easily account for those examples.<br><br>You have yet to provide an argument as to why we should change the way in which covenant children are identified. Anytime you make an appeal to our ignorance regarding the saving faith in a child you merely bring an irrelevant thesis to the table, unless you can prove that knowledge of saving faith in a person is the only means of entrance into the visible community of God's people. Give us a reason to believe that God is acting differently than He has all along. To cite examples that agree with your position when they also agree in perfect harmony with our position is no argument for me to change my position.<br><br><blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>[color:"blue"] I find it more problematic to import onto baptism and the Lord's table some efficacious means of grace that the Bible doesn't.</font><hr></blockquote><p><br><br>And where have I (or we) done this?<br><br><blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>[color:"blue"] I find it even more problematic to engage in an ecclesiastical system that willing allows unregenerates to partake in the NC, just to maintain the continuity of a favored theology.</font><hr></blockquote><p><br><br>I would dispute this notion of our system "willingly" allowing unregenerate people into the church. I thought you said we could not read the heart? Or did you mean that we could not read the hearts of adults, but we can read the hearts of infants? [img]http://www.the-highway.com/w3timages/icons/wink.gif" alt="wink" title="wink[/img] Or perhaps you know that every single child born into a covenant home is unregenerate at the time of his baptism? [img]http://www.the-highway.com/w3timages/icons/shocked.gif" alt="shocked" title="shocked[/img]<br><br>But that is all really beside the issue here, since your contempt is more with God than us. Ironically, you mentioned that circumcision was the sign of faith in the Old Testament, and yet God commanded that very sign to be applied to unregenerate children! Would it not have been the case that Abraham would have been disobeying God if he did not have Ishmael circumcised, and yet we know that God did not establish his covenant with Ishmael! Would not Isaac have been disobedient had he not given the sign of the covenant to Esau, and yet before they were even born Esau was foretold to be a reprobate child? God commanded the sign of identity to be given even to unregenerate children of the covenant, and more poignantly, God held them accountable to the standards of that relationship, calling them covenant breakers when they disobeyed Him. If the sign never really belonged to them, should we not expect that God would simply dismiss the sign as having been an "oops."<br><br>Furthermore, I suggest that you read over the household baptisms a little more closely. They do not "all" record the faith of those who were baptized. In any event, it is unnecessary for me to prove the baptism of infants in those texts for the redemption of my position. I have over 4000 years of history prior to those narratives granting covenant identity to the children of God's people. Even if I were to grant the idea that the households only included people who were at the age of accountability and only they were baptized, that agrees perfectly with my paedobaptistic system. We don't deny believers baptism, we deny believers-only baptism, which position you have assumed in those texts without first proving your case. Can you provide one example in the New Testament of a child growing up to "an age of accountability" and only then being baptized? Not to mention the fact that any record of baptizing households, when it was only those of faith who were baptized, would be completely irrelevant information if the idea of the household had no significance. Why did Luke not simply record for us that those who believed were baptized like on the day of Pentecost? Why even bring up the point of household baptisms if there was not some significance to the idea? My point is, the household baptisms make perfect sense when you interpret them in light of paedobaptism, but become superfluous in the credobaptistic system.<br><br><blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>[color:"blue"] Furthermore, your idea of those whom God has told us to identify with the covenant community is more of an import from the OT due to your system of theological continuity. It really is an argument from inference by reading into the "believers and their household" passages the possibility of infants.</font><hr></blockquote><p><br><br>Well, you are the one who brought up the household baptisms, not I. I do not employ them as a starting point to prove the position, it is merely corroborative evidence that support the deep rooted practice of redemptive history. It is not I who needs to show a new principle at work in the NT. I would merely show that we see examples in the NT of exactly what we would expect to see from a covenantal perspective, in the household baptism passages as well as others. As far as importing ideas from the Old Testament, I feel quite comfortable doing so as this was the hermeneutic of Jesus Himself. [img]http://www.the-highway.com/w3timages/icons/grin.gif" alt="grin" title="grin[/img]<br><br>Sincerely in Christ,<br><br>~Jason<br>