Apologetics

Suffer Little Children…

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Then were there brought unto him little children, that he should put his hands on them, and pray: and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, "Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven."
—Matthew 19:13-14 KJV

Earlier this week I posted a More Cowbell Award , handing out "The Award No One Wants to Win" to children's Christian education programs (including Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, and Christian summer camps). That Stained Glass of Jesus Blessing Childrenparticular post generated more comments than any other More Cowbell Award I've given out. When it comes to educating the next generation of Christians, plenty of opinions exist.

I suspect even more opinions exist about the nature of children and salvation.

My son is nearing six years old. He's quite intelligent, loves God, enjoys church, spontaneously prays for others and for his own needs, and has a decent knowledge of the general truths of the Bible for his age. He continually surprises me with his questions about God, and surprises me even more with some of his answers. He'll always answer positively when asked if he believes in Jesus.

But is he saved?

For most of my adult life, I've leaned toward credobaptism. I was baptized as an infant in the Lutheran Church, but grew convinced of the need as an adult to show my own faithfulness toward God by being baptized as a confessing adult. (I kept this secret for many years from my parents. My brother felt the same as I did, got baptized, and told my folks, bringing lots of grief down on him and them.)

Later on, I worked in ministry to children and grew increasingly distressed about the issue of whether or not a child under ten understood the Gospel well enough to be justified. Probing kids for any information that might shed light on their eternal status yielded few results. Kids are such natural mimics that it's hard to discern whether they truly believe or are just mimicking what they know adults like to hear.

Kids don't make it any easier when it comes to the fruit of genuine Christian belief. Kids whose parents adamantly claim are rock-solid, baptized kiddie believers can be as rotten as those kids whose parents make no such claims. If a kid shares his milk and cookies with his friends and can rattle off a few memorized Bible verses are those actions proof of a genuine conversion?

For adults, the issue isn't always clear, but it's still far easier to discern. The dope fiend in gothic drag who comes to Christ and then goes on the mission field—that's an easy one. But truthfully, as long as I've worked with kids under ten, I'm not sure what an honest-to-goodness conversion looks like in a young child.  And I don't think I'm the only one.

This whole sticky wicket poses enormous theological problems. A quick scan of the great Christians poised in every possible corner on this issue makes a less diligent believer like me feel extraordinarily uneasy.

Our inability to come to any unified answer on the topic of the justification of children clearly shows in our split on credobaptism (baptizing confessing believers) and paedobaptism (baptizing children, though without a profession of their own personal faith in Christ.) While I don't believe in regenerative baptism—and most Protestant's don't if they truly hold to the truth that justification is by faith alone in Christ—it's still clear that Jesus put an extremely high mandate on baptism:

Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God."
—John 3:5 ESV 

Obviously, one can go too far with this, though. I once had a friend whose boyfriend got mixed up in the Boston Church of Christ movement. That group believed in regenerative baptism. After he'd made a profession of faith, there was a delay in getting him baptized, and he basically locked himself up in his room until that day, afraid he'd be killed accidentally before he got baptized.

We read that and shake our heads, but if we extend the baptism beliefs of many Christians out to their logical ends, some relatively normal denominations pretty much believe the same thing—or else have to do a lot of intellectual shimmying to make their beliefs fit. I wrote a piece last year that talked about this issue after Steve Camp wrote a blistering predestination piece that pretty much came right out and said that the infant who dies in childbirth is predestined to hell. I don't know about you, but as a parent it's pretty hard to take to think that any child of mine that might have died in childbirth went straight to hell because God predestined him/her to die in childbirth. That seems a rather strict limit on God's mercy and any covenants He makes with believing parents.

Whether you're a credobaptist or paedobaptist, the questions remain:

  • What constitutes a genuine conversion in a child? And isn't it only by being converted that we are saved?

  • How do we know a child truly believes and isn't just repeating what he or she heard in Sunday School (or is mouthing what receives the most attention and adoration from Mommy and Daddy)?

  • Is there a covenantal aspect in the faith of believing Christian parents that ensures God's mercy and grace upon their children, whether baptized or not, believing or not?

  • For paedobaptists: If we're truly saved by faith alone, what good is baptizing an unbelieving child? And doesn't your baptizing of that child before a profession of faith only later lead to a false confidence in that child for his/her salvation? And what about the murky area of being "rebaptized" after a full confession of faith?

  • For credobaptists: How confident are you in credobaptism that you would risk letting your children die unbaptized?

It doesn't give me much comfort that so many good Christian sources are split on this. I noted earlier this week that Monergism.com highlighted the split, with solid theologians occupying both sides of the baptism argument. Ironically, most Arminians are credobaptists, so you would think the Calvinist monergists would be 100% in opposition, falling completely into the paedobaptist position. But even Jonathan Edwards was conflicted on this issue, baptizing infants but giving that baptism no efficacy for salvation. (What's the point then, Jonathan?)

Apart from the issue of baptism, Jonathan Edwards presents another unusual case that takes us back to our original question of the salvation of children: he states he was converted at four (or was it his wife—I can never remember). I talked to a member of my wife's family who told me last week that his kids were converted at that age. Honestly, I don't know how anyone can tell that for certain in a child that young, and if one can't (and happens to be a credobaptist), I'm not sure that baptizing them is a wise move.

In the end, this issue troubles me greatly. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's bothered by it, though.

You can't go to the great Christians on this issue because so many diverge on their opinions on baptism. Others fail to give any standards for judging if a child is saved or not. And like I said in my post from two days ago, what do we do when the pantheon of Christian greats can't answer the question?  I certainly don't want to trust the opinion of a man on this one, either, if salvation is truly on the line.

If we go to the Bible, we can find plenty of verses that go either way on baptism, so I dunno. And as to telling when a child is saved or not, well, the age of accountability doesn't exist in the pages of the Word, nor is there a truly solid "age-related" guide for discerning whether a child is genuinely espousing the faith or just trying to win "mommy points."

Other ideas have problems, too. If we are to receive the Kingdom as a child does, is this implying that children are already in and they can only fall out? So much for original sin. And if Jesus readily healed children in the course of His ministry, why would He do so if those kids would only grow up to either forget Him or reject Him? What's the point of healing people who are only destined for hell? And what of the perseverance of the saints if a child comes to Christ innocently in their young childhood, then completely rejects Him in adulthood? How many people can each of us name who did exactly that?

I get (wrongly) accused of being a blogging Christian know-it-all, but I'll be honest: this issue has me stumped. If there was ever a topic that I wish the Bible was more explicit on, it's this one.

When the Pantheon of Christian Greats Blows It

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C.S. Lewis, from another viewI mostly read dead authors, at least when I’m considering Christian theology. Call me crazy, but I find more truth in those writers than what I read in modern ones. My personal library reads like a big list of dead guys: Lloyd-Jones, Schaeffer, Tozer, Lewis, Bounds, Ravenhill, Edwards, Nee, Murray, Torrey, and Bonhoeffer.

We all have our pantheon of Christian greats, the people who inspire us and many times provide us our ideas as to what is true and right within the Christian life. I listed some of mine above. I’m sure you have your own.

But sometimes our Hall of Christian Fame gets us in trouble. From the reaction in some corners of the Godblogosphere, Tim Challies tossed a heap of burning coals on his own head last week when he quoted a list of great Christians who believed the Roman Catholic Church to be the antichrist.

No matter where you stand on that topic, the question lingers: Can great Christians be mistaken?

When I was at Wheaton College, I took a New Testament overview class from Dr. Robert Yarbrough, currently professor of New Testament at Covenant Theological Seminary. (I’ll say without flinching that Dr. Yarbrough may be the most intelligent Christian I’ve ever met, especially when it comes to the Bible. That class was my favorite at Wheaton.) When he discussed Revelation, he outlined at least a dozen end times scenarios, when they were popular, and most of all, some great Christians who supported those scenarios.

What struck me during that teaching was not the scenarios themselves, but the revelation (excuse the pun) that some exceedingly wise and far more biblically diligent folks than I arrived at the wrong eschatology. And for those who avoided predictions as to when the end would come, the law of non-contradiction alone will prove most of those theologians wrong when the End indeed arrives.

Given that all of us have fallen short of the glory of God and see through a glass darkly, ALL great Christians are wrong somewhere in either their faith or practice. I’m willing to say that the apostles were certainly as close as it gets to perfection, yet Peter’s brush with the Judaizers showed that even apostles could have feet of clay.

This is not a question of Biblical infallibility. I believe the Bible to be the perfect and infallible word of God.  But this IS about the foibles of human agents of God.

Pick a topic and you’ll find great Christians on opposing sides. At Monergism.com, witness the solid people at opposite poles on the credobaptist and paedobaptist position. Someone’s wrong, right? Who wins the tag team between John MacArthur and John Piper (credobaptists) and John Calvin and Martin Luther (paedobaptists)? If you want to go with the bulk of historicity here, then the latter win.

But what if the Reformers are wrong? And if they’re wrong on that one position, what other errors may lie in waiting for the undiscerning?

It bothers me sometimes that we treat great Christians as if they could never, ever, in a billion years have a mistaken position on an important piece of doctrine. The Godblogosphere is bristling with defenders of this great Christian or that, and God help anyone who questions that great Christian for even one second! People are so dogmatically in one corner massaging the shoulders of their Spurgeon, Tozer, Aquinas, or Merton and whispering into their man’s ear, “Throw the uppercut this round!” that they’re blind to their hero’s own glass jaw.

It’s not just dogma, either. It’s fairly common knowledge that some Christian greats who were married didn’t have rosy marriages by the standard we uphold today. No one liked Wesley’s wife, and evidently, neither did he. (Gives a whole new perspective to the amount of time John spent away from home.) Plenty of great Christians smoked and drank alcohol (which I think will get you pilloried in the SBC, if the latest conference is any indication), while other great Christians opposed such behavior. Who’s right? Who’s wrong?

The Bible says this about our hero fascination:

But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human? What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building. According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
—1 Corinthians 3:1-11 ESV

Just a couple weeks ago, a commenter at another blog said she’d gotten a lot out of reading Watchman Nee. The very next comment was from someone warning her about Nee. I immediately responded that the Bible teaches us to be discerning about ALL things, not just what troubles us. Truthfully, the greatest errors arise when we cast our discernment aside because “Hey, I’m reading my favorite Christian great who I’ve enshrined on my altar of godliness.” What we build upon the foundation of Jesus Christ matters, and from time to time even the Augustines, Spurgeons, Tozers, Calvins, Luthers, Lewises, and Schaeffers of this world molded a few questionable bricks.

As the great theologian Sergeant Phil Esterhaus of Hill Street Blues fame proclaimed:

“Hey, let’s be careful out there.”

Monergism, Total Depravity, Creativity, and the Imago Dei

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'The Scream' by Edvard MunchIf you’ve got grass to mow, I’ve got more—about nine acres.

Our house sits on 13.2 acres of rolling Ohio farmland. I suspect about four acres of that is wooded, but the rest is grass. Our orchard dots some of that grassland, but I still have to mow around the trees, so it counts. I’ll drop about one and a half acres of grass once we put in our vineyard. (We live in the Ohio Valley Viticultural Area, the largest wine-grape-growing region in the United States. You can put a lot of Napas in here.)

I’ve got a 35hp full-size Kubota tractor that pulls an 8′ finish mower deck. The whole grass-cutting process takes about 5 hours.

That gives me a lot of time to think. The great thing about having land is there’s nothing fast about it. Whatever you do to it takes time. Doesn’t take a lot of brainpower while you’re doing whatever it is you’re doing to it, so the mind can concentrate on other things.

Today, a question trickled through my thoughts and I had some trouble reconciling it logically. That’s why I’m opening up responses. If you’ve got some insights, please comment.

Disclaimer: What follows is NOT a teaching. It’s a question I’m posing for my own benefit so I can better understand the issue. It should in no way construe any indication of questioning orthodox Christian belief.

Now for my tractor meditations…

I was thinking about the Imago Dei, the idea that Man is made in God’s image. Not that our physical appearance is like God’s, but that our spiritual state is. We reason, create, and appreciate beauty because God has those traits in Himself and has imbued us with them.

Total Depravity is the condition of Man after the Fall, unable to connect to God because of sin and spiritual death. (See 1 Corinthians 2:14; Genesis 6:5; Romans 3:10-11)

It should follow that as a result of the Fall, Total Depravity dealt a crushing blow to Imago Dei.

The problem begins when we ask how severe that blow was.

Since Total Depravity is truly total, one would think that the Imago Dei would not so much be damaged as utterly annihilated. If it is the spiritual state of Man that is the Imago Dei, then the spiritual death wrought by the Fall should have destroyed the Imago Dei altogether. Dead is dead, not semi-alive. If the root of sin is that deep, then Man would have nothing left of the Imago Dei, or at least have nothing of the Imago Dei that could remain to produce anything sin-free.

Even considering that view, four possibilities remain:

  1. Total Depravity is total; the Imago Dei was completely annihilated.
  2. Total Depravity is total; however, some of the Imago Dei remains pure.
  3. Total Depravity is total; however, the Imago Dei remains but is tainted in such a way that nothing pure comes from any of it.
  4. Total Depravity is not total; this explains why the Imago Dei remains.

All of those positions have problems, however.

#1 is problematic because it is clearly false. I still reason. The very act of me typing this post is a sign of reason—and creativity. I linked words together creatively.

#2 is problematic because it would insist that Total Depravity does not extend to all parts of fallen Man’s being. More on this one later.

#3 is problematic because one could argue that there are things that Man creates that are perfect—or at least profoundly good—that would argue against taint. For instance, in what way is Handel’s Messiah “imperfect” as a piece of music? Or Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata? One could say that in order to be perfect, those works would have to appeal to all men at all times in all places. But is that the true test of perfection? Yes, the instruments used to play those works may not be in perfect tune, but the idea of those works as they existed in the minds of those composers would mitigate that issue.

The other problem about #3 is asking the other side of the perfection issue: In what way are those works tainted by sin? Yes, their creators are tainted by sin. There’s no reason to believe that Beethoven was ever a born-again Christian, so this muddies the water further, since the Moonlight Sonata is sublimely beautiful. There is evidence that Beethoven wrote that piece in mourning for an unrequited love affair with a married woman, so his motives for writing it are questionable. But the greater question of the purity of the work as a work unto itself remains.

Lastly on #3, one must ask if a pre-Fall Adam could have composed a piece of music more perfect than the works mentioned.

#4 is problematic because it denies Total Depravity altogether.

The title of this post brings up monergism, that Man has no ability within himself to reach out to God in order to receive forgiveness and salvation. God’s grace through the Holy Spirit is irresistible and God’s use of it alone accounts for conversion. The counterpart to monergism is synergism: Man has within him the active ability to reach out to God and effect—with the grace afforded him by God reaching down to him—conversion.

Considering #2, one could argue that if parts of the Imago Dei remain pure, then those pure parts are the source from which Man can effect synergistic salvation. Obviously, monergists would reject that idea outright.

That #3 is a struggle, though, for other reasons. If the Imago Dei is a spiritual condition and Man is totally spiritually dead to the point that monergism is the only possible outcome, how then can any of the Imago Dei remain? This takes us back to point #1, which is clearly false. Nor does it answer the question about the possible perfection of things that Man creates.

If one argues that the spiritual state of man is dual in nature (that the soul exists apart from the spirit and that this allows the spirit of the unconverted to be dead while the soul—the part that manifests the Imago Dei—is still alive), then you’re arguing for a tripartite nature of Man (body, soul, and spirit), a position that most monergists don’t support.

A person arguing that common grace explains how fallen Men who do not know Christ can still create objects of beauty confuses terms. The Imago Dei is by nature; it is innate because it reflects God’s own nature in some form in Man permanently. Common grace is not innate in that none of it ever issues from Man, only from God. If the Imago Dei persists after the Fall, then its source is of innate nature and not common grace.

Others would argue for the neutrality of created things, whether they be created by God or Man. A cliff created by God may be a neutral moral agent, but if it falls on you, you’re still dead. Music or other arts also have no innate moral agency if you follow the line of thinking that many use, but this says nothing about their beauty and whether that beauty is perfect or not, or whether there are levels of perfection that might distinguish God’s work from Man’s.

Tough questions. If we divorce the Imago Dei from the question, then everything is easily answerable. But factor it in and the logic becomes more difficult to untangle.

Which of those four possibilities above do you most believe and why?