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My Rio Carbon began misbehaving about 6 months ago, so I decided to buy an iPod (4 gig 2nd gen nano) to try it out. Even 6 months later I'm still looking back upon my Rio Carbon days with fond memories.

I now have a player that crashes more often. The iPod often takes several attempts before the thing actually responds to my command to shut off. The iPod needs some silly proprietary cable to transfer files. I no longer have the ability to play WMAs on the thing (and I did have a few, even if most of the stuff on my iPod was in MP3 format). It's hard to find anything on the iPod that's not fully labelled - the Carbon had a "[no author]" category (amidst others) that made it easier to find things. The iPod is more ackward to copy files to and loses my filenames whereas the Rio Carbon integrated with iTunes on my Mac as well as allowing you to copy files normally to it.

The Rio wasn't perfect, but IMO the iPod is bad enough that I think that I may ditch it for another MP3 player and let my iPod die an early death.

At the same point in time I'm debating the merits of buying an iMac. According to the rumour mill now is a bad time to buy an iMac, as new models are being expected soon. I'd guess mid-June at WWDC - a major Apple conference.

Why buy an iMac? One of the key things is actually the lack of something - noise! To quote Silent PC Review:

It remains one of the quietest off-the-shelf systems it is possible to buy

Yet, at the same time I find myself somewhat worried about Apple's quality control (and I'm not sure I want to ditch a 19" LCD that seems to work just fine). All of the Apple products that I've owned in the past have been just miserable as far as quality control is controlled. I've owned 3 Windows/Linux-based computers and in total I had a video card die (and some problems with secondary IDE channels). My iBook, on the other hand, had 3 major repairs - each of which would likely have cost $500 or more, if not covered by the extended warranty, as well as 3 other repairs (2 also covered under extended warranty) each of which would have cost around $200 to fix. Was this just a fluke or is this a common problem with Apple? I know that Nan also has had repeated iBook problems, requiring repairs.

Apparently, the CanRC intends to join NAPARC. Amongst the membership of that organization one can find the PCA, my present denominational home. For details see article 140 in these minutes.

(HT: yinkahdinay)

This time I wanted to move on and reflect on a brief passage of Believer's Baptism:

Believer's baptism also demonstrates that the church is a new covenant community - all those within it know the Lord (Heb 8:11). The church of Jesus Christ is not a mixed community of believers and unbelievers. It consists of those who have confessed Jesus as Savior and Lord. Paedobaptists often say that Baptists do not escape from the charge of a mixed community since some of those who claim to be converted do not truly belong to the people of God. It is true, of course, that some of those who claim to believe are subsequently revealed to be inauthentic (eg. 1 John 2:19). Nevertheless, a profound differenceexists between Baptists and paedobaptists, for Baptists do not allow anyone into the church without trying to discern whether the person is truly saved, whereas paedobaptists knowingly include some who do not believe into the covenant community. (p.3)

(That last sentence there, BTW, is basically the reason for the note the other day that I'm intending to read Paedofaith as well).

What the comment from Believer's Baptism really lead me to think of was Ephesians 5:22-32 and just how closely models match reality. The passage in Ephesians describes marriage between a husband and wife as analogous to the relationship between Christ and the church. The model in Ephesians only partially fits - what happens when the husband (who in this relationship seems to represent the role of Christ) sins?

The Old Testament model wherein all (male Isrealite) children are circumcised to show that they are members of the covenant, doesn't wholely parallel those who have "circumcized hearts". Consider Romans 9:6b-8a (ESV):

For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.

At the same point in time the credobaptist model doesn't seem to fully describe the special status of children of believers. To quote a brief passage of the Believer's Baptism book (that I referred to in my previous post on this topic):

While there is no hereditary right to salvation or church membership inherent in the circumstances of one's birth, children of believing parents do stand in a special providential relationship to the people and promises of God.

One could view the Old Testament sign of circumcision as accentuating God's blessings to the children of believers, and the New Testament as instead accentuating that salvation does not come merely based on who your earthly ancestors are. I'm not quite sure if such an understanding would fit with what is known of ancient Middle Eastern legal covenants though (nor am I sure where I can find some good historical coverage of this topic).

So, I finished reading Booth and dug into the first few pages of a book advocating baptism. Instead of Infant Baptism and the Covenant of Grace, I decided to read Believer's Baptism. My reasons for making the change to Believer's Baptism:

• It's a newer book
• It seems to bear more high profile endorsements
• I've been warned that the other book can make for more difficult reading
• And, most importantly, it's got a cooler-looking cover

To speak a little bit more about Booth's book at the present time, I wanted to highlight one thing that I found particularly disappointing about it. I find scripture a little bit unclear on this topic, and thus am lending a little more weight to historical evidence than I might otherwise (with accompanying amounts of generosity to opponents thrown in as history is not authoritative). Booth included an appendix on historical evident which was primarily based on citations of church fathers a couple hundred year's or so beyond the crucifixion. The writing style of the appendix makes some claims which seem over-aggressive and going slightly beyond the evidence. Additionally, the appendix is taken from a text now nearly 175 years old. Granted Augustine, Cyprian, and some others have not written a whole lot of new stuff the past century or two, but archaeologists haven't taken a 200 year long vacation (not to mention that computers these days make it easier to mine a lot of material).

I'm currently on page 17 of Believer's Baptism, but the introduction said that the book would show that the infant baptism was a change to the practice of the apostles. This book uses recent scholarship; there's got to be a more recent attempt at analyzing the history of infant baptism as well. Any recommendations?

One of the objections to infant baptism that Booth brought out over and over again was that it removed children from the covenant, which is something that I'm not sure is valid. Women, for example, were not circumcised in Old Testament times but why does no one seem to be arguing that this should exclude them from the covenant.

Here's a view on children taken from Believer's Baptism:

Believer's baptism must be practiced alongside a proper theology of children. While there is no hereditary right to salvation or church membership inherent in the circumstances of one's birth, children of believing parents do stand in a special providential relationship to the people and promises of God. John Tombes, a seventeenth -century Baptist, spoke of the privileged status of such children who are "born in the bosom of the church, of godly parents, who by prayers, instruction, example, will undoubtedly educate them in the true faith of Christ."

Jesus took a special interest in children, received them into his arms, and blessed them. He did not baptize them. It is right that the children of Christian parents be set aside in a service of infant consecration in which the parents, along with the congregation, pledge to bring up these children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. However, because biological childhood can never be transformed into spiritual childhood, we do not say to our children, "Be a good Christian child," but rather "Repent and believe the gospel."(p. xviii)

In this series of readings I'm not investigating dispensationalism versus covenant theology, but rather attempting to figure out whether covenant theology or new covenant theology best fits the evidence. To quote from the wikipedia article that I just linked:

In simplistic terms New Covenant Theology is a middle-ground between a Reformed and Dispensationalist view of how the Old Testament, and in particular the Mosaic Covenant, apply to the Christian today. On balance, though, the New Covenantal position probably holds a lot more in common with Reformed Covenant Theology than it does with Dispensationalism.

One thing that I decided today is that ;it's probably worth reading Paedofaith as well during this investigation. There's more on baptism to come...