Booth on Baptism (part 2)

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...