You didn’t choose me… - 1 December 2010 |
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Here are the questions for session 41 of the Emmanuel Guided Reading Course.
Having considered the sacraments in generation in the previous session, we’re turning now to baptism in particular, and to Calvin, Institutes, IV.xv (1:1303-1323) and Peter J. Leithart, “The Sociology of Infant Baptism,” pp. 113-136 in The Baptized Body (Moscow: ID; Canon Press, 2007).
Calvin, Institutes, IV.xv
In reading sections 1 to 6, it may help to note that the “three things” that baptism “brings … to our faith” (section 1) are not explicitly enumerated, but are expounded in sections 1-4, 5 and 6.
1. What is “the first thing that the Lord sets out for us” (IV.xv.1) concerning baptism (see also IV.xv.10)? What misunderstandings is Calvin concerned to guard against in sections 1-4?
2. What “benefit” of baptism is identified in IV.xv.5?
3. “Lastly,” what does “our faith [receive] from baptism,” according to IV.xv.6? Why, according to Calvin, is Galatians 3:26-27 significant in this connection?
4. How does “baptism [serve] as our confession before men” (IV.xv.13)?
5. Baptism “is to be received as from the hand of the author himself” (IV.xv.14). What does this mean, and what implications does Calvin draw out (IV.xv.14-15)?
6. Would Calvin re-baptize a Roman Catholic who renounced the errors of Roman Catholicism and joined an evangelical church? Why or why not (IV.xv.16-18)?
7. Why does Calvin oppose so-called “emergency baptism” (IV.xv.20, 22)?
Leithart, “The Sociology of Infant Baptism”
8. “Among modern Christians … the Baptist position seems obvious” (p. 113). Why? How does Leithart intend to address this (p. 113)?
9. What, according to Leithart, do the baptist and paedobaptist positions imply about the relationship between Christian nurture and other aspects of the upbringing of a child in a Christian home (pp. 114-116)?
10. How, in Leithart’s view, does the paedobaptist position cohere with the Reformed doctrine of redemption (p. 116-117)?
You may find it helpful to note in the following questions that the four “features of paedobaptist nurture” identified on p. 118 are fleshed out in turn on pp. 118-121, 121-124, 124-126 and 126-129.
11. Why does Leithart find it so “striking” that “baptism is an external application of water” (p. 118, italics original; cf. pp. 119-121)?
12. Why is it a strength, not a weakness, of the paedobaptist position that it “imposes a religious identity that the infant has not chosen” (p. 121, italics original; cf. pp. 122-124)?
13. “The question, ‘Why baptize infants?’ is similar to the question, ‘Why speak to infants?’” (p. 127). Why?
14. Why does Leithart find it necessary to mention paedocommunion (p. 129)?
15. “Baptist theology and practice perpetuates and exaggerates cultural currents that produced the secular world beginning in the late medieval period” (p. 131). How does Leithart illustrate and justify this claim on pp. 131-136? Do you agree?
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Posted by Steve Jeffery · Topics: Guided Reading Course, Minister's Blog