{"id":3082,"date":"2008-01-08T00:20:56","date_gmt":"2008-01-08T00:20:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/2008\/01\/for-john-franke-on-infant-bapt-2.html"},"modified":"2008-01-08T00:20:56","modified_gmt":"2008-01-08T00:20:56","slug":"for-john-franke-on-infant-bapt-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/01\/for-john-franke-on-infant-bapt-2.html","title":{"rendered":"For John Franke: On Infant Baptism 3"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblical.edu\/pages\/discover\/faculty-directory.htm\">John Franke<\/a>, professor at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblical.edu\/\">Biblical Seminary<\/a> in Hatfield, PA, has assigned my penitence to be reading Calvin&#8217;s treatment of infant baptism (<em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&amp;location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FInstitutes-Christian-Religion-2-Set%2Fdp%2F0664220282%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1198015897%26sr%3D1-1&amp;tag=jescre-20&amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325\">Institutes of the Christian Religion<\/a><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important;margin:0px !important\" \/><\/em>). Today I turn to 4.16.21-22. The rumor is that John has escaped my critique and has headed north from Geneva to the low countries to see if he can find some Anabaptists. Here&#8217;s the latest picture I&#8217;ve seen of him: <!--more|inline--><br \/>\n<a class=\"imagelink\" href=\"http:\/\/www.jesuscreed.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/01\/franke-flying.jpg\" title=\"franke-flying.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.jesuscreed.org\/2008\/01\/franke-flying.thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"franke-flying.jpg\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nCalvin takes on Hubmaier and Anabaptists for thinking the &#8220;thing&#8221; (conversion itself) ought always to precede the &#8220;sign&#8221; (baptism). This he calls their &#8220;deluded notion.&#8221; The Anabaptists appeal to 1 Peter 3:21: &#8220;and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also?not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God.&#8221; Baptism, it says, saves as a pledge of a good conscience.<br \/>\nSomehow, without evidence, Calvin argues that circumcision also rested on a good conscience and then offers a circular argument assuming his point and then using his assumption to prove his point. (This argument becomes less circular if it assumes Deut 10:16 and Jer 4:4, but I think Deut and Jer are a metaphor rather than a statement about one&#8217;s circumcision.)<br \/>\nAnabaptists of his day argued that, since baptism dealt with forgiveness (e.g, Act 2:38 or 1 Pet 3?), it should not be given to infants &#8212; since they have not sinned. Calvin pushes forward original sin and therefore counters the argument. This makes sense but his next point doesn&#8217;t: &#8220;infants receive forgiveness of sins &#8230; [therefore should be baptized]&#8221; (1345). Where does he find this?<br \/>\nThe washing of water in the word of life (Eph 5:26), since it refers to baptism, should not be deprived from infants since, as Matt 19:14 teaches, children are in the kingdom.<br \/>\nIn my judgment, the best argument Calvin makes &#8212; and it is the only good one I&#8217;ve seen &#8212; is the analogical relation of circumcision and baptism. Once one admits this, and swallows such in covenant theology, then one has a case &#8230; but the arguments Calvin offers in many of these passage only work if he assumes his conclusion. Logically, I find him hard to deal with; theologically, as I say, it makes sense on one basis. The analogical.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Franke, professor at Biblical Seminary in Hatfield, PA, has assigned my penitence to be reading Calvin&#8217;s treatment of infant baptism (Institutes of the Christian Religion). Today I turn to 4.16.21-22. The rumor is that John has escaped my critique and has headed north from Geneva to the low countries to see if he can&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theology"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>For John Franke: On Infant Baptism 3 - Jesus Creed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/01\/for-john-franke-on-infant-bapt-2.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"For John Franke: On Infant Baptism 3 - Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"John Franke, professor at Biblical Seminary in Hatfield, PA, has assigned my penitence to be reading Calvin&#8217;s treatment of infant baptism (Institutes of the Christian Religion). Today I turn to 4.16.21-22. The rumor is that John has escaped my critique and has headed north from Geneva to the low countries to see if he can&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/01\/for-john-franke-on-infant-bapt-2.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-01-08T00:20:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"xscot mcknight\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"For John Franke: On Infant Baptism 3 - Jesus Creed","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/01\/for-john-franke-on-infant-bapt-2.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"For John Franke: On Infant Baptism 3 - Jesus Creed","og_description":"John Franke, professor at Biblical Seminary in Hatfield, PA, has assigned my penitence to be reading Calvin&#8217;s treatment of infant baptism (Institutes of the Christian Religion). 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