In my last post, which I kept very simple, because I believe
that the covenant arrangement is basic Christian doctrine, I said that the
existence of a religious community was not required for the Exclusion
Principle. All that is required is that a group exist that shares common values
and beliefs and that those values and beliefs must be a requirement for
fellowship in that group. This was precisely the way of the Mediterranean world
during the time of the New Testament and even to a great degree, it remains to
be the way of that world, at least much more than is the case in the West.
Today, I continue my interaction with Manata’s notes and thoughts on why he is
not a Baptist by reviewing a very small component his actual argument.
Manata says, “The EP in Deuteronomy,
involving the Hebrew verb translated “utterly remove,” is “consistently
associated with the covenant motif” (Rosner: 65). Paul uses the LXX translation
of that verb in I Corinthians 5:13. According to Deuteronomy, people are
“utterly removed … because of breach of covenant” (Rosner: 65).” All Israelites
were born into the covenant. They were, by right of birth, members in the
covenant. The New Covenant, the Covenant of Grace is fundamentally different in
that regard. Manata assumes a continuity here that he has not proven. He merely
takes it for granted, spilling a lot of ink here and there attempting to
connect one irrelevant fact with another in my opinion. Second, the word that Paul
used in 1 Corinthians 5:13 is exairo
and it is under the semantic domain of either belonging to or included in the
membership or to be excluded from. Throughout the semantic domain to which this
word belongs, the sense is that the group which this man is to be excluded from
is the Corinthian community and any and all fellowship with that community.
Jesus used a similar word to inform us that the world would exclude us as well.
Does this mean we would be removed from some covenantal arrangement? Manata’s
problem is that he insists on only looking at 1 Corinthians 5 through a very
narrow lens. There is no hint here of the legal workings of removing someone
from a covenant. There is no covenant motif in the Corinthian pericope and to
read one into it on the basis of how Paul uses Deuteronomy 17 to accomplish the
excommunication is weak in my view. Should we examine how the NT writers, to
include Paul use the OT Scripture to make their points and employ the same
principles everywhere in the NT that Manata employs here? Space prohibits such
an analysis but it is safe to say that one could never employ Manata’s
principles here consistently in their interpretation of the NT Scripture
without doing significant damage. In Deuteronomy 17:7, the purging was by way
of stoning. If we are going to claim Manata’s level of continuity between the
two covenants, why didn’t Paul have the man stoned? Why only select the last
half of the text? Could it be that Paul had adopted the same holiness
expressions from Deuteronomy, having been trained to think this way about those
who rejected God’s moral law? Could it be that this was Paul's way of appropriating an enduring principle that reflects both continuity and discontinuity? The principle of godly standards exist in both covenants and the obligation to obedience exists in both covenants while the presence of conditionality is ended with the Old. Why take it so far as to say that Paul is
removing a man from the covenant? The fact here is that in reality, for
practical purposes, credobaptists do exactly the same thing the paedobaptists
do when they are confronted by these situations. It seems that Manata’s
distinction is little more than an abstraction. His removal has no more bite
than the Baptists. We both recognize that a person’s obstinacy in such cases
leads us to the same conclusions and same sort of relationship with them.
There can be little doubt that Manata
is correct on the Exclusion Principle where Israel was concerned. I agree that
there was a covenant motif, a holiness motif, and a corporate responsibility motif
present. But Manata is only begging the question in this argument. He assumes
that the Corinthian man is actually “in” the New Covenant like the Jew was in
the Old Covenant. The fact that similar language is used has little to do with
the covenant status of the Corinthian man and everything to do with the fact
that Paul wanted the Church there to disassociate from him. We must remember
that this is a predominantly Gentile community. There is no evidence anywhere
in the two letters to suggest that Paul had brought the Corinthians to a
full-orbed Jewish understanding of the Old Covenant. The language he uses
reflects his own training and no doubt his thinking in terms of the sort of
people who should be in community with the Church and those that should not be.
But there is nothing to suggest that Paul pushes this so far as to believe he was
removing a covenant member from the covenant itself. We will see other
incidents of the Exclusion Principle elsewhere in the NT and I am convinced one
you weigh these against Manata’s argument, you will see the inconsistency in
how he argues his points.
I must confess that Manata has managed
to spill much ink about the Exclusion Principle through the grid of a
distinctly paedobaptists covenant theology lens. The argument and notes are
littered with numerous references and supposed connections between how Moses
used a word, and how Paul used a word and the connection between the two. But
at the end of it all, one is left wondering if it is even possible to make more
irrelevant connections between two passages than Manata has.
Now, to really subject Manata’s notes
to some critical reflection, we must turn to a text that Manata has ignored,
and he has done so to the demise of his own argument. After all, it was Manata
himself that said we must allow the whole Bible to inform our view on this
subject and on that point, he is not mistaken. This being the case, I think the
best place for us to turn is John. John has a problem with a group of rogue “members”
troubling the Christian community. It is his reason for penning his largest
epistle. And in that epistle, he reveals a principle that is utterly
destructive of Manata’s entire argument. John writes about this group that had
left the community, “They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of
us, they would have remained with us; but they
went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.” (1 Jn.
2:19) This one verse points out that anyone who apparently belonged to the
community but eventually left the community were never really members of the
community despite appearances to the contrary. John never launched into some
elaborate external/internal concept of the New Covenant to explain what was
going on in this case. He simply said that these individuals were never of us.
John is basically saying that if someone is a member in the New Covenant, they
will remain with us. The Hebrew writer said the same thing in Hebrews 10:39, “But
we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith
to the preserving of the soul.” This contradicts Manata’s claim that the
Corinthian man must have been a legitimate member in the community if he was
now being excluded from it. Of such people John tells his community that such
people were never of us. They were never in the group.
From this point, I will begin to make a
case for why paedobaptists covenant theology fails. Future posts will deal with
the simple language in Jeremiah 31 and how those in Manata’s camp play hard and
fast with rules. The argument will be very, very simple. I will leave you with
the basic construction of the argument that will ultimately frame out a more thorough
refutation of Manata’s argument.
(1) All
subjects for Christian baptism are members in the Church.
(2) Only
regenerated individuals are members in the Church.
(3) Therefore,
only regenerated individuals are proper subjects for Christian baptism.
As anyone who has studied logic can see, the argument is a
standard-form categorical syllogism and since the conclusion follows from the
premises, the argument is logically valid. The major term is “subjects for
Christian baptism,” the middle term is “members in the Church,” and the minor
term is regenerated individuals. I will have to demonstrate that all subjects
for Christian baptism are members in the Church. To do this, I will have to
provide a true definition and defense of “members in the Church.” If I can
provide a biblically strong case for (1), then (2) will follow quite logically
from (1). Once this is done, the conclusion will prove logically irresistible.
In my opinion, not only is this a less complex argument than that constructed
by Manata, it is much stronger, easier to demonstrate, and as a result,
requires fewer digital symbols to communicate. The only solution I can see is
for Manata to go the route of baptismal regeneration and to accept the stronger
claims of those paedobaptists that make that argument. If infants are not regenerated,
not elect, not called out by God, they have no right to be baptized, not being baptized
into the body of Christ, the Church, by the Holy Spirit. But if they do have a
right to be baptized, then they must be regenerated or in the process of being
regenerated, called by God, elect, baptized into the body of Christ by the Holy
Spirit.
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