nuance

It’s late Sunday night, and I should be in bed. But I saw this blog post on a new fave Theologia, and it inspired me a bit, especially with recent reminisces of my old days at CMC. The post is about how traditionally Reformed people approach the issue of conversion with their children, and this quote seized my attention:

Notice that nothing whatever is written or implied about the expectation of a future violent conversion experience in later years. No, the redemption is promised to them no less than adult believers. The Heidelberg Catechism teaches the catechized child that he is a Christian. It teaches each boy and girl that his or her guilt has been dealt with by grace so that they should live a life of faith and grattitude. Since, in the Reformed churches, these children have been baptized, it is clear that the catechism is not speaking from its own authority (i.e. the authority of the author or of the denomination that uses the catechism) but from God’s own authoritative message in baptism.

I have a strong affinity for these old “covenant children” traditions. As one who most recently witnessed the worst implications of a Reformed Baptist perspective when applied to children, I cannot help but be enthralled with the simplicity of a doctrine that calls parents to earnestly nurture their kiddos in the faith from youngest childhood under the hopeful expectation that they are saved, are being saved, and shall be saved on the last day.

I am also convinced (having experienced this in my own life and witnessed it in others) that, infant baptism notwithstanding, the parental approach that lays great faith in the faith of their children and follows it up with an earnest training and nurture in the things of God that permeates all of family life and marinates in the power of passionate parental love, will yield equally powerful results. The outlook of a parent is, in this sense, largely self-fulfilling - if immature professions are doubted and questioned in the hopes of a more “violent” conversion experience, they may well prove false, having no encouragement and guidance to help them grow. Yet if such a profession is met with joy equal to that of the father receiving his violently converted prodigal, the encouragement and guidance which follows may well nurture that profession to maturity in later life.

I am even convinced that the child who is merely encouraged in that immature profession, but not given adequate guidance, is better off and more likely to come to eventual maturity than the one who makes the profession but is met with skepticism, though he grow up in an atmosphere of high-minded spirituality.

For the record, I am not a paedobaptist. But I would like to make myself an honorary adherent to the Reformed traditions of covenant children and covenant nurture, no matter how much you Baptists might consider that a contradiction in terms.

To bed.