Infant Baptism and the FV
The Federal Vision has been about a lot of things, but one of the central pastoral issues has to do with the status of our children, what we say to them, and how we say it. From one perspective, the Federal Vision is an effort to articulate a consistent paedobaptist theology. Doug Wilson said awhile ago that this is all about children; I agree.
The pastoral import of the Federal Vision is that we can say to our children, without any mental reservation, “God is your God. Trust Him, and He will remain your God.”
The critical edge of this is that the Federal Vision exposes the ambivalence that weakens the testimony of many Presbyterian and paedobaptist church - the ambivalence that says both “God is your God” and also “God is maybe not your God. We can’t tell. We’ll be able to tell later.”
FV: You know, for kids.
Peter Leithart
Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute. He is the author of numerous books on theology, literature, and culture, including Theopolitan, Defending Constantine, and Baptized Body.
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