https://jacobrcrouch.wordpress.com/2024/11/01/train-your-kids-to-be-christians/
There is much that is positive in this article and I do not doubt Crouch's sincerity nor do I wish to simply cast his comments in a negative light. Rather I wish to utilize them and discuss some of the tensions and inconsistencies that exist within the Reformed and Evangelical communities.
Crouch is a Baptist and as such he views his children as unregenerate. He doesn't back away from this for a moment but he suggests that in teaching them to pray, he's helping to prepare them for being Christians, to practice as it were. Actually, it's a position very much in keeping with how many Presbyterians view their covenant children. In the Presbyterian/Reformed model, they are 'in the covenant' but not actually Christians yet - a contrived and strange doctrine seeking to mix and match and put into practice the divide Paul mentions in Romans 9 - for they are not all Israel who are of Israel. I am certain this is not the way Paul meant for this to be applied!
Reformed Baptists don't usually express an absolute rejection of the Visible/Invisible Church distinction in the way one might find among both older Fundamentalists and contemporary Evangelicals - but there's a lot of nebulous thinking to say the least.
The problem with Crouch's approach is that the prayers of the wicked are abomination as we're told in Proverbs. Likewise in the Psalms the wicked (or unregenerate) are condemned for taking God's name on their lips and declaring His statutes. Obviously this is ignored by all the Evangelicals and others who dream of a sacralized civil government, and while that's another topic, the confusion is fed from the same stream.
It makes no sense for Baptists to 'train' their children to be Christians. The Presbyterians can escape this charge of inconsistency by means of their (somewhat contrived) hybrid view that their children are within the pale of the Church (as members of the Covenant) and yet not 'full' members as it were. Thus unlike the Baptists, their children are something other than simply unregenerate - but they're not quite Christians either. They are (at least in the minds of many) a kind of in-between or tertium quid.
Like the Baptists, full or actual membership only comes with a regeneration experience and testimony signified by confirmation and finally actual participation in the life of the Church by partaking of Communion. And so for many Presbyterians infant baptism is little more than wet dedication and confirmation is tantamount to a dry baptism.
The trouble is the Presbyterian view has no basis in the Old Testament - or the New (we might add) wherein children of believers are reckoned part of the Church. They're not attendees/potential members or half-members. They're reckoned as Christians who must persevere like everyone else in the Church, and like everyone else they are exhorted in the Lord - not to fall away.
The only basis for teaching children to pray and call on the Lord is if they are in fact Christians. Some will immediately think of presumptive regeneration, a doctrine sometimes associated with Abraham Kuyper and there are some Calvinists who on the basis of promise, presume regeneration and/or election with regard to their children. The latter is particularly problematic. Once again, such Calvinist categories struggle with the problem of children growing to adults and yet potentially lacking a 'born again' regeneration testimony - a point frequently raised by Baptist critics.
One of the problems is this assumption that everyone needs to have a Damascus Road experience (as it were). Some experience dramatic and radical conversions - I certainly did. But not everyone does and for children growing up in a Christian home, such a conversion almost necessarily entails (if we're honest) a period of resistance and rebellion - this being required in order to generate a conflict, consciousness of sin, and finally the grand moment of repentance unto life.
But that's not the model for the children of believers in the Old Testament - Paul after all did stress repeatedly that Old Covenant believers were saved in the same way that we are. Nor is it the model we find in the New. I will grant that not a lot said on this point but the language in Acts suggests that not only were the promises continued to believers and their children but the very household language assumes a broader picture of salvation and baptism - which most certainly included the infants in the household. The grammar alone testifies to paedobaptism in Acts as do the various doctrinal assumptions made in the epistles. For children of believers to be removed from the covenant would mark a sharp redemptive-historical break that would need to be explained as (for example) the fulfillment and disannulment of the Mosaic Law. But we don't find that. Rather we find assumption and affirmation as well as analogies between circumcision and baptism, and language regarding household baptism - a concept wholly outside the purview of Baptist theological categories. At the very least they must grumble at Paul for using such ill-advised and sloppy language - or so it must seem to those who restrict the gospel means to such very narrow individualistic categories.
In the epistles there is no distinction made - children and young men are part of the Church. They requirement of a conversion experience is a later development driven by the Magisterial Reformation's tendency to read soteriology out of focus - all aspects being read through the lens of Forensic Justification. And of course the later history of Magisterial Protestantism would only amplify this problem and the need for experience that demarcates the work of the Spirit from the (admittedly much abused and sometimes downplayed and neglected) ordinary means of grace.
The Kuyperian view would argue that we baptise our children because they are in the covenant. I do not agree. I would argue that we baptise children due to the command-promise of God with regard to the Covenant - which in the Last Days overlaps with the concepts of Kingdom and Church.
When someone is baptised they are united to Christ and become part of the Church and so it is with our children. They are thus in the Covenant. They are Christians because they are baptised and in defiance of the confused theology of Westminster and its progeny, these same Church members are entitled to the Covenant Meal - in keeping with Early Church practices.* As many will know the Hussites revived this ancient practice in the West in defiance of the blasphemous sacrificial doctrine of Transubstantiation and its practical effect of removing both the meal from the young and the cup from the laity.
At this point (when infants are baptised and communed) many get entangled over issues of 'membership', 'voting', and other distractions which miss the larger point and are due to misconceptions regarding ecclesiology. This is especially true in the American context where the discussions are quickly choked in the fog of non-profit status requirements and democratic assumptions. These are all non-issues and in most cases errors that need to be purged anyway. The return to New Testament practice merely exposes them.
I find it strange that Crouch speaks of the faith in connection with 'healthy habits' and the like. Far from disagreeing with him, I find it somewhat refreshing, but I also know that many will chafe at such descriptions as smacking of works-based righteousness and of confusing faith with faithfulness. I'm left mildly encouraged and optimistic but wondering how far Crouch has thought this through.
We should raise our children with the Scriptures and with Bible reading. But again, we know that the Law of God is foolishness to the world, that the unbeliever cannot understand the Scripture nor can they please God. They have no means to compare spiritual things with spiritual.
But if our children are viewed as Christians, as regenerate, then we have every reason to teach them and exhort them. Indeed the Word belongs to them. They sense their inclusion in the life of the Church as they partake of the Supper - at an age when they sometimes can understand little more than that simple fact. They can discern the body even if they cannot elaborate upon it in theological terms. The sins of the Corinthians are not in play here. In fact, feeding on Christ via the Supper they will grow in grace and their faith will be strengthened. It is after all the cup of blessing, angel's food, the living bread of heaven.**
Understand this is not to say that our children should lack all struggle - not for a moment. Indeed they must own the faith and most likely this will be gradual or occur in phases. It need not be instantaneous through a radical conversion experience but in some cases that might happen. But they (like all of us) must own the faith, and our lives are characterized by patterns of repentance and belief. The one-time experience which so many rest on is not the saving faith of the New Testament but cheap grace. The shoddy superficial confidence of once-saved-always-saved and the swagger of eternal security are not examples of assurance but presumption. It's no wonder today's Evangelicalism is marked by libertine insolence and antinomian pride. Combined with the Enlightenment Liberal values of American and Western idealism, the formula is deadly to say the least. It is literally soul-destroying. The New Testament understanding of assurance is one of active perseverance resting in Christ - a blessed hope. The dozens upon dozens of warning verses are not hypothetical, nor are they directed at the lost. And they're not about rewards. They're about salvation. They're for the Church, for believers, and they are absolutely real.
If most of us are honest over the course of our Christian life we pass through seasons of zeal and something more like tepidness. We have seasons in which our faith is rekindled and burns bright, times when it seems as if it's new all over again. This is (I think) fairly normal in the Christian experience. It's not always recommended or necessarily healthy and I think we need to repent of our times of torpor. Would that we could run full steam ahead at all times but if we're realistic we all go through times in which we're on (for want of a better term) auto-pilot or cruise control. And at other times we revisit the Scriptures are read them as it were anew. We might be stirred by the old paths that we've walked before. We also discover new ones - which hopefully are not new but new to us and our faith waxes bold.
But to 'train' unregenerate people to 'practice' or play at being Christian is not a teaching I find that has any basis in Scripture - and certainly not within the framework of Baptistic theology. Don't teach them to practice - teach them to 'be' and fulfill their calling as those baptized into Christ.
I'm not sure how helpful it is to use Timothy as an example in terms of being trained in the Scriptures from his youth. While he was undoubtedly converted to Christianity later, he would have been raised as a Jew - even though this was unconventional. In keeping with the confusion of the Hellenistic context, his mother had married outside the faith (or at best a God-fearer) and Timothy was raised as an Old Testament-studied Jew and yet remained uncircumcised. As such he was technically not a Jew but at best he could have been reckoned also as a God-fearer - and so were many early converts in the book of Acts. The point is made but I don't think we'd want to view our children like Timothy. It's not a good example even if we can with the apostle rightly praise his mother and grandmother for instilling him with the Scriptures. Crouch is right in the sense that it did prepare him to receive the gospel preached by Paul but the analogy doesn't actually exist in today's context. It was one of those unique situations one finds in the (roughly forty year) transition between Old and New Covenants (30-70AD)
It is right to take inspiration from Joshua's words regarding his house and how they will serve the Lord. But Joshua didn't have pagan children living in his house. His house was Christian (if I may speak accurately yet anachronistically).
And Crouch is wrong - God has promised that your children will be saved. This promise is of course provisional (as it is for all of us as Paul makes clear in Colossians 1.21-23), but the failing (if there is one) is not on God's side. And there are always exceptions - there are hypocrites in the Church and cases of parents who did things right, who used the means God provides and yet their children abandoned the faith. But how often is the apostasy the result of doctrinal confusion? That's hard to say. I know for me it played a huge part in driving me away from the faith as a teenager.
The article both encouraged and frustrated me. Crouch is on the right track but is (by this author's estimation) being hindered by Baptistic assumptions which stem from a lopsided reading of Scripture. He understands that promises are given and that God uses the Word, families, the Church, prayer, and worship as means to bring children along. The sacraments would need to be included under the aegis the Church - I'm not sure if Crouch would include them. I would say these means also keep adults in the faith as well and I would further argue that the means are not empty or symbolic - he doesn't seem to think so either (at least generally speaking). In fact they are efficacious, means ordained and employed by the Holy Spirit to bring people into union with Christ and to help them continue in the faith grounded and settled and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel.
Despite what some will say, (and these folks will have most likely given up reading long before now), these things do not cancel out, contradict, or take away from the truths of the gospel of grace nor are they in conflict with the doctrines of predestination and election, nor that of salvation by faith alone. It depends on how these things are understood. Are they utilized in context, or plugged into a logically prioritized system - relying ultimately on man's fallen and finite reason to judge their place, weight, and worth?
Today's Evangelicals and many Confessionalists do not understand these doctrines in the way they were taught in the 16th and 17th centuries. I will admit that as one who previously was something of a Reformed zealot, I am now rather dubious about many aspects of the Magisterial Reformation and the Scholastic-Confessional tradition that followed - and I do not apologize for it. The issue for me is fidelity to Scripture and years of study of both Church history and historical theology has led me to question some of the narratives which have come down to us today and also led me to discover how the narratives and theology have changed over time. There are many today who portray themselves as Reformed stalwarts but are in fact little more than Evangelicals of the post-war variety. There are others who seek to magnify God's grace as per the Reformers, but instead rely on the presumptions of 18th and 19th century revivalism and in many cases have denigrated God's grace and made it cheap. I'm not so worried about lining up with the Confessions but I find that most who trumpet them don't actually line up with them either or the theology of their forebears. I find the whole situation somewhat ironic.
The Scriptures are varied and rich and doctrine functions in context - often in a multi-faceted and occasional fashion. The real issue here is with regard to the nature of theology itself. Do we prioritize some truths at the expense of others? Do were shrink and constrict some passages because they do not fit our conceptions and commitments in other doctrinal areas? There are many doctrinal points taken as givens in today's Evangelical and Confessional context and they tend to dominate and effectively cancel out other verses that call them into question - sometimes by the dozen. Luther at least admitted as much - though he was wrong. A re-examination of Scripture might reveal a somewhat more complex mosaic in which the picture of salvation (while very simple) is also quite a bit more dynamic and complex than what one normally encounters in Evangelicalism. Election is plainly taught in Scripture but not in the way the theologians tend to utilize it. Salvation is grace-based, free, and by faith, and yet these concepts and how they are applied and play out are both different and more complex, intricate, and dynamic, than is commonly understood. Doctrines exist in tension - often unresolvable and this is in part undoubtedly due to the fundamental eschatological tension that characterizes this age, these Last Days. So it is with Christ's Kingdom at the present.
The things I'm saying will resonate well enough with some Lutherans and Anglicans and even some within the Reformed sphere. It is to be lamented that those associated with the Federal Vision picked up on this larger set of truths and now unfortunately (and unfairly I might add) they are immediately associated with them. One need not embrace their high-church ecclesiology, Dominionism, Theonomy, and Postmillennialism to nevertheless grasp this larger set of doctrinal truths. While I won't pretend that my doctrine lines up with the theology of John Calvin, it was in fact a deep study of Calvin back in the mid-1990's that initially led me down this path - years before Federal Vision emerged, an event that both excited me and led me to despair. I still chuckle remembering an old PCA roommate who (though a Theonomist) was of the anti-Federal Vision camp. He tracked me down and called me about 2003 because he recognized that many of the things they were saying (which had by then exploded into controversy) were akin to what I had been arguing with him about years before in the 1990's.
For me the shift also came with the realization that Calvin and the Calvinists were not cut from the same cloth - this despite those who continue to insist they are. There's too much at stake for them to say otherwise. Further study of Church history and historical theology only confirmed this with Scriptural study driving my own internal debates and wrestlings.
I will continue to 'check in' on Crouch's writings. He's interesting to me (or at least this piece was) and yet I hope he continues to develop even though it might lead him away from his present ecclesiastical company.
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* In fact the Early Church tied baptism so closely to salvation that when the concept of mortal sin was distorted it led to abuse and an overreaction. In some quarters people began to delay baptism out of fear of losing their salvation - even while paedobaptism and paedocommunion continued in others. Such delays had absolutely nothing to do with a craedo-baptistic arguments and in fact rested on a completely different understanding of baptism - that it was salvific, regenerative, and involved the expiation of sin.
I would also mention that this is in keeping with the First Reformation narratives I argue for. Both Catholic and Protestant Church historians have pointed out that groups like the Waldenses were something less than Sola Fide Protestants.
For Catholics this scores a point in demonstrating that the 'Where was your Church before Luther?' challenge remains unanswered - that is if the Lutheran formula of Justification by Faith Alone is the article by which the Church stands or falls. You won't find it before Luther - not in the way he taught it, not in a way that would remotely satisfy today's Church leaders.
For other contemporary Protestants this reality is (in some cases) a relief as they wish to claim the Medieval Catholic Church and its civilization, and the Waldenses (while worthy of sympathy) are actually something of an annoyance and a distraction from their larger goals of dominion and the re-constitution of so-called Christendom. Others of course make groups like the Waldenses into proto-Baptists or proto-Adventists - which they were not.
At the 1218 Bergamo Conference or Synod, the Lyon and Lombard branches of Waldensianism met for a debate which left several issues unresolved. One thing that's noteworthy is that the Lombard group insisted that their French cousins agree that baptism was necessary for salvation - a point they were more than ready to concede. That's thinking not exactly cut from the Baptistic cloth is it? The Waldenses were right by the way on that point - when speaking in normative terms. The thief on the cross is an exception and that tells us something (or rather reveals a doctrinal dynamic) but the exception is not the rule. The Spirit may work when and how He wills but it's not for us to discount or downplay the primary means that God has ordained.
This is but one point among many that demonstrates these groups were of a different order than not only the Magisterial Reformation but the many Baptist and other groups that would claim them. In fact by the latter metrics, they were for all intents and purposes Catholic but of course they were not and in fact they rightly denounced the Roman Catholic Church as antichrist. I won't say that there weren't times later on in the Middle Ages and Renaissance in which some within the fold of Waldensianism and other dissident groups questioned infant baptism but all too often this was in connection with a larger set of difficulties with Rome and the way infant baptism was abused - and placing it within a Constantinian context of state Christianity is to abuse and distort it. The problem in that case is not infant baptism (Spurgeon was wrong) but state Christianity - whether or not it manifests in an actual 'state' Church. In some cases (as with the Petrobrussians) the rejection of infant baptism involved a rejection of all means and sacraments. Like the Quakers or Salvation Army, they didn't just reject infant baptism but baptism itself.
** Not too long ago, a Reformed seminary professor argued that participation in Communion is like a driver's license. You have to have a degree of maturity and competence in order to earn the privilege. Under that reasoning, I guess when people are too old and in their dotage prove unable to properly elaborate the doctrine, they too should be excluded - just like with a driver's license! I remember reading that and feeling pity for his students.