Infant Baptism, Objections Answered, 2

2. Admitting the force of our first answer, the previous objection is modified slightly. It is admitted that we can infer many important doctrinal things, particularly moral duties, from scriptural statements. However, when it comes to positive institutions, we must have an actual direct and positive warrant. In other words, the inferential reason of our first rebuttal is not to be allowed in the case of a positive institution.

This objection fares no better than the first one. For one these grounds, women should never partake of the Lord’ Supper, for we have no explicit and direct commandment that they should. No Baptist I have ever met is willing to live by his principles in this regard. To avoid sounding uncharitable, I will not adduce any other of the multitudinous examples which could be marshaled in to show the falsity of such a position. 

Of course, it is proper practice that women, as well as men, partake of the Lord’s Supper. But on what basis can we make such an assertion. Clearly it is on the strength of the same type of inferential reasoning we used to refute the objection that there is no New Testament warrant or command for infant baptism.

And before I continue any farther, let me interject something here. Where does anyone get off jettisoning the Old Testament when it comes to doctrinal matters? This is clearly the result of a Marcionic view of the Bible. Marcion was a 2nd century heretic who rejected the Old Testament because it didn’t line up with what he believed to be the message of the New. To him we owe the false idea that the Old Testament shows a God of wrath, but the New Testament shows a God of love. Marcion was the proto-Dispensationalist, in a way. He drove a wedge between the two Testaments so far as to reject the Old. Every doctrine and principle we encounter in the New Testament appears in the Old. One need only to read Paul’s Epistles to have this fact verified.