We have decided to start a regular feature called the Weekly Word.  Featured each week will be the sermons from Pastor William Cwirla, from Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Hacienda Heights, CA, and Pastor Kevin Kolander, from First Lutheran in Lake Elsinore, CA.

Frank Dent, a friend of New Reformation Press, and a resident of New England, has written a fascinating guest post for us about the demise of the Puritans in New England and its parallels with the modern church growth movement. Frank has done some excellent research and we are excited to be able to share the first of three parts with our readers.

During the first few years of living in Massachusetts, after moving from the San Fernando Valley suburbs of Los Angeles, it seemed as though the air was fairly filled with stories of Colonial Massachusetts, yarns of yankee whaling ships, tales of fabulously snooty Beacon Hill bluebloods, as well as anecdotes of eccentric New England intellectual elites. After hearing the stories recounted again and again, some questions began forming in my mind, “Why is there no American Puritan denomination today? How did Harvard College become dominated by liberal Unitarian theologians so early when it was founded for the proper training of Puritan ministers? How did we get from the Puritans to the Boston Brahmin so quickly?”

A couple years ago I began some casual research on these topics and my questioning came into greater focus when I read a reference to the Half-Way Covenant instituted by Puritan congregations in Colonial New England. The reasons for the Half-Way Covenant, and its consequences, are many and nuanced. Still, I think there is much to be learned by confessional Lutherans in the early 21st Century from the causes and consequences of the Half-Way Covenant that provide us an historical reference in our discussions regarding church polity, traditional worship, pastoral training and the definition of the pastoral role, as well as baptism, communion, catechesis and the means by which we accept new members.

Another change occurred during the last two years; I became a Lutheran. I had actually belonged to a Lutheran Church in the 1980s in southern California, a congregation in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. I managed to belong to the Church Council, even serve as the Church Growth Committee chairman, and never actually become a Lutheran. It took another twenty years of wandering through American Evangelicalism before I understood what confessional Lutheranism actually is and what I had been missing all my life. If my approach to the questions I’ve posed above seems biased, then you may conclude that I am actively cultivating that bias. Confessional Lutherans, those orthodox traditionalists who continue to advance the solas of the Reformation, and other adherents of objective truth and causality, find history not to be a dead subject but something we live every day. We live our baptism every day, although it can be recorded as an event in time past. We live the promises of Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter every day, although these are observed only once during the church calendar and are historical events. We don’t simply re-enact them as hollow rituals but, rather, live each day in the reality of their meaning in what God accomplished long ago and promised to do even longer ago.

I’ve organized my findings into three parts. The first will provide a brief overview of English Puritanism and the challenges it faced when transplanted to New England. The second will look at the transition in Boston from the Puritan ideal of “a city upon a hill” to the rise of the Boston Brahmin. The final segment is my assessment of what Confessional Lutheranism in the early 21st century can learn from the experiences of our American Puritan forefathers.

1. Visible Saints in America

Puritanism was an English phenomenon that sprang from conditions unique to that country, and was as important as a political force as it was a religious movement. Efforts to purify the church in England were applied to many areas including church polity and hierarchy, church membership, the use of clerical vestments, the appropriateness of liturgical ceremonies and religious symbols, and the exercise of traditional discipline of church members. The pursuit of these reforms exacted a terrible toll as the Puritans’ opponent was chiefly the Monarchy as “governor” of the Church of England, to which all citizens belonged by decree. Many Puritan clergy and congregants were imprisoned, tortured, and executed for their criticism of the national church. Some of these punishments were meted out by Protestant monarchs, some by Catholic, and some by a ruler, Elizabeth, who seemed determined to be one or the other or both, depending on what most benefitted her government at the moment.

Puritanism was represented in public dispute and in published argument by some of the most learned and erudite English thinkers of the day. Their persuasiveness in print and skill in public preaching were both the front line of their attack as well as their sometime last court of appeal. It was not a thoroughly homogenous movement, however. There were episodes where Puritans, in conflict with each other over interpretation of what constituted a biblical church, would indulge in the public embarrassment of excommunicating each other, pursued with the same learned language as their theological treatises, but seasoned heavily with sarcasm, not unlike the treatment applied by Martin Luther to Erasmus of Rotterdam and other opponents.

Among the enduring themes of English Puritanism was the desire for establishment of a church composed solely of the “Visible Saints.” This Puritan ideal was borrowed from Augustine’s assertion of there being two churches, the invisible church made up of all elect believers predestined for salvation from time past, present, and future, and the visible church made up of those alive today who professed Christ. The visible church, while Christ’s Body in the world today, is not pure, but represents “the wheat and the weeds” side-by-side together. While Augustine knew that the visible church would be impure, it should retain discipline among its members by applying the Apostle Paul’s counsel to the early church as its model. The Puritans saw a Church of England completely overrun with weeds, with the wheat struggling to stay alive, to maintain a high regard for Scripture, to maintain church discipline, to expect righteous living from its Bishops, and sound teaching from its clergy. They envisioned a different ideal, a church pure and spotless in its leadership and laity, a church discriminating in who may be numbered among the elect, a church community where people would live their faith, a church of Visible Saints.¹

Viewed in its historical context, this desire to establish a church that stands as a testimony to the purity of the Lamb by whose blood was won the forgiveness of sins, a church that suggests to the world the future perfection that will accompany Christ’s return, must be considered among the highest of all human ideals. But, it can be also viewed as merely that, among the highest of all human ideals, and not a soundly biblical model for the visible church. Insistence on purity of the church members and its clergy, as well as the elimination of a church hierarchy as unbiblical and Romish, are more dominant in historic Puritan thought than insistence on purity of the Gospel being preached, the inerrancy of Scripture, or the centrality of Christ and his work on the cross.

Although authors of popular histories of English Puritanism, and its American offspring, are quick to argue that the desire to establish the Visible Saints was by no means the primary distinction of Puritan congregational life nor the sole focus of Puritan teaching and preaching, Puritanism simply cannot be fully appreciated without it. In fact, they were commonly likened to Donatists, the 4th Century Christian heretical sect who held that only those demonstrating a blameless life belonged in the church, by their opponents. While Puritans argued persuasively against this characterization, their commitment to the Visible Saints ideal increased over time and became quite severe.

Despite Puritan musings on the necessary agency of grace and the presence of faith in their regenerate members, these are of lesser importance to their movement than the necessity of creating a pure church, called away from unregenerate society and an unrepentant church hierarchy. Walter Tavers, a Puritan minister at Temple Church, London, wrote that doctrine and discipline were interdependent. As long as discipline in the church was unreformed the reform of doctrine was precarious.² Robert Browne went beyond Tavers’ call to throw out canon law and the church hierarchy, and argued for congregationalism. His prescription for reforming the Church of England was a complete dismantling of the system, including the revocation of the royal degree making all citizens members of the church, even if that meant the church were distilled down to a precious few, but pure, members.³ While these themes were recurring throughout English Puritanism, there was one issue that provided a clear demarcation between internal camps, whether to reform their national church from inside it or from outside it. Those that separated from the Church of England, arguing that the national church was past saving, were known as Separatists. Although there were some Separatist groups who remained in England, most fled not only their church, but also their country. Among the Non-Separatists who remained to fight for reformation from inside the Church of England, many refused to accept the attempts by Queen Elizabeth to standardize Anglican worship in the Act of Uniformity in 1558 and became known as Nonconformists. Since there was no Church of England in the New World, the distinction between the two groups once they arrived on these shores is made clearer by referring simply to Separatists and^{3 2} Non-Separatists. These represent the two dominate strains of radical Puritanism that both nurtured and hardened those who concluded that relocating to the New World was not only reasonable, but necessary. We must regard this as a particularly courageous and hopeful decision by a sect that contended that even one known offense left unpunished was sufficient to destroy a church.⁴ What impact could this, and other practices of Puritan church life, have on a group that was now isolated from the rest of the world?

All Americans know something of the Pilgrims, that group of Puritan Separatists who sailed from Amsterdam to the New World with the intent of establishing a kind of Puritan utopia, and founded the community that became Plymouth, Massachusetts. We may even remember something of a vague distinction between these Pilgrims of the “first American Thanksgiving” and their Non-Separatist Puritan counterparts who came a little later and founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and are perhaps better known for the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts.

While in the Netherlands, the Pilgrims had lived as a community set apart from their Dutch neighbors, who were largely tolerant of their religious scruples and held no serious grudges against them, either political or theological. Perhaps the most serious threat to Pilgrims during their twelve-year residency in the Netherlands was the gradual loss of Englishness they observed in their children as they become accustomed to Dutch ways and culture. Meanwhile, those Non-Separatist Puritans who would soon found a second Boston, John Winthrop’s “city upon a hill,” were still in England fighting corruption within their national church. As Non-Separatists, they maintained that they represented the true Church of England and refused to consider themselves separate from it, because any schism meant a failure of unity in the church and was dishonoring to God.⁵

The Puritans who founded Massachusetts, Separatists and Non-Separatists alike, carried the struggle to establish and maintain the Visible Saints to the New World, and soon both communities looked beyond surviving to thriving. They were free from the tyrannical religious edicts of a monarchial overseer and the resulting bureaucracy of incompetent, unqualified, and corrupt clerics, but they were also isolated from their English culture and society.

The first candidates for proselytizing to their faith were the sixty-six Englishmen, representing the London Company, underwriters of the venture, who accompanied the thirty-four Pilgrims on the Mayflower. They also established friendly relations with the Native Americans they found living in the region, few in number, their population having been decimated by diseases borne by earlier European visitors to that region. But soon more settlers came, bringing tradesman skills, the explorer’s daring, mercantile trade ventures, and a desire for wealth among settlers and investors alike. And, all too quickly, relations with their native neighbors grew tense, and then grew deadly. But more importantly, to the⁴ Visible Saints, the new settlers could be Puritan, Anglican, or Catholic, or may be more likely to bend the knee in worship of mammon than care about the purity of the saints. The ability to grow Puritanism in the New World from the “Great Migration,” the tide of some 20,000 new prospects from the Old World arriving over the next decade, would be severely tested.

As the requirements for church membership were put to repeated practical tests over the years, through the process of examining thousands of people petitioning for membership, a kind of “method” for measuring a candidate’s suitability began to emerge. By 1640 there had developed a kind of orthodoxy around these questions which was commonly referred to with terms such as the congregational “way” or New England “method.”

Cotton Mather was a strong proponent of this method which hinged upon an interrogatory approach to determining if a candidate possessed a “saving faith.” Although “historical faith” was important, and may be thought of as the minimum requirement, it represented only a knowledge of the historic truths of the Gospel and of the common social hallmarks of the Christian life, namely that a person be of good repute, live a life free of scandal, and cheerfully avail himself to Christian instruction and church discipline. This may qualify a person to receive the Seal of Baptism and nominal membership in a Puritan Church.

However, full membership, which qualified one for receiving the Lord’s Supper and awarded participation in the congregation as a voting member, was to be reserved for only those members who could successfully demonstrate having a saving faith, a sure and certain regeneration that marked them as part of God’s elect. Under this method the Visible Saints, those who could demonstrate sure and certain election were, in effect, a church within a church.

The New England method can be reconstructed from sermon notes, letters between clergy, and written salvation narratives of the some of the saints. The regularity of these testimonies under the New England method suggest that the “method” was more than the examination of candidates for membership, but that there was also a “method” in salvation narratives.

Puritan clergymen often discussed, in their own circles, the difficulty inherent in discerning saving faith in applicants for membership, and there was constant concern, and occasional alarm, that the method would result in allowing unworthy persons into the congregation. However, they also seemed to settle on a formula that provided some comfort. If a person was absolutely, unshakably confident of their salvation experience then the minister would have sufficient grounds to consider them with suspicion. However, if a candidate had a persuasive conversion story but remained somewhat troubled by the security of their salvation, then the minister could be sure of a sincere and earnest profession of faith.

Though this standardization approached stereotype, most Puritan congregations felt reassured by the New England Method and somewhat absolved from any taint that may come to their congregation in its abuse.

However, the greatest threat to Puritanism in the New World was not from the possibility that they would admit an impostor from among the “strangers” around them but from the Puritans’ own children and grandchildren.

“Saving faith” is not hereditary, neither were the children of a communicant Puritan covered by sentimentality under the salvation their parent possessed. However, the Puritans practiced infant baptism, and that created something of a dilemma. What was to be done with the grown children of Puritans who did not possess the saving faith necessary for full membership in the church?

Growing up Puritan had a single desirable end, that the child would “own” their parent’s covenant. Even with the benefit of a childhood regulated by Christian instruction and church discipline, it was not assumed that their children would automatically be admitted to full church membership and it was demonstrated that there was nothing approaching a full harvest of the elect from their offspring. So the baptized children of communicant Puritans, while denied communion, were included in worship, partook of teaching and preaching, and were subject to church discipline, but it seems as though there was little hope of “converting” them once they passed a certain age.

It was not long before children born in the Old World were of the age considered appropriate for a legitimate experience of saving faith, sometime around their twentieth year or later, and right behind them were coming the children born in the New World. More importantly, baptized but non-communicant Puritan children were marrying and starting families of their own.

Now the dilemma began resembling a crisis. What was to be done with the children of baptized, but non-communicant, Puritan children? Were they to be baptized? That idea was considered radical. Only regenerate adult converts and the children of fully sanctified Puritans could receive the First Seal of the covenant of the purified church.

This third generation, mostly born in New England, created a problem that the Puritan founders had not anticipated. They could not exclude their own grandchildren from their fellowship because to deny them the benefit of church instruction and church discipline would be to relegate them to a status no better than strangers.

But persons, no matter how dear, could not be baptized outside of the covenant of full church membership. This would surely be a violation of the purity of the sacrament and be a fundamental violation of the hard-fought reforms in the Puritan church. Clearly, evangelism in the Puritan church was only a rear-guard activity, designed to defend a “pure” church as it continued its determined retreat from the world, and certainly not a means by which the unchurched elect were reached by the preaching, and hearing, of the Word.

So began a dialog within the Puritan churches of Massachusetts and Connecticut that spanned decades and took many twists and turns along the way but remained tethered to the basic problem who could be baptized among their own fellowship.

The name “Half-Way Covenant” was a derisive label applied by the opponents to an accommodation promoted by some leading Puritan ministers in Massachusetts. Historians have categorized the Half-Way Covenant in widely varying ways, from an attempt to build the tax-paying base of franchised citizens by creating a new category of church membership, to signifying the first slip in a scandalous slide toward open communion, as the opening move by some revisionists toward “presbyterianism,” or as the earliest crack in the separatist defenses that would eventually lead to the dissolution of Puritanism as a sect and the beginning of its more enduring legacy as a model for the parish that embraces its obligation to whole community in which it finds itself.

In the next posting, “A City Upon A Hill Becomes the Hub of the Universe,” we will take a closer look at the Half-Way Covenant and its consequences. In the third and final posting, “Line in the Sand or Mighty Fortress?” we will consider what Confessional Lutherans may learn from the Half-Way Covenant.

^{1 Edmund S. Morgan, Visible Saints (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1963).}

^{2 John Brown, The English Puritans (Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 1998)}

^{3 Brown}

^{4 Morgan.}

^{5 Robert G. Pope, The Half-Way Covenant (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1969)}

**UPDATE: Michael Spencer’s daughter, Noel Cordle, commented in an entry on this subject over at White Horse Inn’s blog mentioning that the PO Box listed is not correct. It should be: PO Box 313, Oneida, KY 40972 (the PO Box number was off by one digit). Also, you can go directly to internetmonk.com and click on the PayPal “Donate” button on the top-right, just underneath the “Podcast” menu item, and donate via that method as well. Thank you all for the outpouring of support.

As many of you may already know, Michael Spencer, aka Internetmonk, a good friend of ours, has been diagnosed with cancer. He has ministered to and encouraged literally thousands of discouraged Christians. He has been a friend of New Reformation Press since almost the beginning of our endeavor, and we were his first commercial sponsors. He is a good man, and a solid brother in contending for the Gospel.

He recently posted an update for his readers outlining his situation.

He is unable to work, and his insurance is due to run out very soon. He still faces a lot of expensive treatments for his cancer.

To that end we would like to pass the virtual plate on his behalf. Neither Ted nor I can just stand by. NRP is rendering what help we can. If you are so inclined you can send checks or money orders to Michael and Denise directly.

Their address is: PO Box 313, Oneida, KY 40972

Even a little bit can make a difference. Our prayers and thoughts are with Michael and Denise during this tough time.

Isaiah 9:6

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

We here at New Reformation Press hope you and yours have a wonderful and joyful Christmas. We give thanks this day for the priceless gift we receive in the birth of God’s only Son and our Savior, Jesus Christ.

It appears there is some kind of glitch in our subcategory system and it has been breaking the links to some of our audio products recently. If you clicked on any of our downloadable products and got a blank page, the links for those products have been fixed. Our developers will be looking into this and we’ll open the Audio subcategories again once all is made right.

I apologize for the inconvenience. Please feel to once again peruse those products and listen to the audio samples.

Merry Christmas!

I’ll call him Pastor X for reasons that will soon be apparent.  A member of his congregation, an Elder who has served the congregation faithfully for many years, has been diagnosed with a very aggressive form of cancer.  The doctors recommend an equally aggressive campaign of chemotherapy.  He is in his late seventies or early eighties and his prognosis is grim.  Nausea induced from his chemo prevents him from eating anything.  He is wasting away and is in incredible pain.

Pastor X approaches another member of his congregation, a man with a terminal illness that is less aggressive but just as deadly as cancer.  This man has a California Medical Marijuana card and legally purchases marijuana to help him cope with the effects of his disease and his medication.  Pastor X says “Elder ______ has cancer and is dying. It’s going to be ugly.”  The man quickly produces half a dozen cigarettes of medical strength marijuana and gives them to his Pastor.  When the Pastor next visits the Elder, he gives him the marijuana.

The preceding story is true, and I suspect happens more often than we might think in California and other parts of the country where medical marijuana is legal.

Another man, a personal friend of mine, has a constellation of illnesses that can leave him bedridden.  He is a devout and confessional Lutheran. He has a great job, a lovely wife and two great kids. He is involved in his congregation on several levels.  His physician had for years prescribed Marinol, a synthetic form of the active ingredient in marijuana, to help treat his illnesses.  Once California legalized medical marijuana, his doctor gave him a recommendation for a medical marijuana card, and he now buys marijuana from a legal dispensary.  It’s much cheaper than the Marinol and far more effective in treating his condition.

As more and more states legalize various forms of pot use, the church is going to increasingly face situations like I have just described.   California appears to be well on the way to full blown legalization.  One of the state assembly bills working its way through our state legislature is entitled AB420.  With a title like that, you can see how this is going to go. (420 is street slang for marijuana.)   Our state is broke, and our elected officials won’t be able to resist the avalanche of tax revenue and jobs legalization will bring.

What is, or what should be the church’s stance on these issues?  I have heard no public discussion in the blogosphere or anywhere else on how the church should deal with the subject.  Granted, it is a complicated and nuanced issue. Medical use and recreational use would seem to be two entirely different subjects.  Once the legal hurdle is done away with, will the church (at least some parts of the church) look at casual use the same way they look at the use of alcohol or tobacco? Is there merit in medicinal use in the eyes of the church?

It is my hope that our best theologians and thinkers will try to get out ahead of the curve and engage the subject in a wise and rigorously biblical way, or at least try to shape the conversation in a constructive way. This issue is running up on us quickly.  Some denominations will automatically be against any use at all. Others will be in favor of any and all use, just because.  I’d like to see the Lutherans engaging the issue. Pastors and theologians hammering out a biblical position, or maybe the CTCR doing a study and issuing a paper, even if it is only a preliminary study.

What do our readers think?  Here are a few questions to get the discussion started.

Do you think the use of marijuana for medical reasons has merit?

Is legalization helpful or harmful to our society as a whole?

If it is legal, is it right for Christians to work in a dispensary or otherwise be involved in the Medical Marijuana industry as a legitimate vocation?

Is Marijuana use sinful in a state that has legalized it?

What are some of the Scriptural passages that would be helpful in shaping our attitudes towards the whole issue?

You may be asking yourself what I personally think about the issue.  I have tried to be non-committal on the whole deal, but I do have several opinions on the subject.

About Pastor X; while he technically broke the law by appropriating marijuana legally obtained by one patient for use by another who was not permitted by law to receive it, I am not going to second guess a Pastor who is trying to help his friend and church member on his deathbed.  Here I would err on the side of mercy.

Likewise, I am not a doctor and would not insinuate my judgment into my friend’s health care decisions arrived at with the help of his doctor.  If the law of the land states that a medication is legal and his doctor prescribes it for him, in my book he is not guilty of sin in the matter.

I do have opinions on the subject of legalization, but they are an outgrowth of my political views, and both Ted and I make a conscious effort to keep our politics off this site in the interest of not placing stumbling blocks in front of the Gospel.  One of the main reasons for this post is to stir up theological discussion so that better minds than mine can shed some Biblical light on the subject and help me and others to have a more fully formed Christian view of the subject.

And no, I do not use marijuana, medical or otherwise, just in case you were wondering.

So, what do you think?

I have been involved in a number of conversations recently concerning infant Baptism. This kind of thing is a never ending cycle on the internet and instead of rehashing everything on several different forums, I thought it might be helpful to put down in writing a defense of infant Baptism addressing several points that proponents of adult believer’s baptism bring up.

The two things that I hear most often are:

1. Baptism is an outward sign of an inward work or action. Its main purpose is as a testimony.

2. Infants can’t have faith and/or repent, therefore they cannot be baptized.

Many refutations of these two points often fail, not because they are not true, but because they resort to a kind of theological shorthand that leaves out several important distinctions and foundational assumptions and results in the two sides talking past each other.

Proponents of believers-only baptism usually argue from the Book of Acts and the Gospels, taking their cues from how they see baptism being used in the Scriptures.

This is correct insofar as it goes. However, in the view of those who champion infant baptism, it does not go far enough.

The Lutherans and other paedobaptists (those who baptize their infants) go further. They look to see what the scriptures say baptism is and does. This is a huge difference. Think about it for a moment.

Our believers-only baptism friends rightly point out that the majority of people people baptized in the Bible have believed and repented before they were baptized. (We would say that the believing centurion and the Philippian jailer probably had children that were baptized with the household.) This is then set in stone as it were, and considered to be the final word on the subject.

The Lutheran way is to ask “What is baptism and what does it do?” and consequently “Given what the scriptures say, how is it properly used and on whom is it used?”

Let’s take a quick tour of the pertinent passages and what they say.

Romans 6:3-5 Baptism into Christ’s death and burial with Him. Unites us to His death and resurrection.

Colossians 2:11-12 Putting off of the sinful nature by the circumcision done by Christ through baptism.

Ephesian 5:26 What else is a “washing with water through word” but baptism?

1 Peter 3:21 Baptism now saves us… Cut it any way you like, but baptism somehow saves.

Because this is what the scriptures say baptism is, then how then is it properly used?

Matthew 28:18-29 Make disciples by baptizing and teaching. (We baptize our infants into teaching and teach adults into baptism.)

See the various instances in the Book of Acts. Note especially the Philippian Jailer (Acts 16:33) whose whole household was baptized.

This is what baptism is and what it does. The crux of the paedobaptist arguments lie primarily in the substance of baptism as scripture defines it, and only secondarily in the examples of its application we see in the Book of Acts. That is why we so often are talking past each other.

So then if baptism joins us to Christ, what about our children, how do we bring them to Jesus? Is it proper to do so?

Mark 10:13-16 Jesus rebukes the disciples who were preventing parents from bringing their infants to Him.

Baptism is the way we bring our children to Him. The New Testament says nothing about infant dedication. Neither does the early Church.

The Scriptures never speak of baptism as a testimony to others. The Ethiopian eunuch and the Philippian jailer and his household were in situations in which there weren’t many witnesses to testify. The scriptures also never speak of baptism as an outward sign of an inward work.

It seems a bit ironic to us that groups that assign to baptism a symbolic or signatory value often become hyper-literal concerning the mode of baptism. So baptism is for them an outward sign of an inward work, and a testimony to others about your relationship with the Lord, but unless you are entirely immersed in the water the baptism is not valid. If the water does nothing, then why is it important to immerse rather than sprinkle?

The second objection we often hear is “Infants can’t have faith and/or repent, therefore they cannot be baptized.”

This second objection makes ‘understanding’ as we define it the one necessary work on our part to be saved. If they are unable to comprehend then the Lord is incapable of granting that infant (or mentally handicapped adult for that matter) the gift of faith.

Ephesians 2:8-9 tells us that faith is a gift given by the Lord. We are loathe to say that the Lord cannot do something; especially when it comes to granting someone saving faith. You end up with a situation in which God is unable to communicate with some part of His creation.

In the book of Jonah, God commands a fish and a vine to do his bidding. In Genesis 9:5 there is that strange passage where the Lord says he will demand an accounting for our lifeblood from every animal that kills a human. So God will hold animals morally accountable for killing humans. There seem to be a lot of things going on behind the scenes between God and His creation that we are not privy to. If He can communicate with fish and vines and hold animals accountable for killing us, I think He is capable of granting the gift of faith to my children through the appointed means of baptism. It is His action towards us.

When someone is baptized, it is not the Pastor that buries someone into the death of Christ and raises them to new life in Christ, but God Himself makes the baptism efficacious. I brought my children to the baptismal font so that they could be buried in Christ’s death and raised to new life in Him. I am confident that God is faithful to His word.

So here, briefly, I have summed up a couple of quick points that I hope will shed some light on why those of us who baptize our children believe that it is scriptural and right. For those interested in a deeper discussion, you can click on the links below for further resources.

Scriptural Baptism by Uuraas Saarnivaara – A very thorough treatment of the subject.

Did My Baptism Count? – Luther on the subject of re-baptism.

The Baptism of Your Child – A great resource for families who are going to baptize their baby. Well put together and informative.

Luke 1:39-45, 56

Now at this time Mary arose and went in a hurry to the hill country, to a city of Judah, and entered the house of Zacharias and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. And she cried out with a loud voice and said, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And how has it happened to me, that the mother of my Lord would come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped in my womb for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what had been spoken to her by the Lord.”

And Mary stayed with her about three months, and then returned to her home.

As we go through the season of Advent, I relish the words we get to hear in church every year, praying for the grace of God – that He send us our Deliverer, our Redeemer, our Captain in the fight come to win the battle that we can not.

Our prayers are not in vain. God remembered His promises. He remembered His promise to Abraham. He remembered the words He spoke to Adam and Eve in the garden. And the One who would come to die for the sins of the world would soon dwell among men. The promise would very soon be fulfilled. Hallelujah!

I simply LOVE the joy of this time of year. As the years have worn on, it has become clearer and clearer to me that the joy surrounding Christmas and all that we celebrate throughout the season is truly a foretaste of the Feast to come.

“But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall.” Malachi 4:2

When Scripture speaks of arriving in heaven like a calf leaping happily out of a stall, it is that joy of which is spoken, even if what we experience right now is only the merest shadow of an inkling of what is to come.

Psalm 85

O LORD, You showed favor to Your land;
You restored the captivity of Jacob.

You forgave the iniquity of Your people;
You covered all their sin. Selah.

You withdrew all Your fury;
You turned away from Your burning anger.

Restore us, O God of our salvation,
And cause Your indignation toward us to cease.

Will You be angry with us forever?
Will You prolong Your anger to all generations?

Will You not Yourself revive us again,
That Your people may rejoice in You?

Show us Your lovingkindness, O LORD,
And grant us Your salvation.

I will hear what God the LORD will say;
For He will speak peace to His people, to His godly ones;
But let them not turn back to folly.

Surely His salvation is near to those who fear Him,
That glory may dwell in our land.

Lovingkindness and truth have met together;
Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.

Truth springs from the earth,
And righteousness looks down from heaven.

Indeed, the LORD will give what is good,
And our land will yield its produce.

Righteousness will go before Him
And will make His footsteps into a way.

Come Lord Jesus! Amen! Amen!

For the remainder of December we are holding a 20% Off Sale on all printed material, CDs and DVDs. Many of these items will be discontinued from our catalog in the New Year, and when we sell out we will not be restocking them.

This is a great time to pick up any of the devotional books we carry; they make great gifts. Check them out here.

Music and audio CDs are also sought after gifts. Look at these deals.

We have a final few copies of the DVD ‘Singing the Faith’ the magnificent story of the History of Lutheran Hymnody and it’s impact on the church and the world. Be sure to watch the video clip, you don’t want to miss it.

As I said, many of these items will not be returning to our catalog so take advantage of the sale while you can.

For the past couple of weeks we have been enjoying Dawn’s guest post on her journey into Lutheranism.  Check out Part I and Part II in the archives.  Here is the third and final part.

Part 3

After I had been listening to the White Horse Inn for a while, I read on Kim Riddlebarger’s blog about the cancellation of the Lutheran radio program Issues, Etc. and the fact that the program was going to come back on the air. So I resolved to start listening when they started up again, even if I was a bit skeptical at first. I found Lutheran theology to be remarkably comforting and their view on the extent of the Atonement to be much more in line with what Scripture actually taught. But the one thing that was a real stumbling block for me was the idea of baptismal regeneration. It seemed too much like adding a work to salvation. I remember thinking, “I don’t think I could ever believe THAT. It would be way too much of a stretch.”

So I started listening, and as I said, I was skeptical at first. But after weeks of listening to Pastor Wilken and his guests, I became much less skeptical. Through Issues, Etc. I found other radio shows such as Fighting for the Faith, The God Whisperers and Table Talk Radio. Somehow I discovered an online forum called the Wittenberg Trail where I could ask questions about what Lutherans believed and how that fit in with the Scriptures.

From all of these things I came to realize this – confessional Lutherans were literally the most Christ-centered people around. They always pointed me to Christ and not to myself. I came to understand that Baptism was Gospel and not Law. That the idea of Baptism as an “outward sign of an inward commitment” was something foreign to the Scriptures and a relatively recent innovation in church history. Baptism was not just water – it was water combined with the Word of Christ. If faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the Word of Christ, it was not that big of a stretch to believe that that Word could work through physical means appointed by Christ.

When I read passages about Baptism in this light, everything started to fall into place. Most crucial was Romans 6:1-4:

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

I had been baptized years before when I was barely out of my teens. I had no idea what my baptism meant at the time. I thought it was all about my obedience and commitment. But all the Scriptures that talk about what Baptism means talk about it as being God’s work, not our work. God had objectively, through external means, put His name – the name of the Triune God – upon me in Baptism.

It was around September 2008 that I realized, “I think I’m becoming a Lutheran.” But I was still attending an evangelical church. It happened that after Christmas was over I decided to visit an LCMS church in my area. It was the closest of three that had been recommended to me by a pastor on the Wittenberg Trail.

I can’t really say “I didn’t know what to expect” because I did. All those months of listening to Issues, Etc and all the other Lutheran podcasts – as well as using the Treasury of Daily Prayer for a month or so beforehand! – had taught me exactly what to expect, though not being used to liturgical worship I found myself fumbling around to figure out where I was in several parts of the service.

I found myself very emotionally moved, in particular, by corporate confession and absolution. Why? Because finally, there was open, public honesty. No coming before God and others pretending to have it all together, like I did on so many Sundays before that. I was coming to God with only my sin because it was all I had to offer Him. I was publicly admitting – in church! – along with a hundred or so other people, that I had not loved God with my whole heart, that I justly deserved His punishment and that all I could do was plead for mercy.

And for the first time I heard those wonderful words, “I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

The whole service was saturated in Scripture from beginning to end. From beginning to end everything pointed to Christ –for me – and not to what was happening inside of me.

I had the opportunity to speak briefly with the pastor at the end of the service. I told him that I was an evangelical who had discovered Lutheranism on the Internet through such programs as Issues, Etc, that I was VERY interested in Lutheranism and that I had wanted to see it for myself. I remember him asking me, “Was it what you expected?”

And my answer was a somewhat wide-eyed “Yes.”

I started attending Bible study every Sunday at this church, though it was a few more months before I started attending services there exclusively. I continued to learn and grow in my understanding of the faith. But I knew I was finally home.

In Lutheranism there is no more wondering if I am sincere enough. No more wondering whether I really believe. No more wondering how God really sees me. I know that my salvation was and is entirely His work. He put His name on me in Baptism, and He sustains my faith through the hearing of His Word and the receiving of His Sacraments.

I dare not trust in anything inside of myself. Instead, I look entirely outside of myself to Christ alone – who was born for me, lived a perfect and sinless life for me, died for me, and was raised to life again for me.

Even for me.

Be sure to visit Dawn’s blog at RealRealityZone. We have really enjoyed her series of posts and look forward to hearing more from her in the future.