Journal: Reformed Baptist Theological Review
Volume: RBTR 02:1 (Jan 2005)
Article: A Brief Response To Richard L. Pratt’s “Infant Baptism in the New Covenant”
Author: Samuel E. Waldron

RBTR 2:1 (January 2005) p. 105

A Brief Response To Richard L. Pratt’s
“Infant Baptism in the New Covenant”

Samuel E. Waldron

Samuel E. Waldron is a doctoral student at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, KY, and author of several books. This brief article is adapted from an appendix in A Reformed Baptist Manifesto: The New Covenant Constitution of the Church by Samuel E. Waldron with Richard C. Barcellos and is used with permission from Reformed Baptist Academic Press.

In a chapter entitled, “Infant Baptism in the New Covenant,” Richard L. Pratt Jr. has recognized and attempted a response to the threat to paedobaptism posed by the Reformed Baptist exegesis of Jer. 31:31–34.1 To Pratt’s credit he evidences a credible understanding of the Reformed Baptist interpretation of the passage.

Pratt attempts to answer the arguments against paedobaptism based on Jer. 31 by pointing out that a comprehensive understanding of the fulfillment of this passage must take account, not just of the fulfillment in the present age, but also its fulfillment in the age to come (i.e., eternal state). Without going into all the details of Pratt’s argument, the treatment of the New Covenant by Reformed Baptists is in general and hearty agreement with Pratt’s insistence that the New Covenant finds its final and consummate fulfillment in the new heavens and new earth.

Where Pratt’s polemic for paedobaptist views clearly leads him astray is in his conclusion that the New Covenant is virtually exclusively future in its establishment. Pratt admits repeatedly that the implications of the New Covenant are exactly what Baptists think, but argues that these implications are only true in the eternal state. For instance, he says:

In the third place, we saw that many evangelicals object to infant baptism because the new covenant distributes salvation to all of its participants. As with the previous objections, this point of view is correct insofar as it relates to the complete fulfillment of the new covenant in the consummation.2

RBTR 2:1 (January 2005) p. 106

This means that for Pratt the present fulfillment of the New Covenant is merely anticipatory of its real fulfillment in the eternal state. This must be the case, because, for Pratt, none of its provisions are strictly fulfilled until the eternal state. In fact, in the respects that make the New Covenant new, it is according to Pratt’s own statements akin to all the previous Divine covenants including the Mosaic...