R. Scott Clark: Not Baptizing Children Is A Sin And Your Church Isn't A Real One - Baptism: A Third View (Part 9)

Read all posts in this series here.

In a related proposition to what I linked to in Part 8, where Mark Dever called infant baptism a sin, R. Scott Clark in his series on churchless evangelicals makes the claim in his Part 3 that churches who don't practice infant baptism (i.e. the majority of churches in America) aren't true churches. He further states:

To many such a thought is impossible. It was quite difficult for me to reach this conclusion but I didn’t reach it carelessly or quickly. For most of my life in the Reformed world since 1980 I shared the assumption that, though I disagreed with my evangelical brothers and sisters over the question of baptism, their congregations were still churches. It’s only been in the last few years that the other shoe has dropped.

Additionally, in another post at 9Marks when he replies to Dever, Clark states that not baptizing covenant children is a sin:

What I'm about to say is not by way of retaliation. What I'm about to say here is what I've said to Mark privately. As a principled paedobaptist, it is not too much to say that believing parents who refuse to baptize covenant children are sinning.

So, putting the beliefs of Dever and Clark together, beliefs that are mutually exclusive, to claim to be a Christian at all is to sin against God. It doesn't matter what you believe about baptism - it's wrong anyway you cut it. Either you're not a Christian or your church isn't a real one.

Of course, if you believe both of these men are wrong, you don't have to be subject to their belittling and accusatory ivory tower rhetoric. I'm glad my conscience is finally free from the likes of men like Dever and Clark. I believe in water baptism, just not the way they do. I accept the practice of each of them, just not what they think about not practicing baptism those ways.

Part 8 . . . . . . . . Part 10