A Test Case for How to Put the Bible Together: Baptism
Christians disagree—sometimes sharply—on how themes unfold in the OT and NT. Here are a few examples:
- the old covenant and new covenant
- law and grace
- Israel and the church
- promise and fulfillment
- type and antitype
- the Sabbath and Lord’s day
- circumcision and baptism
People cannot study such issues in an isolated way without raising larger biblical and theological structural issues. The hermeneutical spiral is complicated, and the way people approach such issues reveals how they put the Bible together. That’s why, upon the recent recommendations of some friends, I spent several hours this afternoon carefully reading the following 66-page essay:
Stephen J. Wellum. “Baptism and the Relationship Between the Covenants.” Pages 105–70 in Believer’s Baptism: Sign of the New Covenant in Christ. Edited by Thomas R. Schreiner and Shawn D. Wright. NAC Studies in Bible and Theology. Broadman & Holman: Nashville, 2006.
(Note that Wellum’s long essay is hyperlinked above to a free PDF.)
This essay by Wellum, who is “neither Dispensational nor Covenantal (in the paedobaptist sense of the term)” (p. 123n44), is a fine example of what it looks like to approach an issue like baptism responsibly in light of Bible’s storyline.
What follows is an outline of Wellum’s essay with quotations from the introduction and conclusion. (I’ve added the numbering.) (more…)
