Friday, October 14, 2022

Fred A. Malone's Critique of the Faulty Hermeneutic of Reformed Proponents of Paedobaptism

  

[John] Murray [in his book, Christian Baptism] fails to recognize that New Testament sacraments must be expressly commanded and explicitly instituted by Christ according to the regulative principle of worship.

 

The Westminster of Faith 1:6 teaches that things may be “deduced from Scripture” by “good and necessary consequence” when trying to determine “the whole counsel of God.” however, that which is “expressly set down in Scripture” is specifically distinguished by the Westminster divines from good and necessary consequence. They are not the same things. The former is instituted revelation; the latter is human deduction from instituted revelation. . . . For the sake of clarity, the reader should understand that it is a valid hermeneutical method to draw inferences from Scripture. Drawing good and necessary inference is required tot draw up confessions, to do systematic theology, and to engage in pastoral applications to people. Yet no one would claim that all deductions or inferences are equally clear, good, necessary, and authoritative. There is such a thing as “poor and unnecessary inference.” In fact, using poor and unnecessary inferences is a primary strategy of the cults; i.e., the baptism for the dead. How does one distinguish between the two? One must distinguish between inferences that are possibly plausible and those that are consequentially necessary. The Scriptural basis for any inference must be very good and clearly necessary, conforming to standard rules of hermeneutics to be authoritative. Even if the case for paedobaptism were potentially plausible, it still is unwise to form a doctrine of an instituted sacrament by inference alone when never mentioned or expressly set down in Scripture. Inference, even if one concludes it good and necessary, cannot be used to invent sacraments or subjects of sacraments, as do the Roman Catholics.

 

Further, there is a warning on the Westminster Confession against adding to Scripture by the traditions of men, even if those traditions are asserted to be deduced from Scripture, as did the Pharisees in their erroneous deductions (see Matthew 15:1-10). They often followed the “string-of-pearls” method of stringing Scriptures together out of context to invent new laws by inference.

 

To summarize, there is a limit to the practice of good and necessary consequences in its application. The limitation of this: Inference cannot contradict other instituted Scripture or sound hermeneutical principles that govern one’s deductions from Scripture. For sacraments in particular, under the regulative principle of worship, good and necessary consequence cannot be used to institute any sacrament or the subjects of sacraments. . . . An example of this error is Andrew Sandlin’s extreme, unqualified statement that good and necessary consequence, which can be based upon erroneous inferences, always is as binding as Scripture itself. The binding power of good and necessary consequence totally depends upon the hermeneutical validity of the inferences that cold be neither “good” nor “necessary.” He says:

 

The most frequent and obvious objection to the Reformed view of infant baptism is that no obvious, explicit references to it is found in the Scriptures. . . . But hose who hold the Reformed faith do not agree that infant baptism should be rejected on the grounds that it is not taught obviously and explicitly in the Holy Scriptures, for they do not hold that a doctrine or practice need be expressed in obvious, explicit terms to be valid. Supporting as they do the assertion of the Westminster Confession that those teachings which “by good and necessary consequence” can be deducted from Scripture are as binding as those taught plainly and explicitly (chapter 1, section 6), they deduce from the relation between circumcision and baptism, from the covenantal character of the gospel and the Christian faith, and from statements regarding household salvation and baptism, the practice of paedobaptism [emphasis mine]. (Andrew Sandlin, “A Support for Reformed Paedobaptism (with a Reformed Baptist Reply by Fred Pugh)” Tms [photocopy], position paper [Painesville, OH: the Church of the WORD, 1996], 8)

 

In this statement, Sandlin unqualifiedly asserts something that the WCF 1:6 does not say, that things deduced from Scripture “are as binding as those taught plainly and explicitly.” He does not distinguish the actual necessary consequences that are contained in the fabric of Scripture from his own possibly erroneous conclusions as to what those are. What he concludes to be good and necessary may possibly be noting more than erroneous deductions. If erroneous deductions are regarded as binding as Scripture, they then become erroneous additions to revelation. Thus, such an absolute unqualified statement by Sandlin takes a decisive step toward the Roman Catholic position that theological inference and church tradition are as authoritative as Scripture itself, even regarding the institution of a sacrament never mentioned in the Scripture! This position undermines sola Scriptura. . . . Good and necessary consequence can be valid only when deducted from written revelation and not contrary to other written revelation; in other words, the analogy of faith. Never can it be used to violate standard hermeneutical principles or the regulative principle of worship, because the correct interpretations of Scripture never contradicts itself. Scripture must interpret Scripture by sound hermeneutic principles. Even if one could infer infant baptism as a plausible consequence of certain Scripture teachings, as pearls strung on a string, it would still contradict that the Scripture positively institutes, instructs, and provides as examples concerning the subjects of baptism which is expressly set down in Scripture. Good and necessary inference is not a valid hermeneutic when defining the subjects of a sacrament supposedly instituted by Christ (WCF 21:5). (Fred A. Malone, The Baptism of Disciples Alone: A Covenantal Argument for Credobaptism Versus Paedobaptism [rev ed.; Cape Coral, Fla.:  Founders Press, 2008], 19-20, 21, italics in original, comments in square brackets added for clarification)