Credo-Baptism: The Dispensationalist Argument

Dispensationalism is a popular interpretative principle in American Christianity which states that God has broken up redemptive history into time slices, each with their own rules and administrations. He dealt with us one way before the flood, another way after Abraham, a different way after Moses, and so on. Although most people associate Dispensationalism with a sudden rapture followed by a tribulation period, dispensationalism is really about of two key ideas: in a new dispensation the old rules are wiped out and the Jews as a people are separate from the Church.

Although dispensationalists themselves disagree about how many eras there are, whether three, or seven, or twelve, they all agree that the rules are unique in every era. When God open a new chapter in history it’s because He’s intent on closing the old one, along with the old rules that have proven to no longer work. As Christ Himself said, nobody puts new wine into old wineskins. So while the Jews were not to wear garments of mixed threads or light fires on the Sabbath, these rules are not specifically re-instituted in our dispensation, and so we're not required to obey them. The New Testament explicitly evidences this when it speaks of certain commands and principles in the Old Testament being abolished, and providence (such as the demolition of the temple in Jerusalem which ended animal sacrifices) proves the same. This fresh-start rule applies to both the moral laws as well as the ceremonial laws, but it should be mentioned that the Ten Commandments are all restated in the New Testament (except for Sabbath keeping) so dispensationalism is not anti-nomianism or an excuse to do evil. God isn’t promoting unholiness by periodically hitting reset, He’s just doing away with irrelevant cultural markers that keep people from seeing Him for who He is.

The second key mark of dispensationalism is that the Jews are a physical people, distinct from Christians. In the days of Abraham they were given circumcision as an ethic marker, but today He’s dealing predominately with the Church as an interim solution (or a parenthetical) until they come to their senses. In practice this works out to an assertion that God has two distinct peoples: the Jews and the Christians. The Jews are characterized by bloodlines, families, circumcisions, law-keeping, sacrifice, and theocracy. Christians are characterized by spiritual families, baptism, and salvation by faith (although I should mention that most modern dispensationalists agree that in every era salvation has been by grace through faith. Scofield may have believed the Jews were saved by law keeping, but the people who still hold to his ideas by in large disagree). 

/Aside:
Dispensationalism appears to be composed of two ideas working together, but it may instead be the case that one idea is towing the other. If so, the question becomes “Which idea is the primary and which is the corollary?” to which my answer is, “I don't know. I think you can make the case both ways.”

If you consider the Bible from back to front you get the idea that God has a people He’s going to save, and that He used the Jews for a time to bring about their salvation. In that case you start with the idea the Jews were a physical people and conclude that He must be resetting the rules as He goes. Going the other way, by Genesis 10 you’ve seen God change the game a few times and it's only reasonable to conclude that in every redemptive era He has a way of doing things unique to that age. From that, it’s natural to conclude that the New Testament is uniquely focused on salvation, and therefore that the Jews were featured in a few earthly dispensations, but not the heavenly one we Christians are now in.

Or perhaps neither guess is the proper starting point for dispensationalism. Perhaps the original idea was, “The Jews in Jesus day continually sought an earthly kingdom because God promised them an earthly kingdom. This must mean the Jews are God’s earthly people.” In that case the discontinuity between the Testaments arises as a way to avoid the conclusion that God’s promises to His people failed.
Or perhaps it’s something else. Regardless, I think it’s fair to characterize dispensationalism as teaching both that God has two peoples, and that the rules for each people are different.
/End Aside

You can immediately see the relevance to the baptism debate here. Abraham was told to circumcise his infant child who was in the covenant, but because he lived in an obsolete dispensation the practice of applying the sign of the covenant to children is hoc finis est. Believers in the New Testament are given no such instruction to baptize infants, therefore applying the sign of the New Covenant to infants is an idea born of misplaced tradition and is totally foreign to the Scriptures. You might put the syllogism like this:

P1: Only explicitly affirmed commands are valid during redemptive eras.

P2: The Christian era (in which we now live) is a distinct era in redemptive history.
P3: God never explicitly instructed those in the Christian era to baptize their infant children.
C: We should not baptize infant children.

Premise one and two together cut off any continuity from Abraham or Jewish tradition of infants receiving a sign, and premise one and three drive directly to the conclusion. Alternatively, we could base the argument on the other pillar for dispensationalism and frame the argument like this:

P1: God instructed the Jewish people to put a sign on their infant offspring.
P2: The Christian people are distinct from the Jewish people.
C: God has not instructed Christians to put a sign on their infant offspring.

Here premise one is immediately concluded by everyone, premise two is foundational to dispensationalism, and the conclusion immediately follows from it. We’re not Jews, therefore we should not constrains ourselves to Jewish rules.

And that’s all I can think to say about it. This is a pretty straightforward argument that features limited proofs and no real surprises. If you accept that God is unambiguously clear when He sets up a rule, that the rules get cleared out in every dispensation, and that we are living in a dispensation different than Abraham lived in, then the idea of putting the sign of the covenant on an infant is immediately and totally ruled out. Case closed.

Next: the Inductive Argument for Credo-Baptism


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