First Leithart says here that
if you refuse to baptize infants, then you are saying that God's plans have changed. Once upon a time, God intended to form a new human race that would share His life and glory. But that plan failed, so He has now decided to gather together adults who will share in that life and glory.
No doubt some Dispensationalist Baptist's are guilty of considering that God's plan has changed as they understand him to move from intending to form a new humanity made up of people, including infants, from all stages of life in Israel to now working with the Church of Christ made up of those solely who are capable of making a profession. Yet this is certainly a false charge against the Baptist position I and those Baptists I know hold. Leithart's accusation that to deny paedobaptism is to understand God's plan as having changed is just incorrect.
If one understands God to have one redemptive plan whereby he is forming a new humanity to himself in Christ Jesus, which was in some ways foreshadowed in Old Testament Israel and which is fulfilled in the New Testament church, Leithart's charge won't stick. In the biblical story God redeems adult and infant both before and after Christ's incarnation and death, but the shift in the composition of the people with whom he is at work and how they are to be identified is part of the movement from shadow to fulfillment that exists between the Testaments on a Baptist understanding of that story.
Secondly, upon receiving my copy of The Case for Covenant Communion I flicked briefly to Rich Lusk's chapter on 'Infant Faith in the Psalter' having previously posted some thoughts on his treatment on this isuue in his book on paedofaith here. By page two Lusk states
Some have adamantly denied the possibility of infant faith. Certainly this has been true of the Anabaptist and Baptist traditions, but it has also been the case with many Reformed theologians as well. Others have vigorously affirmed infant faith, pointing to infants as the best illustrations of gospel grace. Apart from intellectual and rational abilities, the Spirit is able to regenerate and sanctify infants so that they have a kind of 'baby faith'. This view was advocated by Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, John Calvin, and Zacharias Ursinus among others.
Let's give Lusk the benefit of the doubt and understand the some at the beginning of the quote as refering to some, but not all in the Baptist tradition. Even if this is the case, Lusk's association of a theological position with a whole tradition where only some in that movement hold to that stance is guilty of the same faulty method of argumentation that Waters uses against FV proponents and for which he has been rightly criticised.
To digress slightly, certainly the Anabaptists that Calvin came up against denied the possibility of infant faith. Their use of Deut. 1:39 to claim that infants who could not know right from wrong, could not actually know anything and could therefore not know God, was at least part of the reason Calvin shifts his defense of infant baptism from stating
no men are saved except by faith, whether they be children or adults. For this reason baptism also rightly applies to infants, who possess faith in common with adults
in the 1536 edition of his Institutes, to more reservedly writing in the 1559 edition
the Lord might shine with a tiny spark at the present time on those whom he will illumine in the future with the full splendor of his light.(IV.xvi.19)
This is neither the same faith nor the same knowledge of faith that is allotted to adults yet it has the same genus. For Calvin, the church therefore, is to baptise infants into future repentance and faith, and not as those presently possessing actual faith. Though neither of these has yet been formed in them,
the seed of both lies hidden within them by the secret working of the Spirit.(IV.xvi.20)
Calvin's shift from ascribing full faith to infants in 1536 to allowing them only a seed of faith addresses the Anabaptist criticism he faced and left him in a position where at least some Baptist's would be in agreement with respect to infant faith. Calvin however baptised infant's not because he thought they presently possessed faith but because of their prior inclusion in the covenant and elect of God based on the promise. Thus Lusk not only misrepresents Baptists who would want to affirm the possibility of a seed of faith in infants, but also I would suggest Calvin himself. Directly after the quotation above Lusk continues
They (Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Ursinus) all connected faith with baptism. They insisted that faith was necessary to a right reception of the sacrament and that infants were capable (by grace) of such a right reception. Many early Reformers viewed infant faith as having a kind of normativity with regard to those infants born in the context of the church.(TCFCC 91)
Lusk seems to suggest that Calvin is one of those 'many early Reformers' but this is misrepresenting Calvin, who would have insisted faith was necessary to right reception of baptism and that infants were capable of faith, but does not understand present faith as being normative for those baptised in infancy. As a Baptist I'd want to affirm Calvin's 1559 position with respect to infant faith. Where I'd disagree with him is on all the children of believers being previously included in the covenant and elect of God based on the promise.
'and with the measure you use it will be measured to you' (Matt. 7:2). Whilst the level of misrepresentation in the current FV debate is concerning, making accusations against your opponent while not wrentching out the log in your own eye makes for hypocrisy. Lord, from such preserve us all.
