Thank you very much for the article. I read the whole thread. :) I think I get the basics of the connection between circumcision and baptism, but I still struggle with passages like this:
In applying this sign to the boy babies in the Old Testament, circumcision was still primarily spiritual and not just national. The sign was applied not only to Isaac who was the sole representative of the racial blessing, but to Ishmael as well. Deuteronomy 30:6 makes it plain that the circumcision of the child was primarily spiritual just as was the circumcision of the adult. "And the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live."
I'm sympathetic to the spiritual angle, but if Issac and Ishmael were circumcised, then so were Jacob and Esau. We know for sure that God hated Esau, and so we know for sure that his heart was never circumcised spiritually. Per Warfield then, what is a reasonable presumption? Schaeffer appears to concentrate on what the Jew-turned-new-Christian would have expected. But I wonder how many such Jews did consider grace through faith alone as a completely new teaching. IOW, does Schaeffer assume that most Jews of the time were righteous? I actually don't know, but my guess would be against. If most Jews were unrighteous, then we should discount their expectations.
One other thing that really caught my eye was under the section: "Questions Asked Publicly of Parents Before Infant is Baptized" :
4. Do you realize that this sacrament is not a matter of magic, but that in it you covenant with God to raise this child in the fear and admonition of the Lord, to pray for and with him, to keep him in the house of God and with God's people, to be faithful in your home life for Christ as you live it before him, and to do your utmost personally to lead him to a saving knowledge of Christ at an early age?
Is this an oath? :)
LOL. Nope. It's a covenant. The one God knew He'd bring you into from before the foundation of the world. In baptism, parents present their child to God in recognition of this covenant.
Infant baptism acknowledges that God's covenant precedes a person's birth. It doesn't begin with an adult declaration of intent. It's God's intent that matters. Baptism is passive, as the reception of grace is passive, from Him to us.
"God pronounces that he adopts our infants as his children, before they are born, when he promises that he will be a God to us, and to our seed after us. This promise includes their salvation." -- Calvin, Institutes, 4.15.20