Having dispensed with Chantry, we move now to Piper. I suspect that Chemnitz will take an interest in this discussion.
Piper himself acknowledges the first two-thirds of his essay…
First I saw that every baptism recorded in the Bible was the baptism of an adult…
…the order of Peter's command was "Repent, and be baptized"…
Of course Romans 6:1-11 came to mind….
Colossians 2:12 and 1 Peter 3:21 seemed to me….
To be uncompelling arguments.
But I gradually came to see that these observations were only suggestive, not compelling. That no infant baptism are recorded does not prove there weren't any. And that Peter said, "Repent, and be baptized," to an adult audience does not rule out the possibility of his saying something different about infants…. Since then I have been shown by a long succession of arguments in my membership classes that even these texts leave open the [remote!] possibility that an infant can be baptized on the strength of its parents' faith and in hope of its own eventual "confirmation." It is just as possible that these passages have relevance only for the missionary setting where adults are being converted and baptized. If Paul and Peter had addressed the issue of new infants in Christian homes, maybe they would have come off as good Presbyterians.
So there’s little need for me to address arguments upon which Piper himself is unwilling to stand. The arguments he raises (only to dismiss as uncompelling) are already countered by Warfield and Schlissel above, anyway.
Hence, we move on to his main argument... (to be continued)
So there’s little need for me to address arguments upon which Piper himself is unwilling to stand.
I read Piper as saying that these arguments are so obvious they require no further discussion but he stated his second and third argument as additional arguments and the sorts of argument to support believers' baptism when debating paedobaptists.
Piper most certainly did
not dismiss the primary and most obvious scriptural arguments, his first argument.