The Upper Register Blog

Check out this site, Two Kingdoms, by my friend Jonathan Goundry. See especially the April 6, 2009 podcast featuring a discussion of the kingdom of God by Gene Cook and Jonathan Goundry, pastors at Great Oak Church in Temecula, California. These Reformed Baptist brothers have done an excellent job of summarizing in 30 minutes Kline’s “big picture” panorama of the unfolding of the kingdom of God from creation to consummation. They score some excellent points against theonomy while showing the true, spiritual nature of the kingdom of God. Their discussion walks through a diagram that I created based on Kline’s lectures.

Michael Horton, God of Promise: Introducing Covenant Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006)

I wrote this review three years ago, right after the book came out in 2006. I hesitated to publish it because I like Mike Horton and am appreciative of his ministry, both in his writings and on the White Horse Inn. In writing this review, I am not in any way suggesting that Professor Horton’s book is not a useful contribution to covenant theology. My main concern is that Horton’s book is viewed by some as a lay-level intro to covenant theology from a Klinean perspective. While the book does show the influence of Kline’s thought at some critical junctures (especially the use of the suzerainty treaties and the republication thesis), there are also aspects of the book that fall short of presenting Kline’s full system.

As soon as I say that, I cringe. For why should Horton be obligated to present Kline’s full system? Nowhere in the book does he claim to be summarizing Kline’s covenant theology. He may in fact have some differences with Kline, for all I know — and that would be perfectly okay with me. Kline’s covenant theology is merely one man’s attempt to make systematic sense of the teaching of Scripture and is not the only viable option within the Reformed tradition, much less is it inspired or inerrant. But still, I have this general feeling that many lay-people may think that Horton’s book is at least compatible with Kline, and perhaps more than compatible, an actual attempt to summarize Kline. So I want to put forth this review, not because I have anything against Horton, but to make clear that Horton’s book is not a substitute for reading Kline’s work.

Most of my criticisms below are of the sort that are really irritating in book reviews, e.g., “The author didn’t say anything about topic x, which is really important to me, the reviewer. How dare the author fail to address my hobby horse!” I’m sure that if one were to ask Horton he would respond, “Well, I had a page limit; the book is for lay-people; I couldn’t deal with every issue; and see my four-volume systematic theology published by WJK for the details.” Fair enough, and I respect that. No book is complete; it is merely part of an ongoing conversation.

So, with those caveats out of the way, here’s the review as I wrote it three years ago.

For many years, there has been a need for an accessible introduction to covenant theology explaining and defending the traditional federal system. O. Palmer Robertson’s The Christ of the Covenants was the closest to meeting this need. In many ways it is an admirable book, loaded with detailed exegesis in the original Hebrew and Greek. It was my first major introduction to covenant theology back when I was transitioning from Dispensationalism to covenant theology in the early 1990s. Unfortunately, as I later learned from Meredith Kline’s lectures at Westminster Seminary California (1992 to 1996), Robertson’s book is marred by modifications of the traditional federal system at critical points. Thus, I ordered Michael Horton’s latest book in the hope that it would fill the need for a summary of Kline’s covenant theology geared to a lay audience. Although Horton is certainly indebted to Kline at many points, and is thus closer to the mark than Robertson, in my opinion Horton’s contribution still falls short.

Horton begins his book in chapter one by distancing himself from approaches which attempt to reduce Reformed theology to a central dogma from which the rest of the system can supposedly be deduced. Rather than being a central dogma, Horton argues that covenant theology provides a web or architectural structure for contextualizing a whole gamut of doctrinal topics. When other doctrines are situated within this web or structure, clarity is brought to old problems and tensions. I am attracted to this idea as a proposal for doing theology. However, it has the disadvantage of changing the focus of the book from being an introduction to covenant theology. To be sure, the next four chapters (chs. 2-5) are focused on covenant theology. But in the last four chapters (chs. 6-9) the attention shifts to an examination of related doctrines from the perspective of the covenant motif. This shift in emphasis in the second half was regrettable in my opinion, since it chews up valuable space that could have been given to several critical topics in covenant theology that are inadequately addressed in the first half (see below).

In chapter two Horton summarizes the work of George Mendenhall, Delbert Hillers, and Meredith Kline. These Old Testament scholars of the 20th century drew attention to significant parallels between the Hittite suzerainty treaties and the biblical covenants. These Hittite treaties were tools of international diplomacy in the second half of the second millennium BC, in which a great king (or suzerain) established a relationship with a lesser king (or vassal). Horton sets out the main parts of these ancient treaties or covenants: the preamble, the historical prologue, the stipulations, the sanctions (blessings and curses), and the deposit of the treaty tablets in the temples of both parties. Horton also discusses the ceremony in which the treaty was ratified by the slaughtering of a sacrificial animal and the taking of an oath on the part of the vassal. This helpful chapter would be even more useful if accompanied by a chart outlining the parallels between the Hittite treaties and the biblical covenants.

Having demonstrated these parallels, Horton states that “God adapted the international treaty as the template for his relationship to creatures” (p. 29). This unqualified statement gives the impression that the covenant idea itself was inspired by the pagan treaties. However, I suspect that that many readers will be uncomfortable with this. When Kline taught the parallels between the Hittite treaties and the biblical covenants, he explained that the pagan covenants were a vestige of God’s original covenantal revelation at creation, in which God was revealed as the Great King (suzerain) over all of creation with Adam as God’s servant (vassal). The fall did not totally erase the memory of the creation covenant among the ungodly line that descended from Cain. It was preserved by common grace and rooted in the conscience. Thus, by using the treaty format to express his covenant with Israel, God was not borrowing from the pagans but drawing on the remnants of the creation order that had been preserved by common grace. I’m sure that Horton would agree with this, but it would have been helpful if he had spelled it out.

Chapter three is the most important chapter in the book and it is here that Horton’s central thesis becomes clear. The chapter’s title, “A Tale of Two Mothers,” is derived from Paul’s use of Sarah and Hagar as symbols of the contrast between the Abrahamic promise and the Mosaic law (Galatians 4:21-31). Horton uses this passage as a springboard to argue that there are two types of covenants in the Bible: (1) law covenants which are conditional and which employ the suzerainty treaty format discussed in the previous chapter; and (2) promise covenants which are unconditional and which are modeled on a different type of covenant called the royal grant. The classic example of the law covenant in Scripture is the Sinai covenant with its blessings and curses, and the promise of long life in the land of Canaan conditional upon Israel’s obedience. Examples of royal grants include the Abrahamic promise and the Davidic covenant, in which God made irrevocable promises to Abraham and David. Horton’s distinction between law covenants and promise covenants shows the strong influence of Meredith Kline on his thinking.

In chapter four, Horton deals with the covenant lawsuit found in the prophetical literature, in which Israel was confronted for its failures under the Mosaic covenant and warned that the impending curse (exile) was about to fall on the covenant breaking nation. There is also a positive side to the lawsuit, for the prophets not only brought a message of doom and gloom, but spoke of a spiritual restoration of Israel under a new covenant (e.g., Jeremiah 31). In this chapter Horton also surveys the controversy over whether the new covenant should be viewed as a “covenant” or a “testament.” He sides with the “covenant” view.

When we come to chapter five, the biggest flaws of this book come to light. Let me set the stage by explaining some background that Horton himself does not mention explicitly, although I sense that it is in the back of his mind. Many students of covenant theology have felt that there is a dissonance in covenant theology. On the one hand, we claim that the covenant motif does a better job of organizing Scripture than dispensations. After all, the Bible never explicitly mentions dispensations but it does mention covenants quite frequently. But on the other hand, there is a feeling of dissonance, because the covenants that we talk about in covenant or federal theology (the covenant of redemption, the covenant of works, and the covenant of grace) are never explicitly mentioned in Scripture. The covenants that are explicitly mentioned in the Bible (Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, New) play a surprisingly minor role in the Reformed creeds and in the standard Reformed systematic theologies. Thus, there is a need to show how the traditional federal system relates to the biblical covenants that are inductively drawn from Scripture. Unfortunately, in spite of his promising title for chapter five, “From Scripture to System: The Heart of Covenant Theology,” Horton doesn’t really connect the dots. Instead, he offers a rather traditional exposition of the three covenants (of redemption, of works, of grace), relying mostly on quotes from the standard Reformed creeds and dogmatic sources, with only a dash of exegesis thrown in. The covenant of works receives the most attention, presumably because it is currently the most contested of the three.

Another problem with chapter five is Horton’s treatment of the covenant of redemption. Horton defines the covenant of redemption as the eternal decree to save the elect in Christ. Of course, the decree is an important element of the covenant of redemption, but as a definition it is inadequate. One must go on to describe the crucial role of Christ as the second Adam who stands in a covenant of works with the Father on behalf of the elect. The way Kline would put it is this: there are in fact two covenants of works. There was the Creator’s covenant of works with the first Adam, which covenant was broken by Adam’s failure as God’s vassal under that covenant, resulting in the imputation of his sin to the human race. But there is another covenant of works, which actually precedes the Adamic covenant of works, but follows it in temporal execution: the Father’s covenant of works with the second Adam. In this covenant, Christ is God’s obedient vassal who successfully passes the test by his obedience unto death, resulting in the imputation of his righteousness to the elect. This is the covenant of redemption. Meredith Kline spends much effort in Kingdom Prologue and Glory in Our Midst attempting to demonstrate this understanding with painstaking exegesis. Kline’s brilliant contribution to Reformed federal theology on this point is not clearly presented in Horton’s book. To be fair, Horton does affirm that Christ fulfilled the covenant of creation (works) on behalf of the elect (pp. 87-9, 94, 106-8). But he doesn’t tie this explicitly to the covenant of redemption.

Another surprising lacuna in the book is that there is no exegesis of the famous two-Adams texts in Paul. In fact, as far as I could tell, there is only one sentence in which Romans 5 is cited (p. 89). Romans 5 is one of the strongest proof-texts for the covenant of redemption, that is, for a covenant of works between the Father and the Son parallel to the failed covenant of works between God and Adam.

Another disappointment comes near the end of chapter five. Horton gives surprisingly short shrift to the covenant of grace. Horton states, “Since most of what follows in this work concentrates on the covenant of grace, I will let this brief account suffice” (p. 107). However, most of what follows in subsequent chapters, while it may relate to the covenant of grace, still fails to provide substantial coverage of the key issues that any introduction to covenant theology must address. For example, the doctrine of justification is mentioned here and there, but there is no detailed explanation of how justification relates to the Father’s covenant of works with the second Adam. Another issue that Horton only briefly touches upon is the role of faith, repentance, and obedience in the covenant of grace. This cluster of topics has been debated since the Norman Shepherd controversy in the 1980s and continues to be a big issue in Reformed circles. Witness the lively debate ca. 2002-2007 over “the Federal Vision,” which repeats many of Shepherd’s errors and adds some of its own. Perhaps Horton wanted to keep the book positive and avoid polemics. I can appreciate that desire. Yet it is odd that he would avoid the elephant in the room.

As I mentioned earlier, the remaining four chapters are not directly pertinent to the exposition of federal theology but deal with related doctrines from the perspective of the covenant motif. Chapter six deals with common grace and provides a much-needed voice of sanity in the current political climate in the United States. Chapter seven is a brief chapter that answers the charge of “supercessionism,” a charge leveled by both Dispensationalists and liberal theologians against covenant theology. Chapter eight deals with the sacraments. When dealing with circumcision and baptism, Horton relies heavily on Kline’s work, By Oath Consigned (although in the footnotes it is incorrectly cited as The Structure of Biblical Authority). Finally, in chapter nine, Horton deals with the role of the law in the Christian life. He argues for the traditional three-fold division of the Mosaic Law into moral, civil, and ceremonial, and for the traditional three uses of the law, including the third use of the moral law as a guide for holy living.

For all of its weaknesses, God of Promise is valuable primarily for its defense of the important concept that the Mosaic covenant was a republication of the Adamic covenant of works. This view was the standard position of most covenant theologians prior to the rise of Dispensationalism. Due to the Reformed reaction against Dispensationalism in the 20th century, the republication thesis has fallen out of favor among Reformed scholars, aside from those influenced by Kline such as Westminster Seminary California. [See the recent book edited by Bryan Estelle, The Law is Not of Faith: Essays on Works and Grace in the Mosaic Covenant.] The fear of many contemporary Reformed theologians is that this view sounds like two ways of salvation, as if Israel is saved by works and the church is saved by grace. But Horton makes clear that this is a misunderstanding of the republication thesis. As Kline argued, the republication of the Adamic covenant of works only applies to the typological layer of Israel’s national, theocratic life, not to individual salvation which is always by grace alone through faith alone. The underlying Abrahamic covenant, which is an unconditional guarantee of blessing, is never abrogated, even during the Mosaic theocracy. Nevertheless, Horton shows that there is no escaping the fact that the Mosaic law and the Abrahamic promise are based on distinct principles of inheritance that stand in tension with one another. This tension drives the plot-line of redemptive history as it moves from promise to fulfillment. This is the biblical-theological basis for the law-gospel contrast taught by Paul in Romans and Galatians.

In sum, while making helpful contributions on a number of issues in the area of covenant theology, God of Promise has too many gaps at critical points to serve as a well-rounded introduction to covenant theology. But as long as one reads Horton’s book with an awareness of its limitations, it can be studied with profit.

I’ve returned home from SBL and can say that I had a great time. Here are some highlights of my experience:

My roommate was Phil Dennis, a Ph.D. student in NT at the Jesuit Fordham University in the Bronx. He is also interested in Paul, specifically Galatians. Interestingly, he used to go to Redeemer OPC, the church I used to pastor, and I even had the privilege of baptizing him. It was great to hang out with him throughout the four days (Friday night through Monday morning) we were there.

On Saturday, I met Jonathan Kline, MG Kline’s grandson. We went out to lunch at a bar and grill across the street from the convention center on Boylston St. He is doing his Ph.D. at Harvard in the Dept. of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. He is super gifted in the area of philology, Hebrew grammar, cognate languages such as Akkadian and Ugaritic.  But the best part is that like his father and his grandfather, he wants to put all of that learning in the service of Christocentric biblical theology. He mentioned that when his grandfather passed away, the family found a lot of old handwritten papers, lecture notes, sermons, etc., that they still need to go through. I hope they can figure out a way to make that priceless material available. After lunch we ran into MM, Jonathan’s father and MG’s son. He is as delightful as his father was - kind-hearted, warm, smiling, and diminutive.

Another highlight was presenting my poster on my Annual Greek NT Reading Program. In addition to the large poster itself, I had brought 100 copies of the poster in a regular 8.5 x 11 form and they were gone by the end of the first day, so I had to make another 100 copies. I also got to meet with an editor from Wipf and Stock who said he was very interested in publishing my Greek Syntax Notes designed to supplement the UBS Reader’s Edition (which, by the way, is now available in a smaller softcover edition). The next day, an editor from Hendrickson came by my poster and liked it as well. He said that Hendrickson has a contract with UBS to distribute their academic Greek and Hebrew texts, and even, within certain strict limits, to do joint-publications using their texts. He suggested the possibility of doing something with my notes as well, like a reader that has the daily Greek portion, the UBS glosses and parsing, and then my notes all on one page. I’m not sure where all of this will lead, but I may end up having to decide between the two publishers. However, there are numerous technical obstacles such as the Greek font - Wipf and Stock uses SBL Ionic, whereas I use Unicode. On the Hendrickson side, the technical issue is whether UBS would be willing to permit such a re-use of their work. They tend to be very protective of their proprietary Greek text. 

On Sunday morning, Phil and I went to hear Gordon Hugenberger preach a fully awesome redemptive-historical sermon from Zechariah 8. It should be available on the Park Street Church site at some point. Check it out.

After church we zipped over to the convention center to hear a lecture by E. P. Sanders in which he argued that Paul was a proof-texter, using the first half of Galatians 3 as his main example. I didn’t agree with everything he had to say, but it was stimulating to hear the old legend speak.

One of the best sessions I attended was the Paul and Scripture Seminar chaired by Christopher Stanley (I attended both the Saturday and the Sunday afternoon sessions). I would highly recommend that you visit their website where you can download papers from this year and last year. Also, the seminar has published a collection of papers titled As It Is Written: Studying Paul’s Use of Scripture in the SBL Symposium Series. If you get this book and read the papers on their site, you will be at the cutting edge of this important discussion. One of the big issues they address is:  Does Paul respect the original contexts of his quotations? There are a number of passages where it seems that he does things with Scripture that are odd and surprising, and so the members of the seminar are wrestling with how to best explain this phenomenon. They run the gamut from saying that Paul was a proof-texter (in line with the hermeneutical behavior of his Jewish contemporaries, and motivated by the rhetorical exigencies that he faced), to arguing that Paul respected the original contexts of his quotations (whether hewing to the plain sense of Scripture, or, as some would argue, re-reading Scripture through a radically new Christological hermeneutical prism).

Anyway, I met lots of other interesting people and attended many excellent sessions, but those were the highlights. I can’t wait for next year’s meeting in New Orleans.

Remember those analogy thingies in the SAT? 

Well, there’s a student at the Jackson, Mississippi campus of RTS who thinks that my views are to Meredith Kline what the Federal Vision is to John Murray, and that whereas Kline and Murray were within the bounds of the Reformed tradition, my views and the FV are outside. He tries to explain his theory using this diagram: 

Clever, but wrong on both logical and substantive grounds.

Logically, it is wrong because it presupposes that I have taken Kline’s views and extended them beyond Kline himself. But I am confident that my views are precisely the same as Kline’s in all the key areas (e.g., my view of the Decalogue, covenant theology, civil government, etc.).

Substantively, it is wrong because the Federal Vision denies key elements that are at the core of Reformed theology (such as the federal two-Adam scheme, the covenant of works, the merit of Christ, the pactum salutis, sola fide, etc.) all of which are things that Kline and I strongly affirm. It is odd to say that those who affirm traditional Reformed covenant theology and soteriology, but who disagree with WCF XIX’s identification of the moral law with the Decalogue, are just as “out of bounds” as those who deny or undermine sola fide. Kline’s thought is a clarification and sharpening of the Reformed covenant theology, not a denial of it like the FV.

Amoskeag Presbyterian Church (OPC), pastored by Greg Reynolds, has made available on their church website several series of lectures by Meredith G. Kline and his son, Meredith M. Kline. These lectures are from the Granite State School of Theology, a ministry of that church.

MGK:   
Kingdom Prologue (9 lectures)
Old Testament Exegesis (10 lectures)
Old Testament Prophets (10 lectures)

I recall Meredith telling me how much he enjoyed driving up from Boston to Manchester, N.H. to give these lectures.

MMK:
Poetic and Wisdom Literature (5 lectures)

The church site also has lots of other sermons and lectures by Pastor Reynolds and other speakers, including one by T. David Gordon.

What a great site! Thanks to Greg Reynolds for setting this up. Also, thanks to Stephen Migotsky for the tip.

Here are my reflections on the preceding quotes from Harry Gamble’s article on Marcion.

When people accuse Klineans of having Marcionite tendencies, it helps to have a better idea of what Marcion actually taught in order to make clear the vast differences. Kline did not espouse ditheism, asceticism, or docetism. He affirmed that the God of Jesus Christ and the God of Israel are one and the same, and that he was the giver of the Mosaic Law. There is no hint in Kline of any disparagement of creation, but just the opposite. In fact, he made heavy theological use of the concept of the creation kingdom which will find its eschatological fulfillment in the (physical) new creation. 

Although it is totally unfair to accuse Kline or his followers of having Marcionite tendencies, it is good for us to reflect on the heresy of Marcion, for he stands as a monument in the history of the church warning all who would go off the cliff in that direction or even get close to the edge. Marcion is like Lot’s wife — a perpetual pillar of salt that marks a path that the church could have taken but did not. The church could have followed Marcion in (a) rejecting any continuity between the Old and the New Testaments, (b) selecting a truncated canon with Paul as the sole apostle, and (c) rejecting the Law as the work of an alien God.

I do not think Kline’s covenant theology is even remotely in danger of (a), since Kline clearly emphasizes the type-antitype connection between the OT and the NT, something that would have been anathema to Marcion. However, I do think we need to be careful about (b) and (c). We love Paul and his theological insights into the law-gospel contrast, but we must be carefuly not to elevate Paul so high that we fail to take into account the total apostolic witness contained in the NT, especially Matthew, John and Hebrews. 

And with regard to the divine authorship of the Law, no one would ever argue that the Law was the work of a demiurge, but we must not so disparage the Law that we give the impression that it is unworthy of the character of God. The Law is a legitimate revelation of God’s will for national Israel at a particular point in redemptive history. Its ethical teaching is not unworthy of the God we love and worship. The Law is holy and righteous and good (Rom 7:12). As much as we may want to emphasize the ways in which the will of God for the new covenant people of God has been deepened, intensified, and even changed on certain points, let us never do so in a way that makes the Law out to be a bad thing. It was good for its time, and it served its purpose well as a paidagogos (disciplinarian) until/unto Christ (Gal 3:24). Although the Law has been superceded by the final, eschatological revelation of God’s will in Christ (”the law of Christ”), let us be careful to point out the lines of organic continuity as we move from the acorn to the oak tree, from Moses to Christ.

I didn’t know that New Testament scholar Ben Witherington III (BW3) had studied under Meredith G. Kline (MGK) at Gordon Conwell. He summarizes Kline’s influence on his own thinking, particularly Kline’s analysis of the ANE suzerainty treaties. It’s great to see this, but I need to point out that I don’t think he quite gets Kline right at every point. For example, he says that all biblical covenants are vassal covenants with blessings and curses, whereas Kline would clearly distinguish between two types of covenants — law covenants and promise covenants. Still, he does have some good things to say, including this good comment on the relationship between the old and the new covenants with respect to stipulations or law:

When a new covenant is inaugurated, a suzerain may choose to carry over some of the promises and stipulations and sanctions into the new covenant, as well as adding to them new promises, stipulations, and sanctions. One of the reasons Christians get confused about the relationship of the old and new covenant is that they both have some of the same rules and regulations and features. This is hardly surprising since God, who makes these covenants, has not changed in character.

But it needs to be stressed, that only those commandments given as a part of the new covenant are binding on Christians. Thus for instance, Christians are not obligated to keep the sabbath, food laws, and a host of other stipulations we find in Leviticus. On the other hand, Christians are obligated to love their enemies, turn the other cheek, and leave retaliation or vengeance entirely in the hands of God. This is a striking difference between the old and new covenants. The reason why Christians keep the commandment — ‘No adultery’ is because Jesus stipulated it was part of his law for his disciples. Not because it is part of the ten commandments. In fact Jesus basically reaffirmed most of the ten commandments, but not the sabbath commandment.

HT:  In Light of the Gospel 

Here’s a summary of Kline’s argument for infant baptism:

(1) Kline’s argument for infant baptism avoids the notion of presumptive regeneration and relies on the principle of parental authority.

(2) Kline appeals to the principle of vassal authority, that is, the principle that when a vassal takes an oath of loyalty to his suzerain, he brings not only himself but also his family under the covenant lordship of the suzerain.

(3) Kline sees this principle of vassal authority in the Abrahamic Covenant.

(4) Kline sees this principle of vassal authority continued from the Abrahamic Covenant (the pre-Messianic administration of the covenant of grace) into the New Covenant (the fulfilled, Messianic administration of the covenant of grace). Although Kline sees discontinuity between the Mosaic/Old Covenant and the New Covenant, he sees fundamental continuity along the underlying substratum of the one covenant of grace as it moves from promise (Abrahamic Covenant) to fulfillment (New Covenant).

(5) The case for continuity in the administration of the sign of the covenant on the basis of parental authority rests on the following pieces of evidence:

a. Paul’s teaching that our children are “holy” (1 Cor 7:14)
b. The parents who brought their children to be blessed by Jesus
c. Paul’s instructions to parents and children (Eph 6:1-4)
d. The oikos formula

With this post I’m done blogging through By Oath Consigned.

The fourth piece of evidence that baptism is administered on the principle of vassal or parental authority: 

(d) The oikos (household) formula

Finally, Kline appeals to the New Testament accounts of household baptisms where the household is baptized or brought into the church on the basis of the confession of faith of the parent (Acts 2:38-39; 10:2, 47-48; 11:14; 16:15, 33-34; 18:8; 1 Cor. 1:16; 2 Tim. 1:16; 4:19). The “oikos formula” refers to the recurring statement that “he/she and his/her (whole) household” believed and were baptized. This paedobaptist argument was famously articulated by Joachim Jeremias in the 1960s.

Kline thinks the oikos formula supports the paedobaptist view that the principle of parental authority carries forward into the New Covenant. Of course, there are difficulties with using these texts:  (a) we don’t know whether small children were actually present in any of these cases, and (b) since slaves were also members of the Greco-Roman oikos (household), the paedobaptist appeal to the oikos formula may lead to the unwanted conclusion that slaves should also be baptized. Kline recognizes these difficulties, but wishes to makes the following point (BOC, pp. 96-98):

We would simply observe that for the purpose of substantiating the authority principle of covenant administration the precise constituency of the households involved would not need to be determined. Whether or not there were infant children in one case or the other, or slaves in this or that household, households are mentioned along with the central authority figures in these instances, and these households had to consist of somebody in the category of household subordinates. Even with respect to the narrower question of whether parental authority is honored in the administration of the New Covenant, it would not matter whether conclusive evidence could be adduced proving that there were no children in any of these households; for if there were no children, then surely the households consisted of servants; and if it could be shown that servants were received into the church on the basis of the authority principle, it would follow a fortiori that the continuity with Old Testament practice included infants too …

The recurring mention of the household along with the central figure, whether in description of an existing God-fearing community, or in an invitation to salvation, or in an account of the acknowledgment of faith, or in a record of the administration of baptism, can very naturally be interpreted as the terminological reflex of a standard missions policy according to which the covenant community would regularly be enlarged through the accretion of household authority units. Indeed, it seems easier, particularly in the cases of prospective announcements of salvation and evangelistic proclamation (Acts 11:14; 16:31), to account for the recurrence of the appended reference to the household as a statement reflecting administrative policy rather than as a prediction based on a possible general rule that the sovereign soteric operations of the Spirit of God permeate intimate groupings of men. To explain the language of these declarations as meaning that the invitation with its terms was not confined to the householder but was extended to the members of his household, they, too, being invited to salvation on the same condition of faith, seems somewhat artificial; moreover, it would not explain the phenomenon of recurrence.

[Note: I have some additional information on the oikos formula based on Jeremias’s work that I’m trying to upload, but Adobe says the file is corrupted. Hopefully I can resolve the problem by tomorrow.]

The third piece of evidence: 

(c) Paul’s instructions concerning parents and children

Continuing in the same paragraph, Kline writes (BOC, p. 94):

Another significant fact is that Paul instructed the children of various congregations to obey their parents in the Lord, and in support of his charge cited the pertinent stipulation of the Sinaitic Covenant together with its accompanying covenantal sanction (Eph. 6:1-3; Col. 3:20; cf. Ex. 20:12). Clear confirmation is also found in Paul’s directive to covenant parents to bring their children under the nurturing and admonishing authority of the Lord (Eph. 6:4). In this exhortation the apostle takes for granted that it is the very authority of Christ as covenant Lord that reaches and claims children through the authority of their parents.*

It is therefore a matter of express scriptural teaching that the disciple of Christ is bound to bring those who are under his parental authority along with himself when he comes by oath under the higher authority of his covenant Suzerain. From this it follows that the Scriptures provide ample warrant for the administration of baptism to the children of confessing Christians, for baptism is the New Covenant rite whose precise significance is that of committal to Christ’s authority and of incorporation within the domain of Christ’s covenant lordship.

*The text reads:  “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord [ἐν παιδείᾳ καὶ νουθεσίᾳ κυρίου]” (Eph 6:4). Kline appears to take κυρίου as a subjective genitive. This is the view taken by Ernest Best in his commentary on Ephesians:  ”The Lord [is] seen as the ultimate instructor who works through the father … The father mediates the Lord’s instruction” (Ernest Best, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Ephesians [ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998], 569-70).