Post Tenebras Lux

Virtually every theologian agrees that theology is best hammered out in community. Therefore, this post is an official invitation for my Baptist and my Reformed friends to question, debate, and comment upon a very complicated theological question.

The diagram above is, from what I most clearly understand, a visual representation of the flow of redemptive history from a covenantal, Baptist viewpoint. For all of my Baptist friends, please correct me if I erred in any particular place. The purpose of this diagram is to illustrate the nature of the covenant community and who comprises each covenant throughout biblical history. Therefore, the overall theme should be a narrowing of the covenant communities in each covenantal epoch, finally culminating in a covenant community consisting of exclusively believers after the return of Christ.

For my Reformed paedobaptist friends, your commentary is most welcome as well. This diagram differs from classic covenantal theology in some respects as it does not include unbelievers in the covenant community in quite the same way that Reformed paedobaptists historically have understood.

My point in the gradually falling line after the first coming of Christ is to illustrate that Baptists, though insisting that the New Covenant people of God, the Church, is comprised exclusively of regenerate people, still may err and admit unbelieving persons into the covenant community. The Church will not finally be comprised of believers exclusively until the second coming of Christ.

Once again, your commentary will be most helpful for me in understanding the biblical flow of redemptive history, and included in this larger question is a smaller one. That question is, “Should unbelieving children of believers receive the sign of the covenant (baptism) or not?”