Christian discernment and notable silences

Christian discernment, when understanding where some individual, or a ministry, is coming from or going to, does not only involve listening to what they do say. You should also notice what they don't say.

This, of course, takes longer, and has to be done fairly. If someone writes a short article about marriage which fails to list every article of Christian belief then, well, that's as you'd expect things. But nevertheless, people reveal their hearts clearly by their silences as well as their speeches. Not only what excites them: but also what is barely, or not at all, on their radar, or only in a nominal, box-ticking way. What does their belief system and the direction of their desires *not* interest them in? Why not? Is it because their over-emphasised belief in something else is also not actually representing the Biblical view-point, but is based upon a distortion of it?

Of course, this also demands of us that we have a solid and comprehensive understanding of the Scriptures. Otherwise we might identify people as failing to have a sufficient interest in some topic when it's actually us who has an excessive one. What did the apostles actually teach the churches? What excited them? What motivated them? What were their responses in different situations? What are the consistent presences and the driving desires and assumptions about the great pillars of their understanding of things in those responses, as opposed to what someone claims they can detect in the silences in between the lines, or as a dubious interpretation of an ambiguous phrase? If we don't have a strong grip on this ourselves, then we can never be discerning when listening to others, but will be vulnerable to being blown around by every wind of doctrine.

Cometh the hour.....

Is it not for us to decide what times we live in; all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

Thus spake Gandalf, surely giving voice, as he frequently did, to the viewpoint of his creator, J.R.R. Tolkien, who thus spake surely giving voice to something he'd learnt from his in turn.

History's super-men (so the theory goes) are supposed to take hold of the times, and bend them to their wills, thereby evidencing themselves to be those super-men, a breed apart to the common masses.

It should go without saying that no follower of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen one, can endorse such a view. Not that we don't shape the times, nor that he didn't: but it's the means; he did it, and teaches us to do it, by radical surrender. To gain life, give yours away.

If we think that we are shaping the times by directing the events in the way that men normally do, then we are surely deluded. Who can say what tomorrow will bring? After not many years, we can all look back to seismic events after which "nothing was the same". That might be a personal event - meeting someone, falling in love, children - or a related personal tragedy. There are things from before we were born: what shaped our parents, and their parents, so that we were born in such a place and time, and in such circumstances? And then there are the great "political" events such as 9/11,  the prosecution of wars, the fall of one government and its replacement by another, Covid and government responses to it, the decisions made in order to maintain power and the compromises and consequences (e.g. the British Brexit referendum that was held as a consequence of coalition negotiations, and then the consequence of the narrow result). Two days ago a non-politician in the US was shot dead, most likely because the shooter detested his opinions.

A lot of people seem to live with the delusion that because they talk a lot about these things in their small, inward-looking circles, that they are playing a significant role in shaping them. Furthermore, they apparently believe that that role is the most important part of their reaction to the events.

How history would look if we'd never been born, nobody can say. Perhaps some very insignificant people have been the unwitting initiators of long chains of events leading to monumental consequences. I suppose that most of us go along to vote knowing perfectly well that it's very unlikely in our lifetimes that 1 vote will end up being the difference in the final outcome; and yet quite rightly, we still do it.

The main, very important, thing to be understood, though, is that God has not told us that we are responsible for the times and seasons that we dwell in. We are held responsible for how we respond to them. Christ has given us the mission of proclaiming him, his death, resurrection and exaltation, amongst the nations according to the modern and pattern laid down by his apostles in the New Testament. We have not been given responsibility to control the outcomes, and have not been told that we have a task of gaining political power so that we can shape the times: the apostles were spectacularly, completely disinterested in strategising or telling others how to strategise to do so. They did not see it as part of their mission, either in practice or teaching. Of course, in the nature of living in this world, it may come to pass that an individual Christian does receive a calling to exercise political power. This then means that questions about how Christians would exercise such power do arise, and the church has to study them; but they cannot be allowed to re-write our actual mission. This fact should not be a loophole which can be widened to drive the complete proverbial coach and horses through.

Christ calls us to be faithful. The events that happen around us which, sometimes in a moment, change the situation we're living in, perhaps dramatically, without asking our permission, must be responded to. But we must respond to them as Christians. Our mission is to take up the cross and become servants of all. Our calling is to demonstrate the love of God in our churches, homes and to our neighbours according to our opportunity, especially doing good to suffering fellow-believers. Our aim is that, when the self-sacrificing love between us is observed, all men might know that we are truly followers of Jesus of Nazareth. Our way of life must show that we have a Master whom we are obeying and imitating. What shape that will take in different situations will vary. And each one of us, individually, will have to answer to him for what we did with our situations. Again: he will not condemn us for failing to control the times. Faithfulness means how we respond to them. When they observe us, will people say "that's living how Jesus would have lived - now I understand!"... or not?

September 11th: the world has changed

I remember September 11th 2001. I didn't have a television, but I was at Bible college for one of the weeks when distance learners were present for introductions to courses. There was a television there, so like many people that day, I got to see those shocking images played over and over and over again.

This was one of those moments for which you remember where you were, because instinctively you felt that the world had changed. And indeed, many people today still live (or have in the intermediate time died) in the world that has been changed by the reality of 21st century Jihad, with many consequences.

Looking at the news today feels like a similar moment. I won't pretend to have known who Charlie Kirk was; from descriptions of his political prominence, it seems likely I probably did hear his name in the past, but I don't remember ever doing so. So, it's not for that reason that I say this. Neither is because I live, as sadly too many Christians who venture online appear to do, that whatever is happening today in the American news cycle is ipso facto "the big thing". The big thing for Christians is that the risen Jesus delivered us the Great Commission, and told us to make disciples, to form them into churches who are to shine his light out into the world, as we joyfully await his return, the day of judgment and the renewal of all creation. That's big, and transforms every day, and page after page of the New Testament tells us that we should strive to have that at the forefront of our minds, not the back.

Neither is political violence in America itself a new thing. Human nature in this fallen world can never make the dream, the myth, the ideal, actually be the reality - we will only ever, before Christ's return, gain glimpses of it (for which we should be profoundly grateful). "JFK" was shot and Reagan survived an assassination attempt; the attempts on the present president's life were far from unprecedented.

What then, do I mean?  This: this was a 31-year old man, with two young children. He was not an elected official. He was (from what I understand from the reports) a public speaker, who positioned himself around the importance of civil debate with those who disagree with us. Not that he shied away from controversial views, or views that make some others very angry. But at the end of it, he wielded political power in only indirect ways, making his views, those of a private citizen, known, and trying to persuade other people of them in a civil manner. And for that - as far as we know at this point - he was brutally killed in broad daylight, by (again, as far as we can know) by someone who wished him dead for his success in spreading his views. Today some people made in God's image, wake up for the first time in their new roles as widow and orphans, because of political disagreement.

That's not very unusual in the context of world history. There are lots of places in which it's not so unusual today, throughout less direct means if necessary. But it's not the post-WW2 West that many of us grew up in. (Perhaps the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr six decades ago is the most recent analogous event?) "I may completely disagree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" was the cultural milieu - even if you suspected that this wasn't said so sincerely (history shows that few people will defend to the death even their own professed beliefs when it comes to it!).

Time will tell whether this really is an inflexion point in the cultural setting. If so, it is not unexpected. The signs have long been there. What binds us together has been progressively weakened; what makes us hate our neighbour has been strengthening. "Love your enemies", and Christ's dying for his enemies, are increasingly thought to be a sign of contemptible weakness (if they're even thought about at all), rather than the  world-changing intervention that we need. Sadly, even in Christian/Christian-ish circles (if we may judge from what's on the Internet) the point of engagement appears to be increasingly thought of in terms of performatively humiliating your enemies (whether by doing so you achieve anything useful or not), "owning the libs", etcetera, and seeking or showing a better way is seen as a sign of weakness that can only lead to defeat. Better to slaughter your enemies and rejoice in their flowing blood as you mock their stupidity, than to let them crucify you, if it has to come to it in the end.

As I say, time will tell. When you look back at history, what has happened takes on the aura of inevitability. September 11th 2001 did not have to lead to all that it did; there was no required straight line from there, for example, to destablising Libya, plunging it into the still-ongoing civil war and all the effects that that has had across Africa and Europe. If we look back in 24 years time from waking up on September 11th 2025, what will we see about how the re-introduction of killing non-politicians for political reasons into the West changed things? One-off, or portent of many more changes to come, in the same direction?

As Christians, we are not bound to follow any current prominent political strategy, because we don't believe that the be-all-and-end-all is getting our preferred candidate into power at the next election. The next election is, once you've lived long enough you begin to notice the pattern, always proclaimed as "the most important election of our lifetimes". But actually, the most important thing in the next 4, 5, whatever years is: will Christians give their lives away in order to announce Jesus Christ? By word and by deed will they demonstrate the reality of the Holy Spirit, by following his death-and-resurrection pattern? Will churches take up the cross so that Christ can be made known to the most needy? Will they earnestly disciple their members to live for Christ and not in indifference or for self?

There are many ages and places in church history in which the church, we can now clearly see, was so terribly corrupted by a worldly spirit, that it was completely ineffective. If instead we are driven by the Spirit of the Crucified One, we will be held contemptible in the eyes of the world, and many self-appointed Christian political gurus will proclaim us to be pietists, obscurantists, and to have doomed-from-the-outset strategies if we were intending to have some real influence, real impact on the world.... but, I ask, should we be appointing the blind to be our guides in any case?

I'm grateful for Christians who are called to seek to speak for truth and justice in the political sphere. This is an honourable work. All of us share in it as we pray for our rulers and leaders too. It is, however, according to the Bible, primarily a limited and defensive work, aimed at restraining wickedness, and maintaining the freedom for us to do the real work. That is of proclaiming Jesus Christ, worshipping God joyfully, and demonstrating his love in practice to those who don't yet know of him so that they can join the group of disciples, as we expectantly await his return. This may often bring us into the spheres that people deem to be "political" or "social action", with those terms understood in various different ways; what they deem them doesn't really matter. What matters is that God has made people in his image, has revealed himself through his Son, and many of them don't yet know him, and are suffering in all kinds of ways - and we know how to help them. Let's get busy!

The quest for illegitimate certainty

I like certainty. God likes certainty too, and has told us lots of things so that we can be certain of them. Of that, I am certain!

On the other hand, though, there are things that God hasn't told us. Some of them are on topics that will cut "close to home", having a significant impact on us in some way or other. They may touch upon important issues of theology and consequent practice.

Some people find this difficult to cope with, and as such are drawn towards simple solutions. The problem is, the simple solutions tend not to have sufficient reason for people who love God with all their minds to be able to say "God has said this" rather than just "this might be true, but it remains obscure because the revelation on it is partial and fragmentary". As such, it's actually wrong to say "this is revealed by God as true", even if the thing actually does turn out to be true: because our belief is not justified. We are giving false testimony; we are saying God has said what he has not, which is bad just as denying what God has said is bad.

Of course, in any particular example I give, it'll be something that some will find controversial. That's the nature of things. One man has a deeper understanding and sees things that are there, though subtle, because of prolonged, careful study and thought; another has a drive to believe that something is true without adequate grounds, and takes up beliefs on flimsy grounds merely because he likes them - or, worse, because his false certainty makes him look authoritative and clever, ahead of others, and thus more able to draw followers after himself. Which is which? That takes time and effort to work through, and even then we might not be sure.

So, let me annoy everyone (though they're not reading, so I'll get away with it) by giving enough examples to do so:

• When will the end be? We haven't been told.
• Has my young child become one of God's people? I'd really like them to be.... a doctrine like paedobaptism would be really comforting there. (Except that having an "inner ring" and "outer ring" then brings back the same problem, because being baptised in historical Reformed theology doesn't mean you're in the "inner ring" - so then people are pushed onto even more aberrant theologies like the Federal Vision and paedocommunion). (Don't misunderstand me: I do believe young children can respond to the gospel, with visible consequences in their lives. But that's quite different to saying that we will always or even, at certain ages, usually or likely know the answer to the question posed).
• When my baby or small child died, are they guaranteed salvation? (Even if you think the Bible does say "yes" to this question - I am of John Bunyan's view that where the Bible has no voice, we have no ears, but can rest content that God is astonishingly merciful and makes no mistakes - then you still can't tell anyone at what age the Bible says a child passes to an "age of responsibility").
• What proportion will be saved? (We are told that they will constitute a great absolute number; but concerning relative proportions, we are not told directly, though the imagery we are given of God's true people throughout Scripture at various times invariably pictures a remnant seed - for example, the ark, strangers and exiles, the ubiquity of sufferings before glory in discipleship, etc.).
• Is there a single best manuscript (or best manuscript family, or procedure for identifying infallibly the best reading at every point) for the Scriptures? People can speak about "the preserved text", but this begs the question, since if all the variants we have to discuss hadn't been preserved, we wouldn't have to discuss them! So much easier to boil it down to a nice, simple rule that removes ambiguity (except if you ask difficult questions, which then pushes people even further into utter absurdity, like the alleged infallibility of the King James translation).
• What would all the laws of an ideal Christian nation look like? What percentage will all the taxes be, and which heretics will be executed? (There is no such thing; you question has no meaning; none of them).
• What is the one true procedure that I should carry out for disciplining my children, dealing with a straying wife, church member, or whatever, a set of rules I can apply in all situations to know I did the right thing? What is the one proper way of educating my children to make sure that I brought them up in the fear of the Lord?

The sorts of people drawn towards seeking more certainty than God has provided may be tempted to respond to some of the above with false dichotomies. "Are you saying anything goes? We should have no convictions? God hasn't said anything? Everything's relative, then?". Well, to answer that: no; no; no; no it isn't.

Life is complicated. And since it's not a simulation and we don't get to rewind after seeing the consequences of our decisions, and since procrastinating is also an action we are responsible for, we have to make choices, and learn from them: hopefully, we will mature through reflecting upon them.

The New Testament does have some people in it who couldn't cope with complexity, and whose way of looking at God and his Word led them to try to tie everything down precisely. And of course, when cases came up outside of their very neat rules, things went wrong. (A contemporary example of that that springs to mind is when churches' rigid, one-sided understandings of martial submission and when the Bible allows separation leads them to tell abused wives and children that they have a duty to keep living with their abuser, and then begins to disciple them if they don't). Who were those people? The Pharisees. They tithed mint and herbs... but overlooked the weightier matters of justice, mercy and the love of God. They knew all the details: but unfortunately mainly the ones they'd invented for themselves.

In the mindest I'm thinking of and warning against here, there's a lot of fear. "David, if you speak that way, you've begun a journey; soon you'll be questioning the Bible, then you'll be affirming sexual depravity, and then the year after you'll be an atheist and have announced your new identity is as Deidre!" But this kind of thing is to say: we must hold on to our illegitimate certainties, because admitting "I don't know, but we can trust God and seek to honour him with what we do have" is too dangerous. Trusting God is not actually dangerous, though, when it is trusting God. God is able to take care of us when we hold onto what he's revealed whilst also confessing that we're also in the dark about other things. What is it to walk by faith, after all, if there is no darkness that matters? 

Some people do claim to be ignorant of things God has actually revealed; but claiming to know things that God hasn't revealed isn't a better alternative. I really don't see where God told us when the end will be, that all babies (or all babies of at least one Christian parent, or is it grandparent, or is it great-grandparent?) go to heaven if they die young, that God has told us that a flat tax of 20% (or is it 23% or 26%) is the ideal tax rate, that all valid manuscript readings of the Bible are found exclusively in the bundle of manuscripts that Erasmus had (or is it the Majority tradition?), that God has promised that 100% of my children will be saved if I'm faithful enough (not even father-of-the-faithful Abraham had that), or (as a friend told me this week - really!) that we should have no qualms about baptising any 4-year old who says that they love Jesus), or any such. It's not in the Bible, so I don't have to believe it. If I do chose to believe something might be possible, or even probable, then that's still all. But if I make it a significant plank of my faith or practice, then to the extent that I do that, I'm actually following a man-made idol, rather than walking in the faith that should characterise the sons and daughters of pilgrim Abraham.

It seems to me that God deliberately, intentionally gives us unavoidable complexity. It's part of his call to trust him in darkness or partial darkness. He gives us things we find difficult to cope with and that go beyond what we can see: not just in every-day life, but in doctrinal questions too. At some point a pastor will preach through John's gospel. What exactly should he say about the passage about the woman caught in adultery? (Do read the article to understand the situation and possibilities. If you have a firm conviction either way, which one of the possibilities in the article are you in, precisely?).

Personally I'm comfortable with the idea that even though we can't show that it was known to anyone before the 5th century, and even though it has numerous features indicating very strongly that it has a separate origin from the rest of the gospel, yet we can trust God's providence (though on the other hand, there is also his providence in making it known to us that this passage isn't terribly well attested), and inspiration isn't the same idea as "we can name which apostle wrote every passage, and no passage ever had an inspired editor" (for it is evident in the Pentateuch that later editors wrote some things, which Jesus and the apostles accepted as Scripture - and hence we thus know that those editors were divinely inspired; so, super-intending divine inspiration does not mean believing that the final book was written at a single sitting by a single person). So, I do not see the passage as definitely non-inspired. However, uncertainty remains, because I don't hold to any doctrine that says that the church in any one particular year or Bible translation must have got everything right. I could be wrong; a mistake could have been made in my weighing up of the data, or perhaps indeed I don't have enough data to be able to know even after weighing it all up. It might, after all, not be inspired. God is providentially super-intending history, and it's that supervision that has led to the present-day complexity that leaves us with issues like this one (or if you don't agree on this one, there are many others with all kinds of different features) where we can't truthfully say "I know, for God has revealed it" - even though the thing itself is important.

Excessive certainty is not a sign of spiritual maturity, but the opposite, spiritual immaturity. And this spiritual immaturity can go with being highly educated and confident too, as history proves repeatedly. Again, don't misunderstand me. If I were saying that the list of issues I've given above is definitely the one true list of debatable issues, then I'd be making the same mistake myself. What I am saying is that here is a tendency and temptation, to be aware of in ourselves - and to be aware of in others, if we want to be discerning about healthy and unhealthy spiritual influences upon us. Unfounded dogmatism is not a virtue, it is a fault. Admitting to not knowing may indeed be "a sign of weakness"; but if you're a disciple of Christ rather than aspiring to be Nietzsche's Übermensch (super-man) , that's a good thing, not a bad.

Why we serve

I don't know if you've had cause to browse lists of job advertisements lately. How does this one take your fancy? "For I will show him how many things he must suffer for my name’s sake." (Acts 9:16).

That, of course, is the apostle Paul. "I affirm, by the boasting in you which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily", he wrote to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 15:32). "For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So then death is working in us, but life in you." (2 Corinthians 4:11-12).

That was Paul's service. He was a disciple of Jesus Christ, the cross-bearer. Jesus taught that if anyone wishes to be his disciple, then he must take up his cross - to die to self - daily. Cross-bearing is not a special event in the Christian life: it is the Christian life. The Christian says "today, I choose to give away my life for others, for Jesus' sake". Ship-wrecked, stoned, naked, hungry, in constant danger, exhausted, beaten, imprisoned for years, etc.: this was the life Paul chose. Death worked in him: but what glorious life has worked in so many others, because of the choice he made.

I was touched by this in reading Acts 13 this morning:

"⁵⁰ But the Jews stirred up the devout and prominent women and the chief men of the city, raised up persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them from their region. "

There it is: more death. Expelled from the reason. The great ones of the region against them, and they had to leave and go elsewhere. But what about two lines later?

⁵² And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.

Ah. That's why we serve.  That's why we choose, each day, to give away our lives. Death works in us: but life in you. Lord, it's hard, it's very hard. But, it's not the hard life of living still for self: that's the other sort of death. The sort without any resurrection in it: just barren death, leading to eternal death. We who take up the cross see Jesus, the risen one. After the cross, there was the resurrection. And we know as well that one day we'll be where he is. Death worked in him: and because of that, life works in us too. 

Infant baptism requires two separable doctrines of descent in the Old Testament

The ground covered so far 

Recently (essay, follow-up), I've been examining the Reformed (covenant) argument for paedobaptism, and conclusions from the claim that the New Testament is silent about the revocation of covenant membership for the infants of believers, when that is a subject that we would have expected to generate controversy and debate.

I've argued that the claim itself is incorrect. The New Testament contains numerous passages, self-consciously controversial, which directly contradict an expectation that under the New Covenant relationship to the Messiah can or would pass by hereditary descent.

The reason why paedobaptists overlook these passages (for they do overlook them, generally not including them for discussion at all in their analyses of relevant material in their arguments) is because of how they define how the debate ought to, according to their presuppositions, be carried out. Because the debate is not carried out in that way, thus they effectively define these passages out of existence. Specifically, they require the passages to be explicitly framed in terms of one-generational descent from covenant members (from believers) to their infants; passages discussing physical descent from Abraham are overlooked. They assume that the Old Testament's "infant inclusion" is in in terms (if we speak in terms of primary concepts, i.e. the self-conscious focus of the subject) of "the infants of covenant members" rather than in terms of "descendants of Abraham". Because they do not find such passages, they then assert that this is because the concept which they find in the Old Testament has carried over, unaltered, uncontroversial, universally accepted.

Two separate concepts? 

Noting and describing this helps us to shed further light on the precise nature of the paedobaptist error. The paedobaptist - intentionally or not, consciously or not - has asserted that the Old Testament has two separable teachings about covenant descent. That is to say: for the paedobaptist, in effect (i.e. whether he explains or even realises this or not), in the Old Testament the patrilinear descendants of Abraham via Jacob are covenant members by virtue of that descent; but also the infant offspring (at the first generation) of covenant members are also covenant members. You may be thinking "isn't this precisely the same group of people?" Yes, it is (we bracket proselytes, who are treated as de facto descendants of Abraham). And that is precisely the problem.

So: when we come to the New Testament, we have the various passages which intentionally, directly and explicitly deny that those of Jewish descent are ipso facto members of the New Covenant, the great renewal and fulfilment effected by the Messiah. These are the passages I discuss in my essay. John the Baptist, Jesus, Paul: they all directly deny that mere Jewish descent is enough to qualify you as a member of the New Covenant: you must have faith in Christ to be a child of Abraham. You must be born again. Reformed paedobaptists are aware of these passages; they read them, they understand them, and they agree with what I just said.

What they don't do, however, is allow that the same passages have any relevance to the status of the infant offspring of believers (whether Jew or Gentile). They will say things like "such passages are discussing adults, who are developmentally capable of faith in Christ; infants are not in view; thus they have nothing to say about infants, to whom a separate category of entitlement applies". (Or there are a few who will instead argue that we are taught to, perhaps presumptively if not actually, believe that infants of Christians actually have saving faith, in some prototypical form - but that is problematic when the claimant has also conceded contradictory claims about the New Testament's silence - which, after all, is the question we are responding to; it also is a doctrine that calls for wholesale revision of the Reformed doctrine of what saving faith is).

The implications of this claim, this denial of relevance, is that Jewish descent and descent as an infant from a covenant member, are two separable concepts. They are so separable that one can be entirely, explicitly abolished (via Messianic fulfilment, if we wish to be precise!), whereas the other can carry on, entirely untouched, not having even been mentioned or in anyone's mind because it was so uncontroversial. And yet, as we have already noticed, the people affected up until this point were entirely the same group of people. The infants of Israelites were Israelites. 

The thing to notice here is that the claim of "uncontroversial and complete continuity" relies upon this separation. In turn, then, this relies upon this separation, this conceptual distinction, being actually taught in the Old Testament. It cannot be argued that this separation is actually taught in the New Testament, because the claim is of perfect continuity supported by complete New Testament silence. So, the Old Testament must give us passages in which it explains that infant covenant membership has a two-fold aspect; one is from Abrahamic descent, the other is from descent from one's immediate parents, and that these two are separate claims such that one can remain whilst the other falls away.

An unreasonable demand 

It is quite evident, of course, that this demand is ludicrous and absurd. A false distinction has been introduced. A splitting of a single concept into two which has no real basis in the relevant Scriptures has been made. The two concepts are only one. Thus, when one is changed, fulfilled or abolished in whatever, then so is the other. The denial that membership by descent in the nation of Israel means participation in the Messiah under the New Covenant is the same thing as denial that the infant children of covenant members are already covenant members by virtue of their descent. The latter way of putting things, focussing on infants and parents is, as I argued in my essay, simply a choice of focus made, one which comes naturally to post-Industrial Revolution Westerners whose own primary "clan" focus is dominated by the nuclear family. But Israelites did not have the same narrowness of focus, and the Old Testament Scriptures do not teach that covenant descent has this corresponding bifurcation. There is no separable, separate "descended from Abraham" as well as "descended from my covenant parents"; no dual covenantal status of "I am a legitimate Israelite - but also a member of this nuclear family of legitimate Israelites".

We see this with clarity when we remember (as touched upon in the essay) that there was never any denial that the Jews, even after the resurrection and ascension of Christ, were under the Old Covenant. Pharisees and unbelieving Jews: those who either explicitly rejected Christ, or who at least had not yet believed in him, are spoken of as (Old) covenant members. The repudiation of the covenant, its annulment by God (together with the threatened Deuteronomic curses), is not until AD70, when the Romans come and destroy Jerusalem and the temple. Nowhere prior to that is there any claim that the Jews were not children of Abraham under the terms of the Old Covenant.

So:

• Acts 13:26 - "Men and brethren, sons of the family of Abraham, and those among you who fear God, to you the word of this salvation has been sent." Here, Paul affirms to unbelieving and not-yet-believing Jews to whom he is explaining the gospel for the first time, that they are sons in Abraham's family. He does not, and cannot, mean that he is affirming that they all have faith. And neither can he be affirming that they are all infants, for plainly his address assumes an adult audience. Though the New Covenant was already in force, these adults, independently of their actual belief in Jesus as the Messiah at this point, were the sons of Abraham (under the terms of the Old Covenant).
• 2 Corinthians 11:22 - "Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they the seed of Abraham? So am I." Paul, of course, is a true son of Abraham, as the New Covenant bifurcation of this concept was well underway by the time that he wrote. Yet he affirms that the false teachers, the false apostles, the Judaizers, if any of them had a claim to be Hebrews, Israelites, seed of Abraham - so did he. It is nowhere suggested that he believed none of them actually did. 
• “The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. Therefore whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do," - Matthew 23:2-3. There is no suggestion that these adult Pharisees, though enemies of God's Son, had manifested a lack of faith in the Messiah that meant that they could or should be excommunicated from the nation of Israel. That would be to back-port New Covenant aspects into the Old Covenant.
• Romans 9:4 - "who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises". The unbelieving Jews, as Paul wrote, possessed these things, in the present tense. Paul has made the distinction between them and true Jews (many times) - but he never suggests that they should also be considered as already excommunicated from the Old Covenant.

Anticipating a response 

I expect that in response to these points, a paedobaptist might make true, but actually irrelevant, observations like "there was an overlap of the covenants". Of course there was - who denied it, because I was affirming it? That is not the salient point in the observations above. The key point is that Old Covenant membership explicitly did not work along the lines of "you can join by virtue of being an infant born within the covenant, but to remain in, you must have faith". Adults, lacking faith, were members. If the paedobaptist wants to distinguish between saving faith and some form of "implicit" faith, then this opens up even more problems: should such adults, including ones who explicitly reject Jesus as the Messiah, be New Covenant church members, as they were in the Old? I don't think that paedobaptists have really thought their doctrine of "strict covenant continuity" through.

Conclusion

The Old Testament did not teach two separable-but-coinciding routes into covenant membership for the same group of people, such that the New Testament can explicitly repudiate one route, and leave the other completely undiscussed, enjoying perfect continuity, paving the way to infant baptism. Again we see that the paedobaptist demand for an explanation of the New Testament's "silence" is one based upon his own imported and unjustifiable assumptions. There is no "strict continuity", because the conceptual furniture of Reformed paedobaptism does not exist in the Old Testament any more than it does in the New. The "silence" is entirely a product of making unwarranted demands that the New Testament be written in terms of this furniture. It is silent about such things, precisely because the Old Testament also knew nothing about them. The implied split is not there in either Testament. 

Under the Old Covenant, the seed of Abraham according to fleshly descent was circumcised; under the New, his children according to the second birth which manifests by repentance and faith in Christ are baptised. There are, in fact, two separable descents. Some are born of the flesh, only - and some also of the Spirit. This is taught in both Testaments. But this in no way maps onto "patrilinear descent to any number of generations (through Jacob)" and "physical descent at one generation if your parents have saving faith". That is a chimera, a confusion, faithful to neither Testament, mixing external foreshadowing and Messianic fulfilment up into a mass that is neither one nor the other.

Labels and generalisations

Once a label begins to mean everything, it also has begun to mean nothing. At the heart of useful, iron-sharpening-iron debate is clear definitions, leading to clarified understanding. Light is shed - borders and boundaries are seen. Conversely, at the heart of empty gibbering is noises with little distinct meaning. Words and labels that don't help to clarify and make distinctions because they are not well-defined and understood in the same way across the discussions.

I suggest that the term "feminism" has gone this way. As used in the world at large, and in the Bible-believing church, it is widely used to mean everything and nothing. It covers the whole ground in between "I am glad that God made women" to a whole militant, conspiratorial "the point of life is to crush, in every possible sphere, the omnipresent patriarchy, which is the source of all evil" worldview. It is a rallying cry for adherents (of many different things), and a bogey-word to rally on the other side (again, of many different, mutually contradictory things).

I don't say "stop using the word 'feminism'". But I do say that there's no real point in just throwing it out as part of a Tweet or slogan to either rally people for or against your cause. "What feminism has done to us is...", "The problems caused by feminism...", "Feminism has taught us that..." - these are usually the prefixes to some gross sweeping generalisation that clarifies nothing of use, some under-cooked and under-developed lazy thought that is likely just a way for the speaker to signal his tribe and rally support for it. i.e. Not faith seeking understanding, but just preaching to the choir for applause. So, if you want to use the word, then define and clarify what you mean by it. Otherwise, you will say everything and nothing: strong-sounding words though also entirely deniable ones because you actually didn't mean that when you said "feminism" or "feminist". Clarify, and say "the type of feminism which believes....", or somesuch.

Other related terms have gone or are going the same way. "Patriarchy" seems to have suffered this fate from the moment that it began to appear in academic debate around 1970. Attempts to re-appropriate it in a theological sense in recent years seem to be doing no better, as it apparently can mean anything from "our particular tribe of Internet theo-bros with all 10,000 of their specific, detailed views on absolutely everything pertaining to male-female interactions" right down to a minimal "the Bible teaches that men should take on the responsibility of leadership within households and churches". "Complementarianism" can now be either "thin" or "thick" (and the boundaries between "thick" complementarianism and patriarchy are not clear).

Again, don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that there aren't people who are working hard to carefully define, debate and defend what they mean, or that these words themselves are somehow toxic. What I am saying is: beware of those who just throw out words and sweeping generalisations to signal their tribe and draw followers after themselves. It's not a useful activity; it is a harmful one. It does not indicate depth of thought and godly sincerity; it's a short-cut that superficially looks good on the outside. Proper study of God's word and the issues it raises cannot be carried out through chanting ambiguous slogans. The first question is always "and how shall we define the term being used, such-and-such...?."