Baptism

Its been about 10 days since I wrote about "washing by water" and "regeneration".

I've been reading articles about infant baptism (paedo baptism) versus believer baptism (credo baptism) and believe that most authors write from their prepositional stance.

Paedo baptists 1) are strongly covenantal in their exegesis and 2) view baptism as the substitute for circumcision.

Credo baptists see baptism as symbolizing entrance into the new covenant.

The texts from my prior two posts steer me towards this credo baptist stance. Those "born of water and the spirit", "sprinkled with clean water", who believes in Christ has "living water flowing from them" are all in the new covenant by faith.

I think it was Luther who said that infants have faith in their parents and parents have faith in Christ. So infants have faith in Christ (indirectly). Is this the "faith" described in the NT?

It seems to follow the paedo baptist logic to its end, they should view baptism like Lutherans or Roman Catholics.

A friend of mine that is in the Federal Vision camp calls the children of believers "saints". He says that these children are objectively under the covenant with their believing parents. A problem with this is that some of those children are not elect. Therefore, they cannot believe in the "perseverance of the saints" - I have not yet heard his response to this.