The name might sound silly, but the doctrine is deadly serious.
In the movie Kingdom of Heaven, Balian of Ibelin, a crusader noble of Jerusalem in the 12th century, is tasked with defending the city from the invading Saracens. As the arrival of the invaders draws near, Balian is accosted by the bishop, who advises him to leave the city “on the fastest horses by a lesser gate.”
Balian refuses to abandon the people, and gives a speech that motivates the defenders. But the cowardly bishop accosts him again, this time with a question. How did Balian intend to defend the city without any knights?
The crusader turns to a teenage boy and asks: ‘What is your condition?” The boy replies: “I am servant to the patriarch.” Balian reminds him that he was born a servant, asks him to kneel, then says,
“Every man at arms, or capable of bearing them, KNEEL! … On your knees!”
The men obey, and he then recites the oath speech he heard when he himself became a knight.
“Be without fear in the face of your enemies.
Be brave and upright that God may love thee.
Speak the truth even if it leads to your death.
Safeguard the helpless.
That is your oath. RISE A KNIGHT!”
These common men rise as one, with a new vigor, but the bishop interjects:
“Who do you think you are? Will you alter the world? Does making a man a knight make him a better fighter?”
Of course, the answer from Balian is “Yes.” And the evidence is the countenance of these newborn knights, who in their hearts are no longer common.
I have been writing about biblical literary structure for well over a decade. While writing my first book, it crossed my mind that the fundamental biblical covenant pattern was the deep structure not only of the testing and disqualification of Adam, and the purification of Israel in the wilderness, but also the basic shape of the conversion accounts in the book of Acts. In each case, the Word was delivered, and the response to it decided whether or not the hearer was given authority as a legal representative of God.
Of course, that generated more questions than it answered, and for the past decade I have debated baptism with my Presbyterian friends. The journal of my thinking can be found in numerous blog posts. They are very rough notes but they do show the development of the idea, a concept which has recently been given, in jest, the name Jedobaptism. But as a publicity ploy it has worked like a dream. You are here reading this, aren’t you?
I asked an online friend if this was going too far, and he wisely replied that this had never stopped me before. For a summary of the name, see the first chapter of the book I’m working on. I do have a more scholarly book in the works but I figured that I might as well break the waters under a theme that everyone is already familiar with—knighthood.
As another friend noted, it is easier to get a grip on something that might just be a major paradigm shift if you first encounter it as a summary. But the truth is that after ten years of not getting a satisfactory response to my fundamental objections from my friends, I decided it was time to bypass the old gatekeepers. They seem unable to comprehend the foundational shift in the paradigm let alone refute it. The few who do understand it cannot refute it; they simply refuse it. That’s OK. But it’s no reason to abandon an idea that, to my mind at least, seems to provide the solution to an age-old debate.
So, since the Jedobaptism book won’t be ready for another couple of months, and few are willing to wade through my old essays without at least a list of theses obstinately nailed to the door of Protestantism, it is worth laying out the basic tents here for consideration. The name might sound silly but the doctrine is deadly serious.
The Tenets of Jedobaptism
I
KISS THE SON
The triune nature of God is expressed in His practice of always working through qualified, accountable legal representatives, and within a three-tiered domain that represents the internal hierarchy of Father, Son, and Spirit. This pattern is also found in the architecture of Genesis 1 (the physical order: being); Genesis 2 (the social order: knowing), and Genesis 3 (the ethical order: doing). Genesis 3 records an ordeal allowed by God to qualify the Man and his wife for service as God’s legal representatives. The term “Son of God” in all cases in Scripture refers to those who mediate between heaven and earth—as natural flesh inhabited by God’s supernatural Spirit. If Adam had obeyed God in faith, he would have been invested with authority as the first priest-king. Adam’s sin corrupted the Garden, then the Land, then the World.
II
COVENANT THEOLOGY
Covenant theologians regard covenant history as linear when in fact it is a series of concentric domains. This means that the Noahic order was established within the Adamic realm in order to hold back its global curses. Likewise, God called Abraham and set apart the Israelites as a microcosmic “dry land,” a sacrificial substitute for the whole world, in order to mitigate against judgment on the nations after the corruption of the Noahic order of priest-kings. But the Adamic and Noahic covenants were still in operation. That is why the Jerusalem Council decided that the Jews and Gentiles would continue to obey the covenant stipulations of their respective priestly and kingly orders until the coming of the “new world” at the removal of the Temple and its sacrifices.
This means that nobody in history has ever been outside of covenant obligation to God in some measure—there were just layers of mediation. The biblical covenants recapitulate the seven days of the Creation Week as layers of increasing maturity and purity. The cross of Christ and the testimony and murder of the Firstfruits Church dismantled and removed the old order but also assimilated facets of every step into the universal rule of Christ. There is no “continuity and discontinuity” debate. There were separated elements and now they are combined as a single house. The New Covenant has no boundary. Its obligation is “universal,” as things were under Adam and Noah.
III
BAPTISM = SERVICE
As a model of the world, Israel was also “formed and filled,” passing through a “flood” in preparation for service as a nation that would mediate on behalf of the seventy nations listed in Genesis 10. The nation was not baptized until it was physically mature in number, and this brought it to a corporate “age of accountability”—circumcision of heart under the Law of Moses “because of transgressions.” Despite this corporate baptism, Israel still needed a contingent of qualified individuals who would be washed for service as living sacrifices. This is because there was still a difference between the Land (the tables of men) and the Garden (the table of God). The priesthood was male because the Sanctuary would not be safe for “the Woman” until the serpent was finally crushed. However, the Levite priests represented Adam (priests with no Land inheritance) and the virgins who served at the Tabernacle represented Eve (the woman with no offspring).
The ministry of Christ removed the national boundary, leaving only the office of the priesthood, which was now extended to common men and women, those who in Israel had worn the tasseled robe as a reminder of the covenant vow. It is worth noting that both men and women could take the Nazirite vow for spiritual war as an extension of the ministry of the Tabernacle. Paul took this vow as a sign of Gospel “war” while the Temple was still standing, and rebellious Jews took a vow to kill him. “Putting on Christ” as a robe with “healing in its wings” (corners) is an act of continued voluntary service to others.
IV
PRIEST-KINGDOM
The two trees in Eden represented the office of priest (submission to heaven) and king (dominion upon earth). The Man had to submit in childlike faith to the Father in Heaven before God would make the Man a father on the earth (Genesis 3; Genesis 15). Adam did received the promises of food and offspring but under a curse. And he was disqualified from ministry and never reinstated. The ministry passed to his sons, whose offices were human representations of the trees in the Garden. Once again, kingdom was seized and priesthood was desecrated. Noah was the first man to qualify as a priest-king, and he was granted the sword of God as a human cherubim, with authority as a legal image of God to execute murderers made in the image of God. The centurion who stated that he was “a man under authority” understood this idea of delegated power as a legal representative.
Submission to the sword of God (priesthood) qualifies one to bear that sword (kingdom). We see this in Eden, where God cut into Adam but Adam failed to become a sword bearer. Israel was likewise under the sword in Egypt but bore the sword in Canaan as human “cherubim.” Jesus submitted to the sword of His Father and was given all authority in heaven and earth. He bore the sword against Jerusalem (Revelation 19) and now rules the nations with a shepherd’s staff of iron. The saints who submit to voluntary death in baptism also bear that staff against the nations.
V
OUR SACRAMENTS
The concept of knighthood and the Arthurian round table are perfect analogies for the Christian sacraments. Jesus’ death united the two trees of Eden as a single office: priest-kingdom. The priestly bread and kingly wine that were divided under the Aaronic priesthood (the wine had to be tipped out) were now reunited in a new, global order of priest-kingdom. That is why Jesus’ order is a royal priesthood, and “Melchizedekian.” The demarcation of flesh (Abraham), along with the divided obligation (Moses), were abolished forever. The coming of the Seed ended the sign that concerned human seed. The sign is now an investiture for Sons of God, not generations but regenerations. And it is not about receiving salvation but a testimony for those having received it—an act of public allegiance. This is the age of testimony, where all the Lord’s people are prophets. Indeed, the Church is a school of the prophets. Robes and wine are symbols of judicial maturity—for those who can discern between good and evil (Hebrews 5:14).
Like knighthood, where the individual submits to a symbolic decapitation and is then given the very sword by which he was “slain,” baptism is a voluntary death in a “flood” that kills “all flesh” and extinguishes the natural breath, superseding it with the breath from heaven. This rite is not for children because they are under parental (mediated) discipline. Just as God did not give us individual baptism until His people outgrew their earthly fathers (Abraham), so also baptism as a qualified individual for holy war is for those who are disciples, voluntarily bound, in union with, their Master.
The table of Christ is the table on the mountain in Exodus 24. God only dines with His friends, that is, His advisors and confidants, those who are in on His plans (John 15:15). The cup is a jealous inspection like the second tree in the Garden, the jealous inspection in the wilderness (Numbers 5, Revelation 18), and the cup of all kings who sip wine before making a decree. We judge ourselves or we will be judged. As Paul tells us, Garden food is still deadly if we fail to examine ourselves. God did ask Adam to confess what he had done—to judge himself. He had intended to give him the second tree as a gift upon qualification. Jesus now gives it to us in His Sanctuary.
The sacraments extend to common worshipers the Sanctuary access that was denied to common Israelites. It does not undermine the role of Christian parenting but in fact takes it up a notch. In baptism we take the Covenant Oath and make ourselves especially vulnerable to the Covenant Sanctions—that includes the death in the Garden (cultus), and the cutting off of our dominion via sterility in the Land and the womb (culture). Baptism makes us better in every office because making a believer a knight makes him or her a better fighter. But this is, of course, for spiritual warfare, and our armor is described in Ephesians 6, an allusion to the attire of Levite priests as cherubim at the entry to the Garden. This also explains the description of the members of the first-century (apostolic) church in Revelation, which is a book of Old Testament meme warfare. It is no longer angels who bear the sword, but the invested saints as ev-angels, whose wise testimony (as serpents like Solomon) for their king (the heads of lions) is a fragrance of life to some and a stench of death to others.
And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone. By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths. For their power is in their mouth, and in their tails: for their tails were like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt. (Revelation 9:17-19)
The remedy for the demise of the West is thus not paedobaptism, which feminizes the Church and replaces the Covenant Oath with a meaningless proxy vow, but Jedobaptism—a rite that carries with it all the weight of the Old Testament without conflating it with the temporary ethnic demarcation that was abolished at the cross. As John said, Now are WE the Sons of God, the peacemakers who reconcile heaven and earth as voluntary, Spirit-filled living sacrifices. The Church is not a nursery for sons of men (athough children must be permitted to our worship, as they were in Exodus 24) but a barracks for the Sons of God.
Baptism is not the boundary of the Covenant, since Jesus’ realm has no boundary. Baptism is the staff uniform for His legal representatives, the guardians not the guarded. When we eat the bread and drink the cup, we publicly testify that we, too, are broken bread and poured out wine, that we will give as freely as we have received.
The sacraments are not for those who come in, since everyone can now come in. They are for those who can go out with full authority to testify on His behalf as legal witnesses from His court, bearing the name on His thigh as a sword in our mouths. Since Israel’s mediation was fulfilled, and the sacrifices removed, all nations are now directly accountable to God, who is no longer overlooking their sins. The Gospel is the new shema. “Hear O nations.”
What about our children? What about the simple? All are now within the Covenant order, and our king is merciful. We protect the weak and the helpless, as Jesus’ bodily members. Our children are accountable to us as we are accountable to God. We see the same arrangement in the actual clergy in Revelation 2 and 3. God is not a totalitarian. He delegates.
This is only a brief (and hurried) rundown but it should give you a glimpse of the level of consideration of the Bible upon which this thesis is based. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me. They will help me to make the book more useful and beneficial.
If you would like more information on “biblical feminism” you can read Voice of the Bride in Theo Magazine.
