I am currently half-way through Lewis Bevens Schenck’s “The Presbyterian Doctrine of Children in the Covenant”. So far, it’s been a very good read. The book was first published in 1940, and originated as Dr. Schenck’s doctoral dissertation. Even though it’s been revised to be more readable, it does plod through a lot of historical examples. Since the goal of the book is to discuss the history of infant baptism in the Reformed Church, though, a reader should expect to flip through page after page of historical citations.

In my opinion, though, the strength of the book does not rest in the positive examples of infant baptism (which are very good), but in the harsh criticism of the American Reformed church since the early 18th century. The second chapter of the book entitled, “The Development of Revivalism” is an eye-opening exposé of the development of revivalism in the Reformed Churches in America, and, more importantly, it’s novelty in those Reformed Churches, and how revivalism violates many of the Reformed doctrines it claims to be preaching.

As I see it, one of the major problems in the Church today, Reformed or otherwise, is the failure to see the growth of the covenant children into Christian adulthood. Thankfully, most modern Presbyterians do not consider their children to be little heathens in their home. We do have our children baptized, understanding that God has given these children the gift of being born in the covenant, and as such, really are different from the children of unbelievers. However, do we really believe this to be true?

Here’s a question to ask yourself… do you believe that a Christian must be made aware of their sin before they can be forgiven? Gilbert Tennent once wrote that “to talk of using the Gospel as the only or principle means of the conviction of sinners, is very ignorant and foolish, and shows little knowledge of divine things; its just like putting the plow before the Oxen.” For unbelievers, this is very true… oftentimes, a sinner needs to be made aware from what they need to be saved, before they can truly trust a Savior. But is Tennent’s statement as universal as he would have us to believe?

Schenk writes:

Preceding the experience of God’s love and peace, it was believed necessary to have an awful sense of one’s lost and terrifying position. Since these were not the experiences of infancy and early childhood, it was taken for granted children must, or in all ordinary cases would, grow up unconverted. Infants, it was thought, needed the new birth, as well as adults. They could not be saved without it. But the only channel of the new birth which was recognized was a conscious experience of conviction and conversion. Anything else, according to Gilbert Tennent, was a fiction of the brain, a delusion of the Devil. In fact, he ridiculed the idea that one could be a Christian without knowing the time when he was otherwise.

We consider our children to be Christians, yet the smallest child we present to be baptized surely does not understand their state before God. They don’t understand their depravity, their need for a Savior. So, why can we claim that they’re Christians… and if they are Christians, should their parents expect the same sort of “conversion experience” that we would expect from a new believer?

Let me give another example from my own life. I don’t remember ever becoming a “believer”. I’ll go even further than that… there was no time when I wasn’t a Christian. At no time in my life have I experienced a sense of being lost, nor have I experienced what Gilbert Tennent would call “enmity with God”, which, he believed, was a necessary universal prerequisite to friendship with God. Many of the preachers during the Great Awakening would consider me unregenerate, since I’ve never hated God, nor to I remember a particular time when I first turned to Him. Thankfully, Schenk would praise God for my experience as an example of God’s providence in using the ordinary means to fulfill His promises.

Anyway, I highly recommend this book, and it’s available if anyone would like to borrow it. I still need to get to the part where Schenk talks about the solutions to the problems, but for now, I’ll leave you with the following quote that sums up the problems with revivalism as Schenk sees it:

The view of religion presented in the Great Awakening was one-sided and defective. The extraordinary means were regarded by many as the only means of promoting religion. If these failed, it was thought, everything failed. Others, if they did not regard them as the only means for that end, still looked upon them as the greatest and best. As Dr. Charles Hodge said, revivals “may be highly useful – or even necessary – just as violent remedies are often the only means of saving life, but such remedies are not the proper and ordinary means of sustaining and promoting health.” These revivals, as he observed, were in a great measure an “idiosyncrasy of our country.” They were called American revivals, whereas there is nothing American in true religion. Dr. Hodge concluded “no one can fail to remark that this too exclusive dependence on revivals tends to promote a false and unscriptural form of religion… We shall not, it is hoped, be suspected of denying or of undervaluing the importance either of the public preaching of the gospel, or of revivals of religion. But it is not the means… it is not the first nor ordinary means of their salvation.”