Wes Baker

Husband of one, father of seven, lousy friend to many, deeply grateful to God for them all.

[Wes Baker @swesleybaker]

How closely do you think the categories of nature and grace map onto those of protology and eschatology or flesh and spirit or old creation and new creation? I certainly believe that nature and grace are biblical categories but they often get read in distinctly platonizing or even gnosticizing ways.

[Wes Baker @swesleybaker]

Brother, it is unwise and inappropriate for you to publish this. Her premarital sins aren’t yours to confess. For her honor, the honor of your marriage and the honor of your children delete this! Even if she has confessed it publicly, it is still not yours to continue to publicize.

[Wes Baker @swesleybaker]

Hard to imagine a less spiritually sounding word than "institution" but our spiritual and mental health is completely dependant (for good or ill) on the institutions that our lives are embedded in. I made that point in a sermon just last week. Human life is necessarily, inescapably, essentially institutional. Now I run across this article suggesting the same thing. Individual lives abstracted from family, church, school, for example, are recipes for loneliness (and a whole lot of other bad things). Of course bad, toxic, dead (etc) institutions do exist, but humans are essentially homo institutionalis. It is one of the more perverse inheritances of the enlightenment to make us doubt this.

https://t.co/KRtAWV2j8Z

[Wes Baker @swesleybaker]

Here's an interesting and crucially important perspective on missions (I got it from Gemini). It clearly implies that any approach to missions and evangelism that doesn't prioritize covenantal nurture in families is self-defeating and fundamentally flawed (Note well: it is counting as "Christian" those baptized individuals who self-identify as Christian and don't openly apostatize. It's not an argument about who is a real Christian).

The Covenant Imperative
Thesis: Across the full history of Christianity, between 95% and 98% of all individuals who have ever lived as Christians entered the faith through birth and nurture in Christian households, not as converts from explicitly unbelieving backgrounds.

Even in the pre-Constantinian "Pioneer Era," Covenant nurture—driven by household baptisms, higher fertility, and differential survival—accounted for 75–80% of the total Christian headcount.

I. The Pioneer Era (AD 33–313): The Household Multiplier
A common misconception is that the early Church grew primarily through individual adult conversions in the marketplace. While these "roots" were vital, the "branches" were almost immediately familial.

The "Oikos" Entry Ratio
New Testament and Patristic evidence suggests that "conversion" was rarely an individualistic act.
• Household Baptisms: In the cases of Lydia, the Philippian Jailer, and Stephanus (Acts 16, 1 Cor 1), the text records one primary "believer" followed by the immediate baptism of the entire household (oikos).
• The 4-to-1 Rule: In the Roman world, a household included children, dependents, and extended family. For every one adult "convert," an average of 3 to 4 Covenant children/dependents were entered into the community of faith.
• Secondary Conversion: Many "converts" were actually pagan husbands "won over without a word" by their Christian wives (1 Peter 3:1). Their children, born into these mixed-but-Christianizing homes, were raised as Covenant members from infancy.

The Biological Advantage
Rodney Stark’s research highlights that the early Church didn't just win souls; it out-bred and out-lived the pagan world:
1. Anti-Infanticide: Pagans frequently practiced "exposure" (infanticide), especially of females. Christians banned the practice. This led to a higher percentage of Christian (as opposed to pagan) women surviving to reproductive age.

2. Differential Survival: During the plagues of AD 165 and 251, Christian mortality was 60% lower than pagan mortality due to basic nursing care. This preserved the existing "Covenant" base while the "Conversion" pool (paganism) was decimated.

II. The Medieval and Colonial Eras: The Era of Inertia
Once Christianity became the established faith of Europe (c. 5th century), the "Adult Convert" category virtually disappeared for nearly a thousand years.
• The "Corpus Christianum": In Christendom, to be born was to be baptized. From AD 500 to 1500, the Covenant share of entrants was effectively 100%.
• Tribal Conversion: Even on the frontiers (Germanic/Slavic tribes), "conversion" was a one-time tribal event. Within 30 years of a King’s baptism, the entire region transitioned to a pure Covenant-nurture model.

III. The Modern Explosion: The "Post-1800" Weight
The final proof of the 95%+ thesis lies in Modern Demographics. Most Christians who have ever lived are modern.
• The Population Weight: Total humans ever lived is ~110 billion. Total Christians ever lived is ~8 billion. Because the global population surged from 1 billion to 8 billion after the year 1800, nearly 65% of all Christians in history lived in the last two centuries.
• Natural Increase vs. Missions: Even in the height of the "Missionary Century," the number of children born to Christian parents in Europe, the Americas, and increasingly the Global South, outpaced net adult converts by roughly 20-to-1.

The "Ever-Lived" Christian Ledger (Consolidated Estimate)
📷 Pioneer Era (AD 33–313)
Main Driver: Household Baptisms & Higher Survival
Adult Converts: ~20%
Covenant Nurture: ~80%

📷 Establishment Era (313–1500)
Main Driver: Cultural Inheritance & Christendom
Adult Converts: ~1%
Covenant Nurture: ~99%

📷 Expansion Era (1500–1900)
Main Driver: Biological Growth & Global Migration
Adult Converts: ~4%
Covenant Nurture: ~96%

📷 Global Era (1900–Present)
Main Driver: Modern Population Surge
Adult Converts: ~5%
Covenant Nurture: ~95%

Conclusion
The data is consistent: the "Missionary" is the catalyst, but the "Mother" is the sustainer. While adult conversion is the vital mechanism for breaking into new cultures, Covenant Nurture is the mechanism by which the Kingdom of God actually populates the earth.

[Wes Baker @swesleybaker]

@akafaceUS In Texas, it is traditionally called a “tank”, from the Spanish word “estanque” which means “pond”.

[Wes Baker @swesleybaker]

The title “Christos” refers to the Logos ensarkos. The Logos asarkos became the Christos when he assumed flesh. It’s axiomatic that whatever the Christos rules he rules as the God-man, the New Adam.

The most fundamental of all Christian confessions is that the Christos is universal Lord, not merely that the Logos is Lord. The idea that the Logos ensarkos rules the church while the Logos asarkos rules everything else is a christological error.

[Wes Baker @swesleybaker]

https://t.co/gz2lJKeBwV

[Wes Baker @swesleybaker]

How many professing Christian’s have there ever been?

How many of these were nurtured in Christian families as covenant children as opposed to the number of adult conversions from complete unbelief?

Answer: 95% covenant nurture growth and 5% conversion from unbelieving background.

[Wes Baker @swesleybaker]

This is a hugely important factor in missiology and church growth. Evangelizing outsiders is always important. If our spirituality is not “evangelistic” then it is simply a defective form of spirituality. In other words, simply as a spiritual discipline, bearing witness to Jesus is of immense importance.

It’s also important because sort of like financial investments, each converted outsider yields exponential growth in the following decades and centuries.

But, recent missiology has dramatically underestimated the importance of covenant nurture for the long term health and growth of the church.

The call to make disciples has been so individualized that we have largely ignored the importance of covenant nurture FOR MISSIOLOGY.

Imagining that growth and missional expansion begins and ends with outward focused evangelism is a form of enlightenment individualism gone to seed.

I would not say for a second that outward focused evangelism is unimportant. On the contrary it is essential to the faith. But, 95% of all Christians that have ever lived came to faith through covenant nurture. It is safe to say that some of the biggest voices in missions and evangelism in recent decades have had a huge blind spot in their failure to make the nurturing of covenant families a key part of their proposals for church planting and missions.

[Wes Baker @swesleybaker]

@ZacharyGarris If openness to procreation is essential to the purpose of marriage (WCF 24.2) what should we think of the marriage vows of those who take them with the full intention not to have children (which I have seen celebrated by many couples)?

[Anthony Bradley @drantbradley]

I will debate any pastor in America on issue: this is 1000x better than youth group. I have data! In my latest post, is data showing why no youth ministry in the world could ever be more faith-effective than boys signing with just the men once a week (a girls with older women).

[Wes Baker @swesleybaker]

Even the way we use the phrase “pre incarnate Christ” can be quite misleading. The Logos became Christos in time. To use the title in reference to the Logos asarkos is fine as an example of prolepsis (like saying President Ford was born in Omaha when he was not at that time President or even named “Ford”) but if taken as technical christology is quite a serious blunder.

[Wes Baker @swesleybaker]

The fundamental gospel confession is not that the Logos Asarkos is Lord. Christos is a mediatorial title of the Logos Ensarkos. The Lordship of Christ that we confess is a function of his resurrected, glorious humanity. The gospel proclaims him as Lord not because he is God but because he is the true Adam.

[Wes Baker @swesleybaker]

Mearsheimer and Sachs’s contrarianism is increasingly difficult for Europeans to ignore. Whatever one thinks of Trump these two have gone from being pesky academic iconoclasts to frightful Jeremiah figures.

Europe's Worst Nightmare Began When The United States Withdrew From NAT... https://t.co/yxW3l2GTri via @YouTube

[Wes Baker @swesleybaker]

Political theology requires a social ontology. God spoke the physical world into existence. His image bearers speak the social world into existence. Minds unite to create language, corporate intentionality and corporate personality. Social ethics and politics are the rules that preserve and maintain corporate intentionality and personality. Our current discussions of political theology will be superficial and deeply impoverished to the extent that we fail to imbed them within these fundamental notions.

[Wes Baker @swesleybaker]

The point that “father” is ANE covenantal language is very helpful. The additional layer that the article only hints at could perhaps be brought out more explicitly:

Messiah is not only a covenantal Father par excellence. He can be that specifically because he is “Immanuel” and “mighty God” and “everlasting.” In other words, he can be Father par excellence not because he is identified with the first person of the Trinity, but because he is identified with the divine essence or the Godhead in general. The point is precisely what we find in Nazianzen and in several of post reformation divines. “Father” is not only a personal title for the first Person of the Trinity. It is also an essential title for the Godhead in general. To call Messiah “Father” does not confuse the persons but fully identifies Messiah with the Fatherly divine essence, i.e., with the Godhead in general.

[Wes Baker @swesleybaker]

Have you read WL Craig’s recent book on the atonement? I heard him express great surprise that what he had always read about Grotius was wrong and that he was pleasantly surprised at how orthodox he was. Given Craig’s Arminianism I’m not sure how much that is worth but I thought it was an interesting comment.

[Wes Baker @swesleybaker]

@Yayay82827 @AJWTheology Andrew Steinmann is very helpful on this

[Wes Baker @swesleybaker]

@PLeithart Where else we gonna put it?