A Collection of Reflections and Arguments on Baptism
with special attention on infant baptism
Addressing Bad Arguments for Credobaptism
If you're a credobaptist because no one can show you a place or example in the Bible where an infant is baptized, then you also must deny communion to women based on the same interpretive principle given that we have no explicit example of that practice either.
If you're a credobaptist because you think all the examples of baptism in the NT are of people who hear the gospel, believe, and profess faith, don't forget that the focus of the New Testament is on the conversion of Gentiles and don't forget about household baptisms. God often saves by household.
If you're a credobaptist because you think baptism is a way you publicly proclaim your faith and identify with Jesus, please understand that God's covenant signs and seals have always been primarily about God communicating his promises to us. Baptism is a visible word, and like with preaching, we are to respond by receiving those promises by faith. Sometimes we respond to God’s word by faith years after we hear the word.
If you're a credobaptist because you think it was the practice of the early church, please understand that it wasn't. Delayed baptism in the early church was due to problematic views of what baptism accomplished not the reasoning of the 17th century Baptists.
If you're a credobaptist because you think the New Covenant differs from the Old in that every person in the New Covenant community is regenerate and has the Holy Spirit and therefore only professing Christians should be baptized, please read my own story from this background.
If you’re a credobaptist because you think Jeremiah 31:34 teaches that the New Covenant Community is entirely regenerate, then read this article demonstrating that Jeremiah is talking abt the community knowing the Lord without distinctions not exceptions. (See also this article on Jeremiah 31:31-34)
If you're a credobaptist because there are biblical examples that call people to "repent and be baptized," notice that these are examples of evangelization of adult converts and not teachings for Christian families about the proper subjects of baptism.
If you're a credobaptist because the word baptism means to immerse and therefore cannot apply to the baptism of children, then know that many Christians baptize infants by immersion and that there are several New Testament uses that don't mean immerse (1 Cor 10:2; Heb 9:10; Mark 7:4).
If you're a credobaptist because the church is the community of faith and you don't think children can have faith, you need to listen more carefully to how the children of believers are viewed throughout Scripture (Ps 22:9-10; 71:5-6).
If you're a credobaptist because you think immersion is the best or only proper mode of baptism and that sprinkling or pouring is wrong, remember that the paradigmatic baptism of the Holy Spirit was by pouring (Acts 1:5,8; 2:3) and that the New Covenant promise was to be cleansed by sprinkling (Ez 36:25).
If you're a credobaptist because you think circumcision was a sign of national inclusion while baptism is a sign of spiritual inclusion, don't miss that the New Covenant does not overturn familial inclusion in the covenant people of God but the exclusion of Gentiles nations from that covenant.
Calvin on Infant Baptism, Regeneration, and Faith:
In Book 4.16.17-20 of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin addresses the claim infants are incapable of faith and thus undeserving of admittance to the church through baptism.
Section 17 argues that though covenant children are born in Adam and in need of union with Christ, God’s power to regenerate is not annulled.
Calvin notes that God provides proof of this in John the Baptist. He says this doesn’t mean God usually deals with infants this way, but it is wicked to impose narrow limits on how God may work. He saves as He pleases.
Section 18 argues that Christ himself had faith from the womb, and that regeneration through the preaching of the word (1 Pet. 1:23) does not negate God’s power to regenerate infants in any way he pleases.
Section 19 further argues that though infants can’t understand preaching, texts like Romans 10:17, though teaching the ordinary means of regeneration for those capable of hearing and reasoning, should not be seen as the only way God brings this about. God may bring direct inner illumination.
Calvin notes that this infant faith brought about by inner illumination may not be the same faith or faith with the same knowledge as those who come to believe through preaching, but it’d be arrogant to say this with certainty.
Section 20 notes that circumcision was also about faith and repentance and concludes: “To sum up,…infants are baptized into future repentance and faith, and even though these have not yet been formed in them, the seed of both lies hidden within them by the secret working of the Spirit.”
On the Members of the Biblical Covenants
A close reading of the relevant Scripture texts demonstrates that all the major covenants in Scripture include descendants as parties to the covenant. In fact, a relational arrangement is not a covenant if it doesn’t include descendants.
Edenic - Gen 1-3
Noahic - Gen 9:8-9
Abrahamic - Gen 12, 15, 17
Mosaic - Ex 31:13 & Deut 6:1-9
Davidic - 2 Sam 7:12
New - Is 59:21; 61:8-9 (c.f. 54:13); Jer 32:38-40; Ez 37:25; Acts 2:39
Sinclair Ferguson: '“If the children of believers aren't included in the new covenant promise, it doesn't even qualify as a covenant.”
Why not? A summary of his argument by Matthew Roberts:
“God created mankind with particular blessing on marriage and children. This blessing is included in the covenant he made with Adam in Eden. The satanic attack on man and his sinful response issued in the covenant curses of Eden, which particularly applied to these two blessings: the marriage relationship, and the bearing of children. God's gracious response is in the covenant of grace in which the original blessings of the covenant are restated to Adam and his seed, to be won for them by the coming seed of the woman who will crush the seed of the serpent. All of God's covenants, without exception, include blessing to the seed because this is the restoration of the original creation blessing on mankind. So much so that ‘the believer in biblical times would have regarded the inclusion of the coming generations in the promise as belonging to the nature of a covenant; without this, it would not qualify as a covenant.’ Thus the view that children were included in the Old Covenant because it was old is entirely mistaken. They were not included because it was old, but because it was a covenant; not because it is outdated, but simply because it was gracious. For grace is about the restoration of nature. Bavinck: ‘grace runs in the dried-up riverbeds of nature.’ So the natural blessing on children is and must be restored for grace to be grace. Thus for the new covenant in Christ even to qualify as a covenant it must include the children of those included in it. This is embedded in Peter's sermon at Pentecost, as much as it was in the new covenant chapters Jeremiah 31-32. The practice of infant baptism is therefore rooted in the very nature of covenant, and of grace, as the whole Bible envisions it.”
On Baptism and the Individualism of Modernity
Modernity shifted the epistemic starting point to the individual away from the received tradition of the community. The revivalist stream of evangelicalism followed suit and rejected the covenant family as a basis for assuming a person is a Christian.
Now, after 100 years or more of revivalism and youth groups, we have a crisis of young adults leaving the faith of their parents because they were never considered members of or practically engaged in the church.
You can’t solve the problem with more of the same thing that caused the problem in the first place. We must return to ancient conceptions of faith, baptism (of infants), and catechesis.
We need pastors of courage grounded in faith that God will use the ordinary means.
Todd Hains On the Scandal of Rebaptism
“To rebaptize is to contradict this word of our God. And that’s the problem with rebaptism. Rebaptism assumes that God’s word depends on our understanding (and for some on the person who administers baptism). Rebaptism implies that our previous baptism didn’t work or was somehow inadequate, because we didn’t properly understand it, or maybe because the church we were baptized in had a different understanding of baptism than we do now.”
On My Shift from a Credo- to Paedobaptism
I changed my mind on baptism (from credo- to paedo-) largely because I began to see that in both the Old & New Testaments, Scripture regards children as little Christians and encourages Christian parents to regard their offspring as insiders to the covenant until proven otherwise.
As Herman Witsius puts it: "God has given that pledge to pious parents that they may regard their little ones as the children of God by gracious adoption, until, when further advanced, they betray themselves by indications to the contrary, ...and that they may feel not less secure regarding their children dying in infancy than did Abraham and Isaac of old." This is, in part, what Paul means in 1 Cor. 7:14 that children of a believing parent are holy. Baptists were right to challenge the way the Church had blended this covenantal Christian identity with national citizenship. In other words, state churches carried this assumption too far, extending it to any person born under the reign of a Christian magistrate. But their challenge went too far and invented a very narrow conception of regeneration and conversion, which was adopted more broadly by British and American evangelicalism. Rather than regarding the children of believers as little believers until proven otherwise, they were viewed with equal skepticism as the children of non-Christians and required to have an individual, cognitively mature, and intentional decision to follow Christ before they are regarded as Christians. This overreaction has caused unnecessary anxiety for covenant children who feel pressured to have a crisis experience that guarantees they are really Christians with genuine faith. Yet every advance in understanding brings with it the doubt that they were ever truly saved to begin with.
The important correction of evangelicalism has gone too far.
To add another important and related point, the preaching of John the Baptist did not BREAK the link between physical descent and the children of Abraham. Rather, he confronted presumption in those that did not believe and clung to their sin. This was a key insight for me in embracing infant baptism.
Peter Leithart on Credobaptist’s Catholicity Problem
Below is a summary of this essay on baptism & catholicity by Peter Leithart, which is the best and most concise argument I’ve read demonstrating that credobaptists are insufficiently catholic.
“Baptismal theology and practice decide the boundaries of the church.”
“Paedobaptism best expresses the multidimensional catholicity of the church. Negatively, I argue that credo- or believer's baptism is necessarily sub catholic. I do not make judgments about Baptist individuals or churches, which often breathe a generous catholic spirit. My argument is about Baptist theology of baptism, and the ecclesiology it implies.”
“Baptists and paedobaptists agree in principle that there is one church throughout all time, stretching back to the earliest moments of the human race. Baptist theology, however, undermines that affirmation at a fundamental level.”
“Baptists affirm that the church consists of all sorts and conditions of men, but to some degree, baptismal practice is at odds with Baptist ecclesiology. In practice, certain individuals are excluded from baptism, not because they are unconverted but because of their immaturity or disability. A Reformed Baptist might well admit God is fully capable of regenerating a two-year-old child and would insist that this child is a member of the church by virtue of that regeneration. Until the child has the mental and linguistic capacity to confess, however, he cannot receive the visible mark of membership. In God’s eyes, he is a beloved child; in the eyes of the church, he is an outsider—beloved certainly as a child, but an outsider to the people of God…What is temporarily true for infants is true permanently for certain severely mentally handicapped people.”
“The main thrust of my argument is otherwise. Baptism is the church’s welcome of all sorts and conditions of men, of all tribes and tongues and nations. Baptism is the ritual sign that the church is the community of God’s weakness, where not many wise, not many high-born, and not many elites assemble so the Father can elevate them as priests and kings in Christ. Baptism is the clothing that covers the shameful members in the glory-robe of Christ Himself. Paedobaptism extends this welcome to the very least—the most needy and vulnerable—and so ritualizes the socio-political catholicity of the church. Paedobaptism thus expresses the sociopolitical catholicity of the church. Baptist theology, in short, reverts to the nature-grace dualism that the Reformation began to overcome.”
“This does not mean Baptist families are irreligious as families, or that Baptist children before baptism are not being socialized. Baptist families, not merely the individual members, are religious, for good or ill. Baptist children are being socialized, but they are not socialized in a systematically and explicitly Christian manner because they are officially outsiders to the kingdom.”
“The order of redemption follows the order of creation; in both cases, we are thrown into situations that are not of our own choosing, and in both cases, our religious identity is initially not a matter of our consent and choice. Paedobaptism is not only more catholic but more real, more attuned to the patterns of created human existence, than credobaptism.”
“To put it succinctly, paedobaptism affirms that groups as groups are redeemable, institutions as institutions can be conformed to the commandments of Jesus. And that means that paedobaptism confesses intensive catholicity with a clarity and power unavailable within Baptist theology.”
“In no respect can a consistent Baptist fully affirm the full catholicity of the church. On Baptist premises, most of the church in most periods of history have been without baptism, and most Christians living today worship in churches without baptism. On Baptist premises, most Christians throughout the centuries have been unbaptized. Baptist theology cannot embrace all sorts and conditions of men without significant adjustment, since it excludes the weakest and most vulnerable from full membership in the body of Christ. Baptist theology cannot affirm the intensive catholicity of the gospel or the church, since it cannot consistently claim human groups and institutions can be subdued to the Lordship of Christ.”
Conclusion:
“Baptists cannot consistently confess the catholic creeds, with their statement of belief in ‘one, holy, catholic, apostolic’ church. So long they continue to affirm credobaptism, they should, to be consistent, give up this part of the third article of the creed.”
“Paedobaptists, by contrast, have a theology and sacramental practice consistent with the catholic creeds, and so can confess, without reservation, the ‘one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.’”