In Defense of Paedobaptism

Defining Terms

In this post I make an argument for paedobaptism from a theological, historical, and biblical perspective. Before plunging into why I, an ex-Restoration Movement adherent, am now baptizing my children as a staunch Presbyterian, let’s be sure to define our terms:

Credobaptism teaches that only those who credibly and consciously profess faith in Christ are valid subjects for baptism. This is often called ‘believer’s baptism.’

Paedobaptism teaches that infants of at least one believing parent are valid subjects of baptism. This does not exclude the baptism of adults who convert to Christianity and who have never been baptized; nor does it include infants who do not have at least one believing parent.

The approach one takes is often determined by their understanding of baptism. Below are four contemporary understandings of baptism. It is the fourth approach that this defense will take.

Baptismal Regeneration teaches that it is in baptism that we are born again. Baptism saves us. It has its own paper to effect change in a person irrespective of any other factors. The Roman Catholic Church teaches this; in their view, baptism, like every other sacrament, conveys and infuses real grace to a person.

‘Soft’ Baptismal Regeneration teaches that baptism is the moment in time at which we are saved. Faith is needed, and it is priority, but baptism is the point in time in which our faith is credited to us as righteousness. It is the point in time when we are forgiven of sin, receive the Holy Spirit, become members of the New Covenant, are adopted into God’s family, etc. A faithless person can be baptized and it will have no effect (in opposition to baptismal regeneration proper), but a faithful person who does not undergo baptism will be condemned because he has not been baptized. This approach is taken by hardline Church of Christ or Restoration Movement churches in the United States. Hardliners reject infant baptism – for you need to have the ability to understand and profess the faith to be baptized – but go further than Baptists in that they attribute salvific properties to baptism (they are closer to Roman Catholicism than they would like to admit!). In every presentation on the order of salvation, these hardliners present baptism as the final step or even the fulcrum upon which one’s salvation hang. Some Restoration Movement folk go so hard as to teach that you must be fully immersed for the salvation to be effective; if even a pinky is left above the baptismal waters, you will spend eternity in the new heavens and new earth missing your pinky!

Baptism as a Sign and Seal of Regeneration is the classic Baptist approach. Baptism (which must be by immersion) is an outward symbol of an inward reality (i.e. salvation). One is saved by faith in Christ; baptism itself does not save you. But the saved person must be baptized to publicly declare his faith and to show what has happened to him: he has been born again. Going under the water symbolizes joining Christ in death, and coming up out of the water symbolizes joining in Christ’s resurrection. Baptism is to be administered only to professing Christians, which makes Baptists credobaptist.

Baptism as a Sign and Seal of Covenant Membership is the approach taken by most heritage Reformation movement churches, and it’s the approach defended here. Baptism is the new circumcision, serving as a boundary marker for who is In and who is Out of the covenant. One’s membership in the covenant is completely dependent upon Christ’s work in his life, death, and resurrection. Those who receive covenant membership with its attendant blessings, responsibilities, and even curses are those who receive baptism. One can hold this view and be credobaptist or paedobaptist, but all paedobaptists hold this view. This view is rotted in covenant theology, which is spelled out in a little more detail below. Paedobaptists don’t argue that all babies should be baptized, only those belonging to at least one parent who belongs to the New Covenant. Adult converts will obviously undergo baptism upon profession of faith. Some have alleged that paedobaptists are just closeted Roman Catholics; this is due to the fact that both paedobaptists and Catholics baptize babies. One must remember that the theology behind paedobaptism for Catholics and the Reformed is different: Catholics baptize babies to save them (baptismal regeneration) whereas Protestant paedobaptists baptize babies because those selfsame babies are members of the covenant and thus qualify as recipients of baptism.

Baptism as a Sacrament

Sacraments are ‘signs and seals of the covenant of grace’ that God has commanded us to practice. Sacraments are signs in that by them something else is known; a sign is a declaration, but the declaration concerns not itself but that which it signifies. Sacraments declare or ‘make known’ the saving grace of God; the saving grace and the sacrament are not the same thing. Sacraments are also seals; a seal is something that authenticates or confirms that to which it is affixed. A college diploma is affixed with an official seal; no one would say the diploma makes a person educated but, rather, the diploma authenticates the graduate as an educated fellow.

Now, it’s important to understand that the signs and seals are not the same thing as those things they declare and authenticate. Rome makes this error with its doctrine of baptismal regeneration in that they equate the sign and seal (baptism) with that which is declared or authenticated (the saving grace of God). This is an easy trap to fall into due to the way that Scripture often links the sign or seal with that which it declares and authenticates; for examples, Acts 22:16 commands sinners to ‘arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins,’ and 1 Peter 3:21 speaks of that ‘which now saves us – baptism.’ On first glance it may appear as if baptism confers saving grace, but what’s really happening is that the relation between the visible and the invisible (the sacrament on the one hand and the grace of God on the other) is such that ‘the names and effects of the one are attributed to the other’ (from the Westminster Confession of Faith). Indeed, 1 Peter 3:21 makes sense only in this context, for why would Peter deny that baptism saves us by cleansing away the filth of the flesh, unless he was aware that his mode of expression might lead some to suppose that the sign itself could save? The real cleansing is in ‘the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit’ (Titus 3:5); baptism is a sign and seal of that act of God’s grace.

Roman Catholics teach that there are seven sacraments: baptism, the Lord’s Supper, confirmation, penance, extreme unction, orders, and marriage. The Reformed position is that there are only two sacraments, baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Rome adds sacraments to what Scripture commands whereas the Reformed view teaches that the way of worshipping God is prescribed by Scripture, and we don’t have the authority to add to or subtract from what the Lord has commanded. Therefore we have two legitimate sacraments: baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The Reformed view goes even further in stating that there have only been two essential sacraments throughout the history of the Church, under both the Old and New Covenants. In the Old Testament you had circumcision and Passover; in the New Testament you have baptism and the Lord’s Supper. It isn’t that God did away with the Old Covenant sacraments and added two new ones in their place; rather, under the New Covenant, the bloody sacraments of the Old Testament were superseded by two bloodless signs. In the words of G.I. Williamson, ‘The new is in the old concealed, and the old is in the new revealed.’

Bloodless baptism has superseded bloody circumcision, and though there are significant differences, there are more similarities. Both were administered only once to a member of the covenant; both are administered (we would argue) to believers and their children; both are a picture of our union with God; and in both the recipient is wholly passive (the one who is circumcised has the act done to him by a religious leader; the one who is baptized has the act done to him by a religious leader). In both baptism and circumcision, the recipient receives something that someone else has performed. In the same way, the bloody Passover has been replaced by the bloodless Lord’s Supper. Both Passover and the Lord’s Supper are administered repeatedly to each person; these sacraments are for believers only; both give us a picture of the maintenance of our union with God; and in both the recipient is an active participant. The continuity between the Old and New Covenant sacraments is evident in Scripture; for example, in 1 Corinthians 10:2 Paul speaks of the Israelites being baptized whereas they were actually circumcised; in Colossians 2:11 Paul says that the Colossian Christians were circumcised whereas they were actually baptized; and in 1 Corinthians 5:7 Paul speaks of the Corinthians as having Passover though we know they were practicing the Lord’s Supper. The Westminster Confession of Faith puts it this way: ‘The sacraments of the Old Testament, in regard of the spiritual things thereby signified… were, for substance, the same with those of the New.’ Ultimately baptism is linked with circumcision, and the Lord’s Supper with Passover, because they sustain the same spiritual relation to the same grace; because, as we have seen, that grace can be spoken of by means of the name of the sacrament related to it, then the name of the one sacrament can be applied to the other.

The Meaning of Baptism

The sacrament of baptism is rich in meaning: it testifies to one’s admittance into the visible church, to the grace of the covenant, to regeneration, to remission of sins, and to the duties of obedience. It is a sign and seal of not just one aspect of grace or covenant privilege but of the whole system itself; in the words of G.I. Williamson, ‘Baptism is, as it were, a great “motion picture” which shows forth the great work of God whereby sinners are brought into living union with Christ and with God.’ Because baptism is so multifaceted, New Testament writers are free to showcase various aspects of its meaning depending on the contexts they’re addressing; for example, in Acts 2:38 Peter emphasizes ‘the remission of sins’ and the ‘gift of the Holy Spirit.’ In Titus 3:5 Paul emphasizes the ‘washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit,’ whereas in Romans 4:12 he emphasizes our covenant obligation to walk in ‘newness of life.’ However, though baptism is a sign and seal of much associated with salvation, the overarching big-picture meaning is that of our union with Christ and the Triune God. Reformed covenant theologians locate the main meaning of baptism in this union, so that baptism is less a ‘statement of faith’ (in the credobaptist position) than an assumption of identity; to put it another way, baptism is a sign and seal of one’s covenantal inclusion in the New Covenant, in the same way that circumcision was a sign and seal of covenant inclusion under the Old Covenant (more on this anon).

The Historical Argument

Up until the AD 400s, historical evidence for infant baptism is scant, leading credobaptists to argue that the general practice was believer’s baptism until Emperor Constantine made Christianity acceptable in the Roman Empire; at that point, the argument goes, paedobaptism began leeching into the church (it should be noted that Constantine is used as a breadbasket for introducing all sorts of weird ideas into the church, such as replacing believer’s baptism with infant baptism, but his reputation has more to do with lore than historical fact). What is known for certain is that after Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD), who in many ways ‘pioneered’ the doctrines of Original Sin and the Doctrine of Grace – paedobaptism became the universal practice of the ancient and medieval church.

But what about those 400 years prior to Augustine? It must unashamedly be admitted that pre-Augustinian documents give overwhelming evidence of adult baptism (as well as people delaying baptism well into their adult lives). On the face this supports credobaptism as the historical precedent in the early church, but a few things should be kept in mind:

(a) The first centuries of the Christian faith were missional in scope; people were converting to Christianity as the gospel spread throughout the known world. The stories of this time period, such as those found in the Acts of the Apostles, are stories of the triumph of the gospel and the conversion of pagans to the true faith. It is less about the generational faithfulness of Christians; these stories would take time to develop, since there had not yet been time for multiple generations of faithful Christians to take root. If infant baptism was practiced, it was overshadowed by the baptism of adult converts. As territory became Christianized, the balance shifted from the baptism of converting adults to the baptism of infants belonging to believing adults. As most of society became Christian, you thus would have fewer converts but more children being brought up in the faith.

(b) There are no extant historical documents from this time period that are polemical against infant baptism. If the early church were credobaptist, you would expect polemic attacks against infant baptism, given the Jewish roots of the Christian faith. Under the Old Covenant, children were members of the covenant with all attendant privileges and responsibilities, and by circumcision they were marked as belonging to the covenant. With the New Covenant, if children were excluded from the covenant until making a profession of faith, you would see a lot of back-and-forth between Jewish and Gentile Christians on a child’s position in the covenant. We don’t see any of this. Among the church fathers, there is not a single voice against the lawfulness and the apostolic origin of infant baptism; even Tertullian, who is often quoted as being against infant baptism, argues against paedobaptism only from the position of its expediency, not its lawfulness.

(c) We see evidence of the delaying of baptism in the early church which was likely due to the erroneous belief that since baptism washed away all previous sins, future sins were not covered by baptism. Thus if you were a young man, the argument goes, you would do well to postpone baptism until you’re beyond the ‘fires’ of your youthful lusts. Constantine is an example of this: his baptism late in life doesn’t come from a lack of belief in the gospel but because he wanted to ensure he was saved and covered as many sins as possible. Augustine’s systematic and robust development of the Doctrines of Grace from the Scriptures showed such a practice to be unbiblical.

All this isn’t to say that there is absolutely no evidence of baptism in the early church. Our argument is that infant baptism was practiced in the early church but conversion baptisms remained prevalent as the gospel advanced and built by the conquest of conversion rather than by the conquest of generational faithfulness. Our first clear source on infant baptism is an opponent of it around AD 250, but sources from 250 show that support for infant baptism was widespread and most Christians regarded the practice as uncontroversial tradition with apostolic origins. Below are just a few examples of ancient writings prior to Augustine that reference infant baptism in some way:

(a) Irenaeus (ca AD 150) was a student of Polycarp; Polycarp was a student of the Apostle John. Irenaeus writes in 185 AD that Christ passed through all the stages of life, to sanctify them all, and came to redeem, through himself, all who through him are born again unto God: infants, children, boys, youth, and adults. Irenaeus specifically notes that infants are ‘born again,’ and until the heyday of the pietists of the 1600s, the phrase ‘born again’ was used synonymously with baptism.

(b) Origen (ca AD 200) spent half his life in Alexandria, Egypt, and his writings give us a window into early Egyptian Christianity. Origen distinctly traces infant baptism to the tradition of the Apostles. In multiple places he treats infant baptism as traditional, customary, and apostolic in origin. In his Homilies on Leviticus, for instance, he writes, ‘According to the usage of the Church, baptism is given even to infants.’ In his Commentaries on Romans, he writes, ‘The Church received from the apostles the tradition of giving baptism even to infants.’

(c) The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus (AD 215) is a baptismal text laying out how to conduct Christian baptisms. It states, ‘Baptize first the children, and if they can speak for themselves let them do so. Otherwise, let their parents or other relatives speak for them.’ If the Christian practice were believer’s baptism (baptism upon profession of faith), then a child who could not profess would not be eligible for baptism; but here a child unable to speak for themselves – which we can assume would include infants or young toddlers – are vouchsafed by their parents or relatives, and their baptism is considered lawful.

(d) Tertullian (ca AD 220) was opposed to infant baptism, albeit on faulty grounds: because he believed that it conveyed the grace that washed away sins, and that sins following baptism are held against the person’s account, he advocated the delaying of baptism in order to preserve the soul of the child. In his thinking, baptizing an infant was almost a cruelty, for they yet had so many sins to be stacked against them! In writing against infant baptism, he argues against it using religious prudence rather than Scripture or historical precedence. He writes about infant baptism as if it were no innovation but a prevalent custom.

(e) Cyprian (ca AD 250) was Tertullian’s disciple, but he differed from his teacher on the subject of infant baptism. For Cyprian the issue wasn’t whether or not an infant of a believing parent should be baptized (on this all were agreed!) but on the timing of that child’s baptism. Should they be baptized the second or third day after birth or, according to the precedence of Jewish circumcision, on the eighth day after birth? This question itself links the early Christian understanding of baptism with that of circumcision, which will come into play when we look at the Scriptural justification for infant baptism. The question of the timing of infant baptism so rattled the church that in AD 253 a church council was held in Carthage under Cyprian’s lead; this council debated not the practice of paedobaptism but its timing, indicating that it was a normative practice.

(f) Gregory of Nazianzum (ca AD 350) suggested putting off the baptism of infants, unless their lives were endangered, until their third year. Gregory was operating from the same paradigm as Origen; if baptism truly washes away sins, then it might make sense to delay baptism (unless the child’s life was at stake). This shows that a century after the Council of Carthage, the timing of infant baptism remained a hot topic. Gregory also shows us, by arguing for the putting off of baptism until toddler age, that children were routinely baptized as infants.

(g) The golden-tongued John Chrysostom (ca AD 375) was perhaps the most famous preacher of the early church. In his Baptismal Catecheses in Augustine, Chrysostom writes, ‘You see how many are the benefits of baptism, and some think its heavenly grace consists only in the remission of sins, but we have enumerated ten honors [it bestows]! For this reason we baptize even infants, though they are not defiled by [personal] sins, so that there may be given to them holiness, righteousness, adoption, inheritance, brotherhood with Christ, and that they may be his [Christ’s] members.’ Again we see that infant baptism was practiced in the early church. Even in the ancient church, there was the concept that baptism was the initiation rite into the community of faith, and infants born into that community are baptized because they are already a part of that community.

(h) When Augustine came onto the scene, then, he didn’t ‘invent’ infant baptism as some credobaptists will argue. Neither did he borrow it from the surrounding pagan culture; it had been a longstanding, traditional, normative practice for the early church for hundreds of years. Augustine simply defended its practice and brought doctrinal clarity to the practice. In AD 400 writes that infant baptism was not ‘[invented] by councils’ but was ‘something always held’ that was ‘most correctly believed to have been handed down by apostolic authority.’ Eight years later he writes, ‘The custom of Mother Church in baptizing infants is certainly not to be scorned, nor is it to be regarded in any way as superfluous, nor is it to be believed that its tradition is anything but apostolic.’

Our argument from the ‘weight of history’ is that while believer’s baptisms were prevalent in the early days of the church due to the missional nature of the church’s work in welcoming converts from all over the known world, within the first century and a half we have clear evidence of the widespread practice of infant baptism. We have evidence that infant baptism is linked with covenant membership (in which infants are marked as belonging to the covenant with its attendant privileges and responsibilities), that it was understood as the sequential ‘replacement’ of circumcision for the people of God, and that the church viewed its practice as originating with the apostles and being a normative church practice across Christendom. Augustine clarified the meaning behind infant baptism and set the stage for its doctrinal roots until the Protestant Reformation a thousand years later.

Where, then, did the modern credobaptist position originate? One might think it originated with the Reformers; rejecting the authority of Roman Catholicism and turning to Scripture as the bedrock of beliefs and practices, so the argument goes, the Reformers found Catholic baptismal theology lacking and returned to the credobaptist practice of the early church. While it is true that the Reformation saw a break away from the Roman understanding of infant baptism, the Reformers as a whole did not reject infant baptism; rather, they vigorously defended it with fresh biblical rationale based on covenant theology. No Reformers advocated for the rebaptism of those who received baptism in the pre-Roman church. The ecclesial and theological heirs of the Protestant Reformers (the Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Anglicans, for example) continue the practice of infant baptism this day.

It was the Radical Reformers (also known as the ‘Anabaptists’) who spearheaded modern credobaptism. In the 1420s, the fanatical Thomas Muenzer won himself a loyal following in his opposition to civil and religious authority, the doctrine of Original Sin, all sexual desire, and infant baptism. His keelhauling of every tradition attracted lots of followers and copycats, and this trend was picked up by a number of Swiss, German, and Dutch Anabaptists. These Radical Reformers were lambasted by both the Roman Catholics and mainline Reformers. The Catholics and Reformers agreed that rejecting infant baptism was a shameless affront to the historic, traditional, and apostolic teachings of the church. The Anabaptists are the showrunners for a form of credobaptism, but modern Baptist origins are found not in the Anabaptists but in the English Reformation of the 16th and 17th centuries (Anabaptist heirs include the Mennonite and Amish churches). Because the modern credobaptist position wasn’t articulated until the 1600s, there is no real historical precedent for credobaptism prior to the early modern world, and credobaptism in its current Baptist form was hardly practiced outside England until it spread to the English colonies in the early 1600s. Thus we can confidently

Biblical Arguments

The ultimate question is, ‘Should infants be baptized?’ Baptists argue that adults (or youth who are able to make a reasonable profession of faith) are the only right recipients of baptism for two primary reasons: first, infants are incapable of making a reasoned profession of faith, and second, the Scriptures don’t command the baptism of children or infants. We will not make an exhaustive argument from Scripture for the baptism of children, but we aim to show that paedobaptism fits comfortably with the New Testament.

We have already noted how Reformed covenantal theologians view baptism as a sign and seal of one’s membership in God’s covenant community. Covenant theology assumes that what God instituted in the Old Testament continues unless the New Testament specifically abrogates it; thus, since infants were given the sign and seal of circumcision to show their inclusion in the Old Covenant, so children of believing parents should be given the sign and seal of baptism to show their inclusion in the New Testament. Scriptural support for this view come, for example, from Colossians 2:9-15 (particularly verses 11-12, which link circumcision and baptism) and 1 Corinthians 7:14 (in which the child of a believing spouse is sanctified or made holy; more on this below). It is indirectly argued that if the sign and seal of covenant membership under the New Covenant underwent such drastic changes in its administration (e.g. going from children being included in the covenant to being excluded from it), we would see it addressed in New Testament writings; such a momentous change would stir up at least a little controversy among the Jewish brethren, but in all the controversies of the New Testament, the administration of the sacrament is not one of them! In fact, as we have seen, the only reported controversy on baptism took place in the third century AD and dealt not with whether or not infants should be baptized but with whether infant baptism should take place on the eighth day after birth in continuity with Old Testament circumcision!

This point cannot be stressed enough: if infants under the New Covenant were NOT included in covenant membership, why did the Jewish believers not rise up against the Apostles demanding an explanation? It is difficult for us to imagine the pushback the early church would receive from Jewish converts if they excluded little children from the covenant, and yet we see no pushback on this matter at all! And it wasn’t just the Jewish Christians who would pause at being told their children weren’t included; the stiff patriarchal family system of the Gentiles, particularly the Romans, made it unthinkable that a father would convert to a faith without putting his entire family (over whom he is their head) through the rites. The family would follow the faith of the patriarch, and that patriarch would ensure everyone knew to whom his family belonged. It is unthinkable that a Gentile household converting to the faith would only consider those who had the ability to speak as part of that covenant. The silence of the New Testament on this matter gives weight to the historical argument that the early church routinely and traditionally practiced infant baptism.

In Reformed covenantal theology, the sacrament of circumcision in the Old Covenant is replaced by the sacrament of baptism in the New Covenant. In Genesis 15 God made a covenant with Abraham, and in Genesis 17 the covenant was sealed with the sign of circumcision. God promised to bless Abraham with offspring and land, yet at the heart of the covenant was God’s promise that he would be a God to Abraham and his children. Circumcision wasn’t just a physical cut to mark out ethnic Jews; it was pregnant with spiritual meaning. The circumcision of the flesh was designed to correspond with the circumcision of the heart (Romans 2:25-29). It pointed to humility, new birth, and a new way of life (Leviticus 26:40-42; Deuteronomy 10:16 and 30:6; Jeremiah 4:4, 6:10, and 9:25). One could say that circumcision is a sign of justification; as Paul says in Romans 4:11, Abraham ‘received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.’ God’s own interpretation of circumcision is that it was much more than just a physical sign for ethnic Jews. Circumcision was administered to all converts to Judaism, regardless of their age; and it was administered to the children of believing Jews. Thus we see, in similarity with baptism, adults receiving the practice upon conversion and children of covenant members receiving circumcision eight days after birth. Children today are baptized based on this same covenant with Abraham, and Paul makes clear in Galatians 3 what Peter suggests in Acts 2, that the Abrahamic covenant has not been annulled but is still operational. The basic promise of the Abrahamic covenant doesn’t end with the New Covenant (nor, as dispensationalists will incorrectly argue, does the Abrahamic covenant continue only for the Jews while Gentiles are under a separate covenant initiated by Christ); in reality, the Abrahamic covenant remains in play, and we see it from Genesis through Revelation. God’s covenant with Abraham is eternal and sure, and we (and our children!) are included in that. While there is no Scripture that tells us specifically to baptize our children, we know from Colossians 2:11-12 that circumcision and baptism carry the same ‘spiritual stuff.’ Both are signs and seals of covenant membership; we know the one was administered to children; we know that, for the other, we are not commanded to baptize our children, but we are also not commanded not to; and we know that in the early church, there was no controversy over whether or not children should be baptized. Indeed, in the early church, Jewish converts continued circumcising their kids for a time, but as the church became more Gentile, many Jewish rites were abandoned. Baptism eclipsed circumcision as the sign of renewal, rebirth, and covenant membership.

Reformed paedobaptists allege that children are included in the New Covenant just as they were in the Old Covenant. We have no indication in the New Testament or the early church that their inclusion has changed; and why would the newer and better covenant exclude the children included in the older and worse covenant? In 1 Corinthians 7:14, Paul writes that the children of at least one believing parent are ‘sanctified’ or ‘holy.’ He writes this to comfort believing parents whose spouses are not believers. One must ask what prompted the concern that preempted Paul’s argument; the most reasonable explanation is that it was taught that the children of believing parents are ‘holy’ or ‘set apart’ due to belonging to a covenant household. As part of the covenant household, they are part of the covenant and thus ‘set apart’ from those outside the covenant. The dilemma is what happens when only one parent is a believer, particularly if that parent is the wife? The father is the head of the household, so that what is true of him is true for his household (this is why, as we argued above, it is unthinkable for a husband/father to convert to a faith and not force his household along for the ride); but if the father is not a believer, are his children outside the covenant because he is their head? Is the best-case scenario a half-holy child? No, Paul says! In this case it only takes one to tango. By virtue of one believing parent, a child is considered holy. That this child is unable to make a profession of faith is assumed, for if the child were of discerning age, the concern wouldn’t rest on the faith makeup of the parents but on the decision of the child. All this to say, the sanctification of children in a covenant household harks back to the nature of households in the Old Covenant. Infant children were ‘set apart’ by circumcision to show their membership in the covenant by virtue of their parentage; their parents are in the covenant, so they are in the covenant. This is an act of God’s mercy towards us and His faithfulness over generations. The nature of a covenant household as established in the Old Testament seems to remain in play in the New Testament, or Paul’s encouragement makes no sense.

The idea that children are part of the covenant is unsettling for credobaptists, for they hold that only those who have put their faith in Christ are members of God’s covenant. All covenant members are legitimate and professing Christians; false believers and infants are not part of the covenant. The classic Reformed position rejects this: there is both continuity and discontinuity between the Old Covenant, and one of the continuities is the membership of children in the covenant. That infants of at least one believing parent belong to the covenant makes sense of 1 Corinthians 7:14 (if this were not true, Paul’s words wouldn’t have teeth). In Acts 2:38, Peter commands the guilt-stricken Jews to ‘Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off – for all whom the Lord our God will call.’ Peter’s preaching echoes the call to covenantal membership in Deuteronomy 29:10-12: ‘All of you stand today before the Lord your God: your leaders and your tribes and your elders and your officers, all the men of Israel, your little ones and your wives – also the stranger who is in your camp, from the one who cuts your wood to the one who draws your water – that you may enter into covenant with the Lord your God, and into His oath, which the Lord your God makes with you today…’ Peter, as a good Jewish Christian, knew what he was doing in echoing Deuteronomy 29; he was calling people to the New Covenant, and those whom he called includes ‘your children’ as those valid for covenant membership.

If children are included in the covenant, then how come so many of them go astray? Such is the argument made against children being included in the covenant. Our response is fourfold: (1) this was a reality in the Old Covenant, and the Lord did not seem perturbed by it; (2) this is a reality even in credobaptist churches, for many profess faith, are baptized, but then become apostates – were they ever included in the covenant? and if not, how sure can anyone be that they are part of the covenant?; and (3) the Lord has, in His providence and wisdom, decreed that tares should sprout and grow amongst the wheat; and (4) just as the Old Covenant came with attendant blessings and curses, so it is with the New Covenant: Hebrews 6:4-8 reads: ‘For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame. For the earth which drinks in the rain that often comes upon it, and bears herbs useful for those by whom it is cultivated, receives blessing from God; but if it bears thorns and briers, it is rejected and near to being cursed, whose end is to be burned.’ This passage isn’t about true Christians who fall away from grace; it’s about those who are part of the covenant, who experience many blessings of the covenant – through the faithfulness of the church and godly parents, such covenant members experience a sort of enlightenment, partake of the Holy Spirit, and taste the word of God and the powers to come – but who ultimately reject the faith. A day comes when a covenant child must make a decision: ‘Who will I serve?’ Those who reject the faith disbar themselves from the covenant and subject themselves to the covenant curses. The language of Hebrews 6 echoes that of Deuteronomy in which the Lord laid out the terms of the covenant, blessings and curses, and commanded all Hebrews and their families to undergo the sacraments and become members of the covenant; thus we can reasonably assert that Hebrews 6:4-8 has to do with covenant membership rather than regeneration. (As a sidenote: if that text were about Regeneration, then it would undercut the biblical teaching of Perseverance of the Saints).

A child’s position in the covenant does not secure their immediate salvation. This is a form of continuity between the Old and New covenants. Because circumcision was given to all Hebrew children, even those who rebelled against the faith later in life, we can say with certainty that circumcision did not carry salvific power itself (this isn’t a failure of circumcision but an aspect of its design). Circumcision didn’t automatically mean the recipient of the sign was in possession of the thing signified; circumcision, like baptism, pointed to covenant membership, with its attendant privileges and obligations, and allowed for the future faith that would take hold of the realities symbolized. In the same way that there were people in New Testament times who were circumcised but not really circumcised (Romans 2:25-29), so that they were not truly children of Abraham (Romans 9:6-8), so in our day there are some who are baptized but not truly baptized. Children should be marked as belonging to the covenant, but unless they exercise saving faith, they will not grab hold of the covenant blessings but will be subject to the covenant curses.

The point of this defense of paedobaptism isn’t to give a full-orbed treatment of the subject but to give the highlights. Towards that end, before moving on to the mode of baptism, here are a few other minor arguments in favor of paedobaptism:

(a) Jesus said that God’s saving work is found in children, even in tiny infants (Luke 18:15 and Matthew 19:14). If children and even infants can be members of the kingdom of God, then we can’t argue that they can’t experience that which baptism signs and seals. In Luke 18:15-17, when parents brought their babies to Jesus, the disciples tried to prevent it; but Jesus rebukes them, saying, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.’ Jesus thus confirms that the babies of believers belong to the kingdom of God; they are counted as believers, not unbelievers, and Jesus specifically instructs us not to hinder them.

(b) The apostolic church baptized whole ‘households’ (Acts 16:33; 1 Corinthians 1:16). This term encompasses all members of a household, from infants to the elderly. While these texts don’t specifically mention nor exclude infants, the very use of the term ‘household’ indicates an understanding of the family as a unit. In a patriarchal system like that of the ancient Jews and Romans, a household’s faith is determined by the faith of the patriarch; what is true of him is true of all others in his household. Because infants aren’t mentioned specifically in the New Testament, the most we can say here is that maybe infants were baptized, so maybe we should baptize our own infants. The Reformed position doesn’t hinge on the makeup of these households, but it’s an interesting tidbit.

(c) Paul commands children to obey their parents in the Lord (Ephesians 6:1), and in 1 Corinthians 7:14 are considered holy by virtue of their relation to a believing parent. Children in the church aren’t treated as little pagans to be evangelized but as members of the covenant who owe their allegiance to Christ.

Thus we assert that children of at least one believing parent are valid members of the New Covenant, that they should be baptized into that covenant, and that as they mature, they will have to make a decision for or against Christ. Those who choose Christ solidify their membership in the covenant and begin partaking the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper; those who reject Christ expel themselves from the covenant community and subject themselves to the covenant curses.

On the Mode of Baptism

Many Protestant denominations, such as Baptists and the Church of Christ, teach that baptism must be by immersion. They argue that the Greek word for ‘baptize’ (baptizo) means ‘to immerse,’ so therefore all references to baptism are to baptism by immersion. While it is true that baptize means ‘to immerse or submerge,’ we must note the difference between a word’s denotation and its connotation. A word denotes that which it technically means; but it can connote other things. For example, the denotation of the word ‘dog’ refers to all four-legged furry members of Canis familiaris (canines), it can denote a homie or a questionable character who loves women but doesn’t like commitment to one woman over others. In the same way, the denotation of baptizo is fully immersing something, but the connotation can include various cleansings or washings.

Thus while the term can be used for immersion, it’s not required; and in Scripture we see the word being often used for its connotation rather than denotation. In 1 Corinthians 10:2 the Israelites were ‘baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.’ We know that the Israelites weren’t immersed (the Egyptians were!); rather, they passed through the sea on dry ground. Hebrews 9:10 tells us that under the Old Testament ceremonial law there were ‘various washings’ (diaphorois baptismois), and these washings consisted of the sprinkling of the blood of bulls and goats (9:13), the sprinkling of the book and all the people (9:19), and the sprinkling of the tabernacle and the vessels of the ministry (9:21). So we see that various Old Testament ceremonial acts of cleaning weren’t performed by immersion but are still called baptisms. In Ezekiel 36:25-27 the prophet Ezekiel speaks of God sprinkling ‘clean water’ on His people to cleanse them and give them a new heart; Ezekiel was no doubt using the backdrop of Old Testament ceremonial law to make his point. Additionally, in Acts 1:5 Jesus tells his disciples that they will soon be ‘baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ In Acts 2 we see the fulfillment of that promise: the Spirit came upon them ‘and there appeared to them divided tongue, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them.’ When the people thought the disciples were drunk, Peter corrected them: they were seeing the fulfillment of Joel 2:15-18, in which Joel prophesies the ‘last days’ when God will ‘pour out’ His Spirit on all flesh. Thus to be baptized with the Spirit was to have the Spirit poured out upon the disciples, not for them to be immersed in the Spirit.

Scripture does not prescribe the mode of baptism, only that it is to happen to those who are members of God’s covenant either by birth (being born to at least one believing parent) or conversion. We have evidence in the New Testament that three modes can be justifiably used – immersion, sprinkling, and pouring – but no endorsement of one or proscription against another. Therefore we hold that a legitimate baptism can be practiced with any of the three modes.