Theopedia

Infant baptism

Infant baptism, also called paedobaptism, is the practice of baptizing the infant children of professing Christian parents, on the ground of the child’s standing within God’s covenant rather than the child’s own profession of faith. It has been the practice of most Christian traditions across history, including the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, Anglican, and Reformed (Presbyterian and continental) churches,1 and stands opposite believer’s baptism, the practice required instead by the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession.

Historical Origin

Direct evidence for infant baptism is not attested in the earliest post-apostolic sources, but by the turn of the third century Tertullian (c. 155-230) already argued against baptizing infants, on the ground that they should first reach an age capable of knowing Christ, a position that presupposes the practice he was opposing was already established rather than novel.2 Origen (c. 184-253) went further, claiming the practice traceable to the apostles themselves.2 By the early fifth century, when Augustine pressed Pelagius with an argument for original sin drawn from the church’s practice of baptizing infants, Pelagius did not dispute that infants were baptized or that the church regarded the practice as divinely warranted; he only reinterpreted its rationale.2

The Protestant Reformation inherited the practice and re-argued it against a new objection. John Calvin devoted a full chapter of the Institutes, “Pædobaptism, its Accordance with the Institution of Christ, and the Nature of the Sign,” to defending infant baptism against the Anabaptists of his own day, arguing that the Abrahamic covenant’s promise to Abraham’s children did not lapse with the coming of Christ: “if the covenant remains firm and fixed, it is no less applicable to the children of Christians in the present day, than to the children of the Jews under the Old Testament.”3 The confessional Reformed churches that followed Calvin retained the practice and wrote it into their own confessions.

Core Tenets

Baptism holds the same place in the new covenant that circumcision held in the Abrahamic covenant. Both rites signify the same spiritual reality, regeneration (Deut. 30:6; Col. 2:11; Rom. 6:3-4), and Reformed paedobaptist theology holds that baptism has simply become circumcision’s successor as the covenant’s sign and seal: Peter tells the crowd at Pentecost, “be baptized… for the promise is for you and your children” (Acts 2:38-39), Paul calls those baptized into Christ “Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Gal. 3:27, 29), and calls baptism itself “the circumcision of Christ” (Col. 2:10-11). Since the church under the Old and New Testaments is one covenant community, and children of believers held membership in it under the old sign, they hold it still, absent an explicit New Testament command withdrawing it.4

The New Testament repeatedly records children included alongside believing households. Of the individual baptisms recorded in Acts and the Epistles, every instance that mentions a household reports the whole household baptized: Lydia’s (Acts 16:15), the Philippian jailer’s (Acts 16:32-33), Stephanas’s (1 Cor. 1:16), and Crispus’s (Acts 18:8), with Cornelius’s household implied. Paul addresses children directly as members of the churches he writes to (Eph. 1:1 with 6:1-3; Col. 1:1-2 with 3:20), and states that the child of even one believing parent is “holy,” rather than unclean (1 Cor. 7:14).5 Bavinck draws out the same verse’s force for Reformed dogmatics generally: “even the children from a household of which only one of the parents has become a believer are holy,” and “Scripture knows nothing of a neutral upbringing that seeks to have the children make a completely free and independent choice at a more advanced age.”6

Christ’s own treatment of children bears on the question directly. Jesus blessed the children brought to him, saying “of such is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 19:14; Luke 18:16), and commissioned the apostles to disciple nations, always constituted of families, by baptizing and then teaching them (Matt. 28:19-20).7

Comparison with the Reformed Confessions

Baptism is one of the few points on which the Reformed confessional family does not speak with one voice. The Westminster Confession states that “not only those that do actually profess faith in and obedience unto Christ, but also the infants of one or both believing parents are to be baptized,” while denying that grace and salvation are “inseparably annexed” to the rite itself.8 The Belgic Confession states the same requirement in its own words: infants of believers “ought to be baptized and sealed with the sign of the covenant, as the children in Israel formerly were circumcised, upon the same promises which are made unto our children.”9 The Savoy Declaration, drafted by Congregationalists who otherwise diverged from the Westminster Assembly on church polity, reproduces the Westminster Confession’s baptism chapter, infant baptism included.

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession breaks with this wider Reformed family on this one point. It restricts baptism to “those who do actually profess repentance towards God, faith in, and obedience to, our Lord Jesus Christ,” making a credible personal profession, rather than birth to believing parents, the ordinance’s condition.10 Where the Westminster and Belgic confessions read the Abrahamic covenant’s sign as passing to baptism unchanged in scope, the 1689 confession holds that only those the New Testament describes as professing believers are its “proper subjects.”

Variants

Paedobaptist traditions differ over what baptism actually accomplishes in the infant, not only over whether infants should receive it. Lutheran theology holds that the sacrament itself works true faith in the infant rather than merely sealing a covenant status already true apart from it; the Lutheran theologian Quenstedt writes: “by baptism and in baptism the Holy Ghost excites in infants a true, saving, life-giving, and actual faith, whence also baptized infants truly believe.”11 Anglicanism’s High Church wing holds a similar baptismal-regeneration view.12 Reformed paedobaptist theology holds neither: baptism seals a covenant standing the child already has by birth to believing parents, and the Westminster Confession explicitly denies that grace is “inseparably annexed unto” the rite or that all who are baptized are thereby regenerated.8

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), chap. 42, “Baptism,” Q. 31, 622: “The practice of infant baptism is an institution which exists as a fact, and prevails throughout the universal church.” ↩

  2. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), chap. 20, “The Means of Grace,” 553-54: “In the time of Tertullian and Origen infant baptism is spoken of, not only as the prevailing usage of the Church, but as having been practised from the beginning.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845-1846), book 4, chap. 16, 532. ↩

  4. Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), chap. 42, “Baptism,” Q. 27, 619-21: “Since the church is the same, in the absence of all explicit command to the contrary, the members are the same. Children of believers were members then. They ought to be recognized as members now, and receive the initiatory rite.” ↩

  5. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, chap. 42, Q. 29, 621-22: “Thus the apostles, in every case, without a single recorded exception, baptized believers on the spot, and whenever they had families, they also baptized their households, as such.” ↩

  6. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 22, “The Spirit’s Means of Grace.” ↩

  7. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, chap. 42, Q. 28, 621: “Christ declares of little children… that ‘of such is the kingdom of heaven.’” ↩

  8. Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chap. 28, “Of Baptism,” paras. 4-5. ↩ ↩2

  9. The Belgic Confession (1561), art. 34, “Of Holy Baptism.” ↩

  10. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 29, “Of Baptism,” para. 2. ↩

  11. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, chap. 42, Q. 41, 628, quoting Johann Andreas Quenstedt. ↩

  12. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 22, “The Spirit’s Means of Grace”: “Corresponding to this is the doctrine of the High Churchmen [in the Anglican Church] who believe in baptismal regeneration.” ↩