A Theology Of Infant Baptism

Ben Wulpi Systematic Theology II Dr. Edwin Woodruff Tait November 10, 2008 A Theology of Infant Baptism I was baptized as an infant. Born and raised within the United Methodist Church, which practices infant baptism, it is what has always been familiar to me. But as I grew in my own faith and was influenced by Christian friends around me who really seemed to “get it” when it came to their faith, I came to the common conclusion that infant baptism, also known as paedobaptism, didn’t really count—that it was only on confession of faith that believers should be baptized at an age where they were conscious of the confession they were making. With this newfound state of mind, I didn’t really get why infant baptism would be a viable option. It’s not biblical. It doesn’t promote a personal relationship with Jesus. My church just didn’t get it. They didn’t understand how to promote true faith, as my friends and I did. I even expressed thoughts about getting baptized again, this time when it counted. So upon choosing the topic of baptism for this paper, one of my subconscious motives was to conclusively prove infant baptism wrong. I knew true faith, and I knew that infant baptism was just an empty ritual. But my research, coupled with what God has been teaching me through classes and life about the Church and the communal nature of faith, led me down a different path. I’ve been learning recently how the individualism of our American culture has impacted our faith. I’ve seen that a lot of the reasoning behind the different views of baptism is dependent on one’s view of the meaning of the sacraments, the Church, covenant theology, individualism, and the activity of God’s grace in our lives.

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Let’s start with what it means for baptism to be a sacrament. In Latin, the word sacramentum originally meant an oath of allegiance. First Peter 3:21 states that “this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscious before God” (NIV). The Greek word eperoteina, translated here as “pledge,” can also mean “answer” or “response.” So when taken in this sense of a pledge or response to God, the sacrament of water baptism is more of our response to God. The Greek word musterion, which can be translated “secret” or “mystery,” is where we get the idea of sacraments. It comes through the idea of the silence imposed by initiation into religious rites, and it is where our English word “mystery” is derived from. The writers of the New Testament often speak of the “mystery” of Christ which we have been invited to be a part of. Baptism is our initiation into this mystery, the knowledge of God through Christ. Baptism, as a sacrament, is both a response and an initiation (Witherington 115-116). But does the act of baptism play a role in our salvation? “A person’s theology of baptism is to one degree or another a function of that person’s soteriology” (Witherington 113). For this, we must differentiate between water baptism and Spirit baptism. Acts 11:16 presents a clear distinction: “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit” (NIV). Using the book of Acts as a primary source for a biblical basis of baptism, it is shown that “Spirit baptism was almost always prior or subsequent to water baptism, usually in very close sequence in Acts. That the two baptisms were never synonymous is clear” (Witherington 118). Rather, water baptism is a sign of Spirit baptism. It is not a saving act in itself, but is not completely symbolic either. This distinction can be further shown by Acts 8:16-17, which says, “…the Holy Spirit had not

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yet come upon any of them; they had simply been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit” (NIV). These new believers had been initiated into the covenant of God’s grace through Jesus Christ, but had not yet received the Holy Spirit. They were two separate occurrences. Bridge and Phypers’s approach states that “Baptism does not bring salvation automatically, by the work being worked, but neither is it merely symbolic. It is a sacrament which brings grace through faith. It is part of the obedience of faith. The act of baptism demonstrates that faith is active for salvation” (181). Baptism is both a sign, which can be seen as the activity on our end (our response and pledge), and an initiation, which can be seen as the activity on God’s end, welcoming us into the covenant of God’s grace. Because the modern understanding of the sacrament of baptism as a sign of individual response is well-received in our individualistic culture, often at the expense of God’s activity of initiation in baptism, I want to focus on the latter. To understand this aspect of baptism requires an understanding of God’s covenant of grace which is seen throughout the entire Bible. In the Old Testament, the Israelites were in a covenant relationship with God. Everything in the community of the Israelites—religion, government, private and social lives—revolved around this covenant. The covenant was a promise, or a contract between God and His people. The people were to serve YHWH as the only true God and obey His law, and He would bless them and make them a fruitful nation. The initiation into this covenant community was circumcision. Male children born into Israelite families were to be circumcised eight days after birth to signify their entrance into this community. Also, if any Gentile were to convert to Judaism, to become

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a proselyte, he would also have to be circumcised in order to signify his entrance into the covenant promise. Jesus inaugurated a new covenant in the portion of our Bible which is rightly called the New Testament. This new covenant is much more glorious and superior to the old (cf. 2 Corinthians 3; Hebrews 8), but it still falls under God’s overall covenant of grace—fulfilling its original purpose (cf. Matt. 5:17). The initiation into this new covenant community is shown through baptism. As it was with circumcision in the old covenant, it is right that both infants and adults should be initiated into this covenant (Bridge 47-48). Part of the superiority of the new covenant is its inclusive outreach. The old covenant applied to Jews alone; the new is for Jews and Gentiles. Circumcision into the old covenant was for males only; baptism is sexually inclusive. For in Christ, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28 NIV). None are denied the grace offered by Jesus Christ—including infants who are born into the community. “Just as the Jewish child was born already into a Jewish inheritance, so the Christian child, before consciousness or awareness, enters by grace into a community that promises responsively to care and nurture and teach the heart to obey God’s command and receive God’s promise” (Oden 116). Also critical to the understanding of covenant baptism is the understanding of the differences in culture today and what we witness through the Scriptures. Today, American culture is very individualistic. Each person has rights and we see ourselves as masters of our own domains. Therefore baptism is often seen as our individual response and pledge of faith. But throughout most of history, and during the period that the Scriptures were written in, the people lived in collectivist cultures. They did not define themselves

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individually, but rather by the groups that they associated with. Among these, family was most often the primary group. People were defined by their family or clan. In Israel, what tribe and town you were from meant a great deal. Family was literally considered one unit. So we find instances like Acts 16, where Paul and Silas are miraculously freed from prison, only to stay and witness to the jailer. They say to the jailer, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household” (v. 31 NIV), and we are told a few verses later that “he and all his family were baptized” (v.33 NIV). We can’t assume irrefutably that this family baptism included any children or infants in order to prove infant baptism in the New Testament, but this shows the collectivist mindset of the family in the New Testament. In the Old Testament, it was through the family that the covenant love of God was passed down from generation to generation. The children were circumcised by their parents, initiating them into the covenant, and then raised in the knowledge and love of the covenant grace. It should be the same with the initiation of baptism into the covenant of Christ. This is why, at infant baptisms, the parents are questioned of their faith and promise to raise the child in the love of God (Vander Zee 124-125). Even with these inferences of family baptisms in the New Testament, it is still debated as to when paedobaptism began to emerge in the early church. There is no airtight evidence to show that children and infants were baptized in the early church that we read of in the New Testament. But we can glean evidence from some of the early church fathers. Origen (185-284 AD) said that the Church had received a tradition from the Apostles to give baptism even to little children. Evidence from Polycarp (69-155 AD) and Justin Martyr (100-165) say that many disciples had served God since childhood

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(Bridge 37). Some say that testimonies for the practice of infant baptism didn’t begin until the 4th century from fathers such as Gregory of Nazianzus, even though Gregory himself was not baptized as an infant (Aland 46). Some scholars say that “we have clear evidence that the church as early as A.D. 150 thought that infant baptism was an acceptable practice” (Witherington 123). It is doubtful that we will ever know for certain when it emerged, but this quote from Aland, who himself is against infant baptism, gives great insight into its development: “…the development leading to infant baptism was determined by external factors. Up to the end of the second century Christianity must be seen as a small minority in the Roman Empire. Admittedly this fellowship had grown many times its original size since its early days. But this growth quite definitely had come from without, through the entry of new converts, who most commonly were adults. It was only after the Church had attained a certain strength that the ‘inner’ growth, i.e. the increase in the number of Christians through children born among them, began numerically to play a significant role…With the increasing strength of the Church the absolute number of the children born in it also greatly increased, and their ‘belonging’ to the Church, i.e. their baptism, becomes an ever greater problem” (102-103). What role does God’s grace play in the baptism of an infant? Is this infant “saved”? Bridge and Phyphers suggest that “baptized children must be regarded as Christians until they give clear evidence by their lives to the contrary. Just because children have been baptized does not mean that they will always be Christians” (50). But that is not to say that infant baptism is useless. When infants are baptized, God’s grace is given to them as they are a part of the community of the Church. In this case, paedobaptism is much like God’s prevenient grace—His working in us before we come to Him. Paedobaptism emphasizes the objective administration of God’s grace, rather

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than a subjective response by us (Bridge 40). The baptized infant is a member of the covenant community of Christ’s Church, and affected by God’s grace as a result. The straight Baptist approach, which denies the legitimacy of infant baptism, focuses more on the response of the baptized as a sign of faith and God’s grace bestowed on the fully aware person. The Paedobaptist approach, on the other hand, focuses more on the Church as a covenant community, and baptism as a rite of initiation into God’s grace as it works through His Church. Our popular faith culture, influenced by the American individualistic ethos and concerned more with a personal approach to faith, has often clashed with the institutionalized Church and thus tends to reject the paedobaptist approach. If we view the Church as many individual believers in Christ coming together to worship and forming the Church, paedobaptism doesn’t make any sense. But it is my (changed) opinion that God intended for His Church to be a community, and for us to be in relationship with Him through that community. If we accept the universal Church as the Bride and Body of Christ and as God’s means of grace, then indeed, paedobaptism makes a lot more sense. But whatever your beliefs about the legitimacy of infant baptism, it should not be something that separates us as Christians. For as Ephesians 4:4-6 says, “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope when you were called—one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (NIV). There is one covenant community that our baptism is a sign and a seal of our initiation into. Praise God for that.

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Works Cited Aland, Kurt. Did the Early Church Baptize Infants? Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1961. Bridge, Donald and David Phypers. The Water that Divides: The Baptism Debate. Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1977. Cuttaz, Francoise. Baptism: Divine Birth. New York: Alba House, 1962. Dale, James W. An Inquiry into the Usage of Baptism and the Nature of Christic and Patristic Baptism as Exhibited in the Holy Scriptures and Patristic Writings. Philadelphia: WM. Rutter & Co, 1874. George, Augustin. Baptism in the New Testament; A Symposium. Baltimore: Helicon, 1964. Jungmann Sr., Josef A. The Early Liturgy: To the Time of Gregory the Great. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press, 1959. Martin, Ralph P. Worship In the Early Church. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998. McAuliffe, Clarence. Sacramental Theology: A Textbook for Advanced Students. St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1958. Oden, Thomas C. Pastoral Theology: Essentials of Ministry. San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1983. Vander Zee, Leonard J. Christ, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper: Recovering the Sacraments for Evangelical Worship. Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004. Witherington III, Ben. Troubled Waters: Rethinking the Theology of Baptism. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2007.

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