The Road to Redemption – Baptism: Why Children?

    Should I have my baby baptized or should I wait until they are older and allow them to make their own decision? That is a question that I have been frequently asked over my 26 years of ministry. It is asked because many of the people in the churches I have served (including many of you) were reared in traditions that did not practice infant baptism, but instead only allow believer's baptism (the technical term for which is credobaptism). This practice of only allowing believer's baptism is based on the claim that there is no scriptural warrant for infant baptism (the technical term for which is paedobaptism). With this ongoing disagreement what then ought our answer to the above question be?

    My guess is that most of you reading this piece would argue for infant baptism. You would argue for infant baptism because it is the custom with which you have grown up. Churches as far ranging as Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic all practice infant baptism...even though I have heard many people speak of it as "christening" rather than baptism. The issue which confronts those of us who baptize infants is that there appear to be no specific references to infant baptism in scripture. The only direct stories of baptism seem to be about adults being baptized…and those baptisms by some sort of immersion. This lack of scriptural warrant can put us on the defensive when we are confronted by those who believe in credobaptism. Those who back credobaptism claim that baptism requires the ability of the one baptized to make a conscious choice to believe in and follow Jesus. We infant baptizers then need to ask, can we actually defend infant baptism as scripturally based?

    The answer, I believe, is yes we can, though it is not as easily done as we might like. First we have to acknowledge that all specific instances of baptism in the New Testament are of adults. However, this makes a great deal of sense considering that the New Testament is the story of the first generation of believers. In other words the church was making adult Gentiles and Jews into Jesus followers. The Biblical story ends before we reach the time when we have a second generation in which children might be baptized. However there are cryptic references to "the entire household" of a new believer being baptized (Acts 16:15; 16:31-33; I Corinthians 1:16). The implication of these texts is that when the head of a house became part of the new covenant community through baptism, so did everyone else in the household. While this is a strange concept to us, it would not have been a strange concept in the First Century. The household (children and servants) were always of the same faith as the head of the house. This would have made even more sense to Jews because Jewish boys were circumcised on the 8^th day signifying that they were part of the chosen people. Baptism then became the "circumcision" or mark of entry into the new community for men, women, adults and infants.

    Finally the practice of infant baptism has an ancient pedigree. Irenaeus (130-202), Origen (185-254) and Tertullian (155-230) all write about infant baptism as the practice of the church. Hippolytus of Rome (writing at about the same time) gives instructions for how infant baptism ought to be carried out.

    We now return to our original question; should parents have their infants baptized or wait for the children to decide. The answer is…whichever the parent's chose. I say this because baptism, as we discussed last week, is a sign and seal of what God is doing in the lives of our children. Being or not being baptized will not change the actions of God. We believe (along with the Apostle Peter in Acts 2:39) that God is claiming our children as God's own regardless of baptism. Therefore parents ought to feel comfortable in choosing the practice which makes most Biblical and theological sense to them (and by the way, our Presbyterian rules allow for both).