Infant Baptism Quotes

The Church does not dispense the sacrament of baptism in order to acquire for herself an increase in membership but in order to consecrate a human being to God and to communicate to that person the divine gift of birth from God.

It would be unjust toward children to introduce them to Christian teaching and existence only as little pagans and catechumens, in order to leave it up to them to choose the Faith on their own responsibility at a point in time difficult to determine.

You were baptized?" "My sister told me that yes, Father baptized me shortly after birth. My mother was a Protestant of a faith that deplored infant baptism, so they had a quarrel about it." The Bishop held out his hand to lift the Speaker to his feet. The Speaker chuckled. "Imagine. A closet Catholic and a lapsed Mormon, quarreling over religious procedures that they both claimed not to believe in.

At present, the successful office-seeker is a good deal like the center of the earth; he weighs nothing himself, but draws everything else to him. There are so many societies, so many churches, so many isms, that it is almost impossible for an independent man to succeed in a political career. Candidates are forced to pretend that they are catholics with protestant proclivities, or christians with liberal tendencies, or temperance men who now and then take a glass of wine, or, that although not members of any church their wives are, and that they subscribe liberally to all. The result of all this is that we reward hypocrisy and elect men entirely destitute of real principle; and this will never change until the people become grand enough to allow each other to do their own thinking. Our government should be entirely and purely secular. The religious views of a candidate should be kept entirely out of sight. He should not be compelled to give his opinion as to the inspiration of the bible, the propriety of infant baptism, or the immaculate conception. All these things are private and personal. The people ought to be wise enough to select as their officers men who know something of political affairs, who comprehend the present greatness, and clearly perceive the future grandeur of our country. If we were in a storm at sea, with deck wave-washed and masts strained and bent with storm, and it was necessary to reef the top sail, we certainly would not ask the brave sailor who volunteered to go aloft, what his opinion was on the five points of Calvinism. Our government has nothing to do with religion. It is neither christian nor pagan; it is secular. But as long as the people persist in voting for or against men on account of their religious views, just so long will hypocrisy hold place and power. Just so long will the candidates crawl in the dust—hide their opinions, flatter those with whom they differ, pretend to agree with those whom they despise; and just so long will honest men be trampled under foot.

Manz, formerly one of Zwingli's closest allies, held that there was no biblical warrant for infant baptism. Refusing to recant his views, he was tied up and drowned in the River Limmat.

THERE CAME A TIME many years ago when I decided to agree to the baptism of my firstborn. It was a question of pleasing his mother’s family. Nonetheless, I had to endure some teasing from Christian friends—how could the old atheist have sold out so easily? I decided to go deadpan and say, Well, I don’t want his infant soul to go to hell or purgatory for want of some holy water. And it was often value for money: The faces of several believers took on a distinct look of discomfort at the literal rendition of their own supposed view.

Sexual intercourse was taboo on the Lord’s Day. The Puritans believed that children were born on the same day of the week as when they had been conceived. Unlucky infants who entered the world on the Sabbath were sometimes denied baptism because of their parents’ presumed sin in copulating on a Sunday. For many years Sudbury’s minister Israel Loring sternly refused to baptize children born on Sunday, until one terrible Sabbath when his own wife gave birth to twins!18 Altogether, the Puritans created a sabbatical rhythm of unique intensity in the time ways of their culture.19

It is not necessary that faith and repentance should always precede baptism. They are only required from those whose age makes them capable of both. It will be sufficient, then, if, after infants have grown up, they exhibit the power of their baptism." - John Calvin

I have generally been denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious I am no Christian, except mere infant baptism make me one; and as to being a Deist, I know not, strictly speaking, whether I am one or not, for I have never read their writings; mine will therefore determine the matter; for I have not in the least disguised my sentiments, but have written freely without any conscious knowledge of prejudice for, or against any man, sectary or party whatever; but wish that good sense, truth and virtue may be promoted and flourish in the world, to the detection of delusion, superstition, and false religion; and therefore my errors in the succeeding treatise, which may be rationally pointed out, will be readily rescinded.

As far as infant baptism is concerned, it must be insisted that the sacrament should be administered only where there is a firm faith present which remembers Christ’s deed of salvation wrought for us once and for all. That can only happen in a living Christian community. To baptize infants without a Church is not only an abuse of the sacrament, it betokens a disgusting frivolity in dealing with the souls of the children themselves. For baptism can never be repeated.

For the sacrament of baptism; how cruel are men grown to their little infants, by keeping of them from the seal of entrance into the kingdom of heaven, and making their children to be just in the same condition with the children of Turks and Infidels?

Both Jews and Muslims believe that salt protects against the evil eye. The Book of Ezekial mentions rubbing newborn infants with salt to protect them from evil. The practice in Europe of protecting newborns either by putting salt on their tongues or by submerging them in saltwater is thought to predate Christian baptism. In France, until the practice was abolished in 1408, children were salted until they were baptized. In parts of Europe, especially Holland, the practice was modified to placing salt in the cradle with the child.

Hester, meanwhile, says we should live all of life back to front. We should be born old and age younger. Our baptism should be a ritual of our funeral. We should die as infants, content in our mothers' arms, having lost all our learning and all sense of disappointment. If only we could die, she says, not knowing we'd ever grieved.

By infant baptism a person is committed, while unconscious, to a certain church; he is made a member of that church. Now, unless that church is infallible, it has no right to make a person a member without his consent; for, it may commit him to an alliance with error, and to the defenee of it. But all churches are fallible, they may err; a person who is made a member of such a church in infancy, may discover an error in that church when he arrives at maturity. Without his own consent, he has been committed to that error; he was not left free to choose, where it is evident, from the nature of things, a choice might have been exercised. Pedobaptism is therefore inconsistent with liberty.

She climbed down the cliffs after tying her sweater loosely around her waist. Down below she could see nothing but jagged rocks and waves. She was creful, but I watched her feet more than the view she saw- I worried about her slipping. My mother's desire to reach those waves, touch her feet to another ocean on the other side of the country, was all she was thinking of- the pure baptismal goal of it. Whoosh and you can start over again. Or was life more like the horrible game in gym that has you running from one side of an enclosed space to another, picking up and setting down wooden blocks without end? She was thinking reach the waves, the waves, the waves, and I was watching her navigate the rocks, and when we heard her we did so together- looking up in shock. It was a baby on the beach. In among the rocks was a sandy cove, my mother now saw, and crawling across the sand on a blanket was a baby in knitted pink cap and singlet and boots. She was alone on the blanket with a stuffed white toy- my mother thought a lamb. With their backs to my mother as she descended were a group of adults-very official and frantic-looking- wearing black and navy with cool slants to their hats and boots. Then my wildlife photographer's eye saw the tripods and silver circles rimmed by wire, which, when a young man moved them left or right, bounced light off or on the baby on her blanket. My mother started laughing, but only one assistant turned to notice her up among the rocks; everyone else was too busy. This was an ad for something. I imagined, but what? New fresh infant girls to replace your own? As my mother laughed and I watched her face light up, I also saw it fall into strange lines. She saw the waves behind the girl child and how both beautiful and intoxicating they were- they could sweep up so softly and remove this gril from the beach. All the stylish people could chase after her, but she would drown in a moment- no one, not even a mother who had every nerve attuned to anticipate disaster, could have saved her if the waves leapt up, if life went on as usual and freak accidents peppered a calm shore.

MOTHER. I do not believe that there is anything sweeter in the world than the ideas which awake in a mother’s heart at the sight of her child’s tiny shoe; especially if it is a shoe for festivals, for Sunday, for baptism, the shoe embroidered to the very sole, a shoe in which the infant has not yet taken a step. That shoe has so much grace and daintiness, it is so impossible for it to walk, that it seems to the mother as though she saw her child. She smiles upon it, she kisses it, she talks to it; she asks herself whether there can actually be a foot so tiny; and if the child be absent, the pretty shoe suffices to place the sweet and fragile creature before her eyes. She thinks she sees it, she does see it, complete, living, joyous, with its delicate hands, its round head, its pure lips, its serene eyes whose white is blue. If it is in winter, it is yonder, crawling on the carpet, it is laboriously climbing upon an ottoman, and the mother trembles lest it should approach the fire. If it is summer time, it crawls about the yard, in the garden, plucks up the grass between the paving-stones, gazes innocently at the big dogs, the big horses, without fear, plays with the shells, with the flowers, and makes the gardener grumble because he finds sand in the flower-beds and earth in the paths. Everything laughs, and shines and plays around it, like it, even the breath of air and the ray of sun which vie with each other in disporting among the silky ringlets of its hair. The shoe shows all this to the mother, and makes her heart melt as fire melts wax.

Theological controversies over the centuries have sometimes been treated as if they were really important even though they were also often arcane. For instance, a Trinitarian conflict split the Western and Eastern churches in 1054: Does the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father and the Son, or from the Father only? In the 1600s, “supralapsarianism” versus “infralapsarianism” almost divided the Reformed tradition. At issue was whether God decided to send a messiah (Jesus) before the first sin (because God knew it would happen) or only after it had happened (because only then was it necessary). More familiarly: infant baptism or adult baptism? Christians have often thought it is important to believe the right things. In a broader sense, theology refers to “what Christians think.” In this sense, all Christians have a theology—a basic, even if often simple, understanding—whether they are aware of it or not. In this broader sense, theology does matter. There is “bad” theology, by which I mean an understanding of Christianity that is seriously misleading, with unfortunate and sometimes cruel consequences. But the task of theology is not primarily to construct an intellectually satisfying set of correct beliefs. Its

authority. What we face now is the “sinner’s prayer.” And I am here to tell you, if there is anything I have declared war on, it is the sinner’s prayer. Yes, in the same way that dependence upon infant baptism for salvation,[29] in my opinion, was the golden calf [30] of the Reformation, the sinner’s prayer is the golden calf of today for the Baptists, the Evangelicals, and everyone else who has followed them. The sinner’s prayer has sent more people to hell than anything on the face of the earth! You say, “How can you say such a thing?” I answer: Go with me to Scripture and show me, please! I would love for you to show me where anyone evangelized that way. The Scripture does not tell us that Jesus Christ came to the nation of Israel and said, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand, now who would like to ask me into their hearts? I see that hand.” That is not what it says. He said, “Repent and believe the gospel” (Mar 1:15)! Men today are trusting in the fact that at least one time in their life they prayed a prayer, and someone told them they were saved because they were sincere enough. And so if you ask them, “Are you saved?” they do not say, “Yes I am, because I am looking unto Jesus and there is mighty evidence giving me assurance of being born again.” No!—they say instead, “One time in my life I prayed a prayer.” Now they live like devils, but they prayed a prayer!

When Augustine lamented the soft-heartedness that made Origen believe that demons, heathens, and (most preposterously of all) unbaptized babies might ultimately be spared the torments of eternal fire, he made clear how the moral imagination must bend and twist in order to absorb such beliefs [in an eternal hell]. Pascal, in assuring us that our existence is explicable only in light of a belief in the eternal and condign torment of babies who die before reaching the baptismal font, shows us that there is often no meaningful distinction between perfect faith and perfect nihilism. Calvin, in telling us that hell is copiously populated with infants not a cubit long, merely reminds us that, within a certain traditional understanding of grace and predestination, the choice to worship God rather than the devil is at most a matter of prudence. So it is that, for many Christians down the years, the rationale of evangelization has been a desperate race to save as many souls as possible from God. (from Radical Orthodoxy 3.1 (2015): 1-17)

Far more damaging to Calvin’s reputation was the case of Michael Servetus. An accomplished physician, skilled cartographer, and eclectic theologian from Spain, Servetus held maverick (and sometimes unbalanced) views on many points of Christian doctrine. In 1531, he published Seven Books on the Errors of the Trinity, enraging both Catholics and Protestants, Calvin among them. At one point, Servetus took up residence in Vienne, a suburb of Lyon about ninety miles from Geneva, where, under an assumed name, he began turning out heterodox books while also practicing medicine. His magnum opus, The Restitution of Christianity—a rebuttal of Calvin’s Institutes—rejected predestination, denied original sin, called infant baptism diabolical, and further deprecated the Trinity. Servetus imprudently sent Calvin a copy. Calvin sent back a copy of his Institutes. Servetus filled its margins with insulting comments, then returned it. A bitter exchange of letters followed, in which Servetus announced that the Archangel Michael was girding himself for Armageddon and that he, Servetus, would serve as his armor-bearer. Calvin sent Servetus’s letters to a contact in Vienne, who passed them on to Catholic inquisitors in Lyon. Servetus was promptly arrested and sent to prison, but after a few days he escaped by jumping over a prison wall. After spending three months wandering around France, he decided to seek refuge in Naples. En route, he inexplicably stopped in Geneva. Arriving on a Saturday, he attended Calvin’s lecture the next day. Though disguised, Servetus was recognized by some refugees from Lyon and immediately arrested. Calvin instructed one of his disciples to file capital charges against him with the magistrates for his various blasphemies. After a lengthy trial and multiple examinations, Servetus was condemned for writing against the Trinity and infant baptism and sentenced to death. He asked to be beheaded rather than burned, but the council refused, and on October 27, 1553, Servetus, with a copy of the Restitution tied to his arm, was sent to the stake. Shrieking in agony, he took half an hour to die. Calvin approved. “God makes clear that the false prophet is to be stoned without mercy,” he explained in Defense of the Orthodox Trinity Against the Errors of Michael Servetus. “We are to crush beneath our heel all affections of nature when his honor is involved. The father should not spare the child, nor the brother his brother, nor the husband his own wife or the friend who is dearer to him than life.

It is a hot summer day in Tennessee in the midst of the sixth decade of this century. The girl has climbed the fence to get to the swimming hole she has visited so many summers of her life in the time before this part of the land was enclosed. She stands now at the edge of it. Her body is sticky with heat. The surface of the water moves slightly. Sunlight shimmers and dances in a green reflection that seems as she stares at it to pull her in even before her skin is wet with it. Drops of water on the infant’s head. All the body immersed for baptism. Do these images come to her as she sinks into the coolness? The washing of hands before Sunday’s midday meal. All our sins washed away. Water was once the element for purification. But at the bottom of this pool, There is no telling what is there now. This is what the girl’s father will say to her finally: corroded cans of chemical waste, some radioactive substances. That was why they put the fence there. She is not thinking of that now. The words have not yet been said, and so for her no trouble exists here. The water holds up her body. She is weightless in this fulsome element, the waves her body makes embracing her with their own benediction. Beneath her in the shadowy green, she feels the depth of the pond. In this coolness as the heat mercifully abates, her mind is set free, to dream as the water dreams.

When the sun had set and darkness sheltered her from the eyes of the curious, Ruth Ben Shoushan walked into the sea, the nameless infant tight against her breast, until she stood waist-deep. She unwrapped him, throwing the swaddling cloth over her head. His brown eyes blinked at her, and his small fists, free of constriction, punched at the air. “Sorry, my little one,” she said gently, and then thrust him under the dark surface. The water closed around him, touching every inch of his flesh. She had a firm grip around his upper arm. She let go. The water had to take him. She looked down at the small, struggling form, her face determined, even as she sobbed. The swell rose and slapped against her. The tug of the receding wave was about to pull the infant away. Ruti reached out and grasped him firmly in her two hands. As she lifted him from the sea, water sluiced off his bare, shining skin in a shower of brightness. She held him up to the stars. The roar in her head was louder now than the surf. She cried out, into the wind, speaking the words for the infant in her hands. “Shema Yisrael, Adonai eloheinu, Adonai echad.” Then she drew the cloth from her head and wrapped the baby. All over Aragon that night, Jews were being forced to the baptismal font, driven to conversion by fear of exile. Ruti, exultant, defiant, had made a Gentile into a Jew. Because his mother was not Jewish, a ritual immersion had been necessary. And now it was done.

In a sense the rise of Anabaptism was no surprise. Most revolutionary movements produce a wing of radicals who feel called of God to reform the reformation. And that is what Anabaptism was, a voice calling the moderate reformers to strike even more deeply at the foundations of the old order. Like most counterculture movements, the Anabaptists lacked cohesiveness. No single body of doctrine and no unifying organization prevailed among them. Even the name Anabaptist was pinned on them by their enemies. It meant rebaptizer and was intended to associate the radicals with heretics in the early church and subject them to severe persecution. The move succeeded famously. Actually, the Anabaptists rejected all thoughts of rebaptism because they never considered the ceremonial sprinkling they received in infancy as valid baptism. They much preferred Baptists as a designation. To most of them, however, the fundamental issue was not baptism. It was the nature of the church and its relation to civil governments. They had come to their convictions like most other Protestants: through Scripture. Luther had taught that common people have a right to search the Bible for themselves. It had been his guide to salvation; why not theirs? As a result, little groups of Anabaptist believers gathered about their Bibles. They discovered a different world in the pages of the New Testament. They found no state-church alliance, no Christendom. Instead they discovered that the apostolic churches were companies of committed believers, communities of men and women who had freely and personally chosen to follow Jesus. And for the sixteenth century, that was a revolutionary idea. In spite of Luther’s stress on personal religion, Lutheran churches were established churches. They retained an ordained clergy who considered the whole population of a given territory members of their church. The churches looked to the state for salary and support. Official Protestantism seemed to differ little from official Catholicism. Anabaptists wanted to change all that. Their goal was the “restitution” of apostolic Christianity, a return to churches of true believers. In the early church, they said, men and women who had experienced personal spiritual regeneration were the only fit subjects for baptism. The apostolic churches knew nothing of the practice of baptizing infants. That tradition was simply a convenient device for perpetuating Christendom: nominal but spiritually impotent Christian society. The true church, the radicals insisted, is always a community of saints, dedicated disciples in a wicked world. Like the missionary monks of the Middle Ages, the Anabaptists wanted to shape society by their example of radical discipleship—if necessary, even by death. They steadfastly refused to be a part of worldly power including bearing arms, holding political office, and taking oaths. In the sixteenth century this independence from social and civic society was seen as inflammatory, revolutionary, or even treasonous.

It is necessary to baptize little children, that the promise of salvation may be applied to them, according to Christ’s command to baptize all nations (Matthew 28:19). Just as in this passage salvation is offered to all, so Baptism is offered to all, to men, women, children, infants. It clearly follows, therefore, that infants are to be baptized, because salvation is offered with Baptism” (Ap IX 52).

pleasing to God. Churches that practice infant baptism believe that it is their duty to baptize infants, and in failing to do so they would be derelict in a responsibility. Those that refrain from infant

By infant baptism a person is committed, while unconscious, to a certain church; he is made a member of that church. Now, unless that church is infallible, it has no right to make a person a member without his consent; for, it may commit him to an alliance with error, and to the defenee of it. But all churches are fallible, they may err; a person who is made a member of such a church in infancy, may discover an error in that church when he arrives at maturity. Without his own consent, he has been committed to that error; he was not left free to choose, where it is evident, from the nature of things, a choice might have been exercised. Pedobaptism is therefore inconsistent with liberty. This will more fully appear from the

As far back as 1656 the magistrates of Connecticut asked those of MASSACHUSETTS some questions concerning infant baptism. June 4th, 1657, a meeting of ministers was held in Boston, who adopted what is known as the Half-way Covenant, which provided 'that all persons of sober life and correct sentiments, without being examined as to a change of heart, might profess religion or become members of the Church, and have their children baptized, though they did not come to the Lord's table.' A synod of all the ministers in Massachusetts ratified this provision in the same year. It will be readily seen that such an unscriptural step opened the doors of the Congregational Churches to an immense influx of unconverted people and to a corresponding worldliness of life. The Baptists were obliged, almost single-handed, to stem this public sentiment, but they bravely stood firm for Gospel principles. The Churches increased in number and influence continually, and in a large measure they counteracted these dangerous influences upon the public mind.

Protestants have discovered great genius in inventing arguments for the support of infant baptism, and to some Baptists they seem to reason in this manner: It is written, God made a covenant with Abraham and his family: therefore, though it is not written, we ought to believe he makes a covenant with every christian and his family. God settled on Abraham and his family a large landed estate: therefore, he gives every christian and his family the benefits of the christian religion. God commanded Abraham and his family to circumcise their children: therefore, all professors of christianity ought, without a command, not to circumcise but to baptize their children. Jesus said, "suffer little children to come unto me:" therefore, infants who cannot come ought to be carried, not to Jesus, but to a minister, not to be healed, but to be baptized. Paul advised married believers at Corinth not to divorce their unbelieving yoke-fellows, lest they should stain the reputation of their children, with the scandal of illegitimacy: therefore, children, legitimate and illegitimate, ought to be baptized. A man of thirty years of age says he believes the gospel: therefore, his neighbor’s infant of eight days ought to be baptized, as if he believed the gospel. And finally, the scripture does not mention infant baptism; but it is, notwithstanding, full of proof that infants were and ought to be baptized.   Really, the Baptists ought to be forgiven for not having a taste for this kind of logic; yea, they ought to be applauded for preferring argument before sophistry.

God requires integrity and holiness of life; he indicated by the symbol how this could be attained, that is, by cutting off in man whatever is born of the flesh, for his whole nature had become vicious. He therefore reminded Abraham by the external sign, that he was spiritually to cut off the corruption of the flesh; and to this Moses has also alluded in De 10:16. And to show that it was not the work of man, but of God, he commanded tender infants to be circumcised, who, on account of their age, could not have performed such a command. Moses has indeed expressly mentioned spiritual circumcision as the work of divine power, as you will find in De 30:6, where he says, “The Lord will circumcise thine heart:” and the Prophets afterwards declared the same thing much more clearly. As there are two points in baptism now, so there were formerly in circumcision; for it was a symbol of a new life, and also of the remission of sins. But the fact as to Abraham himself, that righteousness preceded circumcision, is not always the case in sacraments, as it is evident from the case of Isaac and his posterity: but God intended to give such an instance once at the beginning, that no one might ascribe salvation to external signs.

Now, if children were considered to be capable of admission into the Church by an ordinance in the Old Testament, it is difficult to see why they cannot be admitted in the New. The general tendency of the Gospel is to increase men’s spiritual privileges and not to diminish them. Nothing, I believe, would astonish a Jewish convert so much as to tell him his children could not be baptized! “If they are fit to receive circumcision,” he would reply, “why are they not fit to receive baptism?” And my own firm conviction has long been that no Baptist could give him an answer. In fact I never heard of a converted Jew becoming a Baptist, and I never saw an argument against infant baptism that might not have been equally directed against infant circumcision. No man, I suppose, in his sober senses, would presume to say that infant circumcision was wrong.

Neither Christ, nor his Apostles have left us a single preceptor example of Infant Baptism. This is a conceded fact. The very first Pedobaptists in history Cyprian of Carthage and his clergy, (A. D. 253,) did not plead any law of Christ, or Apostolical tradition, for infant baptism. They put the whole thing upon analogy and inference upon the necessity of infants on the one hand, and the unlimited grace of God on the other. Their own language is an implied and ab solute confession that their “opinion,” as they call it, had no basis in any New Testament law or precedent. It confesses, in a word, that in advocating the baptism of literally new-born babes, they were introducing an innovation into the Church of Christ and they defend it only on the ground of necessity.

The legends describe Patrick as an extremely pious child. In one, the infant Patrick miraculously provides the holy water for his own baptism! A blind and oddly underprepared priest, realizing that he doesn’t have any water on hand, takes baby Patrick’s hand and makes the sign of the cross over the ground.

The legends describe Patrick as an extremely pious child. In one, the infant Patrick miraculously provides the holy water for his own baptism! A blind and oddly underprepared priest, realizing that he doesn’t have any water on hand, takes baby Patrick’s hand and makes the sign of the cross over the ground. A spring of water bubbles forth, the baptism goes forward, and the blind priest receives sight when he washes his face with the water. What’s more, the priest discovers that he is literate at his first sight of letters: he reads the words of the baptismal service.

Stork was joined by Mark Thomas, another weaver of Zwickau; by Mark Stubner, formerly a student at Wittenberg; and by Thomas Munzer, who was the preacher of the "new Gospel." That Gospel comprehended whatever Stork was pleased to say had been revealed to him by the angel Gabriel. He especially denounced infant baptism as an invention of the devil, and called on all disciples to be re-baptised, hence their name "Anabaptists.

That constant biblical call to cross-shaped dependence is why I’ve changed my mind about “baby dedications” in churches. Many of you will not understand what I’m referencing, especially if you come from a Christian communion that baptizes infants. My communion does not; we baptize only those who profess that they believe the gospel and seek to be disciples. As such, I cynically dismissed “baby dedications,” times in a church service when parents would stand with their newborns to dedicate their lives to the Lord, as just a way to do a “dry baptism” for low-church Protestants. As the years have gone by, though, I have seen that these times of dedication fill an urgent need for families and for the church. This is not so much for the children as for their parents, and for the rest of the congregation. The parents crowding around Jesus wanted a word of blessing upon their little ones. In our hyper-naturalistic time, we tend to lose the sense of what a “blessing” is, other than a rote prayer before a meal or spiritual-sounding language that we use to mean “lucky.” The Bible, though, is filled with blessings, blessings that are sometimes wrestled for, sometimes lied about for, sometimes given on a deathbed. A blessing is to commit another to the good purposes of the Lord. Rightly done, a dedication by parents of their children can be a signal that these children do not in fact “belong” to the parents but to the Lord. Moreover, it can be a sign to the rest of the congregation that the rearing of these children is not simply up to the parents on the platform but to all of the gathered body.

The ceremony of Mexican baptism, which was beheld with astonishment by the Spanish Roman Catholic missionaries, is thus strikingly described in Prescott's Conquest of Mexico:--"When everything necessary for the baptism had been made ready, all the relations of the child were assembled, and the midwife, who was the person that performed the rite of baptism, was summoned. At early dawn, they met together in the court-yard of the house. When the sun had risen, the midwife, taking the child in her arms, called for a little earthen vessel of water, while those about her placed the ornaments, which had been prepared for baptism, in the midst of the court. To perform the rite of baptism, she placed herself with her face toward the west, and immediately began to go through certain ceremonies....After this she sprinkled water on the head of the infant, saying, "O my child, take and receive the water of the Lord of the world, which is our life, which is given for the increasing and renewing of our body. It is to wash and to purify. I pray that these heavenly drops may enter into your body, and dwell there; that they may destroy and remove from you all the evil and sin which was given you before the beginning of the world, since all of us are under its power.'.... She then washed the body of the child with water, and spoke in this manner: "Whencesoever thou comest, thou that art hurtful to this child, leave him and depart from him, for he now liveth anew, and is BORN ANEW; now he is purified and cleansed afresh, and our mother Chalchivitlycue [the goddess of water] bringeth him into the world.' Having thus prayed, the midwife took the child in both hands, and, lifting him towards heaven, said, "O Lord, thou seest here thy creature, whom thou hast sent into the world, thus place of sorrow, suffering, and penitence. Grant him, O Lord, thy gifts and inspiration, for thou art the Great God, and with thee is the great goddess.'" Here is the opus operatum without mistake. Here is baptismal regeneration and exorcism too, as thorough and complete as any Romish priest or lover of Tractarianism could desire.

In infant baptism it was confessed that conversion and regeneration differ, and conversion is ordinarily a coming to consciousness of that new life which has long before been planted in the heart.

Laws requiring a certain frequency of church attendance, the taking of Communion, and baptism of infants soon appeared all across the Lutheran areas of Germany. So did laws excluding all religious nonconformists, especially Jews.

the Council of Florence forbade the postponement of Baptism even for forty or eighty days. Since the Tridentine Council it is a strict ecclesiastical precept that infants must be baptized as soon as possible after birth.

The Second Council of Mileve (416) anath ematized all "who deny that new-born infants should be baptized immediately after birth." n The Tridentine Council declared: "If anyone saith that little children, because they have not actual faith, are not, after having received Bap tism, to be reckoned among the faithful, and that for this cause they are to be rebaptized when they have attained to years of discretion, or that it is better that the Baptism of such be omitted than that, while not believing by their own act, they should be baptized in the faith alone of the Church, let him be anathema.

Lutherans hold that everyone who is truly sorry for their sins and believes that Jesus Christ is their savior is converted. And we do not hold that conversion must necessarily take on a violent form or that the process in every case be a conscious experience. This is why Lutherans practice infant baptism.

Infant baptism was not named in the Holy Scriptures, nor in any history, for two hundred years after the birth of Christ. And when it was first named, ministers called it regeneration. Because Christ says, “Except a man be born of water, and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God,” they held that baptism washed away original sin, and that infants could not be saved if they were not baptized. And because Christ says, “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you,” they held that no person could be saved without eating the Lord’s supper; and they brought infants to it, as well as to baptism. For the truth of these facts, we appeal to the most noted writings of the third and fourth centuries. A noted minister of the third century said, “It is for that reason, because by the sacrament of baptism the pollutions of our birth is taken away, that infants are baptized.” [Clark’s Defense of Infant Baptism, 1752, p.111.]

The Anabaptists’ rejection of infant baptism and their insistence upon adult baptism after an individual profession of faith grew out of a desire to distinguish Christianity from state citizenship, as well as from a fresh interpretation of teaching about baptism in the New Testament.

We baptized you when you were little, too. We promised to raise you to trust Jesus. The pastor put water on your head. We use water for washing, and when we baptized you, we asked God to wash away your sins. The pastor said "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" for you, too. That means that he asked God to be your God. Now you belong to him. We all want you to believe in God for yourself, but baptism means that you are never all by yourself. See how the family always comes to baptisms and how the whole church is there? Our family came, too, and we pray for you. The people of the church care for you, too. We teach you and pray for you, so you will belong to God all of your life.

Yet the Roman Catholic Bishop Hay, in defiance of every principle of God's Word, does not hesitate to pen the following: "Question: What becomes of young children who die without baptism? Answer: If a young child were put to death for the sake of Christ, this would be to it the baptism of blood, and carry it to heaven; but except in this case, as such infants are incapable of having the desire of baptism, with the other necessary dispositions, if they are not actually baptised with water, THEY CANNOT GO TO HEAVEN." It came from heathenism.

fathers held up their infants to be devoted in baptism to Him for whom they themselves were willing to lay down their lives; and amid

Being fully committed to the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, I believed on biblical grounds that regenerate believers cannot lose their salvation (John 10:27-29; Rom. 8:30). I concluded that unregenerate members of the visible church can be covenant breakers in the new covenant.This meant that there was continuity in the way that membership in the covenant was administered. The signs of the covenant are for members of the visible church. Since this is so, even the youngest members, infants, can be included in the visible church and receive the sign of inclusion. This was the critical theological point for me.

Second, as the words of Gabriel, Mary, and Zacharias indicate, the covenant promise is always made, as Peter says, "unto you, and to your children." Peter included children in Acts 2:39 on account of the content and structure of God's covenant fellowship with his people ever since the days ofAbraham.

We have to remind ourselves that the multitude who heard Peter's sermon on Pentecost was Jewish. It included Jews from Palestine, proselytes, and dispersed Jews from other parts of the Roman Empire and beyond. The Old Testament was all they had of the Holy Scriptures. As they listened to Peter preaching from those Scriptures (twelve of the twenty-two verses of Peter's sermon in Acts 2 contain quotations from the Old Testament), they could have understood his words in only one way-as a reference to the promise in God's covenant and the fact that that promise extended not only to believers but to their children as well. To interpret Acts 2:39 in light of the New Testament Scriptures, which did not yet exist, as do many Baptists," is to engage in hermeneutical error and can only lead to a serious misrepresentation of the mind of the Spirit. The Jewish multitude had Jewish expectations-not just about the Messiah, but also about the way in which God works with people.

How could a converted Jew regard the new covenant as a better covenant, if now his children were to be excluded from God's dealings with his people, no longer receiving a sign of God's covenant promise? If such were the case, Peter and later Paul would surely have had to face that question repeatedly. And yet it is never debated or even mentioned in the NewTestament. Peter and Paul are never called upon to answer the question: Do we baptize the infants of believing parents? Why not? Because Acts 2:39 and other texts underscore that the. covenant is the polity or constitution of God's kingdom. It's the way he operates his church, in both the Old and New Testament eras.

Because God's covenant, the framework within which he operates, has not been changed. There has been no explicit instruction which says that God has altered his modus operandi, his way of operating, with regard to infants receiving the covenant sign and seal, as John Murray has pointed out.20The promise which says, "I will be your God and you will be my people," given to Abraham to embrace not just him but his family, still stands; and it is still, in the words of Peter, "unto you, and to your children." Children would therefore naturally be regarded as subjects of baptism, just as they were of circumcision in the Old Testament.21

Finally, the forensic context reminds us that God is bound by his covenant both to save those who turn to him in Christ and to punish those who spurn the promise and judge themselves unworthy of everlasting life (Acts 13:46). If covenant children do not respond to God's covenant promises and mercies, the sign of baptism will testify against them on the Day of Judgment. "Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required" (Luke 12:48). Covenant breakers, who fail to appropriate covenant privileges, will reap God's covenant judgment instead of his covenant blessing.24

When the New Testament tells us that this or that "household" (as many English translations put it) was baptized in connection with Christian faith, what would the first hearers have thought?

After making the covenant with Abraham to bless him and his descendants by grace through faith, God provided a covenant sign both to mark those who were recipients of his promise and to signify his pledge to provide for those who had faith in him. It is important to remember that the sign was given after the covenant was made; it was neither a precondition of the covenant nor a means of conferring it. Faith was and is the sole condition of knowing the blessings of God's covenant.

Because God's promises extended to Abraham's house, he was to devote all that he had to the Lord by use of the covenant sign. This meant that all who were part of Abraham's household in that ancient society were to be devoted to God by circumcision-sons, dependent relatives, and servants (Gen. 17:23; cf. Ex. 12:43-48).

Circumcision was God's way of marking his people with a visible pledge to honor his covenant for those who expressed faith in him.

circumcision was God's pledge to provide all the blessings of his covenant when the condition of faith was met in his people. Our faith does not actuate God's covenant or cause it to be extended to us-he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4)-but our faith does claim (and live out) the covenant blessings that God provides by his grace and pledges with his seal.

The validity of a seal is not dependent upon the time that the conditions of the covenant accompanying it are met. Like the seal of a document, the seal of circumcision could be applied long before recipients of promised and signified blessings met the conditions of the covenant. The seal was simply the visible pledge of God that when the conditions of his covenant were met, the blessings he promised would apply (cf. Rom. 4:11).

Since the covenant remains, but the sign changes, New Testament believers would naturally expect to apply the new sign of the covenant to themselves and their children as the old sign had been applied. Since the old sign was applied to children prior to their ability to express personal faith, there would be no barrier to applying the new sign prior to a child's personal profession of faith in Christ. Baptism would function both as a sign and a seal of the household's faith in Christ. As a seal, baptism would indicate the visible pledge of God that when the conditions of his covenant were met, the promised blessings would apply.

when we read the New Testament accounts of baptism, every person identified as having a household present at his or her conversion also had the household baptized.

Philippian jailer asked Paul, "What must I do to be saved?" it was natural and scriptural for the apostle to reply, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved-you and your household" (Acts 16:30-31). Paul's words do not mean that the rest of the household would automatically come to faith in Christ, but his presumption was that the faith of the head of the household would ultimately govern the commitments of the rest of the man's family. As a result, the jailer's entire household was baptized that night (v. 33).

Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.... The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off-for all whom the Lord our God will call" (Acts 2:38-39). Peter frames his call to salvation in Christ in covenantal terms by speaking of a promise that applies to his listeners and to their children as well as to others who are yet far off. The apostle assumes that God continues to relate to us as individuals and as families-that the covenant principles are still in effect.

While the covenant continues, its sign changes to reflect what God has done to maintain his promises. The bloody sign of circumcision that prefigured the shedding of Christ's blood no longer remains appropriate after the Lamb of God has shed his blood once for all in order to remove our sin (cf. Heb. 10:10; 1 Peter 1:18).Therefore, New Testament believers receive a new sign for the covenant that indicates what Christ has accomplished for them. Baptism with water is the sign of the washing away of our sin

The frequency of the household baptism accounts demonstrates that it was normal and consistent with the ancient practice of the continuing Abrahamic covenant for heads of households to see that the covenant sign and seal was applied to all in their home. No evidence indicates that children were excluded from these households. Rather, two thousand years of covenant practice, combined with the absence of any command to exclude children, indicate that household baptisms included infants.

Infant baptism is typically resisted by people in North American culture today because they (1) do not understand the continuation of the covenant of faith made with Abraham and its application to all believers today, (2) are not informed of the representative nature of covenant headship, (3) do not understand how a covenant sign is a seal (i.e., that baptism is a visible pledge that covenant promises will apply when the conditions of faith are met, so that the sign does not have to be tied to the moment that one believes in Christ), (4) do not realize that children would have been included as members of households that were baptized, and (5) cannot conceive of "dunking" a baby, if one's only experience with baptism involves immersion.

But if baptism will not make our children Christians, then why should we administer the covenant sign and seal to them? The most important answer is that we baptize because God makes promises to believers and to their children. In baptism we honor God by marking out and acting on the promises that reflect his grace both in blessing parents who act in devotion to God and in blessing the child being devoted to him in covenantal faith.

It is important to remember, however, that baptism is not merely a sign of God's grace-it is also a seal. Baptism does not simply signify what Christ has done, nor does it only demonstrate the parents' devotion. Baptism is also God's own continuing, visible pledge to his church that he will fulfill his covenant promises to those who place their faith in him.

As Christ teaches us the nature of abiding, we see that He is not contrasting abiding with not abiding. The contrast is rather between abiding temporarily and abiding permanently. In this fallen world, apostasy, church discipline, fruitlessness, rebuke, and scandal are to be expected. The house of Christ still has slaves and sons, and we should not be surprised when the differences between them become manifest.

This question turns on one point. We must decide whether the children of believers are to be treated the same way as they were in the Old Testament. So, we must determine whether the New Testament teaches a change on the status of believers’ children. Is there continuity or discontinuity on the inclusion of believers’ children into the new covenant, and thus new covenant signs and rites?

Because one of the most striking features of the New Covenant is the inclusion of Gentiles on a large scale, it is important to note that the promises of God to parents do not change as a result of this new state of affairs. Nor does the fulfillment of God’s covenant promises in Christ alter or change the duties of believing parents with regard to the rearing of their offspring. In short, in all eras, God commands parents to bring children up with Him as their God, and He promises that such a faithful upbringing will not be futile. And Scripture is consistently clear that the duties of godly parenthood are not altered if the parents are Gentile.

But because of the faithfulness of men like Peter and Paul at the Jerusalem council, the Christian church (still overwhelmingly Jewish) began to accept uncircumcised Gentiles into their midst. These Gentiles were accepted into the visible church of the New Israel on the grounds of their baptism—a water baptism which could not be denied them because God had clearly baptized them with the Holy Spirit. Paul insisted on this truth with the Galatians, who were being troubled by some Jews for whom this water baptism was insufficient.

Now the Bible tells us that believing Jews continued to circumcise their sons, while graciously not insisting that the Gentiles start circumcising their sons. The debate in the early church was not whether the Jews should stop circumcising their sons; it was whether the Gentiles had to start. The decision of the Jerusalem council was not that individual Gentiles did not have to be circumcised. If circumcision had been required of them, it would have obligated them to live as Jews under the Mosaic law—which included the circumcision of all subsequent generations. Circumcision was not being waived for individual Gentiles; circumcision was being waived for Gentiles and their seed. So the Christian church did not insist that Gentiles circumcise their infants—not because they were infants, but because they were Gentile infants.

This period of time between Pentecost and the destruction of Jerusalem was the time when a great transition from circumcision to baptism was being accomplished. During this period, Gentiles were being included into fellowship with the believing Jews, but Jewish infants were not being excluded. Those outside the Christian church were pagans and false Jews—Jews who apostatized from the covenant by rejecting Christ. We know that within the church were believing Gentiles and believing Jews, as well as the infants of believing Jews. The infants of believing Jews were given the sign of circumcision, which, even though it was an ordinance that was fading away, still had profound spiritual and covenantal significance. This obviously brings us to the interesting and pertinent question of the baptism of Jewish infants. The first thing we must show is that circumcision and baptism have the same theological and doctrinal import.

Circumcision was the sign of the promise, i.e., it was the sign of the gospel. When the law of Moses came, hundreds of years after Abraham, it came in partial fulfillment of the covenant with Abraham (Exod. 2:24–25). It was a temporary administration of shadows, ceremonies, and types, all designed, when rightly understood, to prepare the way for the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham. Abraham had been shown the blueprints of a great house, and he believed that God would in fact build it (Gal. 3:6, 8).

We can see throughout the New Testament the controversy caused by the inclusion of believing but uncircumcised Gentiles (Gal. 2:11–12). Where is the controversy caused by the exclusion of the circumcised infants of believing Jews? There is no such controversy. But is it reasonable to suppose that those who so loudly objected to the inclusion of uncircumcised Gentiles would somehow not object at all to the exclusion of their own circumcised children?

We can point with amazement at the covenant people of God at the time of Christ. They murdered their own Messiah. Does this make God’s faithfulness come to nothing? Certainly not. Christendom has more than once been full of baptized infidels. Does this make God a liar? Certainly not. Paul then comes to a remarkable statement. Every last professing believer in the world could be lying, and doing so through the teeth, and God would still be true, the root would still be firm, the tree would still be Christ, and the earth will one day be full of fruit. God’s promise to Abraham was not dependent upon the cooperation of man. And we are not supposed to believe it because we see it; we are to believe it because God says it.

Abraham’s physical descendants were required by this to follow in the footsteps of their covenant father, Abraham. This they did, but in two divergent ways (Rom. 9:6–7, 13). Some of them simply mimicked Abraham’s external actions, showing themselves really to be nothing more than children of the devil (John 8:39, 44). They, boasting in their physical lineage from Abraham alone, gathered themselves into assemblies that were actually synagogues of Satan (Rev. 2:9; John 8:39, 44). But others, children of the promise, imitated Abraham’s faith, showing themselves to be his true and faithful offspring (Rom. 4:12). The Bible teaches that only those Jews who are of faith are true heirs of the gracious promise to Abraham (Gal. 3:7). A true Jew was the man who was circumcised in his heart (Rom. 2:28–29).

Baptism did replace circumcision as a Gentile sign of entrance into the Church, as a matter of fact. Moreover, it is a necessary act for believing Jews in addition to circumcision (Acts 21:21, 1 Cor. 7:18). But, it doesn’t exactly replace circumcision for Jews, especially in that transitional era.

This covenant with Abraham, confirmed to him in Christ, was a covenant which by its very nature could not be annulled (Gal. 3:17). We can see how God has fulfilled His promise to Abraham; it is by the blood of this everlasting covenant that we as Christians are saved (Heb. 13:20). The covenant made with Abraham is still in force today; this glorious covenant made with Abraham millennia ago is nothing other than the new covenant.

Gentiles were now being grafted into the covenanted olive tree of Israel (Rom. 11:17). These Gentiles were grafted in alongside believing Jews who had been there, in that same tree, since infancy. While leaving the substance of the covenant itself untouched (we must remember it was an everlasting covenant), our sovereign Lord determined that He would alter the external sign of the Abrahamic covenant. Before, that sign had been circumcision. Christ now declared that the means of sealing the nations promised to Abraham (Rom. 4:13) was to be accomplished through baptism (Matt. 28:19).

under the Levitical administration the people of God lived in servitude—and it was a yoke that was impossible for them to bear (Acts 15:10). The people of God under the New Covenant are free—they have come into their promised inheritance. Although we have not received it fully (not having seen the redemption of the body), we have received enough of it to be free.

Three important truths emerge from this passage. Uncircumcised believing Abraham is thereby the father of uncircumcised believing Gentiles. Believing Abraham, circumcised after justification, is thereby the father of believing Jews, circumcised before justification. Abraham was circumcised as a sign and seal of the righteousness he had by faith. That righteousness was not his own personal faith, it was Christ. Circumcision was his seal that Christ, his righteousness, would in fact come. So when Abraham took this seal in his body, he was thus marked as the father of all believers in Christ—Jew and Gentile both. This is important to note because Abraham’s circumcision was not his personal testimony of his own personal faith. It was God’s testimony, sealing his righteousness—which must not be identified with his faith.

One of the problems in the entire debate over baptism has been the natural mistake of deriving the doctrine of the covenant from our doctrine of baptism, instead of beginning with the doctrine of the covenant, and then proceeding to discuss baptism. Many Christians have come to baptistic conclusions because they simply took a Bible and a concordance, and then looked up every incident of baptism in the New Testament. This is objectionable, not because they studied the passages concerned with baptism, but because they did not look up all the passages that addressed parents, children, generations, descendants, promises, covenants, circumcision, Gentiles, Jews, olive trees, and countless other important areas. In other words, the subject is bigger than it looks.

To be explicit, all teaching that grace is somehow imparted to an infant ex opere operato (automatically, by some kind of ecclesiastical magic) is rejected here as sub-Christian (indeed, as will be seen, it is sub-Jewish), and detrimental to a faithful preaching of the gospel. Water baptism does not regenerate, it does not save, and it does not cleanse.

If anyone at that time had seriously maintained this meant the children of believers were now to be excluded unless they came into the covenant on their own as a separate individual, this would have been, in the first century, an incomprehensible doctrine.

The New Testament recognizes that children of believers are holy ones or saints. We are taught that children of at least one believing parent are holy ones. This does not guarantee that each child is personally holy, but rather teaches that they are federally holy, or, put another way, covenantally holy. “For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband; otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy” (1 Cor. 7:14).

And as the history of the church revealed in Acts shows, their central debate was over whether or not the Gentiles had to include their children in the New Covenant by means of circumcision—their debate was not whether the Jewish Christians had to start excluding their children.

Biblical signs were given corporately to families in the Old Testament. Has that changed? This is a question of continuity. Baptism is similar to other faith rites in the Old Testament. Rituals which involve a symbolic act, such as baptism, are connected to Biblical covenants. Biblical covenants include signs to visibly represent the realities behind the covenant promises.

So believing Jews continued to practice circumcision, which placed their sons into membership in a visible assembly of Christian saints—the Christian synagogue. But the Jews were also to be baptized. We know this because the New Israel, Jew and Gentile alike, had one Lord, one faith, one baptism (Eph. 4:5). When Peter preached to the Jews on the day of Pentecost, he told them that they needed to repent and be baptized, because the promise was for them and their children (Acts 2:39). So the believing Gentiles had baptism, while the believing Jews had circumcision and baptism. Circumcision was retained by the Jews, prohibited to the Gentiles as a spiritual requirement, and baptism was commanded of them both. Incidentally, we can see clearly in retrospect that baptism, being required of both Jew and Gentile, was intended by Christ to be the lasting sign of initiation into the church.

Paul is arguing that the nature of the tree has not been changed by the transition from the Levitical administration to the New Covenant. The Root is still Christ. The tree is still Israel—not the nation of Israel, but rather the person of Israel, the Lord Jesus. Christ is our Israel, and Christ is our only Israel. If we abide in Him permanently, we will bear fruit that remains. If we do not abide in Him permanently, we will be removed and burned.

The baptistic assumption is that the covenants are unlike in this respect. Some Old Covenant members were regenerate, some were not. All New Covenant members are regenerate. The paedobaptist assumption is that the covenants are alike in this respect. Some Old Covenant members were regenerate, some were not. Some New Covenant members are regenerate, some are not. The paedobaptist holds that the difference between the covenants is that the promises in the New are much better—meaning that the ratio of believer to unbeliever will drastically change.

Confronted with the gross and unbelieving history of the Jews, the baptist must say the Old Testament record of the disobedience of the Jews does not apply to our situation, and that to compare them is to compare apples and oranges. But this means he must therefore explain why the New Testament draws parallels where the baptist draws contrasts.

Abraham’s righteousness was not his own personal faith; his righteousness was Christ, whom he appropriated by faith. Thus, the seal of circumcision was not a seal given as a personal testimony. The seal was God’s seal of the promised and coming Christ, in whom Abraham believed. The meaning of Abraham’s circumcision was not, “Abraham got saved.” Rather, it was, “Salvation will come to the world!” It is true that Abraham was personally saved, and that he was saved by faith. But he was saved because he believed in the objective promise—that is, in the coming Christ.

But God commanded Abraham to circumcise both Isaac and Ishmael, i.e., to place the same sign and seal on them. What did their circumcision signify? Obviously, the same thing—it was a sign of the covenant between God and Abraham (and Abraham’s seed). Now was it also a seal of their righteousness which they had by faith? Depending upon whether we are considering Isaac or Ishamael, the answer is yes and no. We see the same with Jacob and Esau. It was, on both of them, a seal of the coming Christ, the coming Righteousness. The meaning of the sign and seal remained the same. But Jacob personally came to this righteousness of faith and Esau did not. Thus Esau bore the seal of “the righteousness of another” hypocritically. The Jews who persecuted the Christ were following in Esau’s footsteps. They thought circumcision was a sign and seal of their own righteousness. But it was not—it was a sign of a covenant made with sinners, and a seal of a Righteousness found in Another. The seal of circumcision was a seal of “the Lord our Righteousness.

How then does circumcision relate to baptism? Just as circumcision was a sign and seal of the Christ who was to come, so baptism is a sign and seal of the Christ who came. Circumcision looked forward in history, and Christian baptism looks back in history, but they both testify to the same Christ, the same Lord of the Covenant. Neither circumcision nor baptism primarily testifies concerning the inward state of the individual who bears the sign and seal; they testify of Christ.

If infant baptism is not commanded in Scripture, it is thus a violation of what is called the Regulative Principle of Worship.

The problem with all of this, of course, is that it tends to leave us with little that is normative for two broad areas of concern — Christian experience and Christian practice. There is no express teaching on such matters as the mode of baptism, the age of those who are to be baptized, which charismatic phenomenon is to be in evidence when one receives the Spirit, or the frequency of the Lord’s Supper, to cite but a few examples. Yet these are precisely the areas where there is so much division among Christians. Invariably, in such cases people argue that this is what the earliest believers did, whether such practices are merely described in the narratives of Acts or found by implication from what is said in the Epistles. Scripture simply does not expressly command that baptism must be by immersion, or that infants are to be baptized, or that all genuine conversions must be as dramatic as Paul’s, or that Christians are to be baptized in the Spirit evidenced by tongues as a second work of grace, or that the Lord’s Supper is to be celebrated every Sunday. What do we do, then, with something like baptism by immersion? What does Scripture say? In this case it can be argued from the meaning of the word itself, from the one description of baptism in Acts of going “down into the water” and coming “up out of the water” (8:38 – 39), and from Paul’s analogy of baptism as death, burial, and resurrection (Rom 6:1 – 3) that immersion was the presupposition of baptism in the early church. It was nowhere commanded precisely because it was presupposed. On the other hand, it can be pointed out that without a baptismal tank in the local church in Samaria (!), the people who were baptized there would have had great difficulty being immersed. Geographically, there simply is no known supply of water there to have made immersion a viable option. Did they pour water over them, as an early church manual, the Didache (ca. AD 100), suggests should be done where there is not enough cold, running water or tepid, still water for immersion? We simply do not know, of course. The Didache makes it abundantly clear that immersion was the norm, but it also makes it clear that the act itself is far more important than the mode. Even though the Didache is not a biblical document, it is a very early, orthodox Christian document, and it may help us by showing how the early church made pragmatic adjustments in this area where Scripture is not explicit. The normal (regular) practice served as the norm. But because it was only normal, it did not become normative. We would probably do well to follow this lead and not confuse normalcy with normativeness in the sense that all Christians must do a given thing or else they are disobedient to God’s Word.

The question of the baptism of infants cannot be settled on the basis of exegetical data in Acts but only on theological grounds.20 The promise in Acts 2:39 need not mean that children are to be baptized; the promise may mean no more than that the gospel is a blessing not only for the present generation but to their descendants as well — not only to people in Jerusalem but also to those of distant lands — and is analogous to “your sons and daughters” in 2:17.21 The “children” are limited by the following phrase, “every one whom the Lord our God calls to him.” The references to the baptism of households (11:14; 16:15, 31; 18:8) may refer to the “wife, children, servants and relatives living in the house,”22 but they may equally well designate only those of mature age who confessed their faith in Christ.23 It is not certain that such passages mean that the faith of the head of the household sufficed for his children any more than it did for his relatives and slaves.

Therefore, Catholics baptize infants for the same reason that Jews circumcise infants. The children of believers are accounted as “holy” (1 Cor 7:14) and are entitled to the covenantal blessings received by being incorporated into the communal life of the Church. For this reason, Saint Peter said that the promise of baptism “is to you and to your children” (Acts 2:39). A Jewish man or woman at the time of the Apostles would not have been able to comprehend the modern Evangelical claim that babies and young children cannot and do not belong to the ritual life of the community.

When Smith came to the introduction of circumcision as a token of God’s covenant with Abraham in Genesis 17, he added a passage condemning infant baptism. God tells Abraham: “My people have gone astray from my precepts … and taken unto themselves the washing of children, … and have not known wherein [children] are accountable before me … And I will establish a covenant of circumcision with thee … that thou mayest know for ever that children are not accountable before me till eight years old.