In this life the debate between Baptists and paedobaptists, or baptizing babies, will never end, and this post doesn’t seek to do the impossible. My powers of persuasion are not that great, nor is my knowledge. It is written, rather, for those who are open to trying to understand why we baptize our children, and our grandchildren. And I won’t lie; I always welcome Baptists becoming Presbyterians. The latter in case you don’t know is a baby baptizing denomination. So full disclosure: as I try to explain, I also try to persuade. So be warned all yee Baptists!
If Baptism comes down to water and a handful of examples in the New Testament, then the Baptists have a slam dunk case, no pun intended. But if Baptism is about the entire context of redemptive history, the examples are not the point. For the average Christian the handful of examples in Acts are dispositive, they decide the case, end of story. But the examples also point in the other direction, the paedobaptist direction, as we’ll see.
The critical issue is where you start. Most Evangelicals are Baptists, so they start and likely end with the examples in Acts. They would also wonder why we Presbyterians are always talking about covenant as it relates to baptism, but Christianity didn’t start when Jesus was born. Jesus was the fulfillment of thousands of years of redemptive history. We can go back to the fall and God’s promise to Adam and Eve that the seed will strike or crush the serpent’s head, but the specific start of the covenant of grace started with God’s promise to Abram (Gen 12). Remember, he called one man out of all the people on earth at the time, and promised that through him all the peoples on earth would be blessed. Unless you start your study of baptism there, you’re missing the entire context of why baptism exists in the first place. The discussion of baptism must start with the doctrine of the covenant. I became a paedobaptist because of it.
My Journey to Paedobaptism
I’d become an Evangelical Christian at 18 having been born and raised a nominal Catholic. Of course I rejected infant baptism as a new Protestant, and got myself dunked and re-baptized. Then when I was 24, I was introduced to Reformed theology, and instantly embraced it. TULIP was a no brainer for me, but infant baptism? No way! That’s Catholic! And I was virulently against all things Catholic at the time. Then one Sunday I attended at Reformed Baptist church, and it so happens they had a baby dedication that morning. For some reason, and I don’t know where the idea came from, I thought to myself, they are treating their children as strangers to the covenant, and it annoyed me. I instantly became a paedobaptist. I knew intuitively that God’s covenant promises were not just for me individualistically, but as Peter says in Acts 2, for me and my children.
What I started learning that day, is that my understanding of Baptism didn’t start and end with a handful of passages in the book of Acts. Rather, I learned that to understand the true profundity and import of baptism, I needed to look at all the passages in Scripture that address parents, children, generations, descendants, promises, circumcision, Gentiles, Jews, olive trees, among other issues, in addition to covenant. In fact, if you looked at every passage in the Old Testament referencing child or children, that would take you a while because there are over 400 of them. Not to mention passages that reference seed or offspring or descendants. If I had the time and space and could cite every passage in the Old Testament indicating the generational nature of our faith it would be overwhelming. One of my favorites is Deuteronomy 7:9:
9 Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments.
The faithfulness of God to his covenant promises is what baptism points to, not us! And this verse directs us to the New Covenant which would make generational faith a reality, something Israel and the Old Mosaic covenant never could. This is why in those Acts examples, baptism always includes the household, not just the individual. Baptism, like circumcision, was a corporate, familial covenant act, as all Jewish Christians in the first century would have expected it to be. Yet, we’re to believe according to the Baptists that the New, and better, Covenant, suddenly became individualistic. The Apostle Peter says it doesn’t because, as I mentioned, in the first Christian sermon in history he tells us our faith is still familial and corporate, or covenantal in nature. The people Peter was preaching to were cut to the quick, and they ask, “Brothers, what shall we do?”
38 Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”
Peter is telling them, and us, the natural Jewish understanding of generational faith is informed by God’s covenant promises to families. Baptism and the promise associated with it were not just for the people who were repenting and being baptized; it was for them and their children. If we ignore that, we are in effect ignoring everything BC and the nature of our generational faith handed down to us by Christ and the Apostles, and assuming only AD counts.
The New Covenant is Better Because it is Generational: Household Baptism
The examples of baptisms in Acts do tell us something about the nature of baptism, but not quite what the Baptists think. Let’s look at each instant in Acts, and then one reference of Paul in I Corinthians. In every example, except one, the person who repented and was baptized also had their household baptized. That’s kids, including babies, slaves, cousins, grandma, grandpa, anyone living in the household, and extended households in first century Israel were common. So “you and all your household” could mean 5, 10 or more would have been baptized. When the head of the household embraced the faith, so did everyone in the household. Did everyone in the household make a profession of faith? It didn’t matter because nobody saw it as a personal, individualized decision. It just didn’t work that way, and to think it did is reading our modern assumptions back into the text. We ought not do that.
As far as I know there is only one clear example of a person professing faith and not having a household baptized as well, the story of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8. Household salvation starts in Acts 10 with Cornelius, a Roman centurion, as God displayed salvation and the Holy Spirit coming to the Gentiles too. This passage doesn’t explicitly say household, but when Peter entered the house “he found a large gathering of people.” It could have been friends and neighbors, but as a Roman centurion, a good number of the gathering would have been his household. After the Holy Spirit came on them, Peter ordered that they all be baptized. How we read this passage depends on our assumptions, which should be informed by the following examples, not to mention the entirety of redemptive history prior to this.
Luke continues the story in Acts 11 as Peter tells Jewish Christians in Jerusalem who couldn’t believe that the Holy Spirit would be given to Gentiles too. Cornelius was told by an angel about Peter:
14 He will bring you a message through which you and all your household will be saved.’
Salvation, “repentance that leads to life,” and thus baptism as we see in chapter 10, came to the entire household, not just Cornelius.
The next example in Acts 16 is of Lydia’s conversion, the first Christian convert in Europe.
15 When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. “If you consider me a believer in the Lord,” she said, “come and stay at my house.” And she persuaded us.
Luke tells us, “The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message.” And naturally, “When she and the members of her household were baptized,” she invited them to her home.
Also in chapter 16 is the famous example of the Philippian jailer. Paul proclaims the gospel to him, and the result is the same as with Lydia:
33 At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his household were baptized. 34 The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them; he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God—he and his whole household.
Another example is in chapter 18 where Paul is in Corinth preaching to both Jews and Gentiles, and Luke tells us:
8 Crispus, the synagogue leader, and his entire household believed in the Lord; and many of the Corinthians who heard Paul believed and were baptized.
The final example is from I Corinthians 1, where Paul tells us about his own baptizing:
Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I don’t remember if I baptized anyone else.”
We will tie the bow on this household box with Acts 2. The adults Peter was speaking to believed on the Lord Jesus, and he told them they needed to be baptized. He immediately added that the promise reflected in baptism and the story of redemption he’d just told them was for them AND their children. Of course it was—They were Jews! When they embraced the faith, everyone in their household would embrace that faith as well. As we see in Acts 21, Jewish Christians insisted their boy infants still receive the sign of inclusion in the covenant community, circumcision. Both Paul and James agreed with this. So it makes sense that Jewish Christians would also include their children in the sign of inclusion into the New Covenant community, baptism.
Baptists will tell us this is an argument from silence, but it’s a silence that speaks loudly and boldly, which we ignore only because of the baptistic assumptions we hold. If we don’t have those assumptions, and our theology is informed by the entirety of Redemptive history, as were the Jews in days of the Apostles, of course babies and children will be given the sign and seal of God’s covenant faithfulness in Christ.
And lastly, Doug Wilson points out in his book, To A Thousand Generations, that we also don’t have an example of a child growing up in a Christian household who was not baptized, and then making a profession of faith to receive baptism. It just doesn’t exist, so what does that tell us? Nothing. Examples are not the final word on baptism, but only one puzzle piece of a large, glorious redemptive puzzle God has developed into a beautiful picture.
The New Covenant and Children: Jeremiah 31 & 32
The pivotal passage for Baptists is found in Jeremiah 31 when God reveals that a new and better covenant is coming:
“The days are coming,” declares the Lord,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
and with the people of Judah.
32 It will not be like the covenant
I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them,”
declares the Lord.
33 “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
after that time,” declares the Lord.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
The Lords contrasts the new with the old, Mosaic covenant, and from this Baptists insist the New Covenant community can only include professing, regenerate Christians. They believe that in Christianity, in contrast to Old Covenant Judaism, a transformed
heart is what includes someone in the community of God’s people.
Baptists assume what makes the New Covenant new, is that now God is transforming hearts as a requirement for inclusion in the covenant, and that baptism is a sign of that. The passage doesn’t say this, but this is the inference they take. Therefore, children are no longer included. This inference also assumes Old Covenant saints did not have God’s law in their minds and written on their hearts, which is not true. Some clearly did. But the point I want to make is that children, including infants, are still included in the New Covenant community because this community doesn’t only include regenerate Christians. We’ll discuss that in the next section on olive trees and branches, but God references this new covenant in the very next chapter, and He includes children. We read in Jeremiah 32:
38 They will be my people, and I will be their God. 39 I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me and that all will then go well for them and for their children after them. 40 I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me.
If we’ve read the story of God’s people up to this period of the Babylonian exile of Judah (around 580s BC), the inclusion of Children in the New Covenant promises of Yahweh to His people won’t surprise us. It has always been so, and will always be thus. What seals the deal, though, is olive trees.
The Covenant and the Olive Tree
The metaphor of the olive tree for God’s people, His covenant community, is used several times in Scripture, and most relevant for our discussion in Romans 11. Paul speaks of Isarael as an olive tree into which a wild olive shoot, the Gentiles, have been grafted in. The Jews were broken off because of unbelief so we could be grafted in. Then Paul says something that has vexed Christians ever since.
19 You will say then, “Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.” 20 Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but tremble. 21 For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either.
It seems Paul is saying that those who were once part of the olive tree, the covenant community, Christians, can be cut off, and thus lose their salvation. On baptistic assumptions that is the only conclusion one can come to. Many Christians wonder if we can “lose our salvation.” If they are Arminian, meaning they believe our choice is what makes us a Christian, then we can un-choose Christ. If we’re Calvinists who believe our salvation is God’s choosing, then we can’t be unchosen by Him. So from a Calvinistic perspective, how do we explain being grafted in but able to be cut off, taken out of the olive tree and from God’s covenant community?
The fundamental assumption of the Baptist is that every baptized professing Christian who has been baptized is a regenerate Christian, and thus part of the New Covenant community. You profess faith in Christ, get baptized, and you are grafted in. In Christian terms, your profession of faith means you are one of God’s elect. The theology of election is a challenging topic for Christians, but clearly a Biblical fact. The term is used six times by Paul and three by Peter, and clearly means God chooses whom he will save. So, if you are a Calvinist and you are grafted into the olive tree, you are in for good. You are one of God’s elect, and that can never change. How then to explain those God cuts off, like we read in Hebrews 6:
4 It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age 6 and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.
John helps explain it (I John 2:19):
19 They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.
As does Jesus in John 15:
5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.
A person can be part of the covenant community, appear to be a Christian on the outside, but if they do not remain in Jesus, if they go out from among us, they will be broken off of the olive tree like the unbelieving Jews. For example, everyone including Judas thought he was a “believer,” but he proved by his actions not to be. Until then he was a Jew and part of the Old Covenant community. So, we have our children baptized because they are part of the New Covenant community, and they received the benefits of being part of the calling of God’s people. Because we’re not Lutherans or Catholics, we don’t believe baptism saves them, but we raise them as Christians and teach them to proclaim Jesus as their Lord and Savior because he is.
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