Whenever I have put the word paedobaptist in Google, the first article linked is “Why I Am Not a Paedobaptist” by Tim Challies. One day maybe my little post here will come up high on such a search so people interested in the subject can get a competing argument, unless the folks at Google are against the baptizing of cute little babies.
In case you are not familiar with the term paedobaptist (in Greek, παιδί-paidí-means child), it means those who baptize infants, as opposed to believers baptism, i.e., baptizing someone on the basis of their decision to believe in Jesus. To many Evangelicals, baptizing babies seems positively Roman, as in Catholic—and counter intuitive. The typical response of most Evangelicals is, in incredulous tones, why, a baby can’t make a decision for Jesus! As if the central meaning of baptism is our choice. I know it’s practically heresy today to claim otherwise, but that is exactly what I’m doing.
For the first 1700 to 1800 years of church history Christians baptized their children. That began to change with the first Great Awakening in the 1740s, and gained momentum with the Second in the early 1800s. As revivalism spread throughout the 19th century, believers baptism became the default position of Evangelical Christians. Simply put, baptism is reserved for those who profess faith in Christ as a testimony to that profession. As such, baptism’s focus is on the believer and their faith.
By contrast, paedobaptists believe that baptism is an affirmation of God’s covenant promise to his people. Baptism is a God-centered sacrament, not a me-centered sacrament. What this means is that God’s decision to save me is more important, and comes prior to, my decision to be saved. In other words, God’s decision causes mine, not the other way round. And because of what Peter says in the very first sermon in Christian history (Acts 2), to me it’s a no-brainer that Christians should baptize their children:
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.”
There are many verses in the Old Testament that say or imply this, but one Peter could have had in mind is Deut. 29:29. In the words of Moses:
The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.
Here is why we baptize our children: They are not strangers to the covenant!
But that is what those who embrace baptism only for believers in effect do, treat their kids as if the covenant promises of God are not for them. This is simply unbiblical. Fortunately, those well-meaning Christians who “dedicate” their children don’t treat them as strangers to the covenant, but they can’t get around the fact that their kids are little heathens until they make a profession of faith in Jesus when they get older. Because I am not a Catholic or Lutheran (or Orthodox), I don’t believe that baptism causes regeneration, that it actually saves our children. This means our children do need to confess faith in Christ in order to be saved. But it doesn’t follow that baptism is exclusively for those who are able to make a decision regarding their faith in Christ. Which brings us to the Jewish nature of the first century Church.
Challies argument is, I believe, a facile one: Because there isn’t any command in the New Testament that we ought to baptize our children, ergo, infant baptism is not required. My counter argument is that to think first century Christians needed to be commanded to baptize their infants is to completely miss the culture and beliefs of first century Jews who became Christians. For those early Jewish believers, Children were an integral part of the faith community. They were not an afterthought. Children did not become part of God’s people when they themselves decided. They were raised as if they were already part of the community of God’s chosen people. The irony is that every Christian parent who rejects infant baptism treats their children as if they were indeed already part of God’s community, his chosen ones, not little heathens. In this way, their actions are inconsistent, thankfully, with their theology.
The point of baptism is not our decision, but God’s! It is a sign of his covenant faithfulness to his people. The first century Jewish Christians would automatically have connected baptism to circumcision, and connected it to the covenant God made with the Patriarch Abraham we read about in Genesis 17. I’m not sure why this is even debatable, but that is how powerful the influence of the Great Awakenings are to modern Evangelical Christianity (to understand this, a must read is Fundamentalism American Culture by George Marsden). This connection of children to their parent’s faith (and notice it comes in the context of the exhortation to be baptized) is the cornerstone of Peter’s sermon; of course children are included in God’s covenant promises to his people! As I’m never tired of saying to my kids, it’s not about us! It’s all about God’s promises and work in us.
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