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Baptism is tied in the NT to circumcision: “In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.” (Colossians 2:11-12)
When you can rule out infant circumcision, I’ll admit you’ve found a good reason to rule out infant baptism. Until then, I think the burden of proof lies on one who insists that we are not to carry out Christ’s command for every soul under our care.
And where is your clear scriptural support for denying baptism to infants? An inference from reason, that’s all it is. Excluding a segment of the population because they aren’t mentioned seems a more dangerous precedent that including them all, when Jesus told us to baptize all nations. Let the little children come to me, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Not because they are somehow sinless (or disobedient but unaccountable), but because of the purity and strength and simple trust in a child’s faith. “I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” Are we being told to become unaccountable like a child, or to have faith like a little child, simple childlike trust? Don’t tell me he’s telling us to become like a two-year old shouting “No” in defiant anger, because being like that is the only way to enter the kingdom of God. Don’t tell me that all children who haven’t reached the age of accountability are models of how a Christian is to behave.
Where in the world do you get the notion that churches that baptize infants allow them to keep their church membership if they later throw over the faith they’d been baptized into? We have baptism for infants, and then a rite of confirmation, in eighth grade usually, at which time they confirm that the faith into which they were both baptized and raised is they one they promise to be faithful to for the rest of their lives, and they demonstrate their readiness to receive the Lord’s Supper and take on the responsibilities of adult membership. If they fall away before confirmation, they will never be adult members. If they fall away afterwards, they will be disciplined as Jesus instructed in Matthew 18, and if necessary removed from the Church. We trust that God has given his Spirit to these children until and unless they demonstrate they have rejected the faith, and then we treat them as their words and actions demonstrate faith or lack thereof. How does that destroy Christian witness, or make for any worse of a situation than one where children are dedicated, but their parents do not follow through? Oh, they weren't baptized, so it's okay to abandon them as pagans? I would say that baptism, sealing them as children of God, dearly loved by him and members of his family, would impress on us all the more urgently the need to do all we can for these baptized members of God's household to raise them in the nurture and admonition of the one who sealed them with his own name.
Such a joke as you describe could just as easily be found in churches that don’t baptize, but where families assume that all children, not matter what brats and disobedient scoundrels they might be or how rarely they take any part in church, are automatically God’s children because they had believing parents and they were dedicated, or even if they had no tie to Christ at all.
And you can’t agree on what age they cease to be saved without faith in Christ. At what age can a disobedient child go straight to heaven without faith, and the next day he’ll go to hell because he’s now accountable? Could not such a teaching make parents complacent and not discipline their young children because there’s no such thing a sinful child? Could they not end up assuming their child is still going to heaven long after God has concluded they’re not, putting their very salvation at risk? Could this not result in the tragedy of children being allowed to grow up as pagans until it’s too late to turn them around, and destroy Christian witness because the church is full of rotten kids? I’m not suggesting that’s what your church looks like, but you sure have made an awful assumption of what mine looks like.
Baptism, in our understanding, is a gift of grace of the God who is faithful even if we are not. His sacrament is not profaned if we later become unfaithful. 2 Tim. 2:11-13 “Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us; if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.”
So you’re saying that baptizing an innocent, pure child is to profane God’s sacrament? Based on what the child might do later? Dedicating them, to be baptized later, only avoids such profanation if they don’t reject the faith after such a delayed baptism, so the only way to avoid profaning the sacrament would be to baptize people on their deathbeds, and then off them to make sure they don’t recover and backslide.
Origen, around 250AD said “The Church received from the apostles the tradition of giving baptism even to infants.”
Cyprian, 253 AD said, “As to what pertains to the case of infants: You [Fidus] said that they ought not to be baptized within the second or third day after their birth, that the old law of circumcision must be taken into consideration, and that you did not think that one should be baptized and sanctified within the eighth day after his birth. In our council it seemed to us far otherwise. No one agreed to the course which you thought should be taken. Rather, we all judge that the mercy and grace of God ought to be denied to no man born...If, in the case of the worst sinners and those who formerly sinned much against God, when afterwards they believe, the remission of their sins is granted and no one is held back from baptism and grace, how much more, then, should an infant not be held back, who, having but recently been born, has done no sin, except that, born of the flesh according to Adam, he has contracted the contagion of that old death from his first being born. For this very reason does he [an infant] approach more easily to receive the remission of sins: because the sins forgiven him are not his own but those of another” (ibid., 64:5).
Both predate Constantine.
When you can rule out infant circumcision, I’ll admit you’ve found a good reason to rule out infant baptism. Until then, I think the burden of proof lies on one who insists that we are not to carry out Christ’s command for every soul under our care.
1. Adult baptism is the only kind with clear NT support - the defence of IB that argues from the mention of the Philippian gaoler’s “household” in Acts 16, is based on an inference from reason, and posits infants in his household for whose existence there is no evidence; the argument is an exercise in wishful thinking;
2. IB allows millions of infants to be baptised who later throw over the Faith they had been baptised into. The result for the life and witness of the Church is, that the Church’s membership includes hordes of baptised unbelievers. This degrades the Church, and makes her evangelising mission a bad joke, because those who have no faith in Christ cannot bear witness to Him. Purely nominal members of the Church should be treated as the heathens they are in fact. There are many “good pagans” - that they are good in many ways, does not make them Christians. “Good pagan” adults who have been baptised as infants, and have given up the Faith they were baptised in, are not Christians in the NT sense, so they cannot accurately be called Christians in any sense worth discussing.
Such a joke as you describe could just as easily be found in churches that don’t baptize, but where families assume that all children, not matter what brats and disobedient scoundrels they might be or how rarely they take any part in church, are automatically God’s children because they had believing parents and they were dedicated, or even if they had no tie to Christ at all.
And you can’t agree on what age they cease to be saved without faith in Christ. At what age can a disobedient child go straight to heaven without faith, and the next day he’ll go to hell because he’s now accountable? Could not such a teaching make parents complacent and not discipline their young children because there’s no such thing a sinful child? Could they not end up assuming their child is still going to heaven long after God has concluded they’re not, putting their very salvation at risk? Could this not result in the tragedy of children being allowed to grow up as pagans until it’s too late to turn them around, and destroy Christian witness because the church is full of rotten kids? I’m not suggesting that’s what your church looks like, but you sure have made an awful assumption of what mine looks like.
3. What then to do with the children ? Instead of baptising them, dedicate them to God. Baptism is a sacrament, and to give the sacraments to people who will still be unbelievers after receiving the sacraments, is to profane the sacraments. Dedicating one’s children to God avoids this profanation. If they choose to reject their dedicated state, that is on their own heads; if they choose to live for Christ, they can become catechumens and later be baptised. This would at least lessen the number of baptised apostates and infidels, even though apostasy and infidelity within the Church would not end.
So you’re saying that baptizing an innocent, pure child is to profane God’s sacrament? Based on what the child might do later? Dedicating them, to be baptized later, only avoids such profanation if they don’t reject the faith after such a delayed baptism, so the only way to avoid profaning the sacrament would be to baptize people on their deathbeds, and then off them to make sure they don’t recover and backslide.
Tabibito: That story has been used to justify infant baptism, but the reality is it was simply implemented as a way to enforce Christianity as the State Religion of Rome under and after Constantine.
Cyprian, 253 AD said, “As to what pertains to the case of infants: You [Fidus] said that they ought not to be baptized within the second or third day after their birth, that the old law of circumcision must be taken into consideration, and that you did not think that one should be baptized and sanctified within the eighth day after his birth. In our council it seemed to us far otherwise. No one agreed to the course which you thought should be taken. Rather, we all judge that the mercy and grace of God ought to be denied to no man born...If, in the case of the worst sinners and those who formerly sinned much against God, when afterwards they believe, the remission of their sins is granted and no one is held back from baptism and grace, how much more, then, should an infant not be held back, who, having but recently been born, has done no sin, except that, born of the flesh according to Adam, he has contracted the contagion of that old death from his first being born. For this very reason does he [an infant] approach more easily to receive the remission of sins: because the sins forgiven him are not his own but those of another” (ibid., 64:5).
Both predate Constantine.
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