Thanks to everyone who has been reading my series on infant baptism. I’ve tried to outline the reasons why my opinion shifted from a creedobaptism to a paedobaptism position.
Below you’ll see a listing of all the posts in this series.
Part 1 - Covenant Kids
What started my journey was the nagging question: Just how does God see my kids? As part of the church? Totally lost? His people? Pagans? I started out completely closed to the idea of paedobaptism. But I wanted to know who my children were in the eyes of God. This opened the door to my exploration.
Part 2 - All in the Family
My first stop along this journey was when I started to embrace a more biblical view of the family. While I didn’t find paedobaptism arguments convincing yet, I found myself more and more drawn to their understanding of God’s covenant community and covenant family.
Part 3 - My Objections
I had some serious objections to infant baptism. This post outlines 4 critical ones.
Part 4 - Circumcision: A Seal of the Promise
If it’s true that infants in the church should be baptized like those in the old covenant were circumcised, this would mean that circumcision held profound spiritual significance. But as someone from a baptistic background, I believed circumcision was merely a mark of Jewish ethnic identity. I needed to have this notion overturned.
Part 5 - God’s Generational Faithfulness
One of the reasons I rejected the idea of paedobaptism was because I believed an advantage of the new covenant was that only professing believers would be considered a part of God’s people. Therefore only believers should be given the mark of membership. The old covenant was too inclusive, I thought, embracing members by virtue of their parentage and not their faith. In order to buy into infant baptism, this assumption needed to be dismantled.
Part 6 - From Circumcision to Baptism
In order to believe in infant baptism, I needed to believe baptism somehow replaced circumcision, but there are no statements in the Bible to this effect. Why do paedobaptists believe baptism is the New Testament counterpart to circumcision?
Part 7 - Baptized Born Again Believers
My biggest objection to paedobaptism was my belief that baptism is always linked to a personal profession of faith and a believer’s personal union with Christ. How could an infant be united to Christ? How could we baptize someone who is unable to profess faith? If paedobaptists couldn’t explain this one, there was no way they would win me to their side.
Part 8 - The Household Connection
With my objections answered, I searched for some sign from the New Testament that baptism was for more than just professing believers. I originally believed the absence of infant baptisms in the Bible was a clear indication that it was wrong: I later came to see this silence as one of the greatest arguments for it.
Part 9 – The Difference It Makes
Since my children have been baptized, how has this new theological position changed the way I think about baptism? About God? About my kids?
Hi Luke … I’ve enjoyed checking out your blog, including your interest in cold thermogenesis. While taking a gander at that, I noticed your “Why I Baptized My Babies.” It’s great to want to mark your family as a household led by God. However, a look at the history of baptism is worth noting. Biblical baptism was immersion. Baptism prior to the resurrection of Jesus Christ was a personal (not family) testimony of faith towards the future Messiah’s ultimate sacrifice as the Lamb of God. After the resurrection of Christ, baptism became a public testimony of the spiritual birth that had taken place in an individual (again, not for a group or family). The immersion in baptism is symbolic of the death of Christ (as the person is lowered into the water) and the physical resurrection of Christ / spiritual rebirth of the individual being baptized (as they are coming out of lowered state in the water). Since sprinkling is not immersion, perhaps the act’s could more accurately be changed to a dedication ceremony. A baby can and should be dedicated to the Lord by parents, but unfortunately, calling the sprinkling ceremony a “baby baptism” is meaningless to the infant and counterproductive to the cause of Christ. Sinners, which we all are, tend to want to deny our need for a savior and our “natural” selves avoid submitting to the Savior by using excuses. Some of those I’ve heard include, “I’m not such a bad person, and besides, I was baptized as a baby.” Thus, a false sense of security has been provided unwittingly by the parents who had the baby baptized in the first place. In this way, infant baptism could actually help draw your adult child away from a relationship with Jesus. Parents should be careful not to mislead their children into thinking anything contrary to the Gospel, which is that all have sinned (Romans 3:23), each must recognize that they fall short of the 10 commandments owing God their very lives as a debt over the penalty of sin, that Christ paid that debt in full and that we must receive this gift of salvation by acknowledging their violation of the 10 commandments, praying to the Lord to repent of their sin and ask Jesus to come into their hearts and fill them with the Holy Spirit. Eternal salvation is only given on an individual basis through repentance (Luke 13:5). This is Biblically described as being “born again.” A baby can’t mentally process or verbally express all that, since they are in an “age of innocence.” For a better understanding, please consider http://www.knowgod.org.
Hey TrueBlue!
Thanks for your thoughts on this. I’m glad we can dialogue about this.
Immersion certainly was one of the modes, probably even the most common mode, of baptism. It is certainly the mode I prefer. But the Bible isn’t dogmatic about the mode. When we look at the variety of ceremonial washings that took place in Israel before the coming of Christ, some were by full immersion, some were by pouring, others by sprinkling. We can even see this in the language of Scripture itself. For instance, when someone is said to be “baptized in the Spirit,” the imagery is not one of someone “going down into the Spirit” but the Spirit being poured out from above. Other examples include Old Testament images that were later related to baptism, such as Noah in the Ark (1 Peter 3) or Israel in the Red Sea (1 Corinthians 10): in both instances, though baptism was prefigured, in neither case was total immersion in water the mode. In fact, in both cases the people didn’t even get wet.
As for baptism being a family ceremony, I talk about this in Part 8. Prior to Christ coming, Jewish proselytes would have their whole family baptized, including infants. If you have time, read that post and let me know what you think.
You are correct that people can use their baptism as an excuse to not live a life of personal faith and obedience. But I would respond to this in the following ways. (1) The children of Israel could have used (and probably did use) circumcision the same way, and yet circumcision of infants was commanded by God. (2) When adults who were circumcised in infancy used their spiritual heritage alone as a sign that they were truly saved, God reminded them that their circumcision was meant as a call to personal trust in God. The same should be true in any church that baptizes babies. It should never be taught that baptism (of adults or infants) “gets you in.” All baptized individuals are called to their covenant obligation to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation.
I completely agree that parents should be careful not to mislead their children into thinking anything contrary to the Gospel. Infant baptism properly administered and taught does not lead a child to believe they are united with Christ regardless of faith, but that they are united to Christ only if they live on their covenant obligations of faith and repentance. (I wrote about this some in Part 9.)
Any thoughts?
I christen my kids but not for the reasons the church gives. I think of it as being a blessing, a consecration, nothing more. My children, with the help of the church and family will develop their own relationship/sense of obligation to Christ and the church.