A gracEmail subscriber writes that his infant grandson is soon to be baptized, although Grandpa raised the baby's mother in a church that baptizes only confessing believers. This grandfather requests more information on the subject.
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The New Testament does not specifically mention infant baptism or, for that matter, an "age of accountability" of older children. Luke does report "households" being baptized (Acts 10:24, 48; 16:15, 32). Some theologians suppose that those households contained infants; others suppose that they did not. The Book of Acts reflects a first-generation church in which adult conversions were the norm. It is altogether possible that the spiritual status of believer's children had not yet become a pressing question.
Scholars on both sides of this issue focus on the New Testament's connection between baptism and the benefits achieved by Christ's atoning work -- new life, cleansing, forgiveness of sins, the gift of the Spirit, incorporation into the body of Christ. Scholars also note that the New Testament relates baptism to repentance (Acts 2:38) and to faith (Mark 16:16; Col. 2:12). Christians who decline to baptize babies reason that babies do not need to repent and cannot exercise saving faith. Christians who do baptize their babies either presume that the infants have faith (which they cannot yet express) or, given the faith of the parents, anticipate that the babies will come to personal faith in due time.
Not all Christians who baptize their babies do so for the same reason. Nor, of course, do all who baptize adults. For Catholics, Anglicans, and Lutherans, baptism is a sacrament with saving significance. For Presbyterians and Reformed, it signifies membership in God's covenant community, just as circumcision marked Israel's baby boys as belonging to the Abrahamic covenant. Methodists and other Wesleyans officially think like Anglicans on this subject, although in practice they often view infant baptism more as the parents' dedication of the child and as their own promise to nurture the baby toward personal faith as it grows older.
A gracEmail subscriber writes that his infant grandson is soon to be baptized, although Grandpa raised the baby's mother in a church that baptizes only confessing believers. This grandfather requests more information on the subject.
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Whether babies ought to be baptized or not, their situation clearly differs from that of adult converts to Christianity. Christians on both sides of this issue agree that believing parents bear primary responsibility to nurture their children in such a way that with God's blessing the children will grow to personal faith and consciously commit their lives to Jesus Christ.
Most baby-baptizers perceive the infancy ceremony as incomplete by itself and expect the child to declare faith for itself later through Confirmation. Similarly, many who do not baptize babies sense the need to publicly dedicate their infants to God and to pledge to nurture the infants in Christian faith. These parents also regard that infancy ceremony as incomplete by itself and expect the child to declare its own faith later through baptism. Leaving aside for the moment the question whether baptism requires immersion, both sides in this scenario share all the same elements, though in a different order. They differ as to whether the child's baptism belongs at the beginning of that process or at its end.
My own understanding of Scripture sees repentance and faith as the heart's responses by which we reach out with empty hands to receive God's grace. It sees gospel baptism as the tangible, eventful declaration and embodiment of such repentance and faith. On that basis, I encourage the dedication of infants, followed by baptism when the children actually come to faith. I also encourage believing adults who were baptized as infants now to be immersed as a further confirmation and expression of their personal faith in Jesus Christ as Savior. (This said, let me seek shelter, for I shall soon be dodging bullets from all sides!)
For more on the candidates for water baptism, click here.
For more on marriage and family, click here.