Some notes on the paedobaptism debate:
1. The fundamental divide between covenant baptism and the Baptist view is seeing baptism as a gift and work of God in which we receive a promise versus seeing baptism as act of obedience in which we make a confession of our faith. Is baptism about God’s promise or is it about our confession? Is it God’s action or ours? In the historic Reformed view, baptism is not a human work, it is a divine work. It is not an act we do for God but a gift he gives to us. In baptism, we are not primarily confessing faith, we are receiving a gift. If you read the NT passages on baptism this way, seeing them as an enactment and application of the gospel to us, they will make A LOT more sense.
2. Baptists frame the debate as paedobaptism vs credobaptism. But traditional Reformed and Augustinian views of baptism (not to mention Lutheran, Anglican, etc.) do not accept that. When we baptize a baby, we are baptizing a believer. We are the true credobaptists. A big reason this sounds shocking is because we no longer sing the psalms. If more Christians grew up singing psalms like Psalm 22 (see especially verses 9-10), paedofaith would make sense. David describes the faithful relationship he had with God even in the womb. He knows he had this relationship with God even as a nursing baby, not because he can remember that far back (no one can!) but because he is looking back on his infancy through the lens of God’s covenant promise (Gen. 17:7). David’s infant faith should be the norm for children born into the context of the covenant. By nature, all children are sinners, but by grace, covenant children are also believers. Covenant children should grow Christian, never remembering a day when they did not love and trust Jesus. God was always already there in their lives. Their testimonies have no sharp before and after because God was already their God in the womb.
3. That covenant promise God made to Abraham, “I will be God to you and to your children,” is really the key. It is impossible to fully grasp the argument for infant baptism if you only look at baptismal texts. You have to look at God’s covenant promises, which always include the next generation. You have to look at passages that talk about households, children, olive trees (Psalm 128, Rom. 11), sacramental feasts and festivals (which always included children), circumcision, generations, etc.
4. The covenantal vs Baptist differences go deep into the way we read the Bible. One example: Baptists like to claim there is no example of infant baptism in the Bible. But this just shows Baptists have not really grappled with the unity of Scripture as whole. There are numerous examples of infants being baptized in Scripture. One test case: In 1 Corinthians 10:1ff, Paul describes Israel’s exodus, and he calls the Red Sea crossing a baptism. Israel was a nation of several hundred thousand people at this point. There is no question there were very young children in their number. So the Red Sea crossing was a baptism that included babies. Paul keeps stressing “all” – all passed through the sea, all were baptized, all ate spiritual food, all drank spiritual drink, etc. Paul calls the Red Sea crossing a baptism because of Psalm 77, which tells us the glory cloud “poured” out water on them as they crossed. (Of course, that text raises questions about the mode of baptism, but I’ve addressed that elsewhere.)
5. Another way of looking at this debate is asking, “What kind of community is the church?” Everyone involved in this debate agrees that baptism is our entrance into the church. So does the church include infants or not? It would be very strange if it didn’t. The whole point of God’s redemptive program is to restore the fallen creation. If Adam and Eve had not sinned, obviously their kids would have grown up knowing and trusting God from conception. So it is in the covenant of grace: Our expectation is that our children will grow up knowing and loving Jesus from the womb. Some might fall away (just as some who get baptized and enter the church at an older age fall away). But we do not have to doubt God’s love for our children, his desire to include them in his covenant family of the church, and the calling of parents to disciple the children God gives them. Our children are holy seed (Malachi 2:15) – they belong to God, and their baptisms in infancy manifest that. The church is supposed to be God’s new humanity. But if infants are excluded because they are not smart enough or big enough, the church really can’t be a new humanity in any comprehensive way. The church is not a club for the mature; it is a a holy nation, and nations always include the children of their citizens as citizens themselves.
6. The reason the historic church has been against the practice of rebaptism is because there is “one baptism” (Eph. 4). If baptism is how we confess our faith, then it would make sense to get baptized again and again – maybe every day or even every hour! We can never confess our faith too often. But because baptism is God’s work, gift, and promise, there is no need for another baptism. Even if someone wanders from the faith into which they were baptized for a season, they do not need to be baptized again when they repent and return to the fold because God’s promise was always sure. If baptism is the manifestation of God’s promise it does not need to be repeated because the promise has not changed.
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