God of My Youth

GOD OF MY YOUTH:
INFANT FAITH, INFANT SALVATION, AND COVENANT NURTURE
IN THE PSALTER AND PSYCHOLOGY

RICH LUSK

Introduction: Focusing the Questions

Historical Background

Our children are a gift from God, which means parenting is a form of stewardship. As John Calvin emphasized, every child is a special blessing from God and every birth is a divine visitation. Parents are given a tremendous task: they are to take these little bundles of blessing and help them grow to Christian maturity. But while virtually all Christian parents share a common goal for their children (Christ-like character), not all agree on the starting point or how to arrive at the desired destination. The Spiritual nurture and formation of our children are weighty, difficult issues. One key question revolves around the nature of the child’s relationship with God even from womb. More specifically, this is the question of fides infantum, or infant faith.
The question of whether or not infants belonging to believing parents can have faith has been a troubling one in the history of the church. On the one hand, if we deny that they can have faith, we must either say that these children are lost if they die in infancy or that their salvation is an exception to the great Reformation principle of sola fide. (A further option is tendered by some Anabaptists who simply deny original sin. Infants are not yet sinners so they cannot be condemned. Of course, one wonders why they are subject to the curse of death at all if they are innocent!) On the other hand, if we affirm the possibility of infant faith, we have the difficult task of explaining how persons who lack intellectual and verbal abilities can enter into personal, trusting relationships with others. Is infant faith theologically credible and psychologically plausible?
Some have adamantly denied the possibility of infant faith. Certainly this has been true of the Anabaptist and Baptistic traditions, but it has also been the case with many Reformed theologians as well. Others have vigorously affirmed infant faith, pointing to infants as the best illustrations of gospel grace. Apart from intellectual and rational abilities, the Spirit is able to regenerate and sanctify infants so that they have a kind of “baby faith.” This view was advocated by Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, John Calvin, and Zacharias Ursinus among others. They all connected infant faith with infant baptism. They insisted that faith was necessary to a right reception of the sacrament and that infants were capable (by grace) of such a right reception. Many early Reformers viewed infant faith as having a kind of normativity with regard to those infants born in the context of the church.
To further complicate the subject, however, some later theologians, such as scholastic Francis Turretin, tried to take a middle way, insisting that covenant infants have a seed of faith, a kind of potential faith, but denying that this is actual or active faith. Many fine nuances were made in order to create a distinction between the faith of infants and adults since adult faith includes a propositional confession (e.g., Rom. 10:9-10, 13). The net result, at least in some instances, was to make infant baptism latent until the child had a conversion experience.
The questions we are left with are these: Is infant faith taught in the Scriptures, and if so, what version of infant faith? Is such faith active or passive? How much continuity does it possess with full grown faith? Is there any psychological evidence for infant faith, and if so how does it relate to Bible’s teaching on the subject? How does infant faith relate to the life of the church community, including the administration of the sacraments?

The Issues at Hand

How we answer this question about infant faith has sweeping implications for covenant children who are snatched from this life in their youth, as well as those who live to older years. For those who die in infancy, pastors and parents must grapple with ominous questions surrounding the fate of the child. Again, Christian positions have varied here, running along a spectrum from saying that all such children are saved to denying that any are saved. As a pastor, I know that providing an honest way to comfort grieving parents is of great significance. And so the question is: What do the Scriptures actually teach about infants dying in infancy? Is there any biblically grounded solace we can offer? Can we regard them as saved with certainty?
For children who live normal lives and come of age, the question of infant faith is right at the heart of the debate over how we should raise our children. For instance: Do we seek to nurture them in a covenant relationship they already own? Or do we treat them as outsiders, hoping to convert them once they reach years of discretion? Do our children belong to Christ or to the world? Fundamentally, we can put the issue this way: Is a Christian parent’s first task to disciple his child or to evangelize his child? Is his child inside or outside the kingdom? Does the child need initial salvation or ongoing perseverance?
Further, what are the psychological implications of choosing to treat our covenant children as Christians? What are the psychological implications of treating them as non-Christians? How do we best inculcate in our children an understanding of the free and undeserved grace of the gospel so they develop a “psychology of grace”?
Last but least, the question of infant faith is related to sacramental participation and sacramental efficacy. If our children have faith, how does this bear upon their reception of the sacraments? If we see biblical evidence that they have faith, can we justly withhold the Lord’s Supper from them? And if we deny that they have faith can we justify baptizing them anyway? Must we take into account the maturity level of their faith when contemplating their access to the Eucharist? Or is faith alone–of any quality–sufficient?
This essay cannot deal comprehensively with any of these questions, though we will touch on all of them in various ways. In particular, we want to look at one slice of the biblical canon as it bears upon the question of infant faith, namely, the book of Psalms. We will find that the Psalter provides a rich and practical theology of covenant children. Then we will deal very briefly with issues related to the salvation of children dying in infancy and the debate over covenant nurture in the Christian home. Because there is so much current interest in child psychology, we will pay a quick nod to this discipline as a way of further understanding and unpacking the biblical teaching.
My overall argument will be that in the book of Psalms we see strong testimony of infant faith, and this provides great comfort and encouragement for Christian parents, whether their children die in youth or live to reach old age. We will find that Psalter-based parenting and piety stand in marked contrast to the patterns of American, revivalistic, individualistic Christianity. We will also see that both paedobaptism and paedocommunion are necessary corollaries of sola fide and the Bible’s covenant promises.

Infant Faith in the Psalter

Psalm 22

In Psalm 22:9-10, David asserts that he had faith as an infant. His strongest statement is in verse 9b: “You made me trust while on my mother’s breast.” In other words, David had a God-ward orientation from his earliest days. In recounting his formative experiences, David never points to a dramatic “conversion experience,” but traces back the origin of his Spiritual life to the very beginnings of his physical life. As far as David knows, a relationship with God was always already there. He was a believer from the beginning.
This was certainly not because David believed infants somehow escaped the pollution of original sin or possessed an innate moral goodness. David was not a naïve sentimentalist or a proto-Pelagian. In fact, David confesses elsewhere that he was conceived in iniquity (Ps. 51:5). He knew he was programmed by nature for evil. But he also reckoned that because of the covenant promise, God must have been working to counteract that innate desire for wickedness from his life’s origin. Thus, grace was already battling sin in his heart from the beginning. Apparently for David, sin and faith were no more mutually exclusive in infants than in adults. Man is born a sinner from the moment of conception; and yet for those infants who are also participants in the covenant promises, God’s grace is already operative as well.
How did David know that he had faith as an infant? Certainly not through conscious remembrance. Obviously, none of us can remember that far back in our experience. But it seems that this observation only strengthens the case for infant faith as a general, covenant-wide phenomenon. David must derive the fact that he had faith as an infant from broader covenant principles–that is, from the covenant promises as such (e.g., Gen. 17:1, 8). God’s declaration that he is a God to our children must include giving them his Spirit (Isa. 59:21), who enables them to have a trusting relationship with their Heavenly Father, even apart from ordinary means. Infant faith is a normative covenant reality.
There is another reason why David cannot be presenting his infant faith as a unique case. After all, his description of faith, even from the womb, was part of Israel’s public hymnbook, used in corporate worship. This is not a private prayer journal, but part of a covenantal liturgy. In public praise, every Israelite would have made the words of David his own, and would have been expected to be able to identify with them in some form or fashion. Thus, infant faith is paradigmatic. It is the normal course of events, part of a typical covenant child’s pattern of development. In much the same way that hymns like John Newton’s “Amazing Grace” have made adult conversion the norm (Newton recalls a period of blindness and “the hour I first believed . . .”) in many revivalistic churches, so David’s psalm made infant faith and covenant nurture the norm in ancient Israel. Certainly, God is free to work when, how, and where he pleases, but God’s ordinary way of dealing with covenant infants includes giving them the gift of faith in the womb. The revivalistic paradigm turns David’s experience inside out and effectively eliminates the possibility of growing up Christian.
What is the nature of this faith that David exercised even as an infant? Clearly it was not a matter of cognitive reflection. Instead, it seems to be a matter of relational disposition. For example, David perceives the care of God through his mother’s breast. Her milk becomes a means of grace to him. His mother stands in loco Dei. Even though he knows no more propositions about his mother than he knows about Jesus, he still has a dependent, trusting stance towards her. Really, this relational posture is the essence of faith.
Faith is, as James Fowler has said, a particular way of “leaning into life.” Faith is an inescapable aspect of human life and development, though apart from grace, faith is always misdirected (e.g., Jer. 17:5-6). Given that there is no religious neutrality, even for infants, we might even say that infant faith (and human faith in general) is universal since every person at every stage of development has some particular “approach” to life. The only question, then, is, “Towards whom is this faith directed? The living God? Or an idol?” David’s claim is that he was “leaning into life” in God’s way even from his earliest days. He had a relational inclination and desire for God from infancy. As his sense of self-identity and view of the world developed, they were profoundly directed towards and integrated by his faith-relationship with Israel’s Lord. His life leaned towards God, rather than away from him, from the outset. Obviously, this was not a natural disposition, but a gift of covenanted grace.

Psalm 71

Of course, Psalm 22 is not the only reference to infant faith in the Psalter. We find something similar in Psalm 71:5-6. Here, the psalmist once again describes himself as having a trusting, personal relationship with God from his earliest days. The beginning of Spiritual life is, for the child of the covenant, coordinated with the beginning of physical life. When a sperm and egg unite in a covenant womb, the embryo already has a promise from God and an inescapable relationship with God. Just as covenant marriages belong to God, so the fruit of those marriages is claimed by God as well (cf. Mal 2:15). This is not because infant faith is some kind of natural inheritance from the parents. Rather, it is because the child has a relationship with God, created by Christ through the Spirit, in accord with the covenant promises. Parents do not save their children by their genetics or bloodlines any more than by their works (cf. Jn. 1:12-13); but the divine promise of salvation provides a basis for parents to serve as means of grace to their children, building upon a work God has already begun. Because God is at work in the child, the parents can be effective in parental nurture.
Specifically in 71:5, the psalmist speaks of having hope in God from his earliest days. There was apparently never a time in his life when he lived without this hope. In verse 6, he speaks of God’s special care for him from birth. God brought him out of the womb safely, and it is this past track record of divine faithfulness that serves to bolster the psalmist’s mature confidence that God will now deliver him from the wicked men who seek his harm and ruin (71:4). Because God has sheltered him with favor and care from his earliest days, he will continue to do so on into old age (71:9). From cradle to death bed, the Lord will be faithful to the covenant. Infant faith is simply a manifestation of God’s own covenant fidelity. The covenant provides cradle to grave security for believers.
If we take the framework of the psalmist seriously, the covenant child would never need to pose the question, “What must I do to be saved?” in the way an outsider must ask that question. Indeed, that question would never even occur to the child if he is made to understand the covenant relationship that has been given to him. Salvation has belonged to him from the beginning because of God’s covenant promise (71:6; Acts 2:39, 16:31). He does not need a “conversion experience” when he reaches a mythical “age of accountability.” Instead he simply needs to continue maturing and growing in the trust of his youth (71:5). Indeed, the psalmist pledges himself to just this kind of faith-filled, grace-enabled perseverance later on in his prayer (e.g., 71:14-16).
Certainly this paradigm of covenant nurture in the Psalter does not preclude the possibility of passing through various “crisis points” as the child matures. It does not mean the child’s growth will be a straight upward climb. In fact, even in Psalm 71 we find David facing challenges to his faith. As God brings him through the trial, he will enter a new phase of maturity. His faith will be strengthened and confirmed, and he will confess that faith publicly in a new way. A fresh chapter will have been added to his testimony of God’s care and provision. Thus, infant faith does not negate the need for the child’s Spiritual growth; rather, it gives us a basis for expecting our diligent instruction, discipline, and nurture to be effective in the life of the child, as he grows towards maturity.
If covenant parents grasp the reality of who their children are, they will be in a better position to shepherd them through life’s vicissitudes and quietudes. David had a covenantal framework for dealing with his trials and struggles. He knew he could bank on God’s ongoing covenant care because his eyes had been trained to see God at work all through the course of his life. In the same, way we must provide a covenantal platform for our children so that they can rightly interpret the pattern of God’s covenant faithfulness at work in their life-stories, discerning his love and provision even from their earliest days. By teaching our children that they were already embraced in God’s care from infancy, we bolster their confidence in God for the future. This nurture does not guarantee their perseverance in faith, of course, but it does press them in the right direction.

Psalm 139

Another important Psalm is 139. Psalm 139:14-15 have been pressed into generic usage because of contemporary debates over abortion, but these verses have a very specific, covenantal focus. Jack Collins, professor of Old Testament at Covenant Theological Seminary, suggests the following as the best translation of 139:14: “I praise you for the fact that I have been awesomely distinguished [as a member of your covenant people]; your works are wonderful, and my soul knows it well.” Without repeating Collins’ fine linguistic work on the passage, we should note the nuance of the verb “to be distinguished” in this context. Collins points out that each time this verb is used in the OT (e.g., Ex. 9:4; 11:7; 33:16; Ps. 4:4) “the distinction is one in which the covenant member is set apart for God’s gracious attention.” Thus, in Psalm 139:14, the psalmist is expressing awe not simply over God’s creative work in forming him in his mother’s womb (as many translations imply); rather, he is praising God for having set him apart as a participant in his covenant of salvation. “In context this is praise that one’s experience of God’s covenantal blessings extends back to the very beginning of one’s existence,” as Collins puts it. This is not a generic declaration, applicable to all in utero children; it is a special proclamation of God’s care and favor for those children who belong to his covenant. These children are “awesomely distinguished” from children conceived outside the pale of the covenant community (cf. 1 Cor. 7:14).
Collins echoes my earlier point about Psalm 22:9-10: it will not do to say that this is an experience unique to David. It has normative force, and so we are warranted in applying it to covenant children as a class. All such children are conceived and grow up within the sphere of covenanted mercies. They are awesomely distinguished as believing members of the covenant community even from infancy.
Is this simply a record of the personal experience of the author? No: whatever its origin, it is now in the Psalter, which means that its primary function is to provide fitting words for God’s covenant people to use in their public corporate worship. The redemptive-historical setting of this psalm is an era in which virtually all the pious members of the covenant people were raised in what we would call believing covenant homes; and this psalm is equipping them to trace their experience of God’s intimate love and care right back to the time they were embryos . . .
[T]he people sing that their relationship with God dates from their time in the womb. Indeed God’s care for the children of his covenant people is inherent in the covenant itself (Gen. 17:7; 18:19; Ex. 34:7, “who keeps loving-kindness for thousands [of generations]”), so it is hardly surprising that it would figure in the worship of the covenant people.
Psalm 139:14 does not contain an explicit reference to the psalmist’s infant faith the way Psalm 22 and Psalm 71 do. However, it is not at all difficult to see the connection between the way David describes his pre-birth experience of grace here with the way it is described elsewhere. Even in the womb, the relationship between David and his God is so intimate, it must have been one of mutual faithfulness. It is not simply that God knew (loved) David, but that David knew (loved) God. Surely such knowing and loving on David’s part included faith. The covenant distinction that set David apart even in the womb strongly suggests the presence of embryonic trust, consistent with what we find elsewhere.
Psalm 139:15 is also interesting in regard to the question of infant faith. The psalmist speaks of God having “woven” him together in his mother’s womb. The verb used here does more than merely indicate that each new conception and gestation is a work of God, through created means and processes. This verb is used elsewhere in the OT to describe the making of the veils and curtains that hung in the tabernacle (e.g., Ex. 26:36). The covenant infant is woven together, like fine fabric, for holy purposes. The child is already a sacred person (cf. 1 Cor. 7:14), a kind of mini-temple in which God dwells by his Spirit (cf. 1 Cor. 6:19). Obviously the child will enter a greater degree of holiness at circumcision (or baptism in the new covenant), and will need to grow up into his covenantal status by professing faith and walking in obedience in the years to come. His infant faith must grow into mature, more fully actualized adult faith. But the covenant child’s starting point should be clear: he belongs to the Lord; he is God’s special workmanship; he is a member of the believing covenant people.

Other Psalms

Finally, we should make brief mention of a few other passages in the Psalter which bear upon the question at hand. Psalm 8:2 speaks of infants as true worshippers of God. Babbling covenant children are actually chanting God’s praises. As Calvin says in commenting on this text, God does not wait until men reach mature years in order to make his glory shine through them; rather, “even from the very dawn of infancy [his glory] shines forth so brightly as is sufficient to confute all the ungodly . . . [God] has no need of rhetoricians, nor even of distinct and formed language, because the tongues of infants, although they do not yet speak, are ready and eloquent enough to celebrate it.” Calvin rejects the allegorical interpretation of this verse which makes infancy a metaphor for new Christians and insists the Psalm is describing actual infants as “witnesses and preachers of God’s glory” and “invincible champions of God.” It is hard to escape the conclusion that if infants are all these things, they must also be believers in some sense. Infant faith is presupposed rather than stated, but it cannot be denied.
Psalm 78 calls upon covenant parents to train their children in the story of God’s gracious dealings with Israel. Children love stories, of course, and certain narratives become fundamental to their personal and corporate identities. In verses 1-8, Asaph calls upon fathers in Israel to inculcate a sense of covenant “belongingness” in their children, so that they will understand themselves in light of Israel’s history. By knowing their past, they are also inspired with hope for the future, for the story reveals the triumph of God’s mercy over and over again (78:9ff). Giving our children the redemptive story in such a way that it becomes their story is a way of forming their character and strengthening their faith. Again, there no overt mention of faith on the part of the children, but it is easy to see how their faith is a presupposition of the text. Covenant nurture in the covenant narrative makes sense because the children are regarded as full covenant members.
Psalms 127 and 128 are useful in drawing out the Psalter’s theology of children. The Psalmist says children are a heritage and reward from the Lord (127:3), meaning they are distributed to us not by chance but in accord with God’s counsel and pleasure for our benefit. We should rejoice when God gives us offspring (Psalm 128:1, 3).
But we know that many children grow up to cause their parents grief and sorrow. How can the Psalter speak of children as such blessings? It is because God promises to give us children who are like arrows in the hands of a mighty warrior (127:4). If parents sharpen and straighten these arrows through faithful nurture, their children will be equipped to fight the wicked in the city gate (e.g., in public and cultural life).
Psalm 128:3 reinforces this point. Our children are like olive plants. Provided that we water and fertilize them, prune and protect them, we can be assured they will grow into fruitfulness. Olive plants elsewhere are symbolic of covenant membership (e.g., Rom. 11) and holiness (Zech. 4). Our homes and churches are to be like greenhouses in which we seek to optimize growing conditions for these covenant seedlings. Through our stories and songs, our festivals and fasts, our public and familial worship, our teaching and discipline, and our example and prayer, we control the lighting, humidity and temperature levels in the greenhouse, enabling our little olive plants to flourish.
While neither of these psalms speak directly of infant faith per se, it is easy to see how compatible these images and metaphors are with the Psalter’s more literal description of covenant children elsewhere. These images mesh well with David’s profession to have been a paedo-believer. No conversion experience is demanded in order for our children to be regarded as arrows or olives; instead this is simply who they are from their infancy, by virtue of God’s covenant. We are called upon to receive and raise them accordingly.
Psalm 58:3 is important to our discussion, even if only by way of contrast. We are told the wicked are alienated from God from birth. Indeed, they are actively, not just potentially, wicked. As soon they are born, they speak lies. Obviously, this forms a sharp contrast with the babies of the righteous who speak truth and praise God even in their youth (cf. Ps. 8:2). But if the sons of the wicked are practicing idolatry even from infancy, it only makes sense (in terms of the text’s implied contrast) that the children of the righteous are in some way practicing righteousness. Their faith is not just latent; it is every bit as concrete and “actual” as the wickedness of covenant breaking children. Of course, both sin and faith will be more fully actualized later on life, but the Bible does not draw a hard and fast line between infants and adults in their exercise of the will for or against God. There is no religious neutrality, even in the womb.
At this point we should add a qualification. None of these Psalms surveyed indicate that faith among covenant infants is absolutely universal. The covenant often has fuzzy boundaries. For example, it is hard to imagine Psalm 22:9-10 applying with the same force during times of declension and idolatry in Israel as it did in David’s time, given that he was raised in the godly home of Jesse. In our day, many infants are baptized in a context of apostasy because the family or church (or both institutions) have rejected the orthodox faith and only carry on an outward shell of the sacrament of baptism. In these cases, where a child is baptized unlawfully or where there can be no realistic expectation that baptism will be followed up by parental discipleship and nurture, the probability of infant faith is uncertain.
But in more normal circumstances, such as those addressed by the Psalter, where the faith of the parents and the covenant community is in tact, there is no good reason to doubt the presence of faith in the heart of the child. In a faithful situation, the children have faith as well as their parents. The children share their parents’ posture of trust and God-ward orientation. They have a favorable relationship with the Lord.
If we ask why there aren’t even more references to infant faith in the Psalter (and elsewhere in Scripture), we should note that this is one of those relatively “invisible” doctrines. That is to say, it is everywhere assumed but rarely talked about explicitly. However, there are all kinds of corroborating evidences.
For example, we do not see the patriarchs in Genesis seeking to convert their children out of unbelief and into faith when they reach a certain age point. Jesus does not say that little covenant children need to be converted so they can enter the kingdom of God, but says they already belong to the kingdom. Paul does not tell Ephesian children to believe the gospel, but to obey their parents in the Lord. In other words, he deals with them as saints and disciples, not as unbelievers in need of conversion. In the same way, Paul does not instruct Ephesian fathers to seek the conversion of their children, but instead tells them to provide a comprehensive pattern of training for their children in the Lord. For Christians, the whole parent-child relationship is contextualized “in the Lord.” And so on.
Everywhere along the way, it assumed that the children of God’s people belong to God from their youth, and this assumption is grounded in God’s covenant promise. The picture drawn in the Psalter is consistent with what we find in the rest of Scripture.

What Infant Faith Is Not: The Role of Baptism and the Psychological Pressure of Communal Expectations

Infant Baptism and Infant Faith

Thus far, we have seen that there is strong biblical warrant for believing that our children are believers. However, we need to clear away a couple of important misconceptions before unpacking the practical implications of this teaching.
First, this doctrine of infant faith means, simply put, that Christian parents give birth to Christian children. After all, what could be more sensible? If anything is evident from providence (not to mention the Bible), God has ordained an intimate life-bond and organic connection between parents and children. Muslims give birth to Muslim children. Jews give birth to Jewish children. Chinese parents give birth to Chinese children. Roman Catholic parents give birth to Roman Catholic children. Presbyterians give birth to Presbyterian children. Baptists give birth to . . . well, never mind! But the point should be clear. Children inescapably share in the cultural and religious life of their parents.
However, the point is also easily misunderstood because, when it comes to Christian children, there is a complicating factor. Scripture makes it plain that because of our fallenness, everyone is by nature out of fellowship with the living God (e.g., Eph. 2:1ff). Left to themselves, the children of even the holiest parents would be conceived as God-haters and unbelievers. Our children are not innocent or even neutral; they are without God and without hope on their own. Grace is a not a natural possession that can be passed on from one generation to the next the way other traits are. Faith in the Triune God is not a natural inheritance but a gift of divine mercy.
This is precisely why the covenant is so important. The covenant promises reveal that God does not leave our children to themselves–even for a moment. He takes initiative to claim the children of his people and make them his own. He does not wait for either parents or the children to make the first move. His grace runs ahead of us, and prepares the way for us. His Spirit is always already there in the life of the covenant child. God’s people do not give birth to children of trouble but for blessing (Isa. 65:23; cf. 59:21).
It is sheer mercy, not some natural necessity that makes the next generation partakers of the covenant relationship. Covenant membership becomes part of the “givenness” of the child’s life situation, not because of his own virtue or his parents’ virtue, but because of God’s free favor. Covenant children share their parents’ relationship with God because God graciously wills it to be so, and binds them to himself. In this way, grace intersects and transforms nature. Grace interrupts the “natural” transmission of the Adamic curse, restoring the creation (specifically the family) in and through Christ and the Spirit.
The only question, then, is this: At what point in the life of the covenant child can we expect the grace of God to begin taking effect? At what age in the life of the child do the promises become operational? Does God put his blessing on hold, and wait until the child reaches a certain age to become the God of that child? Or does he act earlier in the child’s life, even in the womb? At what age can parents begin to claim and apply God’s promises to their children?
The answer of the Psalter is clear. The promises are effective from the moment of conception forward. God is the God of believers; if he is the God of our children, that must mean our children have faith. This does not exempt our children from participating (organically and legally) in the corruption and guilt of original sin. But it means that God is already at work counteracting the native depravity and culpability of our children from the beginning of their lives. There is never a time during which they exist outside the bounds of the covenant of grace. In fact, to affirm original sin, and simultaneously deny that God can and does perform a counterwork in the children of his people is, as Charles Krauth suggested, to make nature more potent than grace since it places a portion of “nature” (infants) in the grasp of sin but beyond the reach of mercy.
Of course, the answer of the Psalter makes perfect sense in light of the promises God makes in his covenant. God does not say, “I will be a God to you and to your teenagers.” Nor is it even, “I will be a God to you and to your toddlers.” No, it is “I will be a God to you and to your children.” The promise covers our children as soon as they exist. But note that it is the covenant promises, not some natural faculty, that ensures our children’s standing before God. It is the trans-generational covenant of grace, not a biological connection, that makes our children heirs of life together with us. The tie binds parents and children together in the Lord is not shared bloodlines or DNA, but the promised grace of the Holy Spirit, who sanctifies what would otherwise be unclean (cf. 1 Cor. 7:14).
Thus, the sacrament of initiation into the covenant (circumcision in the old covenant, baptism in the new) plays a critical role. The practice of infant baptism proves that our children are fallen and that the resources of father and mother cannot restore them. The parents are impotent to pass along saving grace to their children. When parents bring their child for baptism they are confessing that child needs a redemption and cleansing they cannot provide. They are confessing the family is fallen and has no redeeming powers within itself. But, again, this is precisely where the covenant promises step into the situation and answer to our need.
This means we must beware of so emphasizing parental nurture that we squeeze out the importance of the covenant administration in the church. Parents are not sacraments, and parental training, no matter how important or influential, cannot replace baptism. There is no substitute for the divinely appointed and ordained means of grace in the church.
The purpose of baptism, then, is to put a solid foundation of grace underneath the work of the parents. Through the ministry of the church, God enfolds families into his eschatological family, so they function as he originally designed (cf. Mal. 4:6). Parental nurture then builds upon the solid foundation laid down in covenantal baptism.
The fact that we baptize our infants manifests and testifies that [1] our children are not “ok” as they are, in a state of nature, but are in need of the cleansing blood of Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit, which gifts are already promised to them in baptism; [2] God makes his claim on covenant children through their parents, as they are compelled by promise to bring their children for initiation into the covenant and correspondingly pledge to raise them accordingly; and [3] God acts publicly in baptism to make our children part of his family in their earliest days, loving them long before they can express love in return to him.
So what changes at the baptism of a covenant child? If our children already have faith in some sense, what does baptism effect? Before baptism, the covenant is already applicable to our children in some form or fashion. Psalm 22 indicates the Spirit is already at work, even in the womb. Indeed, it is the Sprit’s prior work in the child that makes infant baptism reasonable and necessary. When we baptize our children, we are baptizing believers. In evangelical, faithful churches, paedobaptism is a subspecies of believer’s baptism. After baptism, the covenant becomes the child’s full possession, since he has been officially adopted into God’s family and united to Christ. In baptism the child transitions into a state the Bible calls “forgiveness” (Acts 2:38) and “regeneration” (Tit. 3:5), though that in no sense precludes possession of those blessings in some way even prior to baptism. Baptism is not merely a re-appropriation of a pre-existing relationship, but neither does it create a relationship from scratch. Instead, it is the means God uses to bring his relationship with the one baptized into a new and solemnized state. Baptism does for the child what a wedding service does for an engaged women or a coronation service for a prince-in-waiting.
If asked the question, “Do you baptize your children because they are already Christians or in order to make them Christians?” we can only reply by saying, “Both!” This is like asking a godly man, “Did you marry your wife because you love her, or do you love her because you’re married to her?” The pre-baptismal relationship of mutual faith and love provides a basis for baptism; after baptism, the God-child relationship takes on a more formalized covenant structure. Thus, we can do justice to passages which speak of pre-baptismal faith and grace (e.g., Ps. 22:9-10), as well as those which describe baptism as a decisive, transitional event in a person’s life (e.g., Rom. 6:1ff; Acts 22:16).

The Psychology of Infant Faith and Conversion

This doctrine of infant faith does not mean that our children never have a conscious point when it first dawns on them that they are believers. Infant faith does not negate the varieties of religious experience our children may undergo. It does not mean that every Christian child should be forced into the same straight jacket of experience, so that they all have identical stories to tell.
In fact, as we continually press upon our children the need to repent and believe, we expect them to experience the grace of God in a wide range of dramatic ways as they grow up. But the way this happens requires us to be willing to rethink the evangelical doctrine of conversion as it is usually understood. We have not done justice to the psychology of the Spirit’s work in our children.
What is going when kids today from faithful, evangelical homes grow up and have what are often deemed “conversion” experiences? It is quite simple, actually. Parents and churches insist and expect that that their kids will have a decisive and dateable transition point, and (guess what?) they do so. However, in light of the above data, it is actually likely that such experiences are not about “conversion” per se, except in the more general sense that the whole Christian life is one of continued deeper and deeper conversion from sin and unbelief to repentance and faith (e.g., Lk. 22:32). It is more likely that they are appropriating an already existing relationship with God in a new and more mature fashion. The confused interpretation of the experience stems from a confused paradigm.
Consider David’s case again: he grew up trusting in God, but at several junctures in his life (as we know from numerous Psalms!) he is “re-converted” and renewed as he passes through crisis situations. The same dynamic happens to all of us, including our children. Thus, we shouldn’t discount their new experiences of God’s grace as they hit puberty, or go off to college, or start families of their own, or face illnesses. These are experiences through which God brings true change, and real spurts of Spiritual growth.
But these “awakenings” or “mini-conversions,” however powerful, should not be confused with initial conversion, as though the child was not a believer in any sense until he went off to a summer camp in high school or got involved in a campus ministry in college or met with the church elders to state his profession of faith for the first time publicly. These experiences should be interpreted against the backdrop of texts like Psalm 22:9-10 and 71:5-6.
In light of the current evangelical conversionist paradigm, many covenant children grow up and come to despise, or at least discount, the Christian nurture they were given in their youth. They say, “Well actually, I was never a Christian until I got to college and finally heard the gospel.” But if they grew up in an orthodox context in home and church, this is either a sign that something went drastically wrong or a sign that their experience is being badly misinterpreted.
Unfortunately, this misinterpretation of experience is not harmless. Kids who grow up under Christian nurture in some form or fashion, only to have their experience squeezed into a revivalistic mold, are taught (implicitly or explicitly) to disregard the worth of God’s work in them as children. They do not value the baptism they received in infancy and they become skeptical about the Spiritual experiences of children in general. They think, “I was not a Christian in my youth, and so no one can be.” They tend to pin their assurance on an experience.
Further, because the emphasis is placed on their independent decision (often apart from the influence of family or church), they come to regard Christianity as a highly privatized, individualistic affair. They are told to explicitly break with the faith of their parents or the church community, rather than being called into a more personalized appropriation of that same faith. The conversionist paradigm treats the decision to believe in Jesus as a basically autonomous choice, which must be made apart from parental or pastoral persuasion (though explicit or implicit pressure from others is, of course, unavoidable). We have to ask: Is this approach likely to foster in our children an appreciation of the covenant community and the corporate dimensions of Christian living? Or is it going to make them think of Christianity as a privatized “me and Jesus” affair?
In addition, they may all too easily fall into a “once saved always saved” doctrine in which a one-time crisis conversion experience is thought to secure salvation even apart from a subsequent life of obedience. Parents pressure them to make a one-time decision (which is easy enough to coax out of the child), and then fail to follow-up with the much harder work of discipling them in the whole counsel of God. All this fosters an unhealthy view of the means of grace and a hankering after spectacular experiences rather than an appreciation for God’s more ordinary ways of working in the sacraments and the covenant family. It puts more weight on a crisis conversion experience then the objective promises of God.
The bottom line is this: The Psalter is the Bible’s comprehensive handbook of covenant life and experience, and yet (as we have seen) there is not a shred of evidence that covenant children must pass through some distinct “conversion” experience, or make some independent decision, in order to be regarded as believers and full members of the people of God. In the covenantal paradigm, we continually call upon our children to express and live out their faith, but we do not ever treat them as unbelievers (unless and until they grow up and apostatize.) Nor do we call upon them to make an independent, autonomous decision in favor of Christ, since such a decision is impossible anyway.
Colin Buchanan provides some helpful thoughts on how infant faith functions as the child matures psychologically and Spiritually. There is no legitimate psychological argument against infant faith and to deny its possibility creates insuperable practical problems:
To put this another way – it is not that one day a child comes face to face with the Savior and makes a conscious decision. It is that, growing up in a home where the Savior is known, only slowly does it dawn upon the child that there are odd people (at school and elsewhere) who are trying to live life on their own. One could go further into the psychology of this. Is it, for instance, probable that the parents stand in loco Dei from the earliest moments, and the transfer of devotion to God himself by the child is a gradual and unselfconscious process which he or she cannot possibly be expected to report accurately? If so, we are surely best trying to treat the child as a believer in the true God, rather than try to catch the child at the point of the watershed, and baptize him or her then. It is not, after all, that the child is passing from heresy to faith – it is that God himself has chosen to reveal himself to the child in this way, and the faith in a parent who is in loco Dei is to be accepted as faith in God. Consciousness, we say, dawns. But who can say when dawn begins? Many psychologists would say this dawn begins before birth.
The fundamental problem with the conversionist paradigm is not that the children lack faith, but that their parents do! They refuse to take the covenant promises about their children seriously. Again, I am not necessarily saying the conversion experiences of evangelical kids are “trumped up” by parental and ecclesial expectations, but I do think those expectations bear a lot of weight in shaping their Spiritual experiences. The wrong framework is controlling how they interpret the data of their own experience. If we applied the Davidic paradigm to our children (reckoning them as believers and treating them accordingly from infancy onwards), we might be surprised at how differently their experiences of God’s grace would look and feel and sound. No doubt, they would be considerably more in line with the testimony given in Psalm 22:9-10.
Montagu Barker has also examined several factors that shape the way we experience God’s grace (or at least the way we interpret our experience of God’s grace). Our personality tendencies play a critical role in the way we process experiences and the expectations we create for ourselves and others. Even more relevant for our purposes is Barker’s demonstration that our religious experiences and practices are radically shaped by the family and church context in which we grow up. Barker’s fascinating study explains how various branches of evangelicalism have emphasized their own particular understandings of conversion, with unsurprising results:
[T]here are still churches where a certain kind of conversion experience is expected, and even demanded, and by a process of suggestion and exclusion the pattern tends to be repeated. The more suggestible the individual the more readily will the experience be reproduced. The less suggestible the individual, the greater may be the difficulty in reproducing the expected experience and consequently the greater the distress for that individual. This was particularly noteworthy in the Kentucky Camp Meetings of the nineteenth century in the United States. Whole families with adolescent children were marched off to these yearly meetings, and then in response to a week’s preaching all the children returned soundly converted every year. That was the way it was done. This is still seen in some denominations in Europe, where sudden conversion experiences are particularly valued.
Statistics bear out Barker’s thesis with remarkable consistency:
There was a questionnaire on conversion given to some theological students some years ago. Among the students of a particular Baptist college, ninety seven per cent of the students had had a conversion experience. The majority of them had had a sudden conversion experience. Within the evangelical Anglican College studied, ninety three per cent of the students had had a conversion experience, but only fifty per cent of the students had had a sudden experience. Within an Anglo-Catholic College fifty per cent of the students had had a conversion experience but none of them had had a sudden conversion experience. Even among evangelicals with the same theology of regeneration the frequency of the actual type of conversion experience may be very different according to church background.
In other words, when it comes to covenant children, we basically get what we expect (because our expectations are inescapably tied to our faith in God’s covenant and shape the way we carry out the parenting project). Our children are extremely malleable, and we have incredible influence over their sense of identity and their interpretation of experience. Given these facts, why not expect (by faith) the best case scenario? Why not impress upon our children a Christian self-concept from the beginning? Why not expect our children to grow up as believers (especially since the surest way to lead them to unbelief is to treat them as unbelievers)? Why not reinforce their covenantal identity from their earliest days so that we do not lose precious time that can be used positively in character formation? Why not expect every covenant child to share David’s testimony? In short, why not expect God to keep his promises from the very beginning of our children’s lives?

Infant Faith in Light of Science and Psychology

Our case for covenantal infant faith rests exclusively on a biblical basis. It is the teaching of Scripture that drives us to believe that our children are already believers. But within the framework of a biblical world view, there is room for bringing in extra-biblical evidence, provided we evaluate it in light of Scripture and do not allow it usurp Scripture’s authority. We have already gestured towards this point in various ways above, as we have touched on extra-biblical corroborations for the infant faith paradigm, but now we will explore that evidence more fully.
A recent lead article in Newsweek magazine examined the latest discoveries in baby brain research. We now have more insight than ever into how even preverbal babies think and feel. Obviously, all data of this nature is tentative and open to revision, but it is still interesting to examine, especially since it seems to reinforce to the biblical teaching we’ve already seen in the Psalter.
Pat Wingert and Martha Brant’s research explains the even the youngest infants have rich and complex relational capacities. They have near “superpowers” of observation and are sophisticated social learners well before their first birthdays:
The helpless, seemingly clueless infant staring up at you from his crib, limbs flailing, drool oozing, has a lot more going on inside his head than you ever imagined. A wealth of new research is leading pediatricians and child psychologists to rethink their long-held beliefs about the emotional and intellectual abilities of even very young babies. In 1890, psychologist William James famously described an infant’s view of the world as “one great blooming, buzzing confusion.” It was a notion that held for nearly a century: infants were simple-minded creatures who merely mimicked those around them and grasped only the most basic emotions—happy, sad, angry. Science is now giving us a much different picture of what goes on inside their hearts and heads. Long before they form their first words or attempt the feat of sitting up, they are already mastering complex emotions—jealousy, empathy, frustration—that were once thought to be learned much later in toddlerhood.
They are also far more sophisticated intellectually than we once believed. Babies as young as 4 months have advanced powers of deduction and an ability to decipher intricate patterns. They have a strikingly nuanced visual palette, which enables them to notice small differences, especially in faces, that adults and older children lose the ability to see. Until a baby is 3 months old, he can recognize a scrambled photograph of his mother just as quickly as a photo in which everything is in the right place. And big brothers and sisters beware: your sib has a long memory—and she can hold a grudge.

Research suggests that relational skills like emotional sensitivity and language aptitude are actually better indicators of future competency in adulthood than are motor skills. There is also ample evidence to suggest what we saw above in our survey of the Psalter, namely, that infants are capable of relational interaction. They are “hard-wired” for empathy and other inter-personal emotions. But they only empathize with other living babies crying in their presence, not with tape recordings of babies crying. They can detect the presence of others and interact with them at some level.
Infants have highly refined personal and relational skills. They are skilled at discerning the emotional states of others from facial expressions. They pick up on language skills from other humans, but not from recordings of human speech. In other words, they learn in the context of relationship, where there is some emotional attachment to another person. One researcher concludes, “[P]eople – at least babies – need people to learn.” Again, this fits well with Psalm 22—David learned of God through his mother. In her womb and at her breast, she became the means through which God reached him and created a relationship of trust.
Wingert and Brant summarize their research as it pertains to infant relationships:
Children crave—and thrive on—interaction, one-on-one time and lots of eye contact. That doesn’t mean filling the baby’s room with “educational” toys and posters. A child’s social, emotional and academic life begins with the earliest conversations between parent and child: the first time the baby locks eyes with you; the quiet smile you give your infant and the smile she gives you back. Your child is speaking to you all the time. It’s just a matter of knowing how to listen.
If infants are capable of relational engagement and bonding with other humans–indeed, if they are specially suited for just this kind of interaction–what should hinder them from interacting relationally with the ever present God in whose image we are all made? What should prevent God from using the most basic forms of parental care and nurture (e.g., breastfeeding; cf. Ps. 22:10) to create a bond with the child from life’s earliest days? Infant faith is entirely plausible in light of our best understanding of infant psychology. Current scientific data on infants (for what’s it worth) is entirely consistent with the Scriptural picture. It would be absurd to say that parents can have a relationship of trust with their child before God can. It would be incongruous to say that parents are in a better position to cultivate a mutual relationship of love before the child’s Creator and Lord can do so. At the very least, the child’s relational connection to his parents should be understood to coincide with his relational connection with God. As soon as parents can have a relationship with the child, God can as well.
There are other studies of note. For example, Melanie Catania’s short article “What Do Babies Think before They Start Talking?” in Exploration: The Online Research Journal of Vanderbilt University suggests babies have ways of categorizing things before speech develops. They can think before they can speak. This would obviously bear upon those pastors and parents who want to emphasize a verbal profession as the only way to ascertain faith in the heart of a child. Faith (relational trust) can pre-exist speech.
The books by Alison Gopnik, Andrew Meltzoff, and Patricia Kuhl, How Babies Think: The Science of Childhood (London: Orion, 2001) and The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind (New York: William and Morrow, 1999), while not deriving from anything like biblical presuppositions, contain a lot of interesting information about infant abilities and development. Much here can be “pirated” for use by covenant theologians and set within a biblical frame of reference. Given that John the Baptist was able to respond to Mary and Jesus while still in the womb (Lk. 1:41, 44) , we should not underestimate the abilities of in utero children. John the Baptist was able to respond to Mary’s voice; why shouldn’t other covenant children be able to respond to adult speech as well? John the Baptist was able to receive blessing in the womb (Lk. 1:42); why shouldn’t other covenant children receive blessing in the same way? There is no biblical or scientific basis for excluding covenant children from responsive relationships of trust and love.
Carol Sorgen’s essay “Bonding with Baby Before Birth” argues that “making a connection with your unborn child can strengthen the bond you share, make you feel closer, and enrich you and your baby’s lives.” The article provides evidence that parenting actually begins before birth. Babies can bond and respond in the womb. They can actually begin to exercise trust in the context of relationships from very early in life: “When there’s a healthy attachment between baby and parent…the baby comes to believe that the world is a safe place. This is the beginning of the establishment of trust.” The article recommends practices such as talking to the baby in the womb, playing music, and even playing “games,” because the baby is already a responsive person. Other studies have shown that failure to bond with caregivers in infancy can have life-long disastrous effects on relational, emotional, and even physical development. The early period of a child’s life is extremely formative.
Finally, we should note that many of the things being learned about infancy correspond to what is being learned about elderly senility. For example, Lynn Bolt Rosendale’s article “Alzheimer’s and Faith,” suggests that while older Christians who develop Alzheimer’s may no longer be able to follow a sermon or a Bible reading plan, they can be blessed by participation in the sacramental meal in the context of other believers:
“It’s amazing the awakening of memory that taking communion can have,” he said. “It offers an upholding sense of community. It also takes on a new meaning—this is the presence of Christ for you. It makes it real and concrete in a manner that those suffering with Alzheimer’s are capable of experiencing.”
Weaver suggests that the church might consider the importance that sacramental worship has for effective pastoral care. “In fact,” he wrote, “the episodes of greatest spiritual assurance for Alzheimer’s patients seem to arise in regular opportunities to relive very familiar practices that witness to the spiritual meaning of a person’s life. I like to think of these experiences as patients’ participation in the rhythms of God’s grace.”
Both the very young and the very old are capable of relating to God and receiving from God apart from fully operational mental faculties. Only sheer ageism (often masked under rationalism, which privileges those with strong, clear minds) prevents us from seeing these truths.
Having built a case for covenantal infant faith primarily from the Psalter and secondarily from science, we now to turn to the practical and pastoral import of this teaching.

Infants Dying in Infancy

If the doctrine of infant faith sketched above is true to Scripture, then the question about the fate of covenant infants dying in infancy is all but answered. If salvation is received through faith, and our infants have faith, they have salvation. For those infants whose covenant membership is secure (e.g., those not in liberal or apostate churches), there is no reason to doubt their salvation. In the fuzzier cases, we may have considerably less certainty, but we can remain hopeful. Perhaps their early death was a great mercy.
Now, to be sure, we could still ask if all our covenant infants actually have saving faith in the strongest sense of that term. After all, many infants who have faith and grow to years of discretion stumble and fall away from the faith (cf. Mt. 18:6), showing they never possessed saving faith in the full, persevering sense. Infant faith is a reality, but the possibility of apostasy is as well.
This is quite possibly what we find in the case of Esau (though not all exegetes believe he was a reprobate). Esau received the covenant promises in his circumcision, just like Jacob, but later rejected his inheritance, in accord with God’s decretal rejection of him (cf. Gen. 25:12-34; Rom. 9:10-13). But even those covenant children who turn out to be Esaus are given an initial covenantal inheritance, though (sadly and tragically) they eventually forsake it. They have the same starting point, covenantally speaking, as covenant children who will persevere in faith. Unless God gives parents specific revelation that he has reprobated one of their children, as he did to Isaac and Rebekah, Christian parents should regard their children as full covenant members, with a conditional promise of covenantal inheritance. If a Christian parent asks, “How do I know if my child is an Esau or a Jacob?” we must remind him that he has to be governed by what God has revealed (Dt. 29:29). God has revealed covenant promises that are applicable to every covenant child, head-for-head. He has not told us that our children are reprobates. We should raise our children in terms of the covenant promises and trust God for the rest. Our parenting methods should not be controlled by the fearful reality that our child might not be elect. Instead, we should walk by faith, even in our child-rearing.
The case of Esau certainly reminds us of the mixed nature of infant faith. But there is no reason to assume that any of our children, taken from us in their earliest days, have apostatized. In other words, we can have the same confidence about their salvation we would have in the case of any mature, faithful adult who dies in the context of the covenant community. (We could always ask, “If Joe had lived longer, would he have eventually apostatized?” but what would be the point?)
Covenant infants who die in infancy have saving faith and no one can prove otherwise. Grieving parents should be made to feel the full weight of this, availing themselves of all the comfort God’s covenant has to offer. Losing a child is still painful, but at least the child is safely in the arms of God, enjoying the glory of heaven and awaiting the final resurrection. We can share the confidence of David in this matter (cf. 2 Sam. 12:22-23).

Infant Faith, Pastoral Practice, and Covenant Nurture

This doctrine of infant faith also has important implications for parental nurture. How we care for our children reveals our deepest religious commitments. Parenting bridges the gap between theology and practice; as we nurture our children, our theology flows out our fingertips and mouths into public view. Our operating instructions, as parents, are found in the Bible’s teaching on the covenant. Far, far too many of our parenting discussions (e.g., the nature vs. nurture debate) leave out the vital role of God’s covenant. We fail to believe God’s promises and parent accordingly. We wrongly either presume (note that presumption is quite different from faith!) upon God and grow lax, or we cut our children off from God for all practical purposes and become hardened legalists.
Full treatment of this deep and controversial topic would require something more like a book. To put things briefly, we should note that parents must have a grasp of the nature of the child they are called to raise. The Psalter’s doctrine of infant faith stands against all forms of conversionism, which put certain models or types of conversion experience at the center of the Christian life. Conscious experience of both conviction of sin and of God’s redemptive grace must take place in due time in the covenant child. But however important those experiences are, they cannot be absolutized into the sole barometer of a child’s Spiritual state. After all, our experience often deceives us; in the end we must rely upon the sure and firm Word of God. Moreover, we must interpret our experience in light of God’s revealed covenant, rather than looking at the covenant in the light of our experience. The covenant is not the product of our experience, but the ground of it.
Faith in its mature form includes manifest and multifaceted conscious experiences of God’s grace. We expect and anticipate these things in our children, as they come to own the covenant more and more fully for themselves. However, the Davidic paradigm in the Psalter shows that growing up in the covenant does not require a dramatic conversion experience in which a child can name the time and place of his salvation; indeed, such an experience might be a sign something has gone terribly wrong somewhere along the way. Likewise, in the new covenant, the words of Jesus (Mt. 18:1-14; 19:13-15) and the experience of Timothy (2 Tim. 3:14-15) show that covenant nurture-unto-perseverance is still the norm for children of believers in the new age. The “normal” covenant child is one who (like David!) grows up never remembering a day when he did not trust the Lord and know him as Father.
So, to answer our earlier question, we seek to disciple our children, rather than evangelize them. They are not merely “likely converts” or “prospective Christians” or “potential disciples;” they are already members of the kingdom of Christ because of God’s covenant promise (cf. Mt. 19:14). This should not be misunderstood, however. We still give our children the gospel. But we do not offer it to them as though they were outsiders to it. Instead we give it to them in such a way that they will know the gospel is already their treasured possession. They are part of the people of God, the community of faith. As such, the gospel story is their story, and they are to increasingly internalize it and frame their lives according to it. They are to be brought up from within the circle of God’s favor, rather than being told they need to do something to enter into that favor. They began in grace; we train them to continue in that same grace.
Again, certainly, we expect our children to have a wide array of experiences of God’s grace as they grow up under his covenant care and nurture at home and in the church. The covenant promises do not turn us into cookie-cutter parents. Every covenant child is unique and the program of covenantal child-rearing must be tailored for the special needs, strengths, and weaknesses of each covenant child. The covenant has a subjective side, and for the blessings of the covenant to be realized, they must be received by a living, vibrant, growing faith. As the child’s faith moves toward maturity, the child will experience his faith in the gospel at work overcoming trials, resisting temptation, seeking the Lord’s guidance through prayer, and so forth. At times, the child may be overwhelmed with the reality of God’s grace and at other times the child may experience a period of aloofness. There may be crisis points, through which God’s grace is experienced in unique and fresh ways. But the child should not be trained to seek after or expect a dramatic conversion experience from unbelief into faith as the absolutely necessary mark of true religion. This experientialism has been the bane of much American evangelicalism, going back to some of the more extreme Puritans, and especially the revivalists of the Second Great Awakening. It has affected every sector of the American church. More often than is bearable, its pessimism regarding covenant children has led to self-fulfilling prophecies of children who walk away from the church, often for good.
Covenant-based parenting provides an alternative to the revivalist, conversionist model. Thus, covenant nurture in the home should help parents guard against both anxiety (“Will my child ever become a believer?”) and presumption (“My child is already a covenant member, so my work is done”). Or, translated into more practical terms, a proper notion of the covenant helps parents steer clear between the shoals of both legalism and permissiveness.
The covenant contextualizes rules that parents make by situating those standards in an environment of grace. The covenant also provides a secure basis for mutual forgiveness and fellowship in day-to-day life within the home. Apart from this understanding of the covenant (including faith’s origins in infancy), children would have to be regarded as alien (pagan) invaders into a Christian home. Parents would have no reasonable basis for expecting their children to be able to measure up to Christian norms of conduct. If they are non-Christians, how can we impose a Christian morality on them? If our children do not possess the grace of God, what can we do to motivate them or enforce a Christian pattern of life upon them? All we have are rules, rules, and more rules – usually focused only on externals and applied with an ever shortening fuse. This is a recipe for disaster.
The covenant means that parents should be controlled by faith rather than fear as they undertake one of the greatest tasks on earth. Parents should trust in God’s covenant promises, not their own ability to build hedges around the home that will keep the world from reaching into their kids’ lives. Parents should trust in God’s covenant rather than their ability to manipulate their kids into obedience through setting a near-perfect example, or disciplining in just the right way every time it’s needed, or whatnot. Parents should trust God, not their own efforts. But having put their faith in God, they should make every effort. Faith works, after all. The works of faith may often be outwardly indistinguishable from the works of the flesh, but the difference is absolute. Faithful, promise-driven parenting is calm, confident, and consistent. Fleshly parenting is full of anxiety and fear. Because of the comfort found in the promises, parents should be diligent, but they should not put undue pressure on themselves. Any assurance they have that their children will walk with the Lord should spring from the gracious promises and work of God, not their masterful parenting skills. When they fail (as all parents do every day), they should call on God’s grace to overcome their weaknesses and fill in their gaps. They should ask forgiveness from their children if they have sinned against them and look to the cross for consolation.
Parents do not need to worry about the status of their covenant children. God has made a promise about their children that can be trusted. They may be assured that God is at work in their children’s lives and will continue that good work. They should begin with the end already in view. Their aim is to produce mature disciples of Christ. Like farmers, they are called upon to cultivate the seed of faith that has already been planted. They tend it and fertilize it through faithful application of the means of grace, by administering loving and prayerful discipline, and by creating an ethos of humility, charity, and hilarity in the home. God will take care of the growth.
When parents raise their children accordingly, they are going with the grain of God’s prior and ongoing work in the lives of their children. They are strengthening and reinforcing their children’s faith so they can live their whole lives according to the good beginning made in infancy, aligned with the covenant promises and the work of the Spirit even in the womb.
Knowing that their children are already inclined to faith also encourages parents to deal with heart and attitude issues rather than merely outward behaviors. God’s promises provide parents with a basis for expecting and requiring the child to practice Christian virtues of love, joy, and respect. We assume our kids will struggle with sin as they grow up (as all Christians do), but we also trust that God has provided them with resources necessary to deal with sin and grow in holiness. The covenant promises should not make parents naively optimistic about their children. We must remain utterly realistic about the force of indwelling sin in Christians, especially those who are the most foolish and unlearned. We must remember that our children are “baby Christians,” with a long road to travel before they reach maturity. Our calling is to help them get there. We should also always keep in mind that we are merely parents, not gods. We cannot control how our children respond to the grace God gives them, or to our nurturing efforts, or to situations they encounter in the world. While our parental diligence is highly influential in their character formation, it is not the only factor. We should resist the temptation to get cheap and easy results through manipulation or a focus on mere externals.
Parents should view their children through the lens of God’s covenant promises. At the same time, parents should not take the covenant blessings for granted. There is nothing mechanical or automatic about the covenant promises. Parents must bank on God’s promises with a diligent, working faith, but faith is not the same as presumption. They must teach their children to rely on those promises as well, and warn them against simply counting on their Christian heritage as a guarantee of salvation (cf. Mt. 3:9). Our children must be trained to never treat their covenant membership as an inalienable right or a deserved privilege. Instead it is a precious family treasure to be guarded and preserved at all costs.
If the child grows up and refuses to embrace the promises on his own, or grows up to live in flagrant rebellion against the covenant, he will need to be called to repentance. Eventually, he may even need to be disciplined formally by the church if he proves totally recalcitrant. (One of the most helpful by-products of taking our children’s covenant membership seriously is that it gives us leverage to use against them if they ever do rebel. We have traction to do church discipline with them. But disciplinary action should always be shot through with love, humility,, patience, and readiness to forgive. Anger and self-righteousness make a travesty of the disciplinary process.)
Focusing on covenant faithfulness means we will be rather counter-cultural in our parenting principles and methods. Whereas most American parents simply want their children to be comfortable and happy, and thus cave in to wanton consumerism and hedonism in parental practices, we will be far more focused on producing children who are humble, holy, and disciplined. We teach our children that God is more concerned with their conformity to Christ than their personal comfort, and more concerned with their holiness than their happiness.
Covenant consciousness also reminds us we have a stake in more than just the Spiritual health of our own children. Thus, we will not be focused only on our own children in a narrow minded (and narrow hearted) way, but will also take concern for other children in the covenant community since we know our children’s lives are so intertwined with their lives. Thus, we will want to be a part of creating a church culture in which children can thrive as they wrestle with the call to embody the gospel’s radically alternative lifestyle of cruciform service. We will not demand uniformity from other families but will strive for like-mindedness as much as possible, while allowing for legitimate, methodological differences in the application of biblical truth.
We will not coddle our children with the ethic of instant gratification, we will not make excuses for their sins and failures, we will not be so obsessed with their self-esteem that we are unable to correct and rebuke them when called for, and we will not tempt them with too much free time or discretionary money before they are ready. We will also refuse to make our children serve our own adult interests, using their success to prop up our own sense of achievement or trying to re-live our youth vicariously through them. All in all, whatever burdens we find in raising our children (e.g., sacrifice in luxuries or career advancement or recreational time), we will insist that our children are worth the cost because they are (after all) priceless gifts of God.
In all these ways, the covenant structures our approach to parenting from beginning to end. Of course, this directly impacts the way our children come to understand themselves as well. This doctrine keeps our children from the twin dangers of anxiety (“Does God love me?”) and antinomianism (“I have Christian parents, so I’m saved no matter how I live”). The child learns of God’s favor and care from his earliest days. Just as he can never remember being introduced to his earthly father, so it is with his Heavenly Father. He is given a foundation on which to build a life of faith and gratitude. However, at the same time, he learns that all the blessings bestowed upon him are a matter of sheer grace, and can be taken away if he refuses to abide by the terms of the covenant (faith and repentance). He learns to value his Christian background, rather than take it for granted. He learns he is a branch on the vine of Christ, but he must bear fruit. He learns both grace and obligation in terms of the covenant.

Infant Faith and the Sacraments

Finally, we come to the main question at hand. How does this theology of covenant children bear upon our children’s participation in the life of the church, especially in the sacramental dimension of the church’s ministry? Obviously, this doctrine of infant faith means our children have every right to the sacraments. If they are actually believers, promised the benefits of the covenant of grace, then nothing hinders them from being baptized. Indeed, they must be baptized. The major Baptist objection to infant baptism is cut away since our infants consent (after a fashion) to baptism through their relational trust in the Lord. They are not strangers and aliens to God; indeed, we know that he desires to have them enrolled into his family in the initiatory waters of baptism. We trust that our children fit the Davidic mold. We treat them as Jacobs until and unless they prove to be Esaus.
Likewise, the table belongs to covenant children. They can receive the body and blood of the Lord through the elements of bread and wine as soon as they are able to eat. To hold them back from the table is to demand something in addition to faith, which in principle denies sola fide and tends towards works-righteousness. If Christ is received by faith alone, and our children have faith, then the case for paedocommunion is closed. To demand that their faith must have a certain quality (e.g., a certain level of intellectual maturity or discernment) is to suggest that faith alone is not enough after all. There is only one entry requirement to the table, and our children meet it.
In other words, paedocommunion is simply a corollary of sola fide. The table is a gift to us and to our children; it is a matter of pure, unearned, unalloyed, uncompromised, unmixed grace. Our children belong to God and he desires to feed them with his free food. This is his highest and best form of “youth ministry” the church can provide! When God’s children ask for bread (even if it’s an inarticulate cry!), he is happy to oblige. The denial of paedocommunion is an implicit (albeit unintentional) threat to the great Reformation principle that God’s gifts are received by the instrumentality of faith alone. It is a threat to the Reformational teaching that Christ (even in the bread and wine of the Eucharist) is received by a simple faith, and nothing but faith. There are no other hoops to jump through – no special experiences, no minimum score on a theology exam, no minimum number of Bible verses memorized, no set quantity of good works.
To withhold our children from the table because they cannot yet perform some work like answering catechism questions, narrating a testimony, or having a protracted and dramatic crisis conversion experience, is to risk psychologically damaging the child’s ability to understand and live by grace. We take from him the very thing God intends to give him in baptism and at the table, namely, a sense of covenantal identity and belonging. A child may not know much systematic theology, but he does know what it is like to be included or excluded, especially when food is involved. He may not have a deep grasp of doctrine, but he intuitively senses the importance of ritualized, symbolic actions. He may not be able to articulate his feelings, but he knows when he is being asked to perform some work in order achieve a reward, as opposed to being given a free and unearned gift. Paedocommunion is important because of the way it shapes our children’s psychology of grace.
I consider the exegetical case for paedocommunion to be firmly established (as the rest of this book shows). But there is more at stake in the paedocommunion debate than simply exegeting a few key texts. Our whole understanding of the covenant promises, the way God would have us regard and rear our (really, his) children, the relationship of the sacraments to faith and the covenant community, and more, are bound up in the paedocommunion debate. Many Christian parents are faithful in the work of covenant nuture in many respects, but they do not practice paedocommunion. They treat their children like Christians, on the whole, reminding them of God’s grace, inculcating in them the skills and virtues that constitute a life of discipleship, and they assure their children that God loves them. They teach them to pray “Our Father” and sing “Jesus loves me.” They do everything but the most central thing, namely, include their children at the table. This is a sad inconsistency. A fully covenantal and consistent approach to our children requires the whole package, combining parental faith in the promises, the application of the sacraments to our children, and continual parental nurture through teaching, discipline, and prayer.

Conclusion: Taking David’s Testimony Seriously

Infant faith is biblically plausible, pastorally practical, and psychologically credible. By taking seriously David’s claims to infant faith, we can construct a doctrine that embraces both the free grace of the covenant as well as its stipulated condition of faithfulness. However mysterious, our children have a relationship with God based on faith and grounded in grace. We are called to raise our children accordingly, so their testimonies will match David’s: “From my mother’s womb, You have been My God.” Hopefully this essay demonstrates the way paedofaith, paedobaptism, paedocommunion, and parental nurture all converge together in God’s beautiful design for church and family.