While the debate about whether to baptize infants or not has raged for five centuries, we can and should seek unity as brothers and sisters in Christ.  Baptism actually unites us by identifying us as part of the visible people of God, so let the world see our unity rather than division as we approach any differences with love, humility, and submission to Scripture.

Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.”
Acts 2:37-39, ESV

Who should be baptized?  This question has sparked intense debate amongst Reformed Christians ever since the early days of the Reformation.  As someone who has attended baptistic churches until I recently joined a pedobaptist church (where infants are baptized).  In order to become a deacon I needed to be able to accept the Westminster Confession of Faith which meant accepting the pedobaptist position.  I entered that study believing that the Presbyterian version of pedobaptism—referred to as covenant baptism—was valid and biblical while believer’s baptism was preferrable.  I came out of that study with a reversed position: believer’s baptism is a valid and biblical position but covenant baptism better aligns with what the whole of Scripture teaches.  My purpose in this post is not to convince Baptists to begin baptizing their infants but to explain simply what covenant baptism is, why it is biblical, and how we can maintain unity in the Body of Christ regarding this topic.

What Covenant Baptism Is and Isn’t

First, it is important to define the actual question we are addressing.  The question is not whether to baptize believers or infants, since Scripture is very clear that we are to baptize believers.  Every example of baptism we see in Scripture is of new converts, so a church must baptize them and require of them a profession of faith in order to be biblical.  The question is not whether to baptize infants or believers but whether or not to baptize the infants of believers.  Scripture gives no clear examples of infants being baptized or being excluded from baptism, so there is room for genuine Christians to differ on this and still practice baptism biblically.  To paraphrase Romans 14, the church that baptizes infants does so in honor of the Lord and the church that refrains does so in honor of the Lord.  Let not the one who baptizes infants look down on the one who refrains, and let not the one who refrains cast judgment on the one who baptizes infants, for God has welcomed both!  So contrary to the perception of some Baptists, pedobaptists do not reject the baptism of converts following a profession of faith.

Another major difficulty Baptists have with pedobaptists is the assumption that baptism is considered part of salvation or a guarantee of salvation.  They would be correct in this regarding the Catholic and Lutheran pedobaptist views (baptismal regeneration), but not covenant baptism.  It is absolutely vital to differentiate between the two.  Covenant baptism of infants is not part of salvation and is not seen as a guarantee of salvation.  Instead, covenant baptism refers to the view that both believers and their children should receive baptism as the new covenant sign of entrance into the visible people of God.  It largely mirrors circumcision as the sign of entrance into the visible church and is therefore separate from actual regeneration.  Churches that faithfully practice covenant baptism make this distinction very clear in their baptism liturgies.  In these ways, covenant baptism answers two of the biggest Baptist objections to pedobaptism.

Why Covenant Baptism is Biblical

But is covenant baptism biblical?  Baptists often fail to see pedobaptism as biblical because pedobaptists often do a poor job of proving it from Scripture.  They often point to examples of entire households being baptized—of Cornelius (Acts 10:48), Lydia (Acts 16:14), the Philippian jailer (Acts 15:33), Crispus (Acts 18:8), and Stephanas (1 Corinthians 1:16)—which would include any infants.  But this argument is unsatisfying since the text does not mention infants in any of these households.  Pedobaptists then point to passages about the inclusion of children, such as Jesus calling little children to Himself and saying that the Kingdom belongs to them (Matthew 19:14, Mark 10:14, Luke 18:16) or Peter at Pentecost saying the promise “is for you and your children” (Acts 2:39).  They also point out the similarities between baptism and circumcision, but Baptists often have difficulty seeing a strong enough connection to justify pedobaptism.  All of these individual bricks are therefore easy for the Baptist to topple, giving the appearance that pedobaptists are grasping at straws for anything in the Bible to support their position. This is because pedobaptists have failed to establish the foundation on which all of these bricks rest to form a biblically-sound structure.

That foundation is covenant theology, which we have examined in recent posts.  We saw that all of the covenants are corporate in nature and included children.  We then saw the nature of shared responsibility and how that relates to the generational nature of the covenants and the role of representation.  Last time we saw how those the Bible calls worthless were members of the covenant people of Israel but were ultimately unregenerate.  From all of this, we see that families—as the central focus of God’s work—have always entered into the covenants, with parents (specifically fathers) representing their children, so they were all considered to be part of the people of God.  Some of them were faithful while others were not.  For the faithful, the covenant sign signified their inclusion in the invisible church, being united with Christ and therefore guaranteed to inherit the blessings of the covenant.  For the unfaithful, the covenant sign signified that they were not part of the invisible church, being separate from Christ and therefore guaranteed to inherit the curses of the covenant.  This was the context into which the New Covenant came, so it should come as no surprise that we see similar language in the New Testament.  From the earliest days of the Church, the covenant was for those who placed their faith and trust in Jesus Christ and their children (Acts 2:39).  In both Testaments, we see households joined the people of God.  Throughout the Old Testament we see the visible people of God containing those who are faithful and those who fall away: righteous Seth vs. unrighteous Cain, Shem vs. Canaan, Isaac vs. Ishmael, Jacob vs. Esau, etc.  During the exodus, we see the whole nation entering into the covenant, but many fell away:

For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.
1 Corinthians 10:1-5, ESV

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