I recently taught a seminary class on baptism in which I asked my students to read an article written by a Baptist brother on why he believed paedobaptism is unbiblical. What surprised me most about this brother’s article was how frequently he misunderstood covenant theology and its implications for baptism.
As a Presbyterian minister, I often get asked about why I believe in baptizing infants. The sheer number of questions that I get tells me that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about this doctrine. Part of the reason for this misunderstanding is that many members of paedobaptist churches have not been able to give good biblical justification for what they believe. This may be because paedobaptist churches are not adequately preparing their members to do so, or it may simply be because baptism is not a defining doctrine for paedobaptists in precisely the same way that it is for many others. Our Baptist brothers and sisters, for instance, distinguish themselves from most other Christian traditions by their position on baptism, which means that their average church member often receives more thoroughgoing teaching on this doctrine than ours will.
Another part of the reason why people misunderstand paedobaptism is that they misunderstand the covenant theology that lies behind it. I recently taught a seminary class on baptism in which I asked my students to read an article written by a Baptist brother on why he believed paedobaptism is unbiblical. What surprised me most about this brother’s article was how frequently he misunderstood covenant theology and its implications for baptism. Before we can ever move forward together on this doctrine, we need to correct these kinds of misunderstandings with as much clarity and grace as possible. And it is in that spirit that I offer the rest of this article.
Having acknowledged this, the first thing I would say is that the paedobaptist position embraces virtually everything that the credobaptist position does about the recipients of baptism. We wholeheartedly affirm that baptism is rightly administered to adults (never before baptized) when they profess faith in Christ. The term paedobaptist is thus something of a misnomer. We don’t merely baptize young children; we baptize both professing believers and their young children, and, in that sense, we are both credobaptist and paedobaptist. What distinguishes us from our credobaptist brothers and sisters is the word only. Credobaptists baptize professing believers only, whereas we baptize professing believers and their children.
I mention this to indicate that it takes more than simply pointing to the examples of professing believers being baptized in the New Testament to prove the credobaptist position. Paedobaptists acknowledge the baptism of professing believers too. Our credobaptist brothers and sisters have to demonstrate that the Bible teaches that professing believers, and no one else, are to be baptized.
