Infant baptism

A promise for children

Churches that baptise infants begin with the shape of God's covenant, which from the start embraced parents and children together. God promised Abraham "to be your God and the God of your descendants after you" (Genesis 17:7), and the sign of that covenant was given to every boy "when he is eight days old" (Genesis 17:12), long before he could confess anything. At Pentecost Peter spoke in the same pattern:

This promise belongs to you and your children and to all who are far off — to all whom the Lord our God will call to Himself.

Acts 2:39

Paul sets "the circumcision performed by Christ" beside baptism (Colossians 2:11-12) and says that the children of a believer "are holy" (1 Corinthians 7:14). Lydia was baptised with "her household" (Acts 16:15), and the Philippian jailer "and all his household were baptized" (Acts 16:33). Scripture does not say whether there were little ones in those homes, but these churches see household baptism as fitting the covenant's shape, and they hear Jesus' words, "Let the little children come to Me, and do not hinder them!" (Mark 10:14), as encouragement.

In this view the sign speaks first of God's promise, not of the child's faith. Parents and congregation promise to bring the child up in the Lord, and in many churches the child later professs that faith in their own words, at confirmation or admission to the Lord's Table. As Matthew Henry says, "still the encouraging promises are to us and our children" Matthew Henry.

How the church came to practise it

Whether infants were baptised in the apostles' day is debated among scholars. Around 200 Tertullian advised that the baptism of little children be delayed, which shows that it was already being done. In the third century Origen called it a tradition received from the apostles, and in the early fifth century Augustine, against the Pelagians, pointed to the church's baptism of infants for the forgiveness of sins as a witness to original sin.

At the Reformation Luther, Zwingli and Calvin kept infant baptism, and the Anabaptists, beginning in Zurich in 1525, rejected it. The Reformed answered by explaining baptism as a sign and seal of the covenant of grace:

Not only those that do actually profess faith in and obedience unto Christ, but also the infants of one or both believing parents are to be baptized.

Westminster Confession 28.4

Where the traditions differ

Churches that baptise infants differ on what baptism does. The Orthodox and Catholic churches teach that it gives new birth, and the Catholic Church adds that it washes away original sin Catechism of the Catholic Church; the Orthodox chrismate infants at their baptism and give them communion. Lutherans teach that baptism works forgiveness and gives eternal salvation to all who believe God's word and promise Luther's Small Catechism, and that God works faith even in infants. Reformed and Presbyterian churches confess baptism as a sign and seal whose grace is not tied to the moment it is given but is conferred by the Spirit in God's own time (see the lesson The sign of the covenant). The Thirty-Nine Articles say that "the Baptism of young Children is in any wise to be retained in the Church" Thirty-Nine Articles, art. 27, and Methodists, following Wesley, baptise infants too.

Baptists, Anabaptists, and many Pentecostal and free churches practise believers' baptism, because those baptised in the New Testament had heard and believed, and baptism is the believer's own confession; many of them dedicate infants instead, with thanksgiving and prayer. They note that the jailer's household heard the word and "rejoiced that they had come to believe in God" (Acts 16:34). This is a long-standing disagreement among evangelicals, and both sides hold to the same Scriptures in earnest. Both agree that baptism points to God's grace and that its promise is to be received by faith. See also What are baptism and the Lord's Supper?