Introduction⤒🔗

"We have looked well through the Bible and cannot find it, and do not believe it is there; nor do we believe that others can find infant baptism in the Scriptures, unless they themselves first put it there." So wrote that famous 19th century preacher, Charles Spurgeon in his official Autobiography. In many respects Spurgeon was a thoroughly Reformed man, but when it came to the matter of infant baptism, a parting of the ways became painfully evident. I say, "painfully," because it is a fact that throughout the ages the question of who are the proper recipients of baptism has been hotly debated. And it continues to be so today.

On the one side, you have those churches that have their roots in the Roman Catholic, Reformed and Presbyterian traditions insisting on the legiti­macy of infant baptism, albeit for varying reasons. On the other side, you have those churches that have emerged out of the more radical wing of the Refor­mation who stress the validity of adult baptism alone. Both parties have their champions, their treatises, their pamphlets, their converts. Both are busy firing volley after volley at each other. And then it has to be admitted that in the process a lot of blanks are being fired as well. Not all the arguments are sound, not all of the reasoning is rational.

Who is winning? That is hard to say at times. Although at the moment it would appear that the advocates of infant baptism are mostly on the defen­sive. I say this because the number of people switch­ing from a paedobaptist position to an adult one is larger than vice versa. Many people who were once Reformed or Presbyterian have become Pentecostal, evangelical, free alliance or gone to some other anabaptist grouping. Usually the reasons for the altering of their allegiances have been diverse and manifold, but if you talk to them, more often than not infant baptism and their rejection of it figures promi­nently in the picture.

What kind of justifications for becoming anabaptist are most frequently given? The first is that there is no text anywhere in the Bible which says that infants should be baptized. In this respect these people follow in the footsteps of Spurgeon who encountered the same difficulty. However, there is another rationale as well and it is even more basic. It can be captured in the following syllogism: faith is a condition for baptism, infants do not possess faith, therefore infants may not be baptized. In addition, they point to the so-called abuse of baptism in estab­lished churches where many people receive the sac­rament, think that it works magic and never bother to live up to it. Infant baptizers, they allege, have added far too much water to the biblical wine.

What has been the rejoinder to this from those who believe that baptism is also for infants? On a popular level it has often been one of consternation and weakness. The anabaptists have always been good at spouting Bible verses at their opponents. The Reformed and others of an infant baptism affili­ation have reacted to this by citing vague and gen­eral biblical principles. The Reformed have chimed in that of course, faith is a necessity, but they run stuck when it comes to relating it to baptism. Yes, and as for the matter of abuse, there the Reformed have to confess that there are many churches that have and still do use infant baptism in a loose and superstitious manner.

So where does that leave us as Reformed believers except with an overdose of inferiority? People leave our fellowships claiming that they have found a better place to worship, a place where there is more warmth, more integrity and more biblical faithfulness. But is that a proper reaction and is that a proper assessment of the historic Reformed posi­tion? Is tradition the only thing that Reformed confessors have going for them? Are all the perti­nent biblical arguments on the side of the anabaptists?

Hardly. On the point of infant baptism there is no need for reformed believers to take even one step back. I dare say that the teaching of the entire Scriptures is on our side, the great confessional documents of the Church are on our side, the most able defenders of the faith are on our side. If we have left the field largely to the anabaptists that is not because of defeat but due to default. We have failed to bring all of the truths of God's revelation to bear in a clear, concise and convincing manner.

What are those truths? By way of elaboration, first a general remark, and it concerns the matter of there being no text in the Bible that commands infant baptism. Is this such a major loss? Not really! There are any number of practices current in the church which are not grounded in one or other text. Take the matter of worship on the first day of the week. Where is there a passage which says that Christians must worship on Sunday and not Saturday? Is that not a matter of inference based on sound biblical principle? Or take the matter of women attending the Lord's Supper. Christ instituted this sacrament in the presence of men only. There is no command which enjoins us to accede the right of participation also to women. And yet who would dare to deny them? Not even the anabaptists! So there are more practices and procedures that we follow which can­not be hung on one or other isolated Bible verse. They are the result of working out proper biblical principles, and that applies to the matter of infant baptism too.

To indicate that let me proceed to develop my argument using five sets of opposites. The one is used by the proponents of infant baptism, or better, the baptism of children of believers, and the other by the proponents of adult baptism.

a. Unity versus Disunity←⤒🔗

The first set of opposites are dealt with under the heading of "unity and disunity." What is meant by that? It has to do with the fact that many anabaptists approach the Bible in a divisive way. They drive a wedge between God's people and allege that there are really two peoples of God, two different seeds of Abraham. There is the Church of Jesus Christ and there are the Jews. There is natural Israel and spiritual Israel.

This essentially dispensational scenario holds that there are the Jews who are the real and natural Israel, with special privileges, special promises, spe­cial covenants and a special future. Included in that future is an earthly land of Canaan, an earthly city ­Jerusalem, an earthly temple on Mount Zion, an earthly throne of David. Here is the real and true Israel forever. As for the believers of the new dispen­sation, they are only the figurative seed of Israel. Two sets of people, two sets of blessings, two sets of status, that is the disuniting view of some anabaptists.

Only it does not end there, for this element of disunity crops up not only when it comes to the people of God, but also when it comes to the book of God, the Bible. There are anabaptists who place the Old Testament against the New Testament, the law against the gospel, Old Testament Israel against the New Testament church. What applies in the one dispensation is not just in certain cases fulfilled or abolished in the other. No, it can even be contra­dicted.

Now it is important to realize in ones discus­sions with anabaptists that there is this disconcert­ing tendency among them to fracture both the peo­ple and the Word of God. It is equally important that you counteract this position. As long as it prevails there is little or no room for discussion. And then I would say to you that it is not too difficult to disman­tle this disuniting approach either.

Take the matter of the unity of the Bible. Careful study shows that there is a unity of purpose stretching across both testaments. Both stress the need for God's Name to be praised in all things. Both stress the fallenness of man. Both stress the need for redemption through the Messiah, Jesus Christ. In addition, there is also a unity of ethical demand. The moral law of the Ten Commandments retains its validity in both testaments (Ex. 20; Ps. 119; Mt. 5:17-19; 1 Jn. 3:22). Finally, there is a unity of future. What the prophet Isaiah predicts about the future of God's people dove-tails perfectly with what the apostle John is led to disclose in the book of Revelation. Indeed, this unity of the Bible is everywhere. Who can read and grasp the meaning of the book of Hebrews without an Old Testament constantly at his elbow? And so the arguments for unity go on and on.

And the same applies to the unity of God's people. They all have one father in Abraham, as Rom. 4 reminds us, "he is the father of us all" (v.16). They have all been called to faith and holiness. They have all been ingrafted into that one olive tree men­tioned in Rom. 11. There is not one tree for the Jews and another tree for the Christians. There is only one building of which Christ is the cornerstone (Eph. 2:11- 20).

In short, there is only one people of God, not two distinct peoples. There is only one Word of God, not two distinct books or testaments or dispensa­tions that somehow contradict each other. There is unity that either follows forward to abolition or fulfillment, but never contradiction.

b. Generations versus Individuals←⤒🔗

The second set of opposites has to do with that of "generations versus individuals." If one analyzes the anabaptist position carefully then one must come to the conclusion that here the emphasis is emphati­cally individualistic. Faith is pictured in personal, isolated, individual terms. At the same time there is little or no awareness that while the Bible speaks to individuals, it also addresses itself to the genera­tions, to one's posterity, to one's seed. God is so often described in the Bible as being the God of a people.

Any number of references can be made here. Take Gen. 3:15, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed." Or Gen. 9:9 where God establishes His covenant with Noah and says, "Behold, I establish my cov­enant with you and your descendants after you." You find it again in Gen. 17:7,

And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your de­scendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your descendants after you.

Why, if you look carefully in the Old Testa­ment you see that the Lord does not deal simply with individuals. No, from Adam to Seth, from Seth to Noah, from Noah to Abraham, from Abraham to Israel, from Israel to Christ, from Christ to His peo­ple, it is abundantly evident that the Lord works through the line of the generations. And this does not stop in the New Testament either. No, on Pente­cost day Peter again stresses this same truth when he says,

For the promise is to you and to your children and to all that are far off, every one whom the Lord our God calls to him.

In light of such an emphasis, it should not surprise one at all to find that in the book of Acts it speaks about the baptism of "households." We will touch on the matter of whether there were children in those households shortly. For now it is sufficient to recognize that in Acts there is no tendency to separate adults from children, or children from fami­lies. There is a stress on family solidarity, and that solidarity, it should be recognized, works both ways. In the Second Commandment mention is made of both the benefits of this solidarity in terms of the future generations, as well as the curses that may accrue to these generations.

The type of religious individualism, which is so rampant today, certainly cannot be said to take its cue from biblical revelation. That revelation takes an organic approach. It recognizes that God works through the generations. It recognizes that believers and their seed have special standing in the eyes of the Lord, a standing for either weal or woe.

c. Infants versus Adults←⤒🔗

We come now to a third set of opposites "infants versus adults." In doing so we are coming closer to the heart of the matter that separates the Reformed confessor from the Anabaptist one. The latter recognizes only a baptism for adults or for mature children and dismisses as unbiblical a baptism also for infants. Because faith is the vital pre­condition for baptism and because of the absence of this pre-condition in infants, they are automatically disqualified.

However, that in turn raises the vexing ques­tion, "If infants cannot be baptized what is their standing before the Lord? Does He exclude them? Does He ignore them? Are they in limbo? Do they have no rights and no standing before the Lord?" The anabaptist does not like to have the matter approached from this angle and queried so forcefully, but these questions must be asked. And if he or she is consequent then they will have to admit that prior to faith a person has no standing before the Lord.

But that in turn raises other questions. For look at the Old Testament and there you will see that God does not exclude the infants among His people at all. They receive a certain standing in His eyes. Gen. 17 reveals that God makes His covenant not just with Abraham, but also with all those in His house, even with his infants. In Deut. 29 Moses summons Israel to stand before the Lord, and he does so with the words,

You stand this day all of you before the Lord your God; the heads of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, all the men of Israel, your little ones, your wives ... that you may enter into the sworn covenant of the Lord your God.

You will notice here that the Lord makes no distinction between adults and infants. They all enter into covenant with Him.

A little later in Josh. 8:35 we are confronted with a ceremony of covenant renewal and we read,

There was not a word of all that Moses commanded which Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel, and the women, and the little ones, and the sojourners who lived among them. Again infants are included.

In addition, they are also included at occa­sions of worship, fasting, feasting. Think of 2 Chron. 20:13, "all the men of Judah stood before the Lord, with their little ones, their wives, and their children". Think of Joel 2:15, 16, "Blow the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly; gather the people. Sanctify the congregation; assemble the elders; gather the children, even nursing infants." Surely, these words are sufficient to testify to the fact that children belonged to the people of God in the Old Testament. God claims them, cares for them, protects them, promises Himself to them. Why, His fatherly heart embraces them. One of the gravest indictments that He ever made against His people Israel is the one to be found in Ez. 16:20, 21, "you took your sons and your daughters, whom you had borne to me, and these you sacrificed to them to be devoured ... you slaughtered my children." Need more be said about the Lord and His relationship to infants?

Still, the remark can be heard, "But that's the Old Testament. In the New Testament it is a whole new state of affairs." But is it? Remember what we said about the unity of God's Word and people. The teaching of the Old Testament and New Testament do not contradict each other when it comes to the place of infants of believing, covenant keeping par­ents. In the Old Testament they belong, they belong no less in the New Testament. To assert anything less is to assert that as time goes on God's revelation to His people becomes poorer, less loving, more restrictive. Can you imagine a situation in which children belong in one testament but are by-passed in another? Does that speak of an enrichment of revelation or an impoverishment? In every other way God's revelation becomes fuller. His promises increase. The earthly Jerusalem will make way for the heavenly one. This earth will make way for a new earth. The promise of the Saviour becomes the reality of the Saviour. The shedding of the blood of bulls and goats makes way for the shedding of that one blood, at one time, by one person. God's revela­tion becomes fuller, richer, deeper. To artificially sever the tie between the Lord and His covenant infants in that newer and fuller testament goes con­trary to the whole flow of biblical revelation.

And not only that. For we do not need to take our refuge in logical deduction alone. Recall that episode in the New Testament where the Lord Jesus welcomes and blesses the children. The Son follows in the footsteps of the Father. (Mt 19:13-14; Mk. 9:36­-37; Lk. 18:15-17) Now, the anabaptists take this passage and say that it refers to a child-like faith. We, adults, should believe in the simple and absolute way that children do. But such an interpretation misses the mark. The children that are brought to the Lord Jesus are not children who are old enough to believe and to serve as models of belief. No, they are infants. That is what the original word means here.

They are babes in their mothers' arms. It is also noteworthy that the Saviour was angry with His disciples for trying to exclude these infants and their mothers as being beyond His concern, compassion and interest. Also, the Matthew account does not even mention "childlike faith" at all. Finally, we are told that the Lord Jesus laid His hands upon them and blessed them. Does that sound like someone who leaves children in limbo until they come to faith? The Father's compassion is evident in the Son.

And the Father's promises remain valid too. In Acts 2:39, which we touched on already, the apostle Peter, harking back to the words of the Lord to Abraham, says to those who have come to faith in the risen, exalted Christ, "For the promise is to you and to your children and to all that are afar off, every one whom the Lord our God calls to Him." There you meet it again. The promises of God belong to the believers and their children. Their status has not changed in the New Testament if it had Peter would never have spoken these words. He would either have left them out, contradicted them or re-inter­preted them. He chooses none of these options. He simply underlines and re-emphasizes that Old Tes­tament commitment of the Lord to Abraham and his children.

Why, we can even take this a step further. For in 1 Cor. 7 Paul says that certain children are holy. Which children? Even the children that arise from a mixed marriage. Such a marriage does not give rise to polluted children who should be ostracized and scorned by the believing community. No, the fact that even one parent is a believer is sufficient to render the off-spring "holy," special, unique, in God's eyes.

It is in this light too that we should return for a moment to what we touched on already, namely the "household baptisms" in Acts. Did those house­holds of Lydia, Stephanas, the Jailer, contain children? We cannot say with absolute certainty; how­ever, we would say that the law of probability favours the affirmative. One childless household is possible, but three would be stretching the limits of logic and the law of averages.

d. Circumcision versus Baptism←⤒🔗

And so it is that we come to the fourth set of opposites, "circumcision versus baptism." The stand and anabaptist ploy when it comes to the relation­ship of circumcision and baptism is either to say that there is no connection whatsoever between them or else to qualify that relationship severely.

To those who insist that there is no connection between circumcision and baptism, we say most emphatically that there is a connection, even a three­fold one. In the first place, circumcision was a sign of union and communion with the Lord. Turn to Gen. 17:7 and 11.

And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting cov­enant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you....You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you.

Notice that the Lord ex­pressly says, "I will be God to you and to your descendants." At the very heart of God's covenant there lies this concept of union and communion, a concept that comes back time and again in Old Testament and New Testament.

Only in the New Testament this communion is so often expressed in relation to baptism. "We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in new­ness of life." (Rom. 6:4) Baptism is depicted here as that sacrament that unites us to Christ, that allows us to share in the fullness of Him and of His redemptive work. Union and communion apply to both circum­cision and baptism.

Yes, and so does the matter of cleansing. In Deut. 30:6 the Israelites are commanded to circumcise their hearts. Elsewhere they are told to remove the foreskins of their hearts (Jer. 4:4). Clearly, the outward cutting off of the foreskin was symbolic of the need to remove drastically all defilement from the heart. And baptism urges us to do the same. In Acts 22:16 believers are told to "rise and be baptized, and wash away your sins." The water of baptism is symbolic of the need for cleansing as well as the ritual of cleansing.

Finally, circumcision was also the seal of the righteousness of faith. The apostle Paul makes this plain in Rom. 4:11, "He (Abraham) received circum­cision as a sign or seal of the righteousness which he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised." Cir­cumcision was vitally related to faith. And so is baptism. As Peter says in Acts 2:38, "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 shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."

In summary then circumcision and baptism are closely related. Why, there are even any number of baptist scholars who affirm this. Robert Kingdon in his book Children of Abraham: A Reformed Baptist View of Baptism, the Covenant and Children says,

it is my considered opinion that Baptists must recognize the analogy between circumcision and baptism. It seems to me pointless to deny the existence of this analogy, yet it is often done. p. 28

Or,

It can hardly be denied that baptism in the New Testament has much the same meaning and import.p. 28

In the same vein, Paul K. Jewett in his book Infant Baptism and the Covenant of Grace says,

we have agreed that circumcision means essentially what baptism means in the New Testament. p. 96

In light of these admissions, as well as in light of Scripture it would seem to be a futile exercise to drive a wedge between circumcision and baptism. But that does raise a further question with regard to those Baptists like Kingdon and Jewett who admit that these two ceremonies are similar. If you are a baptist and yet agree that there is no difference between circumcision and baptism have you not conceded your argument? You would think so. You would assume that if children received the sign of circumcision in the Old Testament and if circumci­sion and baptism are the same then children should be baptized. But both Kingdon and Jewett refuse to come to this conclusion. What they do is something very surprising and inconsistent.

Kingdon says that the covenant has dispensa­tional and transdispensational, temporal and eter­nal, earthly and heavenly aspects to it. The fact that the children were circumcised in the Old Testament belonged to the dispensational, temporal and earthly elements in the Abrahamic covenant. Jewett goes essentially the same route when he says that circum­cision belonged to the temporal, earthly aspects of the Old Testament covenant. The covenant covered a single ethnic group who lived in a specific area. In this way they both try to picture circumcision as a purely national and racial sign of external, non-spiritual blessings and privileges of God's Old Tes­tament dealings with His people. Baptism has a spiritual dimension to it, circumcision does not.

What shall we say about this line of argu­ment? It is contrived and artificial, to say the least. When God makes His covenant with Abraham in Gen. 17 then that covenant is not temporary but everlasting. It is still in effect today. Also, as we have seen when dealing with the similarities between circumcision and baptism, they mean the same thing. They picture for us not in the first place an ethnic reality, but a spiritual one. Circumcision was the sign of the covenant in its deepest spiritual meaning, and the same thing applies to baptism. Indeed, to say that the Abrahamic covenant was mainly con­cerned with earthly blessings and promises is to fall into the same traps as the Israelites. They assumed that outward obedience was sufficient, but God judges it deficient. He wants their hearts to be circumcised as well. Circumcision is not national or racial, it is firstly spiritual.

Thus the conclusion can only be that because circumcision was administered as a spiritual rite to infants, and seeing that circumcision and baptism picture the same covenantal realities and promises, infants should be baptized.

e. Normativism versus Subjectivism←⤒🔗

Yet all of this does in turn raise one more set of opposites, namely that of "normativism versus subjectivism." When the anabaptist says that infants should not be baptized on what basis does he make that assertion? It is on the basis that there is some­thing missing in that child, namely faith. Only when faith is present can baptism take place. Now let us look closely at that assertion. What does it imply? It implies that the focus of the rite of baptism turns on the recipient and what is within him or her. Indeed, it grounds the rite in the person.

What it does is something which Reformed theology has always warned against. According to it, the focus of baptism must not be in the recipient but in the originator, in the Lord. Salvation is of the Lord. To ground the validity of an administration of baptism in something within the recipient is a depar­ture from the soli deo gloria of Reformed theology. The infants of the believing parents in the Old Testa­ment received the sign and the seal of the covenant not upon the basis of something the children had done or had been supernaturally implanted within them, but solely upon the basis of God's uninhibited command. So infants of believers are to receive baptism today for the same reason.

To put in the words of J. Douma,

God has called us and our children to His covenant. For that reason our children have a place in His covenant. God's call precedes all faith, all conversion, all re­generation in adults and infants ...Therefore we bap­tize our children; not because something is present in them, but because something was expressed about them: the promise of the remission of sins and eter­nal life.

What all of this teaches is that we baptize our children because of God's normative command. We do so not because we presume anything about them. We do not presume regeneration. We do not pre­sume election. We do not speculate about our chil­dren. What we know is that these children have God's promises. They also are to be fully educated in God's requirements of faith and conversion. They are children of God and they must also come to live through His Word and Spirit, as His children.

In conclusion, we say about the anabaptist position:

1. by excluding the chil­dren of believers from baptism it goes contrary to the whole character of God's progressive revelation;
    
2. it caters to individu­alism and refuses to rec­ognize the biblical teach­ing of covenantal solidar­ity;
    
3. it undermines the unity of the Word of God and the people of God by either driving a wedge between circumcision and baptism or else by distort­ing the meaning of circum­cision;
    
4. by implication it makes God a God of the strong, the mature, the able, the adult but places in question whether He is, also the God of the very young, the mentally disabled, and all those who can for one reason or other not meet the pre-condition of faith;
    
5. it emphasizes the subjective by making something in man the sole pre-condition for baptism.

More can be said, much more, but suffice it to say that the weight of biblical teaching is on the side of those believers who believe that the Lord has established a covenant of grace with His children, a covenant that includes all believers and their seed.