Reports From the Edge

   Few Lutherans in our culture who are open to discussing their faith have not heard the question, “Why do you baptize infants?” Why do we baptize infants? A comfortable answer to that question eludes many people, church members and clergy alike. We hope here to provide some sense of why.

 

   First, a brief history of baptism. Let us begin with the Reformation and back our way up to the early church. The Reformation was a great watershed in Christian History, and it will be important for us to look both forward and backward from that point. For centuries nothing was known in the church but infant baptism. By the Middle Ages, canon law and church order dictated the necessity of infant baptism and the procedure for its practice. But as with most rigidly defined doctrines and practices of the medieval church, infant baptism had a more humble and gracious origin in the early church. St. Augustine, that great evangelical bishop of the early church who died in 430 AD, says, “The whole church practices infant baptism. It was not instituted by church councils, but was always practiced.” He combines infant baptism as a mark of God’s grace with the challenge for peoples of all ages to rest in that grace. He recognized the importance of lifelong commitment to Christ, and of adults surrendering all to God, for it was he who coined the phrase, “The heart of man is restless until it rests in God.”

 

   Further back in history, Origen, who died a little over 200 years after Christ’s death, relates that baptism of infants was a common practice. He attributes that practice to the apostles themselves.

 

   In the early missionary days of the church it is generally accepted that most baptisms were of adults. Even by those presently affirming infant baptism this is held to be the case. This was an historical fact necessitated by the missionary nature of the church in that era. This is what we see reflected in the stories in the book of Acts. Contemporary missionaries in lands new to Christianity baptize mostly adults also. Again this is the necessity of history. Christianity (without the nurturing body of believers, local churches, local leadership, and strong Christian families) must reach its new converts through conversion of a community’s adult population. Christianity calls to the whole person, mind, body, spirit, and emotions. Without childhood training and the example of adults, the rule of the mind must be challenged first in the unbeliever. Such was the case in the early church. Therefore, most baptisms recorded in the Bible are of adults.

   But those defending believer’s baptism, that is, adult baptism, cannot make their stand on the basis of Biblical practice. The account of the baptisms is certainly incomplete in the Bible and also inconclusive. Where whole families or households were baptized it is possible those events included children and infants. Likewise, those defending infant baptism cannot make a conclusive historical case from the Bible either. In a nutshell the Bible stories of Christian baptism do not solve the problem. They do not even provide a basis for logical argument leading in one direction or another.

 

(This article has been page 1 of a 9 page article which you can view here).