Infant Baptism in History
An unfinished tragi-comedy
Written sometime in the early third century, Tertullian’s homily On Baptism provides the first undisputed evidence for infant baptism.1 That Tertullian (c. 200) provides this evidence is ironic, since he cautioned against infant baptism, just as he urged the unmarried to delay baptism until they had developed habits of continence. To be sure, Tertullian believed that infants were validly baptized, but he thought the practice unnecessary and dangerous. Infants have no need of baptism, for “Why should innocent infancy hurry to the remission of sins?” Besides, baptizing infants burdens them with duties that they cannot keep and places them in grave danger: “if [people] understand the obligations of baptism, they will fear more receiving than delaying it.”2
After Tertullian, references to infant baptism occur regularly. Origen (185-251) claimed that the practice was handed down from the apostles, and occasionally made comments that anticipated the later Augustinian rationale for infant baptism:
The little ones are baptized for the forgiveness of sins. Which sins? Or at what time have they sinned? Or how can there by the slightest reason for the baptism of little children, unless it is to be found in the passage: “No one is free from taint, not even he whose life upon earth lasts but a day”? Even little children are baptized. Because the taint which we have from the moment of birth is removed in the sacrament of baptism.3
Cyprian (200-258), who served as bishop of Carthage during the last decade of his life, argued strenuously in favor of paedobaptism. Summarizing the decision of a synod of Carthage held in the mid-third century, he wrote:
in respect of the case of the infants, which you say ought not to be baptized within the second or third day after their birth, and that the law of ancient circumcision should be regarded, so that you think that one who is just born should not be baptized and sanctified within the eighth day, we all thought very differently in our council. For in this course which you thought was to be taken, no one agreed; but we all rather judge that the mercy and grace of God is not to be refused to any one born of man. . . . And therefore, dearest brother, this was our opinion in council, that by us no one ought to be hindered from baptism and from the grace of God, who is merciful and kind and loving to all. Which, since it is to be observed and maintained in respect of all, we think is to be even more observed in respect of infants and newly-born persons, who on this very account deserve more from our help and from the divine mercy, that immediately, on the very beginning of their birth, lamenting and weeping, they do nothing else but entreat.4
Cyprian’s logic is intriguing, and points to some of the wider issues in the debate concerning infant baptism. For Cyprian, baptism includes extended to infants because the grace of God embraces all. Infant baptism is justified by an appeal to the universal grace found in the gospel, and by the fact that the church embraces all who are “born of men.” The community of the “reborn” is as wide as the community of the “born.”
Despite these testimonies, Tertullian’s cautions reflect a widespread resistance to infant baptism, and “believers’ baptism must have been frequent well into the fourth century.” Many of the church fathers, including those (like Augustine) who had Christian parents, “were not baptized until the end of their student days.”5 Still, by the time of Augustine’s fifth-century disputes with Pelagius, infant baptism was sufficiently well-established that Augustine could base his arguments on a commonly accepted practice, and in the six century, Justinian had made infant baptism mandatory within the Christian empire. In the East, paedobaptism remained the rule to the present day. Detractors of infant baptism reappeared periodically in the medieval West, and again in the Reformation, but through most of church history most of the church has accepted infant baptism.
That, in very brief compass, is the shape of the story. Identifying the genre of the story, however, depends on one’s assumptions about God’s will for Christian baptism.6 For Baptists, the story is definitely a tragedy. Infant baptism became established because of “alien influences” in the church, which transformed baptism into either a magical ritual or a “mere sign,” and in either case baptism and the gospel were diminished.7 Infant baptism is a “wound” in the body of Christ, a “hole” in baptismal practice, an arbitrary and despotic rite.8
Paedobaptists, by contrast, normally tell the story as one of straightforward continuity: The apostolic practice of infant baptism, reflected in various ways in the New Testament, continued undisturbed throughout two silent centuries, after which the apostolic practice became more openly discussed and more firmly grounded. According to this story-line, opponents of infant baptism such as Tertullian were aberrations, and the story is pure comedy. Samuel Miller expressed this view with remarkable rhetorical force: “I can assure you, my friends, with the utmost candour and confidence, after much inquire on the subject, that, for more than fifteen hundred years after the birth of Christ, there was not a single society on earth, who opposed infant baptism on any thing like the grounds which distinguish our Baptist brethren.”9
Perhaps additional evidence will one day turn up to clarify the practice of the church between the apostles and Tertullian. Given the evidence that we currently have, however, neither the comic nor the tragic version of the story makes sense. The Baptist story of tragedy cannot account for the opening chapters of the story -- namely, the biblical evidence in favor of paedobaptism. A sudden shift from inclusion of infants in Israel to exclusion of infants from the new Israel would have left identifiable skid marks on the historical record. There are none.
Paedobaptists, on the other hand, have not fully acknowledged the weight of the evidence against the universality of infant baptism. If the story is one of pure continuity, how does one explain the (apparently) widespread practice of delaying baptism well into the fourth century? How are the early postapostolic liturgies, which clearly assume believer’s baptism, to be explained? And, if the church practiced infant baptism virtually without contest, what accounts for the prominence of confirmation as the key to initiation in the medieval church?