Fundamentalists say the Catholic Church errs in baptizing infants. Baptism, they say, is for adults only, and it is to be administered only after an adult has undergone a "born again" experience--that is, after he has "accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior." At the instant of acceptance, when he is "born again," the adult becomes a Christian, one of the elect, and his salvation is assured. Baptism follows, though it actually does nothing itself to secure salvation; one who dies before being baptized, but after "being saved," goes to heaven anyway.

Baptism, for fundamentalists, is not a sacrament, but an ordinance. It does not produce the grace it symbolizes; it is merely a symbol, a public manifestation of the adult's conversion. Since only an adult can be converted, baptism is not appropriate for infants or for young children below the age of reason. Most fundamentalists say infants and young children are automatically saved, no matter what. Only once a person reaches the age of reason and has sinned does he need to "accept Jesus" in order to reach heaven.

The Catholic Church has always understood baptism differently, of course, understanding it as a sacrament which accomplishes several things, the first of which is the remission of sin, both original sin and actual sin: in the case of infants and young children, only original sin, since they are incapable of actual sin; in the case of older persons, both. "Repent, Peter said to them, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, to have your sins forgiven; then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This promise is for you and your children, and for all those, however far away, whom the Lord our God calls to himself" (Acts 2:38-39). We also read: "Rise up, and receive baptism, washing away your sins at the invocation of his name" (Acts 22:16). These commands are universal, not restricted to adults.

Other Benefits of Baptism

Along with this forgiveness of sins comes an infusion of grace. It is this grace that makes the soul spiritually alive and capable of enjoying heaven. There are other benefits, too, such as the elimination of punishment due for sins and the right to special graces necessary to enable the baptized to fulfill his baptismal promises. But a consideration of these aspects of the sacrament would take us away from the narrow topic this tract is about, infant baptism.

In the Middle Ages, some groups, such as the Waldenses and Catharists, rejected infant baptism. Later, the Anabaptists ("rebaptizers") echoed them in saying infants are incapable of being baptized validly. But the Catholic Church has always held that Christ's law applies to infants as well as adults.

Jesus said that no one can enter heaven unless he has been born again of water and the Holy Spirit (John 3:5). His words can be taken to apply to anyone capable of having a right to his kingdom. He asserted such a right even for children: "Let the children be, do not keep them back from me; the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these" (Matt. 19:14).

Now fundamentalists say this verse doesn't really apply to young children or infants since it implies the persons being referred to are able to approach Christ on their own. (Older translations have "Suffer the little children to come unto me," which seems to suggest they can do so under their own power.) Fundamentalists conclude the passage refers only to older, ambulatory children, those capable of sin. But the parallel text says, "Then they brought little children to him" (Luke 18:15), and following this are the same words as in Matt. 19:14. What's more, some translations even use the term "infants." Indeed, the Greek word (brephe) means babies, little children who are quite unable to approach Christ on their own.

In Place of Circumcision

Besides, Paul notes that baptism has replaced circumcision (Col. 2:11-12). Of course, it was mainly infants who were circumcised under the Old Law; circumcision of adults was rare, there being few converts to Judaism. If Paul, in making this parallel, meant to exclude infants from baptism, it is strange that he did not say so.

It is not often admitted by fundamentalists that nowhere does the Bible actually say baptism is to be restricted to adults. They just conclude that's what it should be taken as meaning, even if the text doesn't explicitly support such a view. Naturally enough, the people whose baptisms we read about in Scripture (and there aren't many who are individually identified) are adults because they were converted as adults. This makes sense, because Christianity was just starting out and there were no "cradle Christians," no people brought up from childhood in Christian homes.

Specific Biblical References?

But, one might ask, does the Bible ever say that infants or young children can be baptized? The indications are fairly clear. Lydia was converted by Paul's preaching. "She was baptized, with all her household" (Acts 16:15). The jailer of Paul and Silas, who was about to commit suicide when they were miraculously freed from their imprisonment, was converted by them. We are told that "without delay he and all his were baptized" (Acts 16:33). And in his greetings to the Corinthians, Paul recalled that, "Yes, and I did baptize the household of Stephanas" (1 Cor. 1:16).

In all these cases, whole households or families were baptized. Presumably this means more than just the spouse: at least the children, probably also servants, if the household had any. But would an impoverished jailer, about to kill himself for what he took to be malfeasance, have servants at all, being, as he was, near the bottom of the social ladder? Not likely. "He and all his" must refer to himself plus at least two others; if it referred to just himself and his wife, we would expect to read "without delay he and his wife were baptized," but we read "without delay he and all his were baptized."

The natural implication is that the jailer had at least one child who was baptized, too. A similar argument can be made in the other cases. Granted, we can't tell the age of the children; they may have been past the age of reason, not infants. Then again, they could have been babes in arms. More probably, there were both younger and older children. Even though the scriptural evidence is not absolutely conclusive on the issue, it surely leans in favor of infant baptism. At any rate, there is nothing in the New Testament that says infants and young children are unsuited to baptism.

Catholics From the First

The present Catholic attitude accords perfectly with early Christian practices. Origen, for instance, wrote in the third century that "The Church received from the apostles the tradition of giving baptism also to infants." Augustine said of infant baptism: "This the Church always had, always held; this she received from the faith of our ancestors; this she perseveringly guards even to the end." Cyprian wrote that "From baptism and from grace...must not be kept the infant." The Council of Carthage, in 253, condemned the opinion that infants should be withheld from baptism until the eighth day after birth.

Now these citations--they could be multiplied--do not themselves prove, beyond doubt, that baptism of infants was authorized by Christ. But they do refer to a practice which was already old at an early date. After all, the Council of Carthage was not adjudicating a dispute about infant baptism as such, but was deciding at what point infants should be baptized.

No Cry of "Invention!"

No one, apparently, was claiming that the practice was contrary to Scripture or tradition. It was as though they were saying, "We all agree infants can be baptized and that infant baptism was practiced from the first, but exactly when should they be baptized?" Another telling point: if infant baptism was opposed to the religious practices of the first believers, why do we have no record of early Christian writers condemning it?

Fundamentalists don't pay much attention to the historical situation. They deflect appeals to history by saying baptism requires faith and children are incapable of having faith. Thus, no baptism for them. It's true that Christ prescribed instruction and actual faith for adult converts (Matt. 28:19-20), but his general law on the absolute necessity of baptism for salvation (John 3:5) puts no restriction on the subject of baptism. Although infants are included in the law, they can't be expected to meet requirements that can't be met because of their age. They can't be expected to be instructed and have faith when they are incapable of receiving instruction or manifesting faith.

The fundamentalist position on infant baptism is not really a consequence of the Bible's strictures, but of the logic of fundamentalism's notion of salvation. Although the Bible is not as clear on the issue as we might wish, certainly what it says leans toward the Catholic position, which is seconded by early Christian practice and writings.