The question:

From what I can gather on the thoughts you just laid out you seem to be fine with infant baptism. I have slowly come around to that position in the last 6 months. Mike and I did a bible study of first acts (pre-pauline travels) and it does say that the families are saved because of the decision of the father. I don't know when I have kids if I will have them baptised or not.

Warren says:

Well, maybe I need to do a study too. I didn’t think it said families are saved because of the father’s decision. I think it said families become Christians because of the father’s decision. You may not be able to distinguish a difference between the two. That’s really the topic at the heart of baptism.

At first blush the baptism question seems pretty obvious. God doesn’t have any grandchildren- people get saved when they believe. The book of Acts is full of people believing and then getting baptized. QED. This settles particularly comfortably with the modern mind, which is highly individualistic.

But on further inspection, I think cracks begin to appear. First, we may not realize that we are extrapolating to say that since ADULTS are baptized at the time of THEIR conversion, therefore CHILDREN should be baptized at the time of THEIRS. But that actually is an extrapolation. Is there anything in the New Testament about when believer’s children should be baptized? No- we have to make an assumption, and Baptists do this by extrapolating from adult converts to believer’s children. Maybe they are right- my point is that it is an extrapolation.

In fact, we are making a double extrapolation, actually. We moderns easily and unconsciously assume that a child, to become an adult Christian, must be converted at some point. Our extrapolation is that the people in Acts thought what we think. But is there anything in the New Testament about the believers of children needing to be converted? A silly question, maybe… but, is there?

And then we assume that the best time for baptism is the time of conversion. But I think there is no way on earth a first-century Jewish Christian in the book of Acts would have thought either of these things. More on that later.

Another crack is that Acts records incidents when a person believed, and their whole household was baptized, including slaves. That had to include children if it included slaves. Why didn’t somebody scold them and tell them it doesn’t work that way? This is heavy stuff- there are only two sacraments, and this is one of them. Paul spent a lot of time on communion. Why would God let this odd baptism precedent stand without comment?

Let’s face it- Jews had been circumcising infants into the nation of Israel for centuries (slaves, too, come to think of it). Don’t you think they would be baptizing infants into the church as a matter of course? What could be more natural to them? What else would they do? If they weren’t supposed to, don’t you think the New Testament would have to tell them not to, loudly and repeatedly? After all, the whole Old Testament is there to teach us. If that whole precedent were bogus you would hope God would let us know.

So, what’s going on? If they were not thinking what we are thinking, then what WERE they thinking? And does it make any sense? Even a little?

Well, it starts with the church. And the way to look at it is to look at Israel. We believe that believing Jews were saved. We’ll see David and Elijah and Moses in heaven. And we believe that they were saved the same way we are saved- by relying on Christ’s atonement. Granted, they looked forward, dimly, and we look back, clearly. But there isn’t any other way to be saved.

So we see that there was a distinct, identifiable nation of old Israel, and contained within it, there was the church of Christ. And today, contained within the distinct, identifiable, visible Church, is… the church of Christ.

Let’s look at circumcision. What did it mean? It meant that this baby was a member of Israel, part of God’s people. Did it therefore mean that the baby was saved? No, it didn’t. It meant he was supposed to be. It meant he ought to be. And it meant his parents were to teach him accordingly.

What did “part of God’s people” mean? It didn’t mean salvation, but it didn’t mean nothing. It was a lesson and a promise. A lesson about how God deals with people. A promise of greater blessings than a gentile could have, in the case of belief, and greater curses than a gentile would suffer, in the case of unbelief. I’m sure it meant a lot more, too, but I’m ignorant.

When gentiles converted and became Jews, they were circumcised at that time. When those converted gentiles had kids, do you suppose they waited for an adult profession of Jewishness? No, they circumcised their kids on the 8^th day: the parents were Jews and so the kids were born Jews.

Christianity has somehow forgotten this. We seem to think the visible church, which corresponds to Old Israel, is just a figment of the imagination, and the invisible church, the company of the saved, is the “real” church. But both are real. Our kids are born Christian; born into the church; born into the Israel of God. Born into the covenant. What’s the sign of the covenant? Bingo. Israel, a figure of Christ’s kingdom, circumcised covenant children to mark them as members of God’s covenant. Baptism replaced circumcision. Surely the converted Jews of Acts got the picture, and baptized their covenant children to mark them as members of God’s covenant. Nothing could be more natural. Nobody scolds them for it- not Paul, not Luke, not John, not Christ.

Doug Wilson said something very bizarre, that proceeded to make a lot of sense. He said a Christian is a person who a Muslim identifies as a Christian. A devout Muslim would understand that the Koran requires him to convert or murder a Lesbian Methodist Bishop, because she is Christian. He can tell--- why can’t we? We think the only Christians are saved Christians. But all those other guys in Christendom? The fact is that they are Christians, too. The Muslims know it. I’ve gotten into trouble with people here when they absolutely, positively cannot grasp a distinction between “Christian” and “saved”. So they think I’m saying that anyone in the church must be saved. But there IS a difference between “Christian” and “saved.” It’s easy to understand the difference between “Israelite” and “saved”. But the extrapolation to the church age is not familiar to most of us.

Is that lesbian Bishop saved? Seems doubtful, but God is full of surprises, and the game isn’t over yet. In fact, the most useful part of what Wilson said, is that it directed me to stop trying to decide who is saved and who isn’t. If you think you can make those calls, you’ll get a lot of surprises in heaven--- if you get there. I’m quite able to say that the Lesbian Methodist is a very poor Christian. And it works a lot better to talk about good Christians and bad Christians, then it does to talk about “real” and “fake” ones, or “saved” and “lost” ones.

For one thing, it lets me remain in the realm of things I can actually observe, and stay out of the realm of their hearts and thoughts, which I cannot observe. I can readily observe that the lesbian bishop is a lousy Christian. I can even prove it.

For another thing, none of us is a very good Christian. Decreeing the lostness of Christians who we consider to be worse screwups than we, is a slippery slope. How am I NOT a bad enough screwup, if the Bishop IS? And if I can decree hell for the bishop, how can I argue with somebody who decrees hell for me on the basis my particular sins? If I can prove that the bishop is a “fake” or “lost” Christian, I could probably use the same proof on myself.

And for a third thing, it properly enlarges the boundaries of our fellowship. It’s a pretty dysfunctional family, but people who have the mark are in the family. This lets us identify the family.

And for a fourth thing, Wilson pointed out that it gives us a basis for chiding the Lesbian Methodist. After all, if we think she isn’t a Christian, how can we scold her for not acting like a Christian? But if we admit that she IS a Christian, we have standing to tell her to straighten up and start acting like one.

What was that whole detour about? It was about the visible church, and how meaningful it is. It was about this: when a child is born to believing parents or even one believing parent, he is automatically part of the visible Christian church. Paul calls him holy. The child is a visible part of the bride of Christ. He is heir to a whole pack of promises God clearly makes to Christian parents. Is the child saved? Well, the child certainly hasn’t professed a saving faith. But parents who understand the clear Biblical teaching should calmly, confidently, faithfully expect this to happen. To these guys, baptism is the sign that the child is part of the church, and is heir to the promises, and is in fact claimed by Christ. The child is subject to greater blessings than an unbeliever, if he remains in the faith, and much greater curses, if he betrays his covenant. That child ought to be baptized into the covenant that he inherited from his believing parents. I (finally, after decades) find this to be thoroughly Biblical.

You know, it is probably most normal, and it’s certainly the ideal, for a Christian child to never remember a time when he didn’t believe. He doesn’t remember not being a Jones, or not being an American, or not being a Caucasian. He was also, in a very real sense, always a Christian. If you are born American and betray America, you suffer the consequences. It’s part of the package you were born with. Likewise being born into Christ’s body.

That’s why we baptize infants.

The most common objection, I think, is that if the child grows up apostate, the baptism was devalued. Two answers. First, many people who undergo believer’s baptism also fall away. What did THEIR baptism mean? It’s a fair question for either camp. Second, that person will spend eternity wishing their baptism was devalued… but unfortunately it was not. The full curse of a betrayed baptism is their lot.

I just stumbled across a Jay Barfield article on infant baptism in the magazine “Every Thought Captive.” Let me finish with a quote:

I believe that a major point to consider is whether the sacrament is about us, or God. We often treat the sacrament of baptism (and the Lord’s Supper, for that matter) as being about us, and our faith. It isn’t, friends. It is about God, and His faithfulness to His covenant promises to us. If we believe that it is about us, we will view baptism as a profession of faith, and therefore only to be given to those who have already publicly professed faith in Christ. If we believe it is about God, we will give the sign to our children, in obedience, claiming God’s covenant promises for our children, resting in His sovereignty over all things, particularly over the souls of our little ones, as we walk and work in faith and by faith.