A Question Every Parent Asks
Christian parents want their children to belong to Christ. In Presbyterian and other Reformed churches, that longing is expressed at the font: the infant children of believers are baptized as members of God's covenant. In Baptist churches it is expressed in prayer, in teaching, and in the joy of baptizing a child who has come to believe. The difference grows directly out of covenant theology, and it is one of the places where that framework touches ordinary church life most.
From the Greek pais, a child: the baptism of infants. In Reformed churches it is the baptism of the infants of believing parents as a sign and seal of the covenant of grace. Its opposite, credobaptism, from the Latin credo, I believe, is the baptism of those who have professed faith in Christ.
This study states the covenant case for infant baptism as its own teachers state it. It shows why that case is not the same as baptismal regeneration. Then it gives the credobaptist answer from the New Covenant, from the pattern of the book of Acts, and from the Bible's teaching on circumcision of the heart.
Presbyterian parents bring their babies to be baptized out of love for them and confidence in God's promises. We answer them as brothers, from the Scriptures we share. The question is not whether God loves children. It is who belongs to the New Covenant, and what its sign means.
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For Deeper Study
- Believer's Baptism: Sign of the New Covenant in ChristAmazon Thomas R. Schreiner and Shawn D. Wright, eds.Baptist scholars trace baptism through Scripture and history and answer the covenant case for infant baptism with care (2006).
- The Baptism of Disciples Alone: A Covenantal Argument for Credobaptism Versus PaedobaptismAmazon Fred A. MaloneA former Presbyterian minister explains why the covenant itself led him to baptize disciples only. Reformed Baptist.
- The Distinctiveness of Baptist Covenant TheologyAmazon Pascal DenaultShows how seventeenth-century Particular Baptists and Presbyterians read the covenant of grace differently, and why that difference decided baptism. Reformed Baptist.
- The Case for Covenantal Infant BaptismAmazon Gregg Strawbridge, ed.Presbyterian and Reformed pastors and scholars make the covenant case for infant baptism (2003). Paedobaptist; read it to hear the view in its own words.
- Foxe's Book of MartyrsAmazon John FoxeThe classic Protestant record of those who died for the faith, from the early church to the English Reformation.
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Believer's Baptism by Immersion
Baptism is for those who have believed, by immersion, picturing the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. It follows salvation; it does not cause it. Infant baptism is a later departure from the New Testament.
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