Why should infants be baptized?
Children are baptized in accordance with the teaching of the Scriptures, and because this is the normative practice received from the Apostles: “The Church received from the Apostles the tradition of giving baptism even to infants” (Origen, Commentary on Romans, 5.9).
The first Christians were Jews, who understood that God deals with family units, and that children participate with their parents in God’s sacred covenant (Gen 17:12; Act 2:39).
Baptism is the normative, God-ordained means by which human beings are joined to the Body of Christ, “baptism now saves you” (1Pe 3:21), and the God and Father “from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” (Eph 3:15) has, through the Lord’s Apostles, extended this ordinance to the newborn, giving assurance of their union with Christ. As St Gregory the Theologian writes: “better that they be sanctified unaware, than that they depart unsealed and uninitiated” (St Gregory the Theologian, Oration 40.28, On Holy Baptism; see Q094, Q095).
Those who object to infant baptism do so on the basis of no explicit prohibition of Scripture, but because they assume that baptism absolutely requires a personal confession of faith and manifestation of repentance, which then obliges them to fix an entirely arbitrary ‘age of reason.’ It is clearly wise and normative to baptize children; and it would be heretical to condemn those who do, since this would condemn the universal practice of the holy Churches of Christ from the days of the Apostles. As Blessed Augustine, citing the authority of St Cyprian, reminds us:
The custom of Mother Church in baptizing infants is certainly not to be scorned… nor is it to be believed that its tradition is anything other than apostolic. (Blessed Augustine, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, 10.23.39)
Infants are baptized on the faith of their parents and sponsors, who are bound to teach them the faith as soon as they are of age to learn. Infants and little children are disciples par excellence (cf. Mat 18:3–4; 19:14), and after baptism comes instruction, according to the order given by the Lord: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them… and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Mat 28:19–20; see Q083, Q091).
The consistent pattern of the Holy Scriptures is that God deals with family units. God’s promise is “to you, and to your children” (Act 2:39), with the inspired assurance: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” (Prv 22:6; see Q568).
The Jews who first accepted the Gospel of salvation would naturally have expected entire households to be baptized, as indeed they were (Act 16:15, 33; 1Co 1:16; see Q023). Just as the Hebrews leaving Egypt, infants included, were “baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea” (1Co 10:2; see Q252), so Christians, infants included, are baptized into Christ Jesus. This is a most important passage for understanding why the Apostle Peter can write that “baptism saves you” (1Pe 3:21).
In the Old Covenant, infants were circumcised at eight days old; in the New, Baptism takes the place of circumcision as the sign of God’s covenant, which is a further reason why infants are baptized.
The Relationship between Baptism and Circumcision
Circumcision was the sign, in the flesh, of belonging to God’s covenant with Abraham: “This is my covenant, which you shall keep… Every male among you shall be circumcised… and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you” (Gen 17:10–11).
The New Covenant, of which Jesus Christ is the great High Priest and only Mediator, opened the doors for the Gentiles to enter: “In speaking of a new covenant, God treats the first as obsolete… Therefore, Jesus is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance” (Heb 8:13; 9:15; see Q537). This entrance of “other sheep” was announced by the Lord (Joh 10:16; see Q252); and those from among the nations who were “appointed to eternal life” (Act 13:48; see Q483) did not need to enter first into the old and obsolete covenant, according to the decision of the Apostolic Council: “It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things…” (Act 15:28–29; see Q014, Q069).
The sign of entrance into the New Covenant is the new sign of faith: Baptism. St Paul makes the correspondence explicit: “In him, you were also circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, by casting of the body of the sins of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him through baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead” (Col 2:11–12; see Q023). Accordingly, Christians enter the covenant not by circumcision but by baptism, and as infants entered the old covenant on the eighth day, so infants enter the new by the laver of regeneration.
