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In this episode, Trent responds to Gavin Ortlund’s recent video on infant baptism, providing a theological case for this discipline of the Church.
The Evidence for Infant Baptism in the First Century: A Response to Gavin Ortlund
Transcription
Trent:
Back in July, Gavin Orland released a video on the historical evidence for infant baptism and concluded that the evidence supports what is called credo baptism or restricting baptism to those who profess Christian faith and denying it to infants. But he also admitted the evidence for the historicity of credo baptism is an absolutely conclusive. So in today’s episode, I’ll be putting forward a modest case for infant baptism and respond to some of Gavin’s points regarding the evidence for infant baptism. But in order to keep this episode in manageable length, I won’t be addressing every single point Gavin made. I’ll just go over the major points and to promote the channels renewed emphasis on charity and fair scholarship. I sent a copy of this script to Gavin for review to make sure that I correctly understood the argument he made in his initial video. So let’s jump right in.
First, I need to make it clear that this is not a strictly Catholic Protestant issue. Most of the Protestants involved with the reformation and those associated with the confessions from that period supported infant baptism. Even if I was not Catholic, I would not be a Credo Baptist or someone who thinks only believers should receive baptism. That’s because I am unwaveringly convinced of the evidence for the doctrines of baptismal regeneration and the necessity of the practice of infant baptism, what’s often called petto baptism. Because of this, I joined with Anglican Lutheran and many Presbyterians who also affirm these doctrines and disciplines. Gavin grew up Presbyterian but left that denomination over the issue of infant baptism. However, his brother Dane is a Presbyterian pastor who holds to the Westminster Confession, which says not only those that do actually profess faith in and obedience unto Christ, but also the infants of one or both believing parents are to be baptized. Dane also had this to say about Gavin.
CLIP:
Tell me what he says. Whatever he says. I agree. Okay, because he’s so smart right on everything except baptism, but keep going.
Trent:
Second, when Catholics present evidence for the historical antiquity of the church, we need to be careful to not overstate our case. Frankly, there’s very few doctrines on which we can say every church father taught X because in many cases the writings of the fathers are fragmentary or they’re focused only on specific issues. Gavin correctly notes in his episode that there is a silence on explicit references to infants being baptized in the first 150 years of church history. I noted this in my dialogue with William Lane Craig, which was recorded before Gavin’s episode released where Dr. Craig recommended that Catholics ditch infant baptism.
CLIP:
While there’s some silence on infant baptism in the early historical record, even people like RC Sproul admit that it’s testified too early. There isn’t opposition to it. The only opposition in the early church was people said, well, you should wait eight days to baptize an infant. That’s when circumcision was done.
Trent:
I told Dr. Craig that his suggestion was basically a no-go, especially because of the historical evidence for infant baptism, which even many Protestants accept. But notice I qualified the nature of the historical evidence in my response though I later said in the interview that there were other reasons people in the early church delayed baptism. However, as we’ll see, overreaching arguments from silence can lead to faulty conclusions. Third, I think the best argument for infant baptism isn’t a cumulative case from historical evidence, but a theological argument. We know who should be baptized by answering the prior question. What is baptism for? You would then get this kind of informal argument. One, baptism is for spiritual regeneration. Two, all people need spiritual regeneration. Three, therefore all people who can be baptized should be baptized. Keep in mind this isn’t a strict logical argument and there’s a few assumptions being made in the premises.
For example, there can be spiritually unregenerate people who should not be baptized. These include adults who vocally reject baptism, children whose parents vocally reject baptism and unborn children whose unique living condition makes baptizing them unfeasible or some cases impossible without harming them. Notice also, and this will come up later when I assess Gavin’s arguments, that there is a difference between doctrine what the faithful are allowed or bound to believe and discipline what the faithful are allowed or bound to do. In many cases, the church can have uniform doctrine, but it takes time for correct disciplines to be fully implemented throughout the church that are in harmony with said doctrine. In this case, infant baptism is a discipline, and I agree many people in the early church were inconsistent in applying this discipline, but baptism regeneration is a doctrine and the evidence for the antiquity of this doctrine is overwhelming.
So the case for infant baptism rests on two premises. The first is that baptism saves us from sin. It spiritually regenerates us and communicates the grace of justification. Baptism is not a sign we have already been justified or saved from sin. Baptism is as one Peter 3 21 says that which saves us. The second is that all people need spiritual regeneration and so we ought to baptize infants. This premise is needed to address members of denominations like the Church of Christ who believe in baptismal regeneration but do not practice infant baptism. You see my dialogue with Church of Christ Minister Marco Arroyo on this subject here on the channel and speaking of Church of Christ, Gavin cites Everett Ferguson’s book Baptism in the first five Centuries in defense of his claims about the historicity of infant baptism, and Ferguson is a member of the Church of Christ.
That doesn’t mean he can’t be an objective scholar, but Ferguson’s book does reach two conclusions that are amenable to his denomination. They are, the historical evidence for infant baptism is unclear, but the historical evidence for baptismal regeneration is abundantly clear and Ferguson isn’t the only scholar to reach this conclusion. The Baptist Scholar g Beasley Murray writes this in the light of the foregoing exposition of the New Testament representations of baptism. The idea that baptism is a purely symbolic rite must be pronounced alone, unsatisfactory, but out of harmony with the New Testament itself. Admittedly, such a judgment runs counter to the popular tradition of the domination to which the writer belongs. The extent and nature of the grace which the New Testament writers declare to be present in baptism is astonishing for any who come to the study freshly with an open mind. So that would be my primary theological argument for the doctrines related to infant baptism, but I’ll save an exhaustive defense of it for a future episode.
Instead, let’s look at some of Gavin’s points on the history of the discipline of infant baptism. First, let’s just assume for the sake of the argument, Gavin was correct that the apostles didn’t formally institute this discipline because of how baptism is described in the writings of the first 150 years of church history, most of the apostles would’ve died before most Christians were born from Christian parents rather than being converts to the faith as adults. In this case, infant baptism would be something the Holy Spirit guided the church incorrectly understanding as the proper application of the doctrine of baptism, and so it could still be obligatory as a discipline. Second, Baptists are inconsistent to not support infant baptism because of its alleged lack of evidence because many of these same Credo Baptists support a practice that has even less evidence for it. Child credo baptism to see what I mean. Here’s Al Moler on the question of what age a child needs to be in order to be baptized.
CLIP:
I wouldn’t baptize until a child was very close to adolescents and I was baptized at nine. So adolescence, 10, 11, 12 and early adolescence somewhere around there I think is quite reasonable.
Pastor
Trent:
Keith Foskey says this,
CLIP:
My friend pastor Tom Buck, he was baptized at age seven and he’s never looked back and I say, well, praise the Lord. He knew he was in Christ. He knew he was a sinner and needed salvation at seven years old, and I can say praise the Lord for that.
Trent:
Some like Ali Beth Stuckey placed the age of baptism even earlier.
CLIP:
That is the B position that baptism should always follow belief, but I would say include the baby even if it could be three, you could be three years old. But no, we don’t. I mean we just don’t believe in baby baptism, but I’m just saying, and I don’t think we see a clear example of that,
Trent:
But other Credo Baptists placed the age of baptism much older, well into the teen years as this guest with Todd Friel of Wretched Radio says,
CLIP:
Let’s continue to read the Bible together. We’ll continue to pray together. We’re going to continue to go to church and talk about the Lord. You want to nurture that, but you want to wait on baptizing that child until that boy in this case is older and I mean much older. I would recommend well into their teenage years. I would say somewhere because Todd, a child is going to adopt the worldview in which he’s raised.
Trent:
However, if you delay baptism until the teen years, then you have the problem of children being capable of sinning, which applies to children at least by age seven or eight since they can be disciplined for wrongdoing but who are also incapable of being saved from sin since they can’t have the saving faith that would allow for them to be baptized. This leads to a gruesome conclusion when it comes to their salvation. On the other hand, not baptizing, preteens or even miners in general was the historic norm among Credo Baptists. Caleb Morell, a Baptist pastor has shown in his research that 18th century Baptists did not baptize children under the age of 12 and rarely baptize anyone under the age of 18. Another article says this, throughout most of the 19th century, the youngest candidates for baptisms were teenagers who were considered adults by the standards of the day.
Most were in their mid-teens and seldom younger than 13. By the beginning of the 20th century, the average age had dropped to about age 13 with younger children ages 10 to 12, increasingly being baptized By the mid 1960s when the Southern Baptist Convention began reporting the ages of those baptized nearly half were 12 or younger with over a thousand each year being six or younger. Even if Credo Baptists tried to claim the fourth century fathers for themselves, those Christians did not baptize children. David Wright in the book Gavin cited in his episode says he did not find outside a questionable example in Augustine identifiable children of seven or older who were baptized answering the questions for themselves and says, of the examples of non infant baptisms among church fathers, they are all of adult years with St. John Christen at 18 probably being the youngest. It’s true we don’t see descriptions of infant baptisms in the first two centuries of church history, but we also don’t see descriptions of child baptisms during this period either. If you say, well, the Bible talks about households being baptized and that would include children, then that same argument also applies to infants. I’ll link to Jordan Cooper’s extensive discussion on that topic in the description below. Doug Wilson, a Baptist who changed his mind and came to accept infant baptism also notes how the silence in the New Testament cuts both ways in this debate.
CLIP:
In my old days, I would point out there’s not a single passage in the New Testament that shows an infant being baptized then that’s quite true, but there’s also no passage in the New Testament showing what I did growing up in a godly Christian home going forward at a Baptist church when I was 10 years old and then getting baptized in a Christmas Eve service. There’s nothing about that in the New Testament either.
Trent:
However, I do think that the evidence and proper inferences from it show the most plausible theory of the origin of infant baptism is that this comes from the apostles and was meant to be a universal discipline within the church even if it took time for this discipline to be recognized just as it took time for the apostle’s own writings to be recognized as sacred scripture. So let’s look at the evidence. Gavin finds it odd that the earliest instructions for in the Diday have things like fasting rules but no dispensation for infants that can’t follow these rules. His argument isn’t strictly from silence, but it builds on the way baptism is described in these ancient texts as seeming to fit more for adults than infants. But most people innately understand the moral principle of ought implies can you’re only expected to do something if you are truly able to do it.
The Diday doesn’t make an exception for baptizing someone who is dying and doesn’t have a data fast, but that wouldn’t mean such baptisms weren’t allowed or practiced indeed delaying baptism until one’s deathbed became an issue later in church history. What I find more interesting is that there are no prohibitions against infant baptism even though the diday does contain prohibitions on administering other sacraments. For example, the Diday says, let no one eat or drink of your Thanksgiving Eucharist, but they who have been baptized into the name of the Lord for concerning this. Also, the Lord has said, give not that which is holy to the dogs. So while some people were incapable of receiving the Eucharist such as those who remained unbaptized, there is no mention of people who are incapable of receiving baptism When it comes to the second century, Gavin cites Justin Martyrs defense of the faith to the Roman Emperor.
Justin talks about how people are baptized saying this as many as are persuaded and believe that what we teach and say is true and undertake to be able to live accordingly are instructed to pray and to intrigue God with fasting for the remission of their sins that our past we praying and fasting with them. The fact that Justin doesn’t mention infants being baptized doesn’t tell us much because the context is an explanation on how pagans become Christian, not the children of Christians. Throughout his letter, Justin takes great pains to show Christianity is not a threat to the civil order and that is not a folly of the ignorant. That’s why in another passage Justin says, we believe or rather indeed are persuaded that every man will suffer punishment in eternal fire according to the merit of his deed. All Justin is saying is this is how pagans become Christian, but as I noted, that doesn’t tell us much about infant baptism.
One piece of second century data not in Gavin’s video is St. IANA’s testimony on the subject. Ferguson is clear that Iran Aus, like many other early fathers believed in baptismal regeneration. William Webster, a Baptist pastor and critic of Catholicism historical evidence, even Amids that quote, the doctrine of baptism is one of the few teachings within Roman Catholicism for which it can be said that there is a universal consent of the fathers. However, EU also says this, for Christ came to save all through means of himself. All I say, who through him are born again to God, infants and children and boys and youths and old men. Ferguson is skeptical. This refers to baptism saving infants because EU uses the word reborn instead of the word regenerate, but EU probably uses those terms interchangeably. For example, cites Naaman being healed of leprosy in the Jordan River and then says this, for as we are lepers and sin, we are made clean by means of the sacred water and the invocation of the Lord from our old transgressions being spiritually regenerated as newborn babes, even as the Lord is declared, unless a man be born again through water in the spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Now, I’m not saying this is proof of infant baptism in the second century, but it is evidence you should also consider when evaluating the evidence Gavin presented in his video. Ferguson and other critics have also cautioned against Erin Aus being a supporter of infant baptism because EU refers to innocent children who have done no evil being saved. But this doesn’t tell us whether EU thought they didn’t need baptism first, even if the critics were correct, an EU and some early fathers didn’t support infant baptism because they were wrong about original sin. Well, their error on original sin shouldn’t bind the church to another error on infant baptism. But second, that’s not the case. We have to say Iran Aus is wrong here because it’s not uncommon to speak of young children being innocent precisely because of their baptism. For a long time of the church’s history, the death of baptized infants was met with a kind of mini canonization with church bells even rung because since these children could not forsake the grace of baptism through something like mortal sin, we could know that they were saved. This is important when it comes to Gavin’s treatment of catacomb inscriptions. He cites Ferguson’s statements regarding various inscriptions that record children receiving baptism shortly before death, not shortly after birth.
CLIP:
Ferguson’s argument is that we get a clue in tomb inscriptions from around this time, especially early third century because we have a lot of these and they suggest in many cases of infant or child baptism, that’s an emergency procedure kind of death bread procedure. So here’s an example from the catacomb of Priscilla. Flore made this monument for his well-deserving son, a PRUs who lived one year, nine months and five days since he was dearly loved by his grandmother and she saw that he was going to die. She asked from the church that he might depart from the world a believer. So that means being baptized. So the scenario is baby boy, almost two years old, sick and about to die, grandmother requests baptism. There’s lots of other examples from tombstones around this time and including with Christian parents. Do you find a lot of these examples that Ferguson is drawing attention to?
Trent:
One of the inscriptions Gavin shared is for a child named Florencia. Ferguson thinks the father may have been Christian, but he was probably pagan since the beginning of the inscription as recorded. In Ferguson’s book says, sacred to the Divine Dead, a statement that has pagan overtones. Note also, it is a relative, the grandmother who seeks baptism for this child instead of parents who are probably ambivalent pagans, many of the other inscriptions that refer to delayed baptisms don’t tell us if the parents were Christian. So these could be similar cases of relatives interceding or catechumens who were waiting to be baptized together as a family and then baptized a dying infant prematurely, or they were pagans seeking a theological refuge of last resort, if you will. But we also find inscriptions that simply refer to infants as being believers without any mention of an emergency. Baptism statements like this one, a OSUs, a believer from believers lies here having lived two years, one month, 25 days.
So here you have a statement taken at face value would say that this child was always a Christian, which would imply that they had been baptized early on in their life or shortly after birth. Ferguson believes that the practice of infant baptism developed out of emergency baptisms, but there is a more plausible explanation that accounts for all the data. In Ferguson’s other book Early Christian Speak, faith and Life In the first three centuries he writes, Christian inscriptions are epitaphs. A considerable number of these are for the graves of children. The vast majority give no indication whether the child was baptized or not. So we need to ask why do only a fraction of these inscriptions mention baptism? And when they do mention it, it’s shortly before death. Now think about modern epitaphs. The graves of most Catholic children say nothing about the date of their baptism if they passed before they reach the age of reason.
We have a safe assumption that this child is in heaven, not because children don’t need baptism, but because very young children cannot forsake the graces received in baptism. The only times you’d mention baptism would be if a child received an atypical precious providential gift of baptism right before death when it is usually received in a much more mundane way earlier in life. So why should we think baptismal inscriptions and catacombs represent atypical cases at variance to ordinary infant baptisms? Because by the third century, infant baptism is the universal norm throughout the church as attest by several writers. For example, we have a politic’s instructions for baptizing infants that can’t speak for themselves. Though there is some issue on the dating of this source. CPR in an origin also attest to the widespread practice of infant baptism in the early third century. Origin says the church has received the tradition from the apostles to give baptism even to little children for they to whom the secrets of the divine mysteries were committed.
Were aware that in everyone was original sins innate defilement which needed to be washed away through water and the spirit. It seems during this time the biggest controversy was whether baptism should be delayed to the eighth day to correspond to circumcision, to which Cyprian says this, 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 counsel for in this course which you thought was to be taken, no one agreed. Well, we all rather judge that the mercy and grace of God is not to be refused to anyone born of man at this time.
And in fact, this is the only time in church history before the reformation, we have a prominent Christian writer Tertullian consistently recommending against infant baptism. Now, I appreciate Gavin noting that Tertullian believed baptism regenerates, so he did not hold the modern credo BT reasons for delaying baptism. However, Gavin emphasizes that prior to Augustine there was more emphasis on the innocence of children, but Tertullian is a counter example to this and on the soul, Tertullian writes the following, every soul then by reason of its birth has its nature in Adam until it is born again in Christ. Moreover, it is unclean all the while that it remains without this regeneration and because unclean it is actively sinful and suffuses even the flesh by reason of their conjunction with its own shame. Where Chalian differs from modern petto Baptists is that after he embraced the ous heresy, Tian followed a misinterpretation of Hebrew six and came to believe that some post baptismal sins could not be forgiven.
This is why he and others delayed baptism so that people would avoid committing these unforgivable sins. Tian also makes an argument based on the unfair duties from his perspective given to godparents, which also speaks of the elaborate nature of infant baptism at this time, something that would be unexpected for a practice that is novel and only done in emergencies. Rather tien’s evidence shows that baptism was an ancient institution even in his own time. Now, Gavin also cites Ferguson’s argument that Tertullian would only have opposed infant baptism if it were novel and not of an ancient pedigree. But given that Tertullian ended up opposing theological orthodoxy when he joined the ous heretics, I don’t find this argument to be able to carry much weight besides Walter Tertullian is quick to label other innovations as abominable heresies such as what we now call modalism. Tertullian never says anything like that regarding infant baptism.
Instead, he offers what he thinks is a prudential argument for a preferential alternative, not a denunciation of a novelty unconnected with the apostles. Next, the fact that a few prominent Christians in the fourth century had delayed baptisms is not sufficient evidence to say there was a universal rejection of the infant baptism norms of the third century. Though there was certainly confusion over how the teaching on baptism should be applied. Consider St. Gregory of NEIS was baptized as an adult. He did not rebuke his parents for this act, but that may be because of his commitment to honoring his father and mother, but he certainly did not recommend the same thing and his advice on the matter didn’t come from Augustine who wrote after him. For example, some critics asked Gregory why they should hurry to be baptized when Jesus was baptized at age 30. Just like Gregory the great saint bluntly tells them Jesus was God you aren’t.
And then he says this, nor was there any danger to him from putting off baptism, but in your case, the danger is to know small interests if you were to depart after a birth to corruption alone and without being clothed with incorruption. He then says, have you an infant child? Do not let sin get any opportunity but let him be sanctified from his childhood, from his very tenders age, let him be consecrated by the spirit. However, in that same word Gregory says, to wait until a child is three years old so that their knowledge may help to sanctify them in soul and body with the great sacrament of our consecration. Even Wright notes the difficulty of parsing out what the fathers mean on baptism when they give contradictory and incomplete answers. It’s no wonder that St. Augustine was so helpful in church history, not by providing a new doctrine or discipline, but by clarifying the doctrine and discipline that had previously existed in church history. Just as the Council of Nsea did not create the doctrine of Christ divinity, but help create uniform expressions of it in a church where there were sloppy or even heretical views on the matter. Augustine’s formulations on the baptism of infants helped unify different disciplines that had emerged, but it was not a theological genesis for the church on this question. Now, here’s the part of Gavin’s episode that I strongly disagreed with.
CLIP:
It really is only with Augustine that the picture begins to change and not just Augustine generally, but Augustine in his later anti Pelagian writings starting around four 10 ad So in the early fifth century and here Augustine draws upon infant baptism to help his argument in favor of original sin. And this has a massive influence because starting with Augustine, you get this emphasis that baptism is necessary for salvation and that includes infants. Those infants who don’t make it to the baptismal font and die according to Augustine are lost. They are damned. They are not saved. They do not experience the beatific vision.
Trent:
This makes it seem like Augustine was the primary source for the belief that infants need to be baptized to save them from hell as part of his mission to dunk on Palis. But as we’ve seen, there is abundant evidence. The entire church already believed infants ought to be baptized to protect them from the loss of heaven. This was not simply an Augustinian response to Pianism. This was a recovery of what had been previously believed in taught in the third century, and this was universal in the church because Palius himself also believed this. Augustine says this now in’s letter. He says that there are certain subjects about which some men are trying to vilify him. One of these is that he refuses to infants the sacrament of baptism. Pius then says in that regard, for after saying that he had never heard even an impious heretic say this, namely what he set forth as the objection about infants.
He goes on to ask who indeed is so unacquainted with gospel lessons as not only to attempt to make such an affirmation, but even to be able to lightly say it or even let it enter his thought, and then who is so impious as to wish to exclude infants from the kingdom of heaven by forbidding them to be baptized and to be born again in Christ. So even though Palas disagrees with Augustine on a lot, palas absolutely agree with Augustine on the need to baptize infants so that they could be saved from sin and damnation and palius appeals from his perspective to the practice being universal for why he holds to that view. Similarly, the Council of Carthage in four 19 referred to those infants alone who are baptized by donus and that they should not be rebaptized because their initial baptisms were valid even though they were baptized by heretics.
This shows that even heretics like the donus did not hold anything resembling a credo Baptist position in spite of what some Baptist historical revisionists have claimed in the past. For more on this, I recommend Christian apologist Stephen Boyce’s video on the topic, and I’m grateful for Stephen’s review and collaboration regarding today’s episode. Finally, what I’m presenting here is not a knockdown argument for why everyone must hold the discipline of infant baptism. I appreciate Gavin helping people more honestly grasp with the historical evidence. And so I would encourage you to take notes from this video. Go watch Gavin’s video, at least the part in the history of baptism, and then decide for yourself which inferences make more sense to you. Although, to be honest, there are many doctrines and disciplines that cannot be settled through historical investigation alone. The same skeptical arguments used against infant baptism are also used against the doctrine of original sin, which many scholars say Saint Augustine also invented.
But I don’t think Gavin would want original sin to be something that we can’t dogmatize. Instead, the church’s living teaching office exists so that theological disputes which involve pressing questions in the Christian life, should I baptize my baby to get him to heaven, do not remain in the realm of academic debate, but are finally resolved for the good of the body of Christ. I’m grateful the magisterium can thread the needle, so to speak, and affirm early witnesses in church history to the salvation of unbaptized infants, while acknowledging that this must be reconciled with the doctrine of original sin through something like God’s omnipotence and omni benevolence. So I would say the historical evidence shows that it is eminently reasonable to ascent to the church’s instruction that baptism be administered to children soon after birth because this reflects the practice of the early church and its gradual understanding of how the saving power of baptism ought to be applied to the universal problem of human sinfulness. And so I hope this episode was helpful for you all today. I’m grateful for Gavin for reviewing the script, and if you have other ideas for topics you’d like me to address, leave them in the comments below. But yeah, thank you guys so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.