A Brief Apology for Infant Baptism

In the interest of full disclosure, I must confess that Debi and I baptized our three sons when they were babies.  Lukas, Ryan and Daniel were baptized by their grandfather, who is an ordained elder in the Church of the Nazarene.  I remember the occasions well and the motivation for what was a relatively minority practice at that time was our desire for our children as children to have received the covenantal sign of God's acceptance of them.  We have always hoped that our children would have boring testimonies and by that I mean that we have never wanted them to have a dramatic testimony of being saved from the depths of sin.  Our intention was to raise our children in the faith such that they would not remember a time when they weren't within it.  To that end, we wanted them to know that God had welcomed them into his kingdom even before they could remember and baptism was the sign of that acceptance.

The ritual we used for those baptisms was the one found in the Church of the Nazarene's Manual.  It is an interesting characteristic of our denomination that from the very beginning, we have had a pluralistic baptismal tradition.  This is a consequence of the mergers of the independent holiness groups that had different baptismal beliefs and practices.1  So there has been generally recognition of the appropriateness of both infant and believer's baptism. 

The ritual for infant baptism in the Manual of the Church of the Nazarene provides the theological justification for the practice.  It reads:

DEARLY BELOVED:  While we do not hold that baptism imparts the regenerating grace of God, we do believe that Christ gave this holy sacrament as a sign and seal of the new covenant.  Christian baptism signifies for this young child God's gracious acceptance on the basis of His prevenient grace in Christ, and points forward to his (her) personal appropriation of the benefits of the Atonement when he (she) reaches the age of moral accountability and exercises conscious saving faith in Jesus Christ.

In presenting this child for baptism you are hereby witnessing to your own personal Christian faith and to your purpose to guide him (her) early in life to a knowledge of Christ as Savior.  To this end it is your duty to teach him (her), as soon as he (she) shall be able to learn, the nature and end of this holy sacrament; to watch over his (her) education, that he (she) may not be led astray; to direct his (her) feet to the sanctuary; to restrain him (her) from evil associates and habits; and as much as in you lies, to bring him (her) up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

The first sentence is significant.  The church of the Nazarene does not believe that the rite of baptism imparts the regenerating grace of God in either infant or adult baptism.  Nazarenes understand baptism, as the ritual states, as a "sign and seal" of the new covenant.  In other words, baptism is not a sign from us to God as if it was some sort of personal testimony indicating our intention to follow Christ but rather baptism is a sign from God to us indicating His acceptance of us.  In truth, God needs no such sign as He knows our hearts better than we do.  However, fallible and forgetful humans do need such signs of assurance from God.  Indeed, as circumcision was the assuring sign of the old covenant for the Jewish people, so infant baptism is the assuring sign and seal of the new covenant for Christians.

The second sentence of the ritual is equally significant.  The reason the Church of the Nazarene believes baptism is appropriate for infants who are not in that rite indicating their commitment to God is due to the prevenient grace of God.  Prevenient grace is grace that goes before a commitment to Christ.  It is what enables persons to seek God in the first place.  Without God's prevenient grace, no one would ever come to knowledge of His saving grace.  In the Wesleyan-holiness tradition, infant baptism is the sacrament of God's prevenient grace.  Now, infant baptism does not mean that a young person is exempt from making a personal commitment to Christ when they realize that need.  When a person who has been baptized as a baby comes to faith, their infant baptism is not negated or superseded but rather confirmed.  Their baptism is brought to fruition.

The second paragraph of the ritual is equally important for it charges the parents with the responsibility to instruct the child concerning that baptism that they cannot remember and to do everything in their power to honor the baptism that they have provided for their child.  When our boys were growing up, whenever there was a baptism at the church, I would take the occasion to ask my children if they had been baptized.  They knew the answer and would always answer yes.  I would ask them if they remembered it and they of course would reply that they didn't.  I would then ask them what their baptism meant and they would reply that it meant that they had been accepted into God's kingdom even as babies!  This has been so significant too them that none of them have desired to be baptized again even though they are all young adults and professing Christians.  They feel no need for a second sign of acceptance.

This indicates that the sign of infant baptism is not an insignificant one.  Signs of covenants are important.  For example, I wear a wedding ring.  It obviously indicates that I am married.  It doesn't make me married.  If I take it off, I don't become unmarried.  However, if I were to tell Debi that I no longer wanted to wear a wedding ring, or if she told me that she no longer wanted to wear her wedding ring, it would be alarming and would probably indicate that our marriage was in trouble.  So while the ring doesn't make us married, it certainly is not insignificant to the marriage.  Baptism, both infant and adult, is the sign of the covenant that God has made with us and as a wedding ring is a significant sign, so is baptism.  It was such an important seal that Christians in the early church when under particularly severe assault from Satan would reply "But I've been baptized!"

At this point, some of the more astute readers will recognize that there has been no scriptural justification provided for infant baptism.  While baptism was commanded for all Christians (see Matthew 28:19-20) and while there was not one occasion recorded in the book of Acts of anyone coming to the faith who was not also baptized, it is true that there is no specific mention of infant baptism.  There are reports of entire households being baptized (see Acts 16) which some argue may have included children.  However, with that acknowledgment, it must also be recognized that there is no prohibition for baptizing infants.  In my view, the argument either for infant or for adult baptism is made most strongly on theological grounds.

The Church of the Nazarene has had from the beginning a pluralistic baptismal tradition.  There are those in the Nazarene church who understand baptism in such a way that would preclude infant baptism and there are those in the Nazarene church who understand baptism in such a way that would demand infant baptism.  In light of the strong arguments that can be made for either, I believe it is a sign of strength that the Church of the Nazarene allows for both theological traditions.

1  See Stan Ingersoll's article in the Wesleyan Theological Journal "Christian Baptism And The Early Nazarenes: The Sources That Shaped A Pluralistic Baptismal Tradition."  http://wesley.nnu.edu/wesleyan_theology/theojrnl/26-30/27.7.htm