All throughout college I worked to convince various people that baptizing babies was wrong. But my hometown Sunday-school friends had gone off to different universities, and they were swimming in uncharted waters. That is, they were all now connected to Reformed University Fellowship, a Presbyterian college ministry. The only girl from my Sunday-school (the one girl in my tight-knit group of friends) was now eyeing engagement to a Presbyterian young man she had gotten to know. The back-home boys were alarmed. We started working overtime to keep her from the shipwreck of believing in infant baptism. We couldn’t let her drown in their depths, confused about something so obvious.
Then the unthinkable happened.
My best guy friend got sucked into the whirlpool. Casey had become a paedobaptist while trying to defeat paedobaptism questions from Karen. I was devastated and went into a panic mode. I shunned entertainment. I locked myself into my dorm room for two weeks and did nothing but read about baptism any time I wasn’t required elsewhere. I got on the phone about it. I emailed strangers about it, seeking information. I called in pastoral counsel about it. I was determined to know why Casey had deserted me. I read baptist books, and I read paedobaptist books. And finally, after two weeks, I unlocked the door and re-emerged… settled. Resigned. Convinced. I had changed my mind. I now believed in infant baptism.
But the story didn’t end there:
You see, Karen was still not convinced of infant baptism, even though she wanted to be. But now, I was convinced. And she was in a bit of a pickle – she needed to be convinced in order to feel comfortable marrying her Presbyterian boyfriend. But he could not figure out how to make her see it his way.
Enter Christmastime. In December the old cohort was back together in town. At some Christmas event, I went on a car ride with Karen and her man – a man with whom I now agreed. They related to me that they couldn’t get past this hurdle. So I went to telling her what I had found recently in my own struggle. And before the car ride was over, I had basically convinced Karen of paedobaptism. My memory (or impression) is that her boyfriend was amazed that I had so quickly found the keys to unlock her thinking. I told him something like, “You have always been a Presbyterian; that means you have never known our specific baptist obstacles, and how we think. I just got done overcoming these obstacles, so I knew exactly what she needed to hear to cross over.” They did get married.
I don’t tell this out of triumph. What I seek to illustrate is that it is easier for one who has gone before to help a new questioner find the same answers. I don’t think I am better than a baptist. But my shut mind did open, and my long-held position did change. So I offer to you reflections on some specific barriers that Baptists have in believing Christians should baptize their babies. It is in different order maybe than I would present the doctrine of infant baptism in a systematic presentation. It is aimed at the way I argued against infant baptism.
OUTLINE
This week I will give you the outline, and next week I will begin moving through these points
Obstacles that Had Prevented Me from Believing in Infant Baptism
- Immersion
- Baptism means “Immersion” (or so I thought), and Immersion isn’t for babies – Click Here For Article on Immersion
- The Faith Requirement
- Salvation requires faith, and I thought that faith could only mean ‘mental assent.’ If babies cannot have faith, they cannot be baptized – Click Here For Article on Infant Faith
- Disciples Only (Matthew 28 – the Great Commission)
- Like unto the faith requirement, Jesus tells us to baptize disciples in Matt 28. That means people who had made a conscious decision to follow Christ – Click Here For Article on Great Commission
- Basic Difference in Old and New Testaments
- The New Testament is radically disconnected from the Old Testament, right? The fact of child inclusion in the old covenant was irrelevant because the Old Testament was rejected for “salvation by works”, or so I thought. – Click Here for Part 1: Article on Whether the Old Testament had a Works-Based Religion
- The New Covenant is More Restrictive (Jeremiah 31)
- According to Jeremiah 31 the New Covenant will only be populated by believers – this is different, or so I thought, from the old covenant. Instead of including children as circumcision had, baptism would only admit those who were shown to be believers by profession.
- The Bible never mentions children included in baptism.
- If it was supposed to be right, why was there no record of the practice?
If any of the above points have links, then the article is already written about that point. I will use the list here as an index as I go.
If these arguments are familiar to you and you are wondering if there is a valid and biblical response, I would like to invite you to come back each Tuesday for an additional piece of my argument.
In the future, I will also address the issue of the argument from history, and I will give a list of helpful reading resources.
ARTICLES IN THIS SERIES (LINKS):
- 1 Tell Your Children, “You’re A Christian!” (10/26/21)
- 2 My God From My Mother’s Womb (11/02/21 – reposted after deletion 11/23/21)
- 3 My Baptist Obstacles: What It Took to Change My Mind About Infant Baptism (11/9/21)
- 4 My Baptist Obstacles: Immersion (11/16/21)
- 5 My Baptist Obstacles: The Great Commission Says, “Baptize Disciples” (11/23/21)
- 6 My Baptist Obstacles: Did Circumcision Come from a Works-Based Religion? (12/1/21)
