When considering infant baptism, we must remember that baptism is an effective visible Word of God. Indeed, St. Paul tells us that baptism objectively kills and resurrects us in Christ (Rom. 6:2-10). Sin is fundamentally unbelief (Rom. 14:23), and faith is new life (Gal. 2:20).1 In other words, just as the preaching office does, baptism enacts the law and gospel on our old person.2 It is the visible form of the word of law and the gospel, which, as Paul reminds us elsewhere, objectively works death and life: “For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor. 3:6).
Hence, the argument that infants cannot repent and believe makes little sense since repentance and faith are not natural capacities in human after the Fall. Rather, they are the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit operating through baptism.3 Moreover, we have a very concrete biblical example of the Holy Spirit working faith even in fetuses. St. John the Baptizer recognized the Christ while still in the womb of Elizabeth (Lk 1:44).4 Jesus himself states that it is not by active and conscious decision that one becomes a Christian, but rather by receiving faith and the kingdom as a “little child” (Mk. 10:15).
Is An Age Of Accountability Biblical?
Beyond these considerations, the Anabaptist/Baptist notion of an “age of accountability” has no genuine basis in Scripture. The idea of an age of accountability has some precedent in Ulrich Zwingli’s teaching that although original sin corrupts from birth, it does not make a person guilty until he becomes a teenager and actively chooses between good and evil.5 Remember that Zwingli’s more radical followers were one of the major forces in the emergence of the Anabaptist movement.
There is not only no exegetical evidence for an age at which God begins to attribute guilt to sins, but such a notion erroneously conceives of sin as more of an action rather than a condition. Scripture affirms that humans are sinful from conception and that they are held accountable for their condition (Gen. 6:5, 8:21, Ps. 51:5). The key is that sin is primarily a disposition and desire and only secondarily an action. Everyone’s actions are tainted by sinful desire, irrespective of their voluntary nature, as Paul makes clear in Romans 7.
Infant Baptism In The Bible
Finally, Anabaptists and Baptists argue that infant baptism is illegitimate because it is never sanctioned in Scripture. However, this is untrue because Jesus authorizes the baptism of “all nations” (Matt. 28:19), which must include infants.6 As many have noted, there are also instances in Acts when entire households are baptized, and Luke does not write that infants were excluded (Acts 16:33).7 Jesus, indeed, bids the little children to come to him (Matt. 19:14)8 Today, this occurs in baptism. Christ is present where his Name is present (Matt. 18:20). Therefore, he must be present in baptism, which contains the divine Name (Matt. 28:19). Bringing children to the font quite literally brings them to Jesus. Finally, St. Peter’s Pentecost sermon in Acts very strongly implies that the hearers’ children should be baptized along with their parents to receive the Holy Spirit and the forgiveness of sins: “For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself” (Acts 2:39, Emphasis added).
Following our canonical principle, there is no prohibition on baptizing infants in Scripture. Nor is there any minimum age requirement for a valid baptism. One would imagine that such a question would have come up almost immediately after Pentecost. If the apostles had sought to prohibit the baptism of infants, the New Testament authors would have made this quite explicit. Unless Scripture has explicitly, or through direct implication, prohibited an action, Christian freedom in the service of the Gospel prevails. This includes baptizing infants.9
Baptism Is Gospel, Not Law
Using the evangelical principle of interpretation, we can see that the entire debate between the Reformed tradition and the Anabaptist/Baptist tradition has been framed in an inappropriately legalistic way. Seeing baptism as a kind of initiation ritual frames the question of infant baptism with legal conditions that need to be met before any baptism can take place. This debate between the Reformed and the Anabaptist/Baptist tradition has been oddly recapitulated by the more recent debate between Kurt Aland and Joachim Jeremias as to whether or not children were baptized in the early Church.10 As previously observed, going back to Zwingli, the Reformed have argued that baptism is the covenant sign that replaced circumcision. Therefore, Reformed Christians argued baptism is applicable to infants. The Anabaptists and Baptists, of course, argued that baptism was not a replacement for circumcision. This is the case, they believed, because a radical commitment to live counterculturally creates Christians, not birth into an organic ethnic community like Israel.
The confessional Lutheran paradigm certainly agrees with the Reformed that circumcision is typological of baptism, something rather strongly implied by Colossians 2:11. The Old Testament speaks of a circumcision of the heart prefigured in the circumcision of the flesh. This is certainly fulfilled in baptism.11 Confessional Lutherans also agree with Anabaptists and Baptists that baptism represents a radical break with the world, since it incorporates Christians into the very narrative reality of Jesus’s death and resurrection. Baptism is the death of the sinful self via the law and resurrection of the new person in Christ via the gospel. Nevertheless, as noted above, both the Anabaptist/Baptist and Reformed traditions operate with the assumption of baptism as a ritual work. Rather than a ritual work, baptism should properly be understood as the very visible work and word of the gospel. Hence, the question should not be: “What are the legal circumstances within which this ritual work can be performed?” But rather: “Do infants need the gospel like all other human beings?” Because “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23), the answer must, of course, be a resounding: “Yes!”12
- Lectures on Hebrews (1517); LW 29:182. ↩︎
- SC IV; CT, 551. ↩︎
- Concerning Rebaptism (1528); LW 40:243. ↩︎
- Concerning Rebaptism (1528); LW 40:245-246. ↩︎
- Olson, The Story of Christian Theology, 406. ↩︎
- Sermon at the Baptism of Bernhard von Anhalt (1540); LW 51:323. ↩︎
- Martin Luther, A Letter on Anabaptism to Two Clergymen in Luther on the Sacraments; Or The Distinctive Doctrines of The Evang. Lutheran Church Respecting Baptism and The Lord’s Supper, trans. Joseph Salyards (Newmarket: Solomon D. Henkel & Brothers, 1853), 109. ↩︎
- Sermon on John 1:30-34 (1537); LW 22:174. ↩︎
- Concerning Rebaptism (1528); LW 40:245. ↩︎
- See: Kurt Aland, Did the Early Church Baptize Infants? trans. G.R. Beasley-Murray (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2004); Joachim Jeremias, The Origins of Infant Baptism: A Further Study in Reply to Kurt Aland, trans. Dorthea Barton (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2004). ↩︎
- Instructions for the Visitors of Parish Pastors in Electoral Saxony (1528); LW 40:288. ↩︎
- The Holy and Blessed Sacrament of Baptism (1519); LW 35:30. ↩︎
From the draft manuscript for Lutheran Dogmatics: The Evangelical-Catholic Faith for an Age of Contested Truth (Lexham Press).
Cover image: Lucas Cranach the Elder, “Let the Little Children Come to Me,” (c. 1538), from Dcs. Carolyn Brinkley, “Cranach’s ‘Let the Little Children Come to Me,'” Lutheran Reformation, September 7, 2017, accessed June 10, 2024, https://lutheranreformation.org/history/cranachs-let-little-children-come/; other images from St. Augustine of Hippo, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis 10:23:39 (408 AD), AZ Quotes, accessed June 10, 2024, https://www.azquotes.com/quote/602929; Pinterest, accessed June 10, 2024, https://www.pinterest.com/pin/pinterest–514254851203785013/; and St. Hippolytus of Rome, The Apostolic Tradition (c. 215 AD), Legacy Icons, accessed June 10, 2024.