Infant Baptism
Baptism may be administered to infants of believers or within the Church.
This doctrine is actively contested between major traditions. Faithful Christians disagree.
What the traditions say
Baptism removes original sin and incorporates into the Body of Christ. Infants of Catholic parents are baptized as soon as possible.
Baptism regenerates — including infants. Luther: "God can create faith in infants as He does in adults." Baptismal regeneration is a Lutheran distinctive.
Infants are baptized, chrismated (confirmed), and receive Communion — full initiation from infancy. The child is a full member of the Church.
Infant baptism is the covenant sign, as circumcision was under the old covenant. Children of believers are covenant members and receive the sign.
Rejected. Only believers may be baptized. Infant "baptism" is considered unbiblical — no NT command or clear example supports it.
Key scriptures
- 1Cor 1:16 — And I baptized also the household of Stephanas: besides, I know not whether I baptized any other.
- Acts 16:15 — And when she was baptized, and her household, she besought us, saying, If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house, and abide there. And she constrained us.
- Acts 16:33 — And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes; and was baptized, he and all his, straightway.
- Col 2:11 — In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ:
- Gen 17:12 — And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed.