In
many previous posts, we have tackled the subject of infant baptism. In those
articles, I have ardently defended this practice as truly rooted in Scripture.
For that reason, I will not go over all the Scriptural defenses of the doctrine
of infant baptism. If one is interested, all my other posts on the subject can
be found here on my blog.
A
secondary defense, however, is a legitimate appeal to the practice of the early
church. When I say “early church,” I am not referring to the 4th or
5th Centuries, either. I’m talking about the period within a
generation or so of the Apostles. If we can determine the Church’s practice
during this era, it will be very instructive for us.
You
may wonder about the legitimacy of such an appeal, but let me demonstrate how I
intend to use it. Right now, there are hundreds of thousands of living veterans
of WWII. There are indeed perhaps one or two living veterans of WWI. If and
when a discussion arises about details and circumstances of life during this
period of time, we have direct access to people who can either verify or
falsify various opinions about that era. If someone makes a faulty or inaccurate
assertion about that time period, one of the thousands of people who were there
can correct the false statement beyond question, because they were
eyewitnesses.
Similarly,
if we go back far enough into Church history and see something that was not
taught by the Apostles being claimed to have been of Apostolic origin, we
should expect to find protest from any other writer of the time who lived
during any part of the Apostolic era. I said all that to say this: If we find
infant baptism early enough in Church history, and we find no opposition to it
at all from any quarter, then we may safely assume that the practice ruffled no
feathers among those who belonged to the older generation and had actually been
later contemporaries of the Apostles.
And
this is precisely what we find! Justin Martyr claimed that "many"
male and female Christians had been "illuminated through the Name of
Christ." Such "had been disciples to Christ from childhood" (1st Apology 15:6). These people
had obviously been 'sexually pure' when infants and little children. Justin is
asserting that they had remained sexually pure thereafter -- and were continuing
to "remain pure" even "at the age of sixty or seventy
years."
The
passive verb “made disciples” - (ematheteuthesan),
in this place, as everywhere else in Justin’s writings, means "to become a
disciple," that is, 'taught' follower of Jesus. This passive word was also
used by Justin elsewhere -- to refer to baptism. Justin's word
"illuminated," of course, was his regular cryptogram for
"baptized," which was a device for evading persecution. A.C. Barnard
remarks in his book I Have Been Baptized, writes: "This refers to
the time when they received their status of discipleship -- i.e. at [and indeed right before] their baptism. Thus, they must
have been baptized circa 80-90
A.D." (Cf. Justin's 1st Ap. chs. 15:6 and 61 & 65
with A.C. Barnard's I Have Been
Baptized, DRC Bookroom, Pretoria, 1984, p. 78.)
Barnard
places their baptism in 80 or 90 AD because he dates Justin’s 1st
Apology to 150 AD. So, according to Barnard's understanding of Justin’s words
in the quotation above, those lifelong 70 year-old disciples had been baptized
when they were infants. That, believes Barnard, would have been around 80 AD,
which is still during the apostolic era.
Barnard
assumes a late date for the writing of the New Testament. Nevertheless, even
had it been written a decade or so earlier, Justin's testimony would still
suggest that infant baptism was an Apostolic practice; because at least some Apostles
were still alive around 80 A.D!
More
than this, the Anglican author William Wall has pointed out something extremely
important: Justin's word ematheteuthesan
-- 'were discipled' or 'made disciples' -- is the exact same word that Matthew
used in expressing Christ's command in the Great Commission. This is Christ's
injunction to His ministers to "'disciple' all the nations" -
and to make them into His followers. We must ask: What nation has no children?
But
Wall continues: "Justin wrote but ninety years after St. Matthew [28:19],
who wrote about fifteen years after Christ's ascension...They that were seventy
years old at this time [when Justin wrote], must have been disciples to Christ
in their childhood...in the midst of the apostles' times -- and within twenty
years after St. Matthew's writing." (Wall's History of Infant Baptism, Vol. I pp. 66-171) So, when Justin
was writing around 150 A.D., some of his acquaintances had been Christ's disciples
already since their childhood -- and for "sixty or seventy years."
This means they had already become Christian disciples or 'taught ones' around
80 A.D., and thus during the apostolic age itself.
Had
infant baptism been an innovation of the later post-Apostolic age, it seems
very peculiar, to say the least, that we do not hear of complaints against this
innovation by older Christians who knew the Apostles and had witnessed their
actual practice regarding baptism. Thus it is safe to assume that Origen was
correct when he asserted that infant baptism was an Apostolic practice.
In case that wasn't clear enough, let me state it again. Justin tells us of people who were baptized as infants during to Apostolic era; no one living during the Apostolic era complains about this as an innovation. Therefore, we may conclude that the practice originated with the Apostles themselves. It is from them that the Church learned this practice.
Thanks, Gary, for your observations.
ReplyDeleteThe key item that I take issue with in the Baptist objection is the ignoring of the Old Testament as a source for doctrine and practice. Who says that New Testament alone is to be the source of material for the Church’s doctrine and practice? This is a terrible position. It betrays a defective view of Scripture.
However, my main purpose in this article was to present the historical precedent for the practice. By showing it historically dates to the Apostolic era, we present a insurmountable hurdle for those who claim that infant baptism is a later innovation. There are several other posts on this blog dealing with the subject and several more on the way.
You article is excellent. I am posting a link to it on my blog.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Gary.
DeleteHave you considered the Didache, very hard for me to see anything but credo baptism in its words?
ReplyDeleteHave you read Ferguson.'s "Baptism in the early church" His assertion is that credo was original but the church very early on allowed for pastoral reasons allowed infant baptism to dieing infants. This he asserts due to the fact that the inscriptions for dead Christian infants almost always seems to have baptism happening just before they deceased.
The Didache is addressed to adult converts, so what is says about baptism has no bearing on the issue of when it was administered. If a person was converted from paganism, he or she would never have been baptized, hence the admonitions of the Didache.
DeleteMoreover, the Didache is concerned with only two things: (a) that the Trinitarian baptismal formula be used in its administration; and (b) that no one quibble about the mode. He essentially says, “Use whatever water you have: warm, cold, running or stored. Just do it in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” Nothing at all in this has any possible bearing on the credo-paedo debate. The whole Greek text Chapter 7 of the Didache (the only chapter which mentions baptism) is 86 words. It is a mere four short sentences.
As far as Ferguson's book goes, I am not familiar enough with it to take it on in much detail. But knowing that his denominational affiliation is stridently anti-paedobaptist, one has to wonder whether this presupposition has not played a part in reading the evidence. That may sound like an ad hominem argument; but so is his. - 'The Reformed want to see infant baptism in Church history, therefore they do.'
Furthermore, as you describe it, his argument is based on his interpretation of the significance of some gravestone inscriptions. This only tells us that the infant were baptized. This doesn't at all relate to the theological rationale for the practice. If you want that, you need to read the Fathers' writings, not infer your own conclusions from some burial inscriptions.
William Wall has written a four volume work on infant baptism in the early church, which even on the surface, appears to be more comprehensive in scope than Ferguson's work, and he arrives at the exact opposite conclusion. My time-line constructed from Justin Martyr in this very article, places infant baptism within the Apostolic Age – way before the 2nd or 3rd Centuries.