here is infant baptism in the Bible? You could, if you like, turn the question around; you might ask: “Where in the Bible does it say it must be in the Bible?” The doctrine of sola scriptura is not in the Bible; the objection that such-and-such a practice is not found in the Bible is thus a moot point. If one is going to object, it must be on some other basis; unless, that is, one can find the Bible expressly forbidding the practice.
We need not go that route, though. Leave sola scriptura for another time, because infant baptism is in the Bible.
Acts 2:38–39. “Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”
Note that Peter also says that baptism is “for the remission of sins,” which some non-Catholics deny. Nor does he restrict it to adults who make a profession of faith. (If you want to talk about what’s “not in the Bible,” we could start there.) “The promise,” he says, “is for you and your children.” Thus we also read, in Acts 16:15, that Lydia was baptized along with “her household.” And in verse 33, we read that the Philippian jailer was baptized, “he and all his [family].” And in 1 Cor. 1:16 we read that Paul baptized “the household of Stephanas.” We read nothing telling us that baptism is to be restricted to adults who make a profession of faith. That’s a tradition of men.
Colossians 2:11–12. 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: buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead.
Baptism is circumcision in Christ, as we read in Colossians. As circumcision brought us into the covenant of Abraham, baptism brings us into Christ. And since infants were circumcised, infants are baptised.
But we can go further than that. Some Protestants love to say that baptism is merely an ordinance, not a sacrament at all. It has no power to save. But that is not at all what the Bible says. “Baptism,” Peter says, “now saves you” (1 Pet. 3:21). It saves you “by the resurrection of Christ.” That most certainly is a sacrament, as the Church defines it in the Catechism §1131. Sacraments are “efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us.” Being instituted by Christ, I suppose you could say it’s an “ordinance,” but it’s more than that—as though it were a mere item on a to-do list. Baptism now saves you.
Some also say that the only valid form of baptism is immersion. I say: Where is that in the Bible? (It is indeed an irony that sola scriptura Protestants—some of them, for there are as many protestantisms as there are descendants of Abraham, numbered like the stars—want to bind the Church to baptism by immersion when the Bible does not bind us in this way. There are very elaborate regulations in the Mosaic covenant, but we find no such detailed regulations about baptism in the New Testment.
We are told that baptism is only for adults who can speak for themselves. But the Church fathers did not see it that way.
Hippolytus, in A.D. 215 (The Apostolic Tradition 21:16), writes: “The children shall be baptized first. All of the children who can answer for themselves, let them answer. If there are any children who cannot answer for themselves, let their parents answer for them, or someone else from their family.”
One does not have to be able to speak for himself; it is enough that a parent (or other relative) do so.
Origen, in Homilies on Leviticus 8:3:11 (A.D. 244), writes: “According to the usage of the Church, baptism is given even to infants.”
Four years later, in Commentaries on Romans, Origen said that the practice of infant baptism came “from the apostles.”
In A.D. 253, the Council of Carthage condemned withholding baptism from infants.
St. Cyprian, that same year, wrote (Letters 64:2) in defense of baptising infants within the first few days after their birth. “The old law of circumcision,” he said, “must be taken into consideration.” So like Paul in Colossians, Cyprian affirmed that baptism is the new circumcision.
St. John Chrysostom, in Instructions to Catechumens (A.D. 388), says that baptism “takes away our sins,” “as if we were born again,” and therefore even infants are baptized.
St. Gregory of Naziansus, in an Oration on Holy Baptism (A.D. 407), said: “Have you an infant child? Do not let sin get any opportunity, but let him be sanctified [i.e., baptized] from his childhood.” Gregory certainly spoke as though baptism were a sacrament.
St. Augustine, in Literal Interpretation of Genesis (A.D. 408), affirmed that infant baptism was “apostolic” and “not to be scorned.”
So when you scorn infant baptism, you scorn both the Bible and the tradition of the Church from the first centuries.
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