Should infants be water baptized?

Baptizing the infant children of believers (sometimes called “paedobaptism”), in the belief that this accords with God’s revealed will, has been the historic practice of most churches. However, the worldwide Baptist community, which includes distinguished Reformed thinkers, disputes this practice.

Baptists insist that membership in local congregations is only for those who have publicly professed a personal faith. The argument often includes the claim that Christ instituted baptism primarily as a public profession of faith, and that this profession is part of the definition of baptism, with the result that infant baptism is not really baptism at all.

On this ground, Baptist churches rebaptize persons baptized in infancy who have come to faith—from the Baptist standpoint they have never been baptized. Historic Reformed theology contests the view that only adult, believer’s baptism is true baptism, and it rejects the exclusion of believers’ children from the visible community of faith. These differences regarding the nature of the visible church form the background for all discussions of infant baptism.

The practice of infant baptism is neither prescribed nor forbidden in the New Testament nor is it explicitly illustrated (though some argue that the New Testament practice of household baptisms probably included infants and small children).

Rather, the scriptural case for baptizing believers’ infants rests on the parallel between Old Testament circumcision and New Testament baptism as signs and seals of the covenant of grace (Gen. 17:11; Rom. 4:11; Col. 2:11, 12), and on the claim that the principle of family solidarity in the covenant community (the church, as it is now called) was not affected by the transition from the “old” to the “new” form of God’s covenant brought about by the coming of Christ.

Infant children of believers have the status of covenant children and therefore should be baptized, just as Jewish male infants had previously been circumcised. The Old Testament precedent requires it and there are no divine instructions explicitly revoking this principle.

Further evidence that the principle of family solidarity continues in the New Testament period is found in 1 Cor. 7:14, where Paul notes that even the children of but one Christian parent are relationally and covenantally “holy” (that is, set apart to God together with the one Christian parent). So the principle of parent-child solidarity still stands, as Peter also indicated in his Pentecost sermon (Acts 2:39).

And if infants are deemed members of the visible covenant community with their parent, it is fitting to give them the sign of covenant status and of their place in the covenant community; in fact, it would be unfitting for the church to withhold it. This fitness is demonstrated in that when circumcision was the sign of covenant status and community inclusion, God commanded it to be done (Gen. 17:9–14).

Against these arguments, Baptists allege that first, circumcision was primarily a sign of Jewish ethnic identity, so the parallel between it and Christian baptism is mistaken; second, that under the new covenant the requirement of personal faith before baptism is absolute; and third, that practices not explicitly recognized and approved in Scripture must not be brought into church life.

Certainly, all adult church members must profess faith personally before the church. Communions that baptize infants provide for this in confirmation or the equivalent.

The Christian nurture of Baptist and paedobaptist children will be similar: They will be dedicated to God in infancy, either by baptism or by a rite of dedication; they will be brought up to live for the Lord and led to the point of publicly professing faith, in confirmation or baptism.

After this, they will enjoy full communicant status. The ongoing debate is not about nurture, but about God’s way of defining the church.

It is sometimes said that infant baptism leads to a false presumption that the rite by itself guarantees the child’s salvation. In the absence of biblical instruction on its meaning, this unfortunate misconception is possible. But it should be remembered that such a misunderstanding is equally possible in the case of an adult, believer’s baptism. See the warning in “Baptism” at Rom. 6:3.


Whitlock, L. G., Sproul, R. C., Waltke, B. K., & Silva, M. (1995). The Reformation study Bible: bringing the light of the Reformation to Scripture: New King James Version. Nashville: T. Nelson.