The Pros And Cons Of Phaebaptism

There is no simple starting point when answering the question of whether one should or should not practice infant baptism. One can not simply turn to the new testament and find a black and white answer. There are no scriptures that directly command or forbid the baptizing of infants. How then, without direct scriptural references, does one form an opinion on a doctrine that is so widely practiced in the Christian church? Several factors, such as views on scripture, the church, the sacraments, salvation, God’s nature, and perhaps most strongly the church and family one is raise in, determine an individual’s position concerning paedobaptism. With such a long list of influences on one’s beliefs towards the practice, the question must be broken

The two are so closely related, it is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish a difference between conversion and baptism in scripture. Wouldn’t it have made a larger impact for the Ethiopian eunuch to be baptized at court than in the middle of the desert (Acts 8:38)? Apparently Philip’s message conveys a need for baptism that compels the eunuch to stop everything and receive baptism at the first sight of water. Of all people, Paul is the ideal candidate for public baptism. What a testimony to see the persecutor Saul declare his faith in the waters of baptism. Yet, Ananias urges Paul once he receives his sight, “And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized and wash away your, sins” (Acts 22:16). Waiting seems to be problematic to Ananias. This is true of Peter as well. When Peter sees that the Holy Spirit has fallen on Cornelius and his household he commands that they be baptized right away (Acts 10:48). The jailer and his household (Acts 16:33) , Lydia and her household (Acts 16:15), the Samaritans (Acts 8:12), the Ephesians (Acts 19:5), and the 3000 converts of Pentecost (Acts 2:41) were all baptized immediately following belief in Christ. An urgency to baptize new believers does not negate the fact that baptism is a profession of faith, it simply suggests that there may be more to it than

Though, to divorce baptism from salvation all together is a leap too far in the opposite direction. Answering the question of how water in baptism can save, Martin Luther writes: “Water does not; but it is the Word of God with and through the water, and our faith which trust in the Word of God in the water. For without the Word of God that water is nothing but water, and there is no Baptism. But when it is linked with the Word of God, it is a Baptism, that is, a gracious water of life and a bath of new birth in the Holy Spirit”

Here Luther is claiming that the physical act of baptism is not a “magical” one that works on its own. True baptism requires true faith that God will work through the water. Water without faith is water. With faith, however, baptism is where one is washed clean of sin and born anew in the Holy Spirit. Baptism is about becoming a new person, and one cannot do so without the old person dying. In baptism, one identify’s with Christ’s death and resurrection (Rom 6:4) and in doing so puts on Christ (Gal 3:27). Being clothed in Christ, one is brought into His body through the Spirit (1 Cor 12:13). This explains an urgency for one to be baptized and why, in the early church, an unbaptized Christian is an oxymoron. Baptism is the physical and tangible part of becoming a Christian. It is not a work of man, but a work of