To a Thousand Generations: Infant Baptism - Covenant Mercy to the Children of God

by Douglas Wilson

Some still may be looking for an express warrant, or unambiguous example of an infant baptism in the New Testament. But this is a false criterion, which no one can consistently apply. For example, should women receive the Lord’s Supper? After all, there is no command to give them the supper, and there is no example of them receiving the supper. The answer must be to appeal to a passage which has nothing to do with the Lord’s Supper, but which has everything to do with the status of women in Christ’s church.

Peter makes a plain statement that it is not the physical water which has the saving effect (“not the removal of the filth of the flesh”). Salvation is accomplished by the resurrection of Jesus and our union with Him.

Wilson, like many, takes this verse to mean something along the lines of "Baptism now saves you, not the water part that removes dirt, but what the rite represents, which is a clean conscience before God." However, "dirt" is not the best translation of "rhupos" which means "moral or ceremonial impurity" (James 1:21; only other NT place it appears, but MANY times in the LXX). Thus this verse is a close corollary of the argument of Hebrews 9-10 (which discusses baptisms as well; Heb 9:10; 10:22). The washing (baptismos) doesn't save by washing away the flesh's "ceremonial uncleanness" (rhupos), functioning as it did in the Old Covenant, but by washing the conscience (Heb 9:9, 13-14).

Our debates center around a question like this: “Do you mean to say that you think the Gentiles in the first century baptized their infants? Where do you get that?” In the first century the question was more like this: “Do you mean to say that the Gentiles don’t have to circumcise their infants?” It was a foregone conclusion in the first century that something must be done with the infants—after all, if at least one parent was a believer, the children were holy (1 Cor. 7:14).

Those familiar with the story of the Red Sea crossing will remember that the whole point of this remarkable deliverance was that the Israelites did not get wet at all. It was the Egyptians who were immersed. Nevertheless, although the Israelites remained dry, they were still baptized into Moses.

Wilson is discussing 1 Cor 10:2. The one problem here is that the Scriptures say the Israelites did in fact get wet (Ps 77:17), though it was a baptism by sprinkling/pouring (literal rain, but "the clouds poured" poetically) rather than the very immersive baptism that met the Egyptians. The (Glory?) cloud rained on them as they crossed.

Dr. Carson’s claim that “it always signifies to dip” is not true in classical Greek (Aristotle, Hist. Anim. v, 15). It is not true in Judaic Greek (LXX: Dan. 4:33). It is not true in New Testament Greek (Matt. 26:23; Heb. 9:10). In short, the claim of exclusivity for immersion is demonstrably not true.

God did not plant a new tree; He has been cultivating the same tree since the time of Abraham.

Little children and infants are included by Christ in the kingdom of God (Luke 18:16). Children constitute one of the recognized subgroups of the church, to be taught along with the rest of the saints in the church (Eph. 1:1; 6:1; Col. 1:2; 3:20). Little Gentile children are taught that the covenant promise made at Sinai applied to them, just as it had to Israelite children from infancy on (Eph. 6:1–3). We are taught that one of the features of the New Covenant was to be the restoration of the covenantal father/child relationship, not the dissolution of the covenantal father/child relationship (Luke 1:17). Ephesian children were commanded to obey their parents in the Lord (Eph. 6:1).

Thus, all the children of believers are part of the Church by birth and have a right to the rite of initiation into said Church.

We also know that, in the New Testament, circumcision continued to be a sign of a true evangelical relationship to God (Rom. 2:29). Christian Jews continued to apply that sign to their infants (Acts 21:21). Such circumcision meant that such children were members of their parents’ synagogue, and we know believing Jews assembled in Christian synagogues (Jas. 2:2). These were also considered Christian churches (Jas. 5:14). Therefore we know that certain first-century churches had infant members.

Wilson succinctly summarizes a whole chapter here, and it is a little pondered/discussed, but very convincing, argument when taken seriously.