Some Lines of Thought on Infant Baptism (Paedobaptism)

1. From a paedobaptist perspective, the Great Commission is to be rightly understood against a covenantal background (as is all of Scripture). The disciples were to go baptize adults who came to faith in Christ. Paedobaptists do the same. We're not against baptizing adults. We simply believe that in addition to baptizing adults who come to faith in adulthood, that the children of believing adults are to be baptized. This is analogous to the foreigner in the OT who wanted to identify himself with the people of Israel. He had to have the sign of the covenant (in the OT, circumcision) applied to him. Adults were circumcised in the OT. Adults are baptized in the NT. The burden of the credo-baptists is to prove that only adults were baptized in the NT. The adult baptism passages in the NT are easily supported by the paedo-baptist position. It's a logical fallacy to leap from "adults were baptized in the NT" to "only adults were baptized in the NT."

2. There is an organic unity between the Old and New Covenant. If you exegete both Jer. 31 and Heb. 8, you will see that the New Covenant is not like the Old Covenant in this regard:

• The mediator of the New Covenant brings about what the mediator of the Old Covenant could not bring about.

• The New Covenant is made effective by God and cannot be broken whereas the Old Covenant was broken.

    In this exegesis, there are actually some lines of organic unity between the Old Covenant and New Covenant:

• First, the same law is written in both covenants—on tablets of stone in the Old and on the heart in the New. Same law, not different.

• The Immanuel Principle is found in both (external in the Old via Temple/Tabernacle and internal in the New via the Holy Spirit within us)

    Thus, it is right to say that there are some aspects in which the New and the Old are the same and there are some aspects in which they are not the same (namely effectiveness—an effective mediator, an effective sacrifice, an effective covenant).  A final note, the fault of the Old Covenant is placed upon the Israelites, not the Covenant itself (Heb 8:8). The Old Covenant is made obsolete in its effect, yet the New Covenant takes aspects from the Old Covenant and applies them in a similar manner with true effectiveness. The Old is obsolete in effect (and this fits with the larger context of Hebrews where Jewish-Christians were in danger of returning to the Mosaic Covenant) and by the fact that the New is now in effect. However, some of the content of the Old Covenant is actually carried over into the New Covenant. This is the organic unity between the Old and the New and this is how we are able to tie the two together when it comes to the signs

3. The covenant sign of the Old Covenant was applied to members of the covenant nation (not children in pagan nations) EVEN if they ultimately were not regenerated. It still was applied to them even though it pointed to something in which they would not participate in a spiritual level. We practice the same in baptism. Baptism does not regenerate but it is the sign of the New Covenant applied to children born to believing parents (not unbelieving parents—but even if 1 parent is a believer cf. 1 Cor. 7) even if they are not ultimately washed in their hearts.

4. The household baptisms of the NT show a "covenant headship/responsibility" still in effect (Acts 16:15, 16:30-33; 1 Cor. 1:16). We see a person believe and then suddenly THEIR household is baptized. Now, we can assume that everybody in the household believed (who was capable of believing) and was saved because this 1 person was saved (it's what the credo-baptists assume). A major problem with this line of thinking occurs to me. Namely, the salvation of the "head of the house" and the baptism of the rest of the household occur so quickly that can we reasonably expect that it only took 1 act of witnessing by the head of the household for EVERYBODY in the household to believe? (Notice that it is the same in 2 of the instances--"head of household" salvation and immediate baptism of family/house; Acts 16:33 even says it was "the same hour" giving very short time for all of the other family members to believe). We read the Bible today with "individualistic" eyes rather than "covenantal" eyes which was the culture of the OT and NT times. Remember, these first believers are Jewish. You think they are suddenly going to start acting "individualistically" rather than "covenantally"? 

4.) This line of reasoning makes Hebrew 6:4-6 easier to understand. The one who has been enlightened and tasted is a "covenant member" who has been baptized and raised in the church and received the blessings attendant with church attendance, yet rejects the faith and walks away. A covenant understanding of Hebrews 6:4-6 makes this difficult passage easier to understand. It also makes 1 Cor. 7 easier to understand. How can i believing parent "sanctify" a child? Again, covenant themes are at work here, not individualistic themes.

5. If the NT sign of baptism was going to radically change the OT sign of circumcision so that only believers partake of the NT sign, we would expect there to be clear and explicit teaching on this in the NT. This would be such a radical departure from what the Jewish Christians were used to that surely they would have questions about it and it would need to be addressed somewhere in the NT. Yet we do not see this.  Now before "argument from silence" gets thrown at me, you are assuming the silence of the NT, yet we have to deal with the OT evidence as well. The "silence" of the NT on such a radical change presupposed continuity with the way covenants worked in the OT. This is only an argument from silence if BOTH the OT and NT were silent on the way covenant signs worked. 

When we start reading and understanding Scripture with covenant as our background, it becomes easy to accept infant baptism.