In continuing to dig on this issue of who should be baptized I have encountered a number of argument categories. These range from:
- Biblical—the key arguments, which involve what Scripture itself says (sometimes in clear texts, though we can still debate the proper interpretation; sometimes there are patterns, etc.), to
- historical arguments, based on things such as the cultural or social context of the events described in Scripture and the practice of the early church, and (for now) finally,
- weakest of all, arguments based on the effects or outcome of either position.
I just came across a post by Gavin Ortlund during the recent YouTube / X controversy about the Flood of Noah’s day and whether it was global. My own view on that issue aside, what struck me today was the reason he gave for continuing to advocate for the local flood view:
“I know lots of folks who lose their faith on an issue like Noah’s flood, so I’m going to continue to advocate for my convictions on this topic.”
I admire Dr. Ortlund’s willingness to engage on a highly controversial issue among Christians. On this particular issue, I don’t agree with him. I do appreciate what I have observed of his approach to other such controversies elsewhere (having just recently finished his series of discussions with Dr. Jordan B. Cooper about baptism, e.g. on baptismal regeneration).
But the specific reason given above made me think of another connection between the Flood and baptism (besides the Biblical connection). I wonder if this reason isn’t similar to what I hear about the baptism of Christian believers’ infants.
You see, infant baptism perpetuates the same thing it did in Israel. You had a whole bunch of circumcised kids who didn’t know God. Now we have a whole bunch of baptized babies who don’t know God either, if we’re going to carry that over, we get the same result. The true church, however, unlike Israel – Israel was a nation of people – earthly people. The true church is a nation of believers. Whether somebody was baptized as a baby, whether they were confirmed at the age of 12 or not, if they don’t know – if they don’t know God personally through faith in Jesus Christ, they do not belong to the redeemed church.
But there’s this huge confusion about what is the church. Infant baptism just totally throws this into chaos, because the world is full of these baby baptized adults who range everywhere from the hypocritically religious, through the indifferent, to the blasphemous. They’re not in the church. They can’t be included in the church. And if infant baptism saved them, then salvation doesn’t change anybody.
John MacArthur, “A Scriptural Critique of Infant Baptism”
Now to be fair, I don’t think that anyone argues against baptizing Christians’ infants on the basis of this alone. (Dr. MacArthur certainly does not.) But I see this as the weakest argument maybe because it’s not based clearly on Scripture: instead it points to the tragic effects—and they are tragic, and lamentable—of people bringing in babies to be baptized in churches where even if the Gospel is preached and believed, the baby is not brought up in the faith. Baptism is the beginning of Christian discipleship, not a Heaven ticket one grabs on the way to a life of sin. Disciples must be baptized and taught. Scripture does make this clear. A child who is baptized and then left to the world will be spiritually no better off than a child who prays a Sinner’s Prayer and then is likewise denied the “teaching” that Jesus commands.
And I could take this the other direction. I could point out that credobaptistic views sometimes leave Christians’ children confused and weary, wrestling with doubts and fears about their salvation, spending formative years stumbling and without assurance that they belong to the Christ who alone is able to keep them from falling. I could talk about the curious little ones who are brought to meetings of the church and yet taught that they don’t have a place there, or told to obey their parents as though “in the Lord” because God commands this, when they understand that they are not Christians and are without God in the world. But how much of this itself is a Biblical argument for the baptism of believers’ infants? (And some of the godliest parents I personally know hold strongly to credobaptism.)
May God help us all.
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