#paedobaptism

I'll give my answer here: I'm not in support of it given that I believe that baptism needs to be a conscious decision. That said, I'm not opposed to infant/child dedications.

Recently in a conversation about when to baptise (paedobaptism or credobelievers’ baptism), one of the questions that came from a paedobaptist was: “What would you do about an adult with a learning disability?” The presumption seemed to be that this would be a barrier to baptism.  It seems to align with a perception that credo-bapfists practice adult baptism, or at least identify some kind of…

Why does Onesimus cause a problem for paedobaptists? Well a lot has been made in their argument of the descriptions of converts being baptised with their whole households.   The argument is that it would run contrary to the culture for people to be only baptized if they repented themselves. Rather, we would expect them to take the faith of the head of the household. However, when Paul writes to…

A common argument for infant baptism is  that in Acts, whole households are baptised and that must have included children.   This has also been developed by some into the argument that the culture of the Bible was more corporate with a greater emphasis on fathers acting as heads of families so that it would be fitting to include children of believers automatically in the New Covenant.  If…

This article attempts to argue that infant baptism is mentioned in the Bible by reference to the way Paul describes those who passed through the Red Sea as baptised into Moses (1 Corinthians 10:1-2).  It relies on some pretty woeful interpretation of Scripture. First, what Paul does is he takes the events of the Exodus and treats them metaphorically to build up analogical links between God’s…

Yesterday I responded to one specific argument for reconsidering infant baptism.  Today, I want to deal with another from this article.  Like Steve Kneale,  I don’t presume that Joe Barnard is seeking to pick fights and like Steve I am not looking for one. However, I was deeply concerned by the emotional appeal to “what about children who die young without professing” that I would plead with Joe…

The other week I wrote about the differences between paedobaptism and credobaptism and argued that credobaptism doesn’t exclude children from covenant relationship as part of God’s people.  One response which has come back is that we need to distinguish between an external and visible covenant versus an internal or invisible covenant. In effect, this would align with language about the visible…