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Update 42 pages 6-7.
In Update 42:
New name
Why infants?
Baptism in CW
Baptism & Fathers
Does history compel?
Is history so clear?
Baptists' integrity
Table fellowship
If God gave
Reborn again
Baptism and the Fathers
Extracted from a recent article in the Church of England Newspaper, by Michael Saward, formerly Canon of St Paul's Cathedral.
Michael’s concern is that modern evangelical Christians should be aware of how the early church understood the faith passed on to them in the holy scriptures, as the writings of the patristic period show the way in which the early church interpreted the bible. He wrote this article to amplify Colin Buchanan’s point about Tertullian (see p2 above), as an article on Colin’s book had appeared in the CEN the previous week.
The Church of England claims that the bible is its supreme authority. “The Scriptures ... both Old and New, must always have a controlling authority,’ says the 1986 House of Bishops’ report, and we need ‘to place ourselves continually under the Scriptures.’ Evangelical Anglicans especially (but not uniquely) value such a commitment.
Sadly, most evangelicals are largely ignorant of the Fathers and their teaching, and do not place much emphasis on patristic teaching. Given that a sound biblical case can be made for covenant theology, rooted in God’s promise to Abraham, marked by circumcision and developed by Paul in his letters to the Galatians and Romans, we may properly ask what happened in the early church concerning the baptism of infants?
We begin with Irenaeus, the late 2nd century bishop of Lyons in France. He probably originated in western Turkey where he knew Polycarp (who had known John and others who knew Jesus). Irenaeus says of Jesus that he came to ‘save all of those who through him are reborn into God, infants, young children, boys, the mature and older people.’ He found no difficulty in the idea of the ‘rebirth’ of infants. Earlier, Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, spoke of ‘many men and women of 60 or 70 years who have been disciples of Christ since childhood’ and Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, at his martyrdom, testified that ‘Eighty and six years have I served Christ’.
Neither Ignatius nor Polycarp explicitly speak of infant baptism, though it is hard to argue that Irenaeus did not have baptism in mind while speaking of ‘rebirth’. Their evidence is not conclusive but it is certainly supportive when one turns to Tertullian, Origen and Hippolytus. As Buchanan reminds us, Tertullian recognised that infant baptism was normal for the children of Christian parents but went on to argue that the infant offspring of pagans who had just come to faith should be postponed.
Origen, one of the greatest early theologians and the son of a Chris tian leader who taught in Alexandria, says quite categorically that ‘the church received from the apostles the tradition of baptising infants’, and he repeats this in his writings.
Hippolytus, the most important theologian in early 3rd century Rome, gives clear instruction about the manner in which baptism was to be administered. ‘First,’ he says, ‘baptise the little ones ... for those who cannot speak, their parents should speak, or another who belongs to the family.”
Cyprian, bishop of Carthage around AD 260, countering a sceptical opponent, said ‘no-one in our Council agreed with you.’
By the time of Augustine (around AD 400) after a short period of reaction against infant baptism, following Constantine’s ‘Christianising’ of the Empire, both Ambrose, bishop of Milan, and Augustine, grounded their convictions on the eternal covenant with Abraham and the symbol of circumcision which marked it. Augustine, like Origen, speaks of a ‘firm tradition of the universal church’ which had been ‘handed down by apostolic authority’ that infants ‘who yet are certainly unable with the heart to believe’ should be baptised, following the practice of circumcision. He adds that in the case of Isaac ‘the seal of this righteousness of faith was given first, and afterwards, as he imitated the faith of his father, the righteousness itself followed as he grew up, of which the seal had been given before, when he was an infant; so in infants who are baptised the sacrament of regeneration is given first.’
Here then is compelling evidence. It comes from Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Palestine, Carthage, Smyrna, Milan and France. In every case it is the teaching of the key figures. It is the virtually universal practice and it follows on naturally from the covenant theology which lies at the heart of the Old Testament and was so interpreted by Paul. Hebrews speaks of the national covenant with Moses as ‘obsolete’, but nowhere is the eternal covenant with Abraham overturned.
The covenant-based theology for infant baptism is not an argument for indiscriminate practice, but it is undoubtedly the basis for the baptism of the infant children of Christian families. To deny the sacrament to such children is to deprive them of the birthright to which they are entitled. The fact that the sacrament has often been abused in past centuries is no justification for its abandonment in the name of so-called spirituality. Scripture, tradition and reason are united in support of principled infant baptism.
See also our review of Michael’s book “What is this thing called baptism” in the last issue.
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