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What age for a baptism of testimony?

Kevin Roy, Lecturer at the Baptist Theological College, Cape Town.

Roger Godin (Update 42, p8) comments, “More and more in secular society I find both parents and Christian young people who are sorry about having been baptised before they believed.” He then recommends for such a “thanksgiving service releasing the child for the wonderful moment of being baptised as a believer.”

These sentiments are very understandable and the church that allows the freedom for such advice to be followed gives evidence of real maturity. However the course of action is not as simple as it sounds. The difficulty revolves around the issue of when does a child brought up within a community of faith become a believer and therefore eligible for baptism?

Coming to faith from outside and inside the community of faith are two quite different processes. Those outside hold to false views from which the gospel calls them to repent and believe the truth. Baptism expresses this repentance and change of mind most appropriately as a death to the old and the beginning of a new life in Christ.

But those brought up on the inside have a different experience. They are taught the faith from their earliest memory. They were never part of the non-Christian world. They do not have to change from one world view to another. Their struggle is to personalise, appropriate, understand and affirm the faith they were raised in. And this is often quite a complex process with many ups and downs, stops and starts. When should such a person be baptised? In early childhood when they make their first faltering prayers in childlike faith? At about 10 or 11 when they have got a better grasp of the gospel plan? In later teens when they have managed to negotiate the storms and trials of puberty? Whatever the case, their baptism will be a baptism of testimony, declaring the faith they have, rather than a baptism of conversion, representing a turning from darkness to light.

Now, if it is difficult to establish infant baptism from direct Scripture testimony, it is even more difficult to establish delayed baptism from Scripture. All recorded baptisms in the NT were administered immediately to those who believed the gospel, representing their turning from darkness to light and their initiation into the church, the community of faith. A baptism of testimony, however meaningful it may be, is necessarily a delayed baptism and therefore something other than NT baptism. If baptism is initiation into the community of faith, then surely the appropriate time for the children of believers is at birth, from which time they are surrounded and nurtured by the prayers, counsel and instruction of the faithful. As we know from sad experience, such children can rebel and abandon the faith of their youth, in which case they opt out of the community of faith and become outsiders, needing repentance and conversion.

I still believe that Roger Godin’s advice is wise for “those Christian parents out there who are hesitating”. It is only by experience that believers discover that deferring the baptism of infants, while apparently solving some problems, creates another set of problems of conscience. But it is important that Christian parents should have the option of such a course of action so that they do not feel forced out of their denomination. In time, as Christians share their different experiences and difficulties in these matters, the pros and cons of different practices will be better appreciated.

On a slightly different note, I would like to commend the attitude and action described in the article “I’ve been reborn again” (issue 42), in which I rejoice. It can only promote that “unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” which is God’s will. It is hard for Baptists to consider sympathetically the case for infant baptism and it is hard for Paedobaptists to consider the case for “rebaptism” in certain exceptional circumstances. But it is the hard work of “making every effort” to which Paul calls us.