Hi, I'm David Bercot, and the title to this message is Bercot vs. Bercot. In 1994, when I was studying to become an Anglican priest, I made a 90-minute tape in which I defended infant baptism. This was a copyrighted message intended for very limited distribution. We never put this tape in the Scroll Publishing catalog, mainly because I wasn't 100% convinced that what I was saying was the final word on the matter.
I shared this tape with people in our local congregation, and with about two dozen other people who were also looking into Anglicanism. I don't have a copy of this tape today. The reason is that in the course of preparing the dictionary of early Christian beliefs in 1996, I came to the conviction that what I said on the tape was erroneous. So I got rid of the tape, and I explained to our congregation that I wasn't comfortable in practicing infant baptism any longer.
However, a few persons still have a copy of that tape, and the matter has been brought up to me. So I decided that it was time I addressed the arguments that I made in that tape. Now, more than likely, you've never even heard of that tape, and hopefully you'll never come across it. However, the arguments I used in the tape are the standard arguments that advocates of infant baptism make. So this present message will be valuable to anyone who is interested in refuting the practice of infant baptism.
At the beginning of the tape, I stated that I grew up embracing believers ' baptism, and as a result, I was unable to examine the evidence for infant baptism with a blank slate. However, that's not completely accurate. When I read the early Christian writings for the first time, I discovered numerous teachings and practices that went against what I had grown up believing, or what I believed as an evangelical Christian.
But my prior beliefs did not stop me from carefully examining from the Scriptures the things the early Christians believed and practiced. I had no problem changing my position on many, many doctrines and practices. The reason was that I could see that what the early Christians taught in these areas was firmly based on the teachings of the New Testament. But infant baptism was different. To be sure, I was surprised to see that it was practiced by some of the 3rd century Christians.
But a lot of other things had surprised me that turned out to follow the most literal interpretation of the New Testament. So my mind wasn't closed to it. The big question was, was infant baptism a practice that crept into the Church in the 3rd century, or was it something that had been there from the beginning? When I first read the Ante-Nicene Fathers, I leaned toward the interpretation that infant baptism was an innovation that came into the Church in the 3rd century.
The reason is that it is nowhere specifically taught in the New Testament, nor is there any example in the New Testament of an infant being baptized? Also, I could observe the fruits of the practice of infant baptism. I looked at the members of churches that practice infant baptism today, the Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian, et cetera, et cetera. I had a hard time believing that the bulk of those members were born-again believers.
Furthermore, I could see a marked contrast between the members of those churches that practiced infant baptism and the members of churches that practiced believers ' baptism, such as the Anabaptists, the Church of Christ, the Baptist, the Holiness Churches, etc. If there was any bias on my part, it was based mainly on what I could see with my own two eyes. If infant baptism was truly an apostolic practice, then I should have been seeing some verifying fruits, and I wasn't seeing such fruits.
Nevertheless, I tried to keep an open mind about the matter. Now, it was obvious to me that infant baptism wasn't mandated by the Christians in the 3rd century. Some of them were practicing it, but it was never required of everyone. So I could still hold fast to believers ' baptism as the better practice without necessarily condemning others with a different view. I was still sorting through it all. That's where I was in the early 1990s.
So actually, I was later coming from a much more biased view when I made that tape in 1994. As I've mentioned, I was studying for ordination in the continuing Anglican Church at the time. I had specifically asked the bishops whether our congregation would have to practice infant baptism. And the answer I was given was yes, if we were going to follow the teachings of the Anglican Church. So I needed to either find a different church or else convince myself and others that infant baptism was an apostolic practice.
So I wasn't coming from a blank slate at that point. I was having to make a case for infant baptism. But I didn't just sell myself out. I did go back to examine the evidence to see if I could make an arguable case for infant baptism. Now, the problem was that my only unbiased resources at that time were my notes from when I had first read the Ante-Nicene Fathers back in about the year 1995. But those notes were not organized by topic.
It wasn't easy to find all the pertinent quotes on this subject of infant baptism just from leafing through my notes. More importantly, since when I started reading the Ante-Nicene Fathers, I had assumed that believers ' baptism was the norm, I didn't write down any quotations in my notes that supported believers ' baptism, because I didn't think there was any controversy about it. Infant baptism wasn't even on my radar.
On the other hand, when I did come across quotations from the 3rd century that supported or seemed to support infant baptism, well, I did make note of them, because that was something unexpected to me. You have to remember that back in 1994, I had not yet compiled my dictionary of early Christian beliefs. The internet was around, but at that time, there weren't all the websites about early Christianity that there are today.
There were no digitized versions of the Ante-Nicene Fathers readily available, or if there were, I didn't know about them. So the only resources I had to re-examine infant baptism in the light of the early Christian writings, other than my memory and my loose notes, were the books and other materials written by Catholics, Orthodox, and Anglicans. And of course, they were not unbiased.
They strongly endorsed infant baptism, and understandably, they presented various quotations from the early Christians that supported infant baptism. They didn't put forth ones that would argue contrary to that. So I was faced with all of their quotes without having any corresponding sources to contradict them. Plus, for the various quotations from Origen, I couldn't read them in their own context because I didn't have those works of Origen. They weren't included in the Ante-Nicene Fathers.
Now, today I own copies of all of them, but I didn't back in 1994. Plus, at that time, I didn't have all the inscriptions from sepulchers that strongly support believer's baptism. Those are in separate books that I didn't own at the time. And in 1994, I knew little about the practice of emergency infant baptisms, and I didn't at all grasp the practice of baptizing young children, children past the age of infancy, but not yet juveniles. So all I had available were those Catholic Orthodox and Anglican sources.
And so I came to the erroneous conclusion that infant baptism was the general practice of the primitive church. As I've demonstrated in my three-part message on believers ' baptism, infant baptism was around in the mid-third century. But there is no evidence that it was the general practice of the Church at that time. Now, when I made that tape, I believed what I said in it, but I was sadly mistaken, because I was heavily influenced by the select quotations provided by the supporters of infant baptism.
Okay, with that introduction, let me get into some of the specific arguments that I used in that 1994 tape. The reason I've entitled this message " Bercot vs. Bercot " is because I'm afraid I'm going to have to refute most of the arguments I made back in that 1994 tape. In short, this is a more mature and better informed David Bercot refuting a younger, less informed David Bercot.
Although I presented many arguments in my 1994 message, most of my tape was devoted to arguing that in the Old Testament, God dealt with families as a unit. In both the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants, infants were brought into the covenant on the eighth day through circumcision. I argued that it works the same in the New Covenant. Now, that's not an absurd argument. However, there are some significant differences between the Old and New Covenants.
Throughout the Old Testament, God's people were defined according to an earthly ethnicity. God called the fleshly nation of Israel " my people. " Although other people groups were allowed to join Israel, for the most part, you became part of God's people through birth. That is, if you had the right parents. And generally speaking, your parental ancestry determined whether or not you were part of God's people. If you were born an Israelite, you were automatically part of God's people whether or not you wanted to be.
You were under the authority and requirements of the Old Law Covenant, again, whether or not you chose to be. However, the New Testament is totally different. It has no relationship to ethnicity. You aren't automatically under the New Covenant just because of who your parents are. In fact, Jesus told the Jews, " I say to you, " The kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it. " Now, the nation of which Jesus speaks is not a new ethnic group.
There is no physical nation on earth, and never has been, that bears the fruits of the kingdom of God. So the nation of which Jesus is speaking is what Paul calls the Israel of God. These are the people of faith who willingly choose to follow Christ and become a branch on His vine. Now, nobody can make this choice for you. Godly parents can certainly influence this choice, but you have to make it yourself. Coupled, of course, with God's prevenient grace.
History has shown that baptizing you as an infant has far less influence on your decision to follow Christ than does godly parenting and a godly church. Instead of being a repeat of the ancient nation of fleshly Israel, the kingdom of God has no earthly boundaries. It is not limited to any particular people group. Your inclusion in this kingdom of God is dependent upon your producing the fruits of it, just as Jesus said.
Rather than His kingdom being an ethnic group or something you become part of because of your parents, Jesus foretold that His gospel message would actually divide families. He said in Matthew 10:34-37, " Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword, for I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man's enemies will be those of his own household.
He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. And he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. So the new covenant works quite differently than the old covenant. You're not in it just because your mother or your father were in it. And God had foretold this from the beginning. Way back centuries before Christ came on earth.
He had prophesied through Jeremiah, saying this is in Jeremiah 31, " Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in that day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. My covenant, which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. So he's saying, " The new covenant was going to be different than the old.
" He continues, " But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, " says the Lord. " I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts, and I will be their father, and they shall be my people. " No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother saying, " Know the Lord, for they all shall know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, " says the Lord. " For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.
" So this is how the New Covenant would work. Jesus announced the New Covenant at the Last Supper, and this covenant came into force with His death on the cross. The New Testament clearly demonstrates that this New Covenant was not instituted with the fleshly houses of Israel and Judah. Rather, it was instituted with the spiritual Israel of God made up of believers of all nations. Now think for a moment the things God says in that prophecy in Jeremiah. Could those things apply to infants?
God says He will write His law in the hearts of the people of the New Covenant. Is God's law written in the hearts of any infants? Has He put His law in their minds? I mean, you can look at infants who've been baptized as infants. You can see them grow up. Do they automatically have God's law in their hearts and in their minds? I think all of us would have to say no. You see, by its very terms, the new covenant is radically different from the old.
Parents can't bring their children into the new covenant by baptizing them as infants. For persons have to be old enough to understand God's law if God is going to put His law in their minds and in their hearts. Infants and small children are not left out of salvation, for Jesus said that to such are the kingdom of heaven. As the early Christians taught, children stand innocent before God. So they don't need to be baptized in order to receive salvation, nor do they first have to enter into the New Covenant.
In my 1994 tape, I had argued that baptism corresponds to circumcision under the Old Covenant. So if infant circumcision was appropriate under the old, then infant baptism is appropriate under the new. I mean, that's what I argued.
I quoted from Colossians 2:11 and 12, where Paul says, " In Him, also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised Him from the dead. " So here Paul indicates that there is a link between the circumcision of Christ and baptism.
But in this passage, Paul says nothing about any link between baptism and the circumcision of the Old Covenant. Some of the early Christians like John Chrysostom felt that the circumcision of the heart takes place in baptism. He said, " Paul says that the circumcision is no longer performed with a knife, but in Christ Himself. " He was commenting on the passage in Colossians there. He continues, " For no human hand circumcises, but the Spirit does. " The Spirit circumcises the whole man, not simply a part.
When and where? In baptism. And what Paul calls circumcision, he again calls burial. But it is not burial only. For notice what he says, " Wherein you were also raised with Him through faith in the working of God who raised Him from the dead. " So Chrysostom says that the circumcision of the heart takes place at the time of baptism. But he does not say that baptism is the circumcision of the heart, nor does Paul. In fact, Paul also talked about the circumcision of the heart in Romans 2:28 and 29.
But there he did not make any connection between it and baptism. He said, " For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. " But he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter. So, not surprisingly, many early Christians did not speak of baptism being the circumcision of the heart.
For example, Theodore of Mopsuestia, commenting on that passage in Colossians, says, " Circumcision here refers to the life of immortality embraced through baptism, just as uncircumcision is the old life of mortality. " So again, there is a link with baptism, but it's not one and the same as circumcision of the heart. Lactantius writes, " The circumcision of the flesh is plainly irrational. " It was a figure of this second circumcision, signifying that the breast is to be laid bare.
That is, that we ought to live with an open and simple heart. This is the circumcision of the heart of which the prophets speak. So again, Paul does not say that baptism is the equivalent of Jewish circumcision or that it replaces it. If baptism replaced circumcision, then why did the Jewish Christians continue to practice circumcision after they were baptized? There would have been no need for it, would there if one replaced the other?
Furthermore, nowhere does the New Testament teach that a person can be brought into the New Covenant unknowingly as an infant, apart from his own will, just by baptizing him. Another way in which the New Covenant differs from the Old is that it lists two requirements that are needed to enter into it. Jesus said, " He who believes and is baptized shall be saved. " So Jesus requires that a person believes, not that He is simply baptized.
In contrast, neither the Abrahamic covenant nor the Mosaic covenant required someone to believe and be circumcised. They only had to be circumcised, and that was something their parents did. All right, next I quoted from Romans 4:11, which reads, " And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while still uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all those who believe, though they are uncircumcised, that righteousness might be imputed to them also.
" After reading that, I then said, " So circumcision is referred to as the sign of righteousness or the seal of righteousness of the faith. " But now whose faith was infant circumcision a sign of? The faith of that infant? No, it was the faith of the Father. And yet it was a seal of that faith. " Well, I'm sorry, David, but that's a terrible argument. Why? Because Paul says that Abraham's circumcision was a seal of the righteousness of the faith that Abraham had while still uncircumcised.
And then Paul goes on to say that he might be the father of all those who believe. So Paul's whole point is that we become heirs of Abraham through our belief, through our personal faith. It is not by the faith of our parents. It is our faith. It is not by circumcision. And it's not by infant baptism given to us before we even have any personal faith. In my 1994 tape, I went on to talk about all the people in the Old Testament who were saved because of the actions of their parents.
But in each case, the salvation obtained was temporal salvation. That is, salvation pertaining to this present life. Here are some of the examples I used in my tape. I mentioned the Passover lamb. When the father sprinkled the blood on the doorpost, it saved his firstborn child from death. But this pertained only to this present life it didn't ensure eternal life to that child. That depended upon the child's own faith and his own obedience once he reached a mature age. Another example I used was Noah and the Ark.
Because of Noah's faith, his whole family was saved from the flood. But again, this was not eternal salvation that they received because of His faith. Now, it's generally supposed that Shem walked faithfully with God, but we don't know anything about Japheth and Ham, and we don't know anything about their spouses. So whether or not they will inherit eternal life, we have no idea. They didn't receive eternal life because of the faith of Noah. I also pointed to the curse on Canaan and his descendants.
But were the Canaanites really punished because of something their distant forefather did? Ezekiel 18, 19, and 20 would say no. For there, God says, " You say, why should the Son not bear the guilt of the Father? " Then God answers, " Because the Son has done what is lawful and right, and has kept all my statutes, and observed them. If so, he shall surely live. The soul who sins shall die. The Son shall not bear the guilt of the Father, nor the Father bear the guilt of the Son.
The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself. " So the Canaanites were punished because of their own sins, not because of the sins of their distant ancestor. The curse Noah pronounced was a prophetic curse, foreseeing the future wickedness of the Canaanite people. So in the Old Testament, the actions of the parents often affected others for good or for bad. And of course, that still happens today.
But those actions did not determine the eternal destiny of others. Some examples I pointed to were Rahab and David. But I also pointed to New Testament examples such as Jairus and the Roman centurion. But again, the benefits, the raising to life of Jairus ' daughter, and the healing of the centurion servants, those benefits were both temporal in that they affected this present life only. The faith of Jairus and of the Centurion did not pass on eternal life to anyone else. What about Zacchaeus?
Because of his repentance, Jesus announced, " Today salvation has come to this house because he also is a son of Abraham. " Now, in what sense was Zacchaeus a son of Abraham? Well, it was in the sense that he had just then shown the faith of Abraham through his actions. Now, did Jesus say that everyone inside his house would automatically also have salvation because of the faith of Zacchaeus? No, that's not what Jesus said. He only said salvation has come to this house. Zacchaeus had found the way to salvation.
And as master of the house, his faith would no doubt affect others in the house. But Jesus did not say that anyone else would be saved vicariously through the faith of Zacchaeus. No, they would have to believe themselves and to bear the fruit of the kingdom for themselves. None of us would doubt that the faith of the parents have a profound effect on their children. I mean, I'm talking about any home.
If they raise their children in the faith, usually most or all of the children will believe and walk faithfully with God. But the children are not saved vicariously through the parents ' faith. They have to walk in faith themselves. They don't come into the new covenant because of the actions of somebody else. I also pointed to the fact that all mankind has been affected by Adam and Eve's sin. We all die because of them. But Paul says we are all made alive through Christ.
But this doesn't mean that everyone will receive eternal life because of Christ, or that everyone will receive eternal death because of Adam. As God explained through Ezekiel as we've already read, each person will die because of his own sins. Even if Adam had not sinned, we would all individually have had to prove faithful just as Adam and Eve did. Their obedience would not have automatically given us eternal life. We would have had to have been obedient also.
Likewise, despite Adam's sin, we all still have free will to believe and to obey God with His enabling grace. But none of this has anything to do with the appropriateness of infant baptism. Now, in my message, I made this statement. I said, " God's normal way of dealing is for the whole family to come under the covenant together, and that infants are to be brought in the covenant by the fathers while they are still infants.
" Now that's true with regard to the mosaic covenant and the covenant of circumcision that God made with Abraham. It's true concerning earthly things, but not true concerning eternal life. But then I go on to say this. I say, " This is the pattern we have in the Scriptures. This is the testimony of the early Church. " Well, I'm sorry, David, but that is not the testimony of the early Church. I may have believed it at the time, being persuaded by the literature I was reading.
But the early Christians say nothing about being brought under the new covenant through infant baptism or through the faith of one's parents. Cyprian talks about infant baptism, and Origen talks about the baptism of small children. But they both only talk about wiping away the stain from Adam's sin. They say nothing about being brought into the New Covenant through infant baptism.
Alright, in my tape, I next move to 1 Corinthians 10:1 and 2, which says, " Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea. All were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. " Now, from that verse, I argue that Paul says that all were baptized into Moses, and that meant that the infants were also baptized into him as well.
Well, that's a clever argument, but Paul isn't even remotely discussing the appropriate age of Christian baptism in that passage. Furthermore, was somebody being baptized into Moses? Was that the same as somebody being baptized into Christ? Not necessarily. More importantly, my argument totally ignored the point that Paul was driving at. Paul says, " But with most of them, God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. " So that baptism in the Red Sea did them very little good. Why?
Because they lacked faith. Still, on the theme of equating Old Testament circumcision to New Testament baptism, I said in my tape: " The apostles were used to infant circumcision, so infant baptism would not have seemed strange to them. " Well, perhaps, but we must remember the important precedent to Christian baptism was not circumcision, but rather the baptism of John. Now, did John the Baptist baptize infants? If he did, there's certainly no mention of it in the Bible.
Not only is there no mention of it, but the description of His baptism seems to rule out infant baptism. Because we read in Mark chapter 1, it says, " John came baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. " Then all the land of Judah and those from Jerusalem went out to him, and were all baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins. Now, why would newborn infants need a baptism of repentance? Do humans have to repent of Adam's sin?
And even if we did, which we do not, could an infant repent of Adam's sin? Furthermore, Mark says that the ones being baptized were confessing their sins. So these obviously were not infants. Yet someone may say, " But it says all the land of Judah went out to him, " and that would include infants. Well, the " all " that Mark mentions is not meant to be taken literally. I mean, does anyone really think that all the priests and all the Pharisees got baptized?
We know they didn't because John rejected the Pharisees when they came to him to be baptized. Did Herod come and get baptized? Did his wife? Did the Roman officials come and get baptized? No, they did not. But they lived in Jerusalem or in Judea. So the word " all " is not meant to be taken literally here, just as it's not in so many other passages. Here it can mean all adults, or it can mean just a large percentage of the people, those who were willing to repent.
I mean, another example of the use of the word " all " is Matthew 10:22, where Jesus said, " And you will be hated by all for my name's sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved. " Well, all does that mean newborn infants? Do they hate Christians? Of course not. So obviously the word " all " is not always meant to be taken literally. I also presented the argument in my 1994 tape that whole households were baptized in the New Testament.
Now, I'm not going to go into refuting that argument now because I thoroughly answered it in my three-part series on what the early Christians believed about believers ' baptism. So I refer you to that if you would like to hear a refutation of that argument. In my tape, I next used the argument from silence.
I said, " In fact, you can scan and scour the entire New Testament, and you will not find so much as one passage where somebody who grew up in a Christian household waited until they were an adult, and then got baptized. " Oh, I have to cringe in embarrassment. I can't believe I made that argument.
I mean, it's obviously a true statement, but it would be equally true to say you can scan and scour the entire New Testament, and you will not find even so much as one passage where somebody who grew up in a Christian household was baptized as an infant. That's the problem with arguments from silence, why they are fallacious, because they work both ways. Silence is silence. It doesn't prove anything.
And as I explained in the three-part series on believers ' baptism, this is the one sliver of hope that Pedo Baptists can put forth. The fact that there is complete silence in the New Testament regarding at what age the children of believers got baptized. There is no reference whatsoever to it. But that silence proves neither believer's baptism nor infant baptism. It's silence.
And obviously, if we knew, if the New Testament did describe the age at which children of believers got baptized, we wouldn't be having this discussion, would we? The issue would be forever settled. Up to this point, I've covered what was perhaps my main argument in my 1994 infant baptism tape. And that argument was a combination of three points. Number one, I argued that in the Old Testament, God often dealt with families as units.
Number two, I argued that the New Covenant operates in a similar way as the Old Covenant, with whole families being brought into it. And finally, number three, I argued that baptism was the New Testament equivalent of Old Testament circumcision. Now, some of these arguments came from Catholics, Orthodox, and Anglicans. The arguments pertaining to the New Covenant mainly came from the Reformed materials I was reading about infant baptism.
Now in my tape, I also spent a considerable amount of time discussing the proof texts from the early Christian writings that are put forth by Pedo Baptist. I'm not going to go over those proof texts in details in this message, as I discussed all of them in detail in my series on Believer's Baptism. But I do want to mention a few things about some of those quotes, and I also want to address the whole approach that I took in that tape concerning the early writings.
I think one of the biggest mistakes in that message and the mistake that so many infant baptizers make was to start with those quotations from the early Christians, and then try to work my way back into the Scriptures. That is the wrong way to use the early Christian writings. You have to start with Scripture. The early Christian writings are our best commentary on Scripture available anywhere. But when we start using those writings as an independent source of authority apart from Scripture, we get into trouble.
I mean, as much as I appreciate the early Christians, I also recognize that they were fallible humans. The final authority has to always be Scripture. And as I demonstrated in my messages on believers ' baptism, there are no examples in the New Testament of infants being baptized. But there are numerous examples of believers being baptized.
And you don't find any references to infant baptism in the writings of the 2nd century Christians, with the possible exception of the ambiguous quote from Irenaeus, which we'll talk more about. Even in the 3rd century, the only mention of infant baptism, as distinguished from the baptism of young children, is in that one letter of Cyprian. And that letter was written at the time of the horrible plague that was killing a large percentage of the population in North Africa.
So to start with the Cyprian quote and then try to work one's way back to the New Testament is flawed logic and a faulty way to approach Scripture. Now, as I've mentioned, the only possible reference to infant baptism in the 2nd century is the short passage from Irenaeus, where he says, " He came to save all persons by means of Himself. All I say who through Him are born again to God: infants, children, boys, youth, and old men.
" Because the early Christians believe that baptism is tied to the new birth, this quote is trumpeted by infant baptizers as proof that infant baptism was being practiced as early as AD 170 or 180. And that is certainly a possibility. But even if Irenaeus is referring to baptism in this quotation, it doesn't automatically mean that most Christians were baptizing their infant children in his day. Irenaeus may have had in mind the emergency baptisms of infants who were near death.
We know that this practice was around in the early 200s, and perhaps it started earlier. Furthermore, my Orthodox friends have pointed out that some early Christians believe that there is baptism in Hades for righteous people who died unbaptized. So perhaps Irenaeus was referring to that. Maybe he thought that infants received baptism in Hades.
From other passages in this same work of Irenaeus, I would have to conclude that Irenaeus either thought that people in certain situations could be reborn without baptism, or two, he thought that such people were baptized in Hades. The problem with the Irenaeus quote is that when you read it by itself, it does sound as if Irenaeus is speaking about infant baptism.
However, when you read the pages that precede it, and the pages that follow that quote, you immediately see that his subject matter is not baptism at all. It is the incarnation. Irenaeus believed that the incarnation played a vital role in the Atonement. He believed that it wasn't just the death of Jesus that saves us, but also His incarnation. And he believed that Jesus had to pass through each stage of humanity, from infancy to adult maturity, in order to redeem persons of every age.
So Pedo Baptist pit this lone quote from Irenaeus, which is definitely ambiguous, against the many quotations from other 2nd-century Christians that make it obvious that when they thought of baptism, they thought of it in terms of believers ' baptism. For example, proponents of infant baptism never balance the Irenaeus quote against the quote from Justin Martyr, which actually precedes it by one or two decades.
In his quote, " Justin Martyr mentions being born again, and it is crystal clear that he is talking about baptism, for he says this: " At our birth, we were born without our own knowledge or choice, but by our parents coming together.
In order that we may not remain the children of necessity and of ignorance, but may become the children of choice and knowledge, and may obtain in the water the remission of sins formally committed, there is pronounced over him who chooses to be born again and has repented of his sins, the name of God the Father, the Lord of the universe, and in the name of Jesus Christ, and in the name of the Holy Spirit.
" Now, if infant baptism were the normative practice in the year 150 or 160, when Justin wrote those words, is it believable that he could make an argument like that? Because in essence, infant baptism operates similarly to our natural birth. We have no knowledge or choice in our natural birth, as Justin Martyr points out. And likewise, we have no knowledge or choice in infant baptism. Infant baptism contradicts everything Justin Martyr is arguing.
Now, it's not clear what Irenaeus is talking about, but it is crystal clear what Justin Martyr is talking about. I mean, he's talking about baptism. Moving on to the work called The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, I only want to address one point, which I didn't discuss in my messages on believers ' baptism.
In the 1994 tape, I make the following statement about this work of Hippolytus: " I think even any conservative scholar would say that these traditions would be no later than the year 150 if they were already an established practice by 200. " Now, when I said that, I absolutely believed it. But I got that notion from the Catholic and Anglican material I was reading at the time. I mean, almost everything written about this work came from those sources.
What I didn't realize back then was that I was getting very biased information. Yet, at that time, I was hardly in a position to question or challenge it. The point I'm speaking about is this claim that the things mentioned in the apostolic tradition of Hippolytus, rather than representing practices in the early 3rd century, actually represent practices that would go back to at least the year 150, because they were already established tradition in the early 200s.
Now, the scholar who opened my eyes to the truth of the matter was Dr. Kurt Aland, who I quote several times in my messages on believers ' baptism. In his work entitled " Did the Early Church Baptize Infants? " Dr. Aland challenges the position about Hippolytus that is taken by most Pedo Baptists. One such traditionalist is Dr. Jeremias, who wrote this about it. He said, " It is true that the apostolic tradition, as far as its composition goes, must be dated to circa 215. But its material is older.
For Hippolytus had no intention of introducing new rules for Church action, but as the title of his work indicates, of setting down the older apostolic tradition. Well, Dr. Aland replies, " That is not so. " He continues, " For it is precisely not the characteristic of a church order. " Now, a church order is a work like the apostolic tradition of Hippolytus or the Didache works like that. They're called Church Orders.
So I'll start that sentence over, " For it is precisely not the characteristic of a church order that it has no intention of introducing new rules for church action, but of setting down the older apostolic tradition. " He's quoting there from Dr. Jeremias. He continues, " The situation is just the reverse of this.
A church order has the intention of finally establishing the Church situation of its time, or the perceptions and demands of its author, by means of an appeal, which is always made back to the apostolic age, and thus of securing for itself an anchorage for all the time until a new church order comes along, and sets the old one aside, and tries to establish something which befits the new time. " This is the explanation of the perpetual appearance of new Church orders.
Even when and where they do conserve and hand on the old texts, they enlarge them through fresh modifications. With respect to their intentions, the Church orders look not backwards, but forwards. The same thing happens ever and again. Naturally, whatever belongs to the Old Order, and is useful for the new, is permitted to remain. But the really important thing to the composer of a Church order is always the " new. " Otherwise, he would not have needed to write it.
" Now, I had never thought about that before reading Dr. Aland, but I guess I had always subconsciously known it without really giving it any deep thought. I mean, you have the earliest one we have, the earliest church order, is the Didache, which was written right at the end of the Apostolic Age. And it's, you know, very, very short. The prayers given in it, the explanations, et cetera. And then next you have the apostolic tradition of Hippolytus.
Well, when you compare the two, you can see that a lot has changed in the hundred or more years that it had elapsed between the Didache and the apostolic tradition. Hippolytus is wanting to argue that these are earlier traditions, but when we compare it with the Didache, we can be fairly certain that, no, they don't go back to the Age of the Apostles. And then when you look at the next one, which is called the Didascalia, you can see that it is much larger than the apostolic tradition of Hippolytus.
It has even more things added. But yes, it incorporates some of the old as well. And then the apostolic constitutions, which are in the Ante-Nicene fathers, and they weren't compiled until about the year 390, you see how it's really blown up into a much larger thing. And yes, it incorporates the Didache and other earlier material, but then it adds a bunch of new material that was of very recent origin.
For example, it talks about the role that rulers should take in the Church, Christian rulers, that is, and the part that they would play in the worship service and things like that. Well, that hardly goes back to the days of the apostles, because you didn't have Christian rulers back then. This is something that would have come in, you know, mainly in the middle of the fourth century.
So we know that those traditions, that it's claiming to be from the apostles, are something that were of very recent origin, and the compiler is trying to argue for their establishment for the new period of time in which the work was written. Now let me briefly comment on the Origen quotes. Back in 1994, I owned none of the works of Origen from which those quotes were taken. I found the quotes in various Catholic sources, so I didn't realize there was a bit of bias present.
I mean, to be sure, they are important quotes. But it was only in the course of preparing the three messages on believers ' baptism that I examined the underlying Greek and Latin texts of those quotes. And it was then that I learned that Origen only talks of young children being baptized, not infants. Once again, I discuss that in much more detail in my messages on believers ' baptism. In addition to the quotations from the early Christians, one of the arguments I used in my tape actually came from Martin Luther.
Jesus said that " He who believes and is baptized shall be saved. " And this would seem to rule out infant baptism. Therefore, Luther made the rather tenuous argument that infants do believe. And surprisingly, I adopted his argument in my tape. Luther had pointed to the example of John the Baptist. When Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby John leaped in her womb. Now, does that prove that unborn infants have the capacity to believe? Hardly. I mean, Balaam's donkey talked to him.
Does that mean that donkeys are able to believe? No, God performed a miracle with the unborn John. But that does not mean that John, in his mother's womb, was able to hear Mary's greeting or that he had the capacity to believe. But to support Luther's argument, I used a quote from Irenaeus. In this passage, Irenaeus says the following: " Who were those who were saved and received the inheritance?
" The answer is those obviously who believed in God and kept their love for Him, such as Caleb and Joshua the Son of Nun, and innocent children who have no sense of evil. So in the tape, I then say, " See, Irenaeus is listing the ones who believe in God and keep their love, " and he says among those are innocent children. Well, as it turns out, this was an honest misreading of Irenaeus on my part.
But it illustrates how a person's mind works when he is bent in a certain direction and has begun to think as a trial lawyer. My mistake was attributing the first part of Irenaeus ' sentence to the ending of his sentence. Whereas in reality, he's actually listing two different groups of people. Speaking of the Old Testament, Irenaeus asks, " Who were those who were saved and received the inheritance? " In answer, he lists two sets of people.
One, " Those obviously who believed in God and kept their love for Him, such as Caleb and Joshua, the son of Nun. " And 2) " Innocent children who have no sense of evil. " So Irenaeus is not saying that innocent children have the capacity to believe and to keep their love for God. He only says that they were saved. The obvious takeaway from this is that if the Israelite children were saved without baptism, then likewise Christian children are saved without baptism.
I now want to close by telling you the rest of the story on that 1994 tape I made on infant baptism. After giving that message, I remained a supporter of infant baptism until I finished working on the dictionary of early Christian beliefs about two years later. I finished it in 1996. I went into that project of compiling the dictionary as an advocate of infant baptism. But by the end of the project, I had changed my mind.
What affected me was the fact that I worked on the dictionary in chronological order, beginning with the earliest quotes after the apostolic age. Now, this was the opposite approach of what I had taken in preparing my tape on infant baptism. There, I had started with the Cyprian quotes in the mid-200s and worked my way backwards to the New Testament era.
But working on the dictionary in chronological order, what first gave me a moment of pause was when I came across the Justin Martyr quote that I read a few minutes ago. That quotation absolutely floored me when I realized the significance of it. And as I kept working, I couldn't help but to notice the nearly complete absence of evidence for infant baptism throughout the entire second century, except for the quote from Irenaeus that we've discussed.
But even as an advocate of infant baptism, I knew inside my heart that this short quotation from Irenaeus was no slam dunk. In preparing the dictionary, I reread the passages around that Irenaeus quote, and I could see that baptism was not the context of that passage. Now, of course, I included the Irenaeus quote in the dictionary under the heading of infant baptism, as I knew it was a quote " widely used by Pedo Baptists, " and I was trying to make the dictionary as theologically neutral as possible.
For that reason, I was also intending to include the Justin Martyr quote under the heading of infant baptism in my dictionary. However, when I told the other brothers in our local congregation about it, they became very upset. They correctly pointed out that Justin Martyr is not directly making a case either for or against infant baptism. I agreed, but I responded that it was unimaginable that Justin could say what he did if infant baptism was a regular practice in his day.
To me, the quote pertained a lot to the subject of infant baptism. But in the end, it came down to either my taking the Justin Martyr quote out of that section of the dictionary, or else my having to leave our congregation. And I'd helped to start this congregation, and those were my friends and dear brothers. So, reluctantly, I agreed not to include the Justin Martyr quote under the heading of infant baptism.
Nevertheless, I did include the quote in the dictionary, but under the topic of the meaning of baptism, where, unfortunately, it has less impact. During the period of time when I was re-evaluating infant baptism, I kept asking myself the question: Does infant baptism really accomplish what we're claiming for it? In the 3rd century, the justification that Cyprian made for infant baptism was that it cleanses the infant from the stain of Adam's sin.
But after spending a few years in the Anglican, Catholic, and Orthodox circles, I realized that I was seeing absolutely no practical evidence for this. I thought to myself, " If inheriting a sin nature from Adam is what makes most 2-year-olds misbehave, then we should notice a difference with two-year-olds who've had the stain of Adam's sin washed away in baptism. " But there is no difference.
Furthermore, it occurred to me that if baptism washes away the stain of Adam's sin, then a baptized Christian no longer has a fallen nature from Adam. In that case, if two baptized Christians marry, then their offspring should be free from Adamic sin and an inherited fallen nature. There should be no need to baptize their infants, because the parents can't pass on a stain of which they've both been cleansed. So the theory that infant baptism washes away the stain inherited from Adam just didn't add up.
At the same time, I was still very much interested in family groups, a godly family functioning together as a cohesive unit. I did see a few examples of this in the churches that practice infant baptism, but ironically, it was typically with families who had converted into those churches. In contrast, I realized that this was the norm in most Anabaptist churches. They didn't practice infant baptism, but they had tight family units who normally lived godly lives.
In them, I was seeing the very type of godly families that I had mistakenly thought infant baptism would help bring about. So in 2004, my family and I moved to Pennsylvania, where we joined the Anabaptist. It had been a long spiritual journey, but I realized that I was at last at home.
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