It's important to recognize that although the baptism of infants and small children was happening in the 3rd century, as I've already mentioned, the practice of believers' baptism continued right alongside of them. We shouldn't imagine that the apostolic practice of believers' baptism just suddenly stopped. I mean, for example, in the early 3rd century, Tertullian wrote this. He said, "That baptismal washing is a sealing of faith, which faith is begun and commended by the faith of repentance.
We are not washed in order that we may cease sinning, but because we have ceased, since in heart we have been bathed already." For the first baptism of a hearer is this: a perfect fear. If it is only after the baptismal waters that we cease sinning, it is out of necessity, not out of free will. Now, we've already seen that Tertullian was opposed to the baptism of small children, let alone infant baptism.
So this quote shows that believers' baptism was still continuing as a normal practice, or else Tertullian's statements make no sense. He talks about repentance, you know, preceding baptism, for example. And although Hippolytus is one of the earliest witnesses we have of the baptism of small children, along with Tertullian, both the apostolic tradition of Hippolytus and his other writings show that most people, uh, being baptized back then, were still believers.
Now, here's just one example from one of his other works that we haven't read from. He says this: "The ropes that stretch around her"—and he's talking about the ship of the Church, he's using an extended illustration here—he says, "are the love of Christ, which binds the Church. The net that she bears with her is the bath of the regeneration that renews the believing, from which, too, are these glories.
Just like the wind, the Spirit from heaven is present, by whom those who believe are sealed." So Hippolytus is still talking about baptism in the sense of it being administered to people who believe. And we don't know that he ever administered it to infants. He only talks about small children, who, of course, were capable of having a childlike faith. Now, a few minutes ago we saw the direct references that Origen makes about the baptism of small children.
However, it would be a mistake to conclude from those quotes that believers' baptism had now disappeared, uh, where Origen lived. Actually, most of the quotations from Origen about baptism presuppose that the person being baptized is a mature believer. Here's just two examples I want to read to you. He says, "Matthew alone adds the words 'to repentance', teaching us that the benefit of baptism is connected with the intention of the baptized person.
To him who repents, it is saving; however, to him who comes to it without repentance, it will produce greater condemnation." And the next quotation, uh, concerns the passage in Romans 6 about baptism that we had read a while earlier. And here Origen says, "A person who has previously died to sin is then buried with Christ in baptism. But someone not already dead to sin cannot be buried with Christ. No one is ever buried alive.
Yet a person is not properly baptized unless buried with Christ." Origen, even himself, despite his comments about the baptism of small children, still was thinking of baptism mainly in term of mature believers who had died to their previous sins. And again, he never talks about infants, um, who cannot believe being baptized, only small children who can, of course, have a childlike faith.
Now, as I've mentioned, one of our strongest proofs of the continuing practice of believers' baptism in the 3rd and 4th centuries are the inscriptions in the Roman catacombs and on the tombs of Christians in other places. Some of the persons receiving emergency baptisms were actually in their teens, so obviously they hadn't been baptized as infants. In fact, I want to read to you a passage from the book entitled "The Catacombs of St.
Callixtus," written by a committed Roman Catholic professor, uh, his name is Antonio Baruffa. The book is published in the Vatican City, and I purchased a copy of it at the, uh, Catholic bookstore at the Catacombs of St. Callixtus when Deborah and I visited them in the year 2001. Now, the dedication of the book reads this. It says, "To Mary, Mother of God and Queen of Martyrs." So obviously this is a Catholic book. The author's prejudice are going to be in favor of infant baptism.
Nevertheless, in the book, uh, Professor Baruffa, he makes this admission. Let me read this to you. He says, "Several inscriptions tell us that the deceased was a neophyte, that is, a recently baptized Christian. Perhaps we do not understand the importance of this, because nowadays baptism is generally administered to babies, and as the saying is, one is born a Christian. Afterwards, to grow and mature in the faith is a lifelong commitment. For the early Christians, the prospect was different.
Those who were to receive baptism, called catechumens, were for the most part grown-ups. Baptism was the completion of a long journey, which began with listening to sermons, undergoing a period of, uh, of a year or so of instruction before conversion, and moving towards a deeper understanding of one's Christian life. During this time, the catechumens—these are the ones who believed but were not yet baptized—they took part in Church life, but not in all manifestations, nor with full membership.
With baptism came the great day of one's encounter with God, the day of fulfillment of grace and of perfect communion with the brethren in the faith." So this is the conclusion of a Roman Catholic professor, the very things that I'm telling you, that, um, believers' baptism was the norm, not just in the New Testament but during the early Church period, even when you have the beginnings of infant baptism. Okay, now let's move to the 4th century.
Here we have the same situation as we have in the last half of the 3rd century. Infant baptism is being practiced, but it's not compulsory or even normative. People are still being baptized at all ages, from infants to small children to juveniles to young adults to people in their old age. Some of the most notable leaders in the 4th century Church were raised by Christian parents or a Christian parent, yet they were not baptized until they were juveniles or adults.
Some examples are Athanasius, Basil the Great, Ambrose, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Augustine himself. And just as we did in the 3rd century, in the 4th century, we have writings and sermons that talk about baptism in terms of mature believers. At the same time, we have other works that promote infant baptism. All right, let's talk about the inscriptions of the 4th century. In the Roman catacombs, we have the following inscription that dates to the year 363.
It says, "To the worthy Antonia, who lived 19 years, 2 months, 26 days. She received the grace of God"—meaning baptism—"and died a virgin on the fourth day, uh, before her death." So even though she was 19, she was only just then getting baptized because, uh, she had, uh, she was on her deathbed.
And we've already discussed the sermon of Gregory of Nazianzus, in which he talks about, uh, all the, the ones who were waiting until their old age to get baptized, and he's having to encourage them to get baptized at a younger age. Now, I think he overshoots the mark and encourages, you know, uh, at the age of 4. But, uh, he still is promoting believers' baptism. But I think even more importantly, his sermon shows that, yeah, most people were, were waiting well into their adulthood be-before getting baptized.
Okay, now we come to Augustine and the big change. What we've seen is that in the 3rd and 4th centuries, infant baptism, child baptism, and mature believers' baptism all coexisted side by side. No one was coerced to follow, uh, one, uh, versus the other. But this whole situation changed in the West because of Augustine, who had an oversized influence on Western theology. I say without hesitation that Augustine had a greater influence on Western theology than either Paul or Jesus himself.
That's because most Western Christians, whether they're Catholics or Protestants, read both Jesus and Paul through the eyes of Augustine. Now, Augustine's early writings indicate that he originally believed that baptism was not essential for infants. However, as is ever the case, he swung away from his original position in response to his religious opponents. In this case, his opponents were the so-called Pelagians, and their strong emphasis on free will and personal responsibility.
And as a result of his debates with them, Augustine adopted the doctrines of predestination, of salvation by grace alone, and the doctrine of original sin as we know it today, meaning we inherit the guilt of Adam. He also came to the view that infants who are ba-uh, unbaptized are eternally damned.
In one of his later writings, he declared, "Let no one promise infants who have not been baptized a sort of middle place of happiness between damnation and heaven, for this is what the Pelagian heresy promised them." So Augustine eventually concluded that unbaptized babies go to hell for all eternity. Now, at the same time, he did say that they would receive only light punishment there. But still, I mean, that's eternity.
And being so incredibly influential, Augustine was quickly able to persuade all the Western North African bishops to join him in this horrible doctrine that, yeah, even Christian babies, the, the babies of believing Christians, they go to hell if they're not baptized. Of course, if the apostles had taught such a view, it's hard to imagine that believers' baptism would have ever received a hold in the beginning.
We wouldn't have been seeing it in the 2nd century if the apostles had taught, um, that infants who are unbaptized, uh, go to hell to eternal damnation. As I said, Augustine was able to persuade all the North African bishops to adopt his new view of infant baptism.
So Canon 110 of the Council of Carthage of 418-419 declares this: "Whosoever denies that infants newly from their mother's womb should be baptized, or says that baptism should not be baptized, or says that baptism is for remission of sins, but that they derive from Adam no original sin that needs to be removed by the laver of regeneration, from whence the conclusion follows that in them the form of baptism for the remission of sins is to be understood as false and not true, let him be anathema." That means let him
be cursed.
So in other words, the Canon is saying if you doubt, uh, this doctrine of original sin, that we inherit Adam's guilt, and that babies don't have to be baptized, then, yeah, let you be cursed. So with this teaching, pretty soon it spread through the West and then through the East as, as well. And what makes matters even worse is that Christianity had been made the state religion of the Roman Empire by Emperor Theodosius in the closing decade of the 4th century.
So when Augustine is saying this, and when this council comes out, this is the state religion. So before long, virtually every Roman, unless he was a Jew, was required to baptize his or her infants. Later, the Justinian Code set the death penalty for re-baptizing a so-called Orthodox or Catholic Christian. This meant that if anyone who believed that infant baptism was invalid and gave someone a believers' baptism, he was put to death.
So now you had an entirely new animal, a monstrous animal, something that can't even remotely be called apostolic. Believers' baptism was no longer allowed, even though it had been the original practice of the Church. And this situation remained the case in most Christian countries, uh, quote Christian countries, until just a few centuries ago. Proponents of infant baptism want to quote Hippolytus, Origen, and Cyprian in support of their modern practice.
But what they teach and practice is not even close to what Cyprian and Origen were teaching. We, we don't even know how Hippolytus and Origen felt about infant baptism. We only know they approved the baptism of small children, which, as we've seen, was viewed as a form of believers' baptism. None of these people tried to coerce other Christians to their viewpoint or to prohibit believers' baptism. So it's a new animal when you start prohibiting believers' baptism.
I recently read a scholarly article that tried to, uh, argue that infant baptism was the apostolic practice. The author used the example of an earthquake. He said that the tremors from an earthquake in California can be picked up on a seismograph here on the East Coast of the United States, whi-which is true.
He then argued that the quotations about infant baptism that we see in the 3rd and 4th centuries, whi-which actually aren't very many, are the tremors from the explosion of infant baptism that happened way back in the 1st century. He says, "We have no direct evidence for infant baptism in the 1st century, but its existence can be proven from the tremors felt two centuries later." Now, it's an interesting theory, but the author has things backwards.
I mean, if there's an earthquake in California, the tremors are much stronger right there near the epicenter, and then they diminish as you get further and further away from it. In the case of infant baptism, there's absolutely no mention nor any evidence for its existence in the 1st century. Like, say you've got some slender threads, you can say maybe it happened. The same holds true in the 2nd century.
But then in the 3rd century, we finally start getting some of the clearer references, actually just one clear reference from Cyprian. I mean, first there's the baptisms of small children, and then we have the emergency baptisms of infants of varying ages. You do have that. Finally, in the middle of the century, we have a single direct reference in Cyprian to the regular baptism of infants.
But other quotations and the inscriptions on Christian tombs show that infant baptism was far from universal or even necessarily the majority practice in the 3rd and 4th centuries. Well then in the 5th century, infant baptism eventually becomes, uh, universal by coercion. Now, if infant baptism was the normative practice in the 1st century, we would expect to see the opposite.
There should be lots of clear references to infant baptism right there in the, in the days of the apostles, and heavy references in the 2nd century. And then, you know, it might get weaker as you get further and further from the epicenter, the, the, uh, New Testament. But the evidence, um, you know, is just the opposite. And, and it's hard to get past the evidence.
When we look just at the hard facts and lay aside all biases, speculations, and what-ifs, we see that the evidence for believers' baptism in the beginning is concrete. And using the illustration of an earthquake, at the epicenter we have the direct instructions of Jesus to baptize believers or disciples. Then in the book of Acts, we have nothing but believers' baptisms recorded.
In every instance, it says that the, the people believed, uh, other than that one exception with Lydia's household, it doesn't, it doesn't comment, uh, even when it was an entire household. All the discussions in the New Testament about the meaning of baptism only make sense when applied to someone who is a mature believer. And again, by a mature believer, I mean a juvenile or an adult. Similarly, in the 2nd century, all the descriptions of baptisms are of mature believers.
Unlike the instructions in the 3rd century in the apostolic tradition of Hippolytus and in later ones, the instructions in the Didache say nothing whatsoever about children being baptized, let alone infants. In his valuable quote on baptism, Justin explains that baptism and the new birth is tied to a decision that we make. It is not something our parents do for us without our having any say in it.
So it's only when we get to the 3rd century that we first see clear statements of the baptism of small children shortly after the ye-year 200. And it's only, uh, half a century later with Cyprian that we get our first clear statement of infants being baptized as a regular thing. In fact, it's not only our first clear statement, it's the only clear statement in the 3rd century as to regular infant baptisms. At the same time, believers' baptism continues on unabated.
And this is exactly the type of pattern we would expect to find if believers' baptism was the apostolic practice and infant baptism was a later novelty that was introduced in the 3rd century. Infant baptism would be untraceable in the 1st century. So if believers' baptism is the apostolic practice, we would expect to find that infant baptism is essentially untraceable in the 1st century and pretty much the same in the 2nd century. And then it starts growing as you get further and further from the apostles.
So I, I, I think the, the, uh, hard evidence should drive anyone to this conclusion. It, it certainly is what convinced me, even coming out of the Anglican Church as a, as an Anglican priest, I realized infant baptism goes against all of these facts that we've talked about. Now, let's talk a little bit about the Kingdom of God versus state churches. Once it became established in the 5th century, mandatory infant baptism worked hand in glove with the state church.
Or to put it another way, infant baptism only prevailed in the manner it did because it had the carnal power of the state behind it. paedobaptists often ask why infant baptism is so objectionable to proponents of believers' baptism. Well, there are a number of reasons, but one of the main ones is the historical linking of infant baptism and the state church. This produced a hybrid religion that was very far from the kingdom that Jesus set up and from the type of Christianity we see in the pre-Nicene Church.
Jesus had made several clear statements about his kingdom. And let, let me just read to you some of them. John 18:36, he said, "My kingdom is not of this world.
If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight so that I should not be delivered to the Jews." And again, he said, "The kingdom of God," talking to the Jews, "will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it." With these statements, Jesus made it clear that the kingdom of God was not going to be something analogous to the kingdom of Israel and Judah that had existed in the Old Testament.
In that kingdom, every Israelite born was automatically made a citizen, uh, of that kingdom at the time of their infancy. Infant boys were brought to the, into the covenant on the eighth day of their lives. They had no say in the matter and no understanding of what was happening. As the history of Israel has shown, this system produced anything but a godly nation of people. So Christ's kingdom was going to be different.
In his kingdom, Jesus only wants citizens who have come in voluntarily and who bear the fruits of his kingdom. They come into the kingdom after being baptized upon personal faith. And Christ's kingdom can never be linked to the kingdoms of this world. So what worked for the kingdom of Israel and Judah doesn't work for the kingdom of God. We can't take a whole population, baptize them as infants, and imagine that they're citizens of God's kingdom. And if they're not citizens of God's kingdom, they're not Christians.
So it's of little wonder that wholesale infant baptism did not come into the institutional Church until the Church had lost the doctrine of the two kingdoms. I mean, first the institutional Church imagined it could combine, uh, a kingdom of this world, the Roman Empire, with the kingdom of God. And then second, it imagined it could turn every citizen of the Roman Empire into a Christian just by baptizing all of them when they were infants. I mean, this was utter folly and a complete loss of the apostolic faith.
It was piling innovation on top of innovation. And when the first two innovations were not completely successful, the Church then piled a third innovation on top of the others, and that was religious persecution of other Christians by so-called professing Christians. Infant baptism and the state Church worked hand in glove in producing the Church that we see in the Middle Ages and in the Byzantine and Russian empires.
These were quote Christian states that differed not in the least from the pagan states that existed before them, except that they professed to believe in Jesus Christ and to worship the God of the New Testament. So often, however, who they actually worshipped was Mary. But other than the change of theology, you had the same endless wars between these Christian nations as you had, uh, when those same lands were pagan.
There were the same court intrigues, the same murders, adultery, swearing, drunkenness, and the like. The same tortures as before, or even worse. And sadly, there was the same persecution of true Christians. It's for that reason that the Anabaptists in the 1500s finally said, "Enough of this. We're going to return to believers' baptism and to a kingdom of God comprised only of citizens who are truly born again." And the response of the paedobaptists, what was it? Well, they horribly persecuted the Anabaptists.
The Catholics tortured them and burned them at the stake. The Lutherans and Reformed churches imprisoned them, took their children away from them, and they put them to death as well. They usually beheaded them or drowned them. In fact, persecution of Christians who practiced believers' baptism went on for over 200 years after the Reformation began. This was the fruit of infant baptism and its marriage to the state Church.
It produced a type of Christianity that bore little resemblance to the Christianity of the New Testament and the 2nd century Church. To be sure, the emergency baptisms of the 3rd century and even Cyprian's endorsement of regular infant baptism did not in themselves produce this ungodly fruit. Voluntary infant baptism in a martyr's Church that embraces the two kingdoms is very different. It's a very different animal than compulsory infant baptism in a state Church that encompasses the entire population of a country.
Now to be sure, I think the infant baptism practiced in the 3rd century was theologically wrong. It, it was not the biblical faith. But its main negative impact is that it was the first step that eventually led to compulsory statewide infant baptism, which, and that's what bore such horrible fruit. But neither Cyprian nor Origen nor any of those people were pushing for compulsory infant baptism on everyone.
Thankfully, at great cost and personal sacrifice, the Anabaptists endured, and believers' baptism finally was reestablished. Over the centuries, other groups like the Baptist, the Church of Christ, uh, the Holiness Churches, and many others, they also embraced believers' baptism. So the original apostolic practice, which was lost for over a thousand years, has finally been restored today.
We can once again freely embrace believers' baptism without being thrown in prison or put to death for following our consciences. Thanks be to God.