catholicsphere

About 10 years ago, I had a conversation with two co-workers regarding the Catholic teaching on “Infant Baptism”. The following is a brief overview of that dialog that I intended to send to Envoy Magazine, but just never got around to it.

Two co-workers, Rob and Roy, and I had gathered at Rob’s desk to discuss some difficulties we were having in implementing the computer application we were currently developing. After muddling through most of the issues, I saw an RCIA class agenda and calendar on Rob’s desk. At about the same time, Roy said, “Converting?”. “Yes”, Rob replied. I told Rob that I was Catholic and had recently began looking more deeply at the basis’ for Catholic doctrine and belief, so if he had any questions, I’d be more than happy to try to answer them.

I shared some experiences I had in Internet discussions and chats, as well as books I had read and Web sites I had visited to get as much information as possible. Eventually, Roy, who attends a local “non-denominational church”, said, “You can’t believe in infant baptism.” (Only later did I find out that Roy and his family were expecting their third child, so this was an issue of particular interest to them). I affirmed the fact that I did believe that infants should be baptized.

Roy replied, “Where in the Bible does it show that a baby was baptized? I know that it says one place in the Bible that a whole household was baptized, but it never says the children were baptized.” In response, I told him that actually there are three places in the Bible that speak of the baptism of whole households, and none of them exclude baptism of infants. Now, because a “whole household” included servants, etc we can assume that there were probably infants, or children below the age of reason, in these households.

“But your position assumes that fact.” “True Roy, but your position assumes that there were no children in those households, so we must look to some other verses to reconcile this”.

Remember, in the Gospel of John, “no one may enter the kingdom of heaven without being born again of water and the Spirit”. The term “no one” seems pretty clear here. “Being born again of water and the Spirit” refers to baptism. Look at Jesus’ baptism in Matthew for the understanding of the meaning of “water and the Spirit” in John’s verse. Now, God is not limited by the Sacraments, therefore he could, by a special act of grace, grant an infant who dies the gift necessary to enter the kingdom of heaven. But, we can’t be absolutely sure of what happens to an unbaptized infant, so we heed the words of John and baptize infants.

Also, Peter’s epistle speaks of baptism as the “new circumcision”. We know, according to Jewish Tradition, that male infants were circumcised eight days after birth. Taking those words of Paul into account, we baptize infants.

“But circumcision was only for males, what about females.” Well, that’s easy to explain. The new covenant was for all, “Jew and Gentile alike”. This is the same with baptism; female infants were included in the promise of the covenant as well. And, Catholic parents believe that it is there role, as nurturers of the life God entrusted to them, to make a vow of faith for the child and incorporate him/her into the family of God.

“That is choice one must make for themself. It can’t be made for you.” In reply I pointed to the Scriptures where we have the story of the man who came to Jesus asking for the healing of his daughter, who was near death at that time. Christ said, “You faith has healed her.” Also, we find the story of the crippled man who was lowered through the roof to be healed. It was the actions of *others* here that healed the man. So, we see that the faith of others means something and can speak for the person, when they are not able. Only with the fullness of the grace of God — something that comes from the Sacraments of Baptism, Eucharist and Confirmation — do we actually even have the capacity to make such a choice.

At this point, Roy was speechless. He stammered a bit, then smiled. I looked at Rob. He smiled and said, “I never knew all those things about the Bible.” I responded, “Either did I, at first.”

[tags]apologetics, catholic, protestant, doctrine, faith, baptism, scripture, infant baptism[/tags]