Introduction

(Author: Anonymous)

Only two people have an interest in the debate over baptism: no, not the paedobaptist and the baptist, but two other people, the dogmatist and the doubter. The dogmatist may be either a paedobaptist or a baptist, for each point of view has its own passionate and imperious defenders, utterly and unchangeably convicted that their opinions about baptism are biblical and, therefore, indisputable. But both sides have their doubters as well. Whether paedobaptist or baptist, the doubter has a certain aura about him, if not a dark cloud of confusion, then at least a shadow of doubt, or at least an air of curiosity regarding baptism. And it is the doubter to whom the author addresses this discourse, for the author himself once doubted the truth of baptism. Remember, dear doubter, it is no sin to doubt, for "doubt leads to enquiry, and enquiry leads to truth."

Before we proceed to the main discussion, let us set two ground rules for our discussion: first, besides biblical writers, we shall quote only secular and paedobaptist scholars, no Baptists (except as they might quote non-Baptists); and, secondly, although his remarks at times will be poignant, the writer intends no personal offense. However, dogmatism, especially if it be dogmatic truth, loyally lays aside the mere conventions of courtesy in the interest of truth which, by its very nature, must offend error. As the reader might expect, the writer is no longer a doubter but a dogmatist who has but three things to say to the doubter: first, what a paedobaptist cannot do; secondly, what a paedobaptist can do; and, thirdly, what a paedobaptist should do.

What a Paedobaptist Cannot Do

Now as to what a paedobaptist cannot do, a paedobaptist cannot prove or defend infant sprinkling from early Christian history. Note carefully to the testimony of these authoritative accounts of the manner and practice of baptism in early church history:

"Baptism was always a burial. The command to baptize was a command to immerse" (Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia 461);

"Immersion was oldest method employed"(Catholic Biblical Encyclopedia 61);

"It is evident that the action performed [by the early church] in baptizing was immersion" (World Book Encyclopedia II:70);

"The earliest Christian literature makes no reference to baptism of infants" (Encyclopedia Britannica Vol 3, Pg 138 );

"The first mention of infant baptism was about 185 A.D. . . . not universal until 6th Century" (Walker 87-88).

These authoritative sources prove that a paedobaptist cannot defend his position from earliest church history. But perhaps the most compelling testimony comes from Presbyterianism's most notable historian, Dr. Phillip Schaff: "As to the outward mode of administering this ordinance, immersion and not sprinkling was unquestionably the original, normal form" (Graves 21). But the reader may ask, "Whence cometh sprinkling?" That honorable Presbyterian, Dr. Schaff, tells us,
". . . while immersion was the universal custom, an abridgement of this rite was freely allowed and defended in cases of urgent necessity, such as sickness and approaching death [for which Christ made no provision]; and the peculiar form of sprinkling thus came to be known as "clinical" baptism, or the baptism of the sick. . . . And hence it is difficult to determine with complete accuracy, just when immersion gave way to sprinkling as the common church practice. The two forms were employed--one as the rule, the other as the exception--until, as Christianity traveled northward into colder climates, the exception silently grew to be the rule" (21).
Astoundingly, almost absurdly, Presbyterianism's most preeminent historian candidly admits that sprinkling arose from accommodations to weather and sickness, climate and clinic. Indeed, it seems that the paedobaptists cannot endure either the cold of northern extremes or the heat of historical scrutiny! Paedobaptism cannot be defended on ancient historical grounds; even their own scholars admit this point.
Secondly, a paedobaptist cannot infer Christian baptism of infants from Jewish proselyte baptism in the first century. Jewish infant baptism applied only to the children of Gentile proselytes outside the Abrahamic covenant (Jewett 64-65). This historical fact influenced Rudolph Bultmann to question the basic assumptions of covenantal theology which underlie the practice of paedobaptism. As Bultmann rightly understood, the Jewish practice of baptizing only Gentile infants destroys the paedobaptist assumption that the circumcised children of ethnic Jews correlate to the sprinkled children of spiritual Israel. Moreover, Gentile proselytes and their children were not sprinkled but rather totally immersed in the tebilah, a ceremonial immersion (Beasley-Murray 21). And perhaps even more significant, no historical evidence whatsoever exists for Jewish baptism of Gentile proselytes' children in the writings of Philo, Josephus, or the New Testament, and only minimal evidence for such baptism among Jews until late in the first century A.D., certainly no earlier than 80 A.D., at least fifty years after the baptisms of John the Baptist and Jesus (Beasley-Murray 19); and even if Christianity eventually assimilated proselyte baptism, it never immersed children after the pattern of proselyte baptism, but rather sprinkled them, beginning about 185 A.D.(Walker 87-88). Finally, the inference that proselyte baptism of infants corresponds to contemporary infant sprinkling involves a double contradiction of John the Baptist's preaching: first, John forbade the Jews to claim a real or promised relationship to God based upon their parentage, viz a viz, "say not that Abraham is your father," and, secondly, John demanded repentance before baptism, something which an infant cannot do. Unless a paedobaptist proceeds on multiple false assumptions which contradict historical facts, he cannot infer the sprinkling of infants from Jewish proselyte baptisms.
Something else a paedobaptist cannot do, and, please, consider this delicate point objectively rather than emotionally: a paedobaptist cannot deny the historical and theological linkage between Reformation paedobaptism and Roman Catholic paedobaptism, nor can he appeal to his ecclesiastical forefathers to defend his position. Quite frankly, will our reader even entertain the idea, much less accept it, that the Roman Catholic church, which the Reformers identified as the "Great Whore, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots," is Christ's Bride? And more specific to the point, is the reader prepared to concede that Rome's baptism is valid? Yet those protestant giants, whom we rightly honor for their heroic but incomplete Reformation, were themselves baptized by the hands and in the shadows of priests and popes whom these same Reformers later called "anti-Christ." And just as damaging, the great reformers will not come to the aid and defense of their modern protestant descendants, but rather the reformers' own words argue against paedobaptism. The paedobaptist cannot implore Luther to his defense, who said that baptizo should be translated "immersion, as when we immerse something in water that it may be wholly covered"; Luther also said of the baptism of children that "they ought to be wholly immersed . . . for that the etymology of the term seems to demand" (Graves 28). Zwingli will not plead the paedobaptist case, "Immersion of the whole body was used from the beginning, which expresses the force of the word ‘baptize,' whence John baptized in a river. It was afterward changed into sprinkling, though it is uncertain when or by whom" (panstrat. Cathol., tom. Iv, l. v, chii, 6; Graves 30). Even Calvin avows, "John and Christ administered baptism totins corpore submersione, by the submission of the whole body" (Commentary on Matt. 3:22-23) and, Calvin said, ". . . the very word ‘baptize' . . . signifies to immerse entirely, and it is certain that immersion was the practice of the ancient Church" (Institutes, V 2, 491). And although it is a humiliation too low for a good Calvinist to stoop, the paedobaptist cannot even appeal to Wesley, whose Georgia journal of 2/21/1736, describes the baptism of Mary Welch by immersion as "the custom of the first church," and whose commentary on Romans 6:4 and Colossians 2:12 describes baptism by burial into water as "the ancient manner of baptizing by immersion." As Karl Barth, the most preeminent theologian of the twentieth century, says, "There is no Biblical basis for infant baptism--this tradition is simply an old error of the church" (58). And should we not here ask ourselves, "Why did the protestant forefathers of infant sprinkling refuse to practice what their Greek preached and history recorded? . . . Why did they perpetuate the unhistorical, unbiblical error of infant sprinkling?" The answer is twofold: first, the Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anglicans inherited their doctrine and practice from the Roman Catholic church at whose illicit and erring hands they themselves had been improperly and unbiblically baptized; and, secondly, they represented state churches for whom infant sprinkling was not merely an evangelical duty but rather a political rite of passage. Infant sprinkling was, for the Reformers and their Roman Catholic predecessors, the ceremonial means whereby the sprinkled child was simultaneously initiated into church membership and state citizenship! And let not this profound observation go unnoticed, the practice of paedobaptism is inseparable from its association with state- sponsored churches for whom infant sprinkling was equally as important for politics as it was for religion, for citizenship in the state as for membership in the church; this is another proof of the Roman Catholic origins of paedobaptism and the cause whereby ancient Baptists were persecuted for their refusal to submit their children to the heretical practices of a state-sponsored churches. The honest paedobaptist must admit that, while Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and even Wesley acquiesce to the historicity of baptism by immersion in the early church, they also bow to the tradition, liturgy, and heresy of the Pope and Rome!
Next, a paedobaptist cannot appeal to Greek scholarship in hopes to deny the primary meaning of the Greek term baptizo as "to dip, plunge, submerge, or immerse, overwhelm" (Thayer 94). A. W. Mais, former Professor of Greek at Endinburg University, says . . .