Paedobaptism: Why Are You Baptizing That Baby?
Infants of believing parents should be baptized as the covenant sign.
The Story
For the first fifteen centuries of Christianity, almost nobody questioned whether you should baptize babies. Catholics did it. Orthodox did it. When the Reformation arrived, Luther did it, Calvin did it, Zwingli did it, the Anglicans did it. Infant baptism was so universal, so deeply embedded in Christian practice, that when a small group of radicals in Zurich began re-baptizing adults in January 1525, the response was not theological debate — it was criminal prosecution, exile, and eventually execution.
The practice of infant baptism cannot be definitively traced to the New Testament. This is the awkward fact that its defenders must navigate. There is no passage in which an apostle says “bring your infant to be baptized.” There is no description of a baby being baptized. The book of Acts records baptism after baptism — the Ethiopian eunuch, Cornelius and his household, the Philippian jailer and his household, Lydia and her household — and in every case where the individual is identified, they are a believing adult who has heard and responded to the gospel.
And yet.
The “household baptisms” of Acts are the thin but important thread on which the paedobaptist case hangs. When the Philippian jailer believed, “he was baptized at once, he and all his family” (Acts 16:33). When Lydia believed, “she was baptized, and her household as well” (Acts 16:15). The Greek word for household (oikos) could include children, servants, and dependents. Did those households include infants? The text does not say. But paedobaptists argue that in the ancient world, a household baptism would naturally include everyone in the household — including the children.
The deeper theological argument comes from covenant theology. In the Old Testament, God made a covenant with Abraham and gave circumcision as the sign of that covenant — a sign applied to infant boys on the eighth day, long before they could believe anything. Paedobaptists argue that baptism is the New Covenant equivalent of circumcision (Colossians 2:11-12 draws this parallel explicitly). Just as Israelite children were included in the covenant community by circumcision before they could profess faith, so Christian children are included in the new covenant community by baptism.
This is not a fringe argument. It is the argument of Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, the Westminster Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Thirty-Nine Articles, and the vast majority of Christian theologians for most of church history. The idea that baptism requires a prior profession of faith is, historically speaking, the innovation — not the default.
The earliest explicit reference to infant baptism comes from Tertullian around 200 AD, who argues against the practice — which tells us it was already happening by then. Origen, writing a generation later, says infant baptism is a tradition received from the apostles. By the fifth century, Augustine used infant baptism as evidence for original sin: if babies are baptized for the remission of sins, they must be born with sin that needs remitting.
The cost of dissent was staggering. When the Anabaptists (“re-baptizers”) emerged in the 1520s, insisting that only believers should be baptized, they were persecuted by Catholics and Protestants alike. Felix Manz was drowned in the Limmat River in Zurich in 1527 — executed by a Reformed Protestant government for the crime of re-baptizing adults. The drowning was a grim joke: if you are so fond of water, here is some more. Michael Sattler was tortured and burned at the stake. Balthasar Hubmaier was burned in Vienna. The Anabaptist martyrology is extensive and horrifying, and the executioners were Christians who baptized babies.
What the Council Actually Said
No ecumenical council formally established infant baptism; it was assumed as normative practice. But several councils addressed it:
The Council of Carthage (418) declared:
“Whoever says that newborn children need not be baptized… let him be anathema. For what the Apostle says, ‘Through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned,’ is not to be understood otherwise than as the Catholic Church everywhere has always understood it.”
The Council of Trent, Session VII (1547), Canon 13:
“If anyone says that children, because they have no actual faith, are not to be numbered among the faithful after they have received baptism, and that for this reason they are to be re-baptized when they come to the age of discretion… let him be anathema.”
Calvin wrote in the Institutes:
“Since baptism has been substituted for circumcision, it must be applied to infants… The children of believers are not baptized in order that they may thereby be made children of God, but because they already belong to the body of Christ.”
Why You Might Accidentally Believe This
If you grew up in a Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, or Reformed church, you were almost certainly baptized as an infant. It was not presented as controversial. It was simply what Christians do.
If you have ever felt that your children belong to the church community — that they are not outsiders waiting to get in but members of a covenant family — you have felt the logic of paedobaptism. The instinct that God’s promises extend to our children, that a believing family is within the covenant, is powerful and deeply rooted.
If the idea that a child must reach an “age of accountability” before God claims them makes you uneasy — if it feels like it leaves children in a theological no-man’s-land — paedobaptism offers an alternative. The child is claimed by God in baptism, marked as belonging to the covenant people, and nurtured in faith until they can own that faith for themselves.
The Strongest Case For This View
The covenant argument is formidable. God’s pattern throughout Scripture is to include children in his covenant community. Abraham was told to circumcise his sons as infants. The Passover was a family event. Deuteronomy 29:10-12 includes “your little ones” in the covenant renewal. When Peter preaches at Pentecost, he says “the promise is for you and for your children” (Acts 2:39). The default in Scripture is that God deals with families, not isolated individuals.
Colossians 2:11-12 explicitly links circumcision and baptism: “In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands… having been buried with him in baptism.” If baptism has replaced circumcision as the covenant sign, and if circumcision was applied to infants, the logic points toward infant baptism.
The household baptisms in Acts are suggestive. In the ancient Mediterranean world, the head of household made religious decisions for the entire household. When Cornelius believed, his whole household was baptized. When the jailer believed, his whole household was baptized. The burden of proof, paedobaptists argue, falls on those who would exclude children from these households.
The universal practice of the early church is itself an argument. By the third century, infant baptism was widespread and claimed as apostolic tradition. If the apostles had taught that only believers should be baptized, it is difficult to explain how the entire church abandoned that teaching within a generation or two without any recorded controversy until Tertullian’s mild objection.
Jesus himself said “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them” (Mark 10:14). While this passage is not about baptism, it establishes a principle: children are not to be excluded from Christ’s embrace.
The Strongest Case Against
The case against paedobaptism is disarmingly straightforward: find one baby being baptized in the New Testament. You cannot. Every clearly described baptism in Acts involves a person who has heard the gospel, believed, and then been baptized. The pattern is consistent: preach, believe, baptize. Faith precedes baptism.
The household baptism argument is an argument from silence. The text does not say whether those households included infants. It also does not say they excluded them. But the silence is loaded: if infant baptism were theologically significant, you might expect at least one passage to mention it explicitly.
The circumcision parallel breaks down at several points. Circumcision was given only to males; baptism is for both sexes. Circumcision was an ethnic marker of a specific nation; baptism is universal. Most importantly, the New Testament repeatedly connects baptism with personal faith and repentance (Acts 2:38, Romans 6:3-4, Galatians 3:27). These are things infants cannot do.
The historical argument can be inverted. Tertullian’s opposition around 200 AD shows that the practice was not universally accepted even in the early church. The fact that infant baptism became widespread does not prove it was apostolic — many practices became widespread that later Christians recognized as departures from the original.
And the persecution of Anabaptists should give paedobaptists pause. Whatever the theological merits of infant baptism, the fact that Christians drowned, burned, and tortured other Christians for dissenting from the practice is a stain that no amount of covenant theology can wash away.
What the New Testament Actually Says
The baptism accounts in Acts consistently follow a pattern: proclamation, faith, baptism. “Those who received his word were baptized” (Acts 2:41). The Ethiopian eunuch says “What prevents me from being baptized?” — implying a conscious desire (Acts 8:36). Paul’s baptism follows his conversion on the Damascus road.
The household baptism texts (Acts 16:15, 16:33, 1 Corinthians 1:16) are genuinely ambiguous. They could include infants; they could refer only to believing members of the household. The text does not specify, and both sides are reading their theology into the silence.
Romans 6:3-4 describes baptism as dying and rising with Christ — language that implies conscious participation. Galatians 3:27 says “as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” — in a context discussing faith. Colossians 2:12 connects baptism with “faith in the powerful working of God.”
1 Corinthians 7:14 complicates the picture: Paul says the children of a believing parent are “holy.” If children of believers are already holy apart from baptism, what role does infant baptism play? Or does this holiness precisely support the idea that such children belong within the covenant and should receive its sign?
The New Testament does not settle this debate. Both sides can construct plausible readings. What the text does not contain is either an explicit command to baptize infants or an explicit prohibition against it. This is one of the many questions the apostolic church left open — perhaps because they never anticipated how fiercely their spiritual descendants would fight over it.