Was Tertullian the only early opponent of infant baptism?

I often see advocates of infant baptism referring to the history of credobaptism as if Tertullian is the only credobaptist source or the only source we know of who was somewhat close to credobaptism in the earliest centuries, the only prominent source early on, or some such thing. Sometimes they won't even mention Tertullian, as if nobody opposed infant baptism before the Reformation. But the evidence suggests that credobaptism was the only or dominant view during the earliest generations of church history. Many church fathers and other individuals other than Tertullian seem to have been closer to credopaptism than paedobaptism. For an overview, including patristic and medieval sources before and after Tertullian, see here. And here's one on Aristides, a pre-Tertullian source. They give a variety of reasons for waiting until after infancy for baptism, such as waiting until the person baptized has an understanding of and has professed the faith and the importance of having the person baptized choose to participate in baptism. The notion that everybody who delayed baptism did so only or primarily to have his baptism cover more sins later in life is demonstrably false.

Why was there so much diversity in ancient baptismal beliefs and practices?

Gavin Ortlund just posted a video about how the historical evidence favors credobaptism over paedobaptism. I agree with him, and I've written about the subject in other posts, like here.

What I want to focus on in this post is why we see so many differences, and often contradictions, among the ancient sources on baptismal issues if what critics of Protestantism tell us about the nature of the church and other relevant issues is true. If there was one church that all or a large percentage of these sources belonged to, with the sort of unity people like Romans Catholics and Eastern Orthodox often claim they had in the past, with their infallible church maintaining all apostolic teaching in every generation, providing guidance, scripture interpretation, the settling of controversies, and such in the way modern Catholics and modern Orthodox often claim their church provides, why do we see such diversity in the historical record on baptismal issues? Some of the differences went on for centuries, sometimes a millennium or more.

Hermas (who lived in Rome, a significant context in relation to Roman Catholicism) advocated postmortem baptism (The Shepherd Of Hermas, Book 3, Similitudes, 9:16; see, for further discussion, Anthony Lusvardi, Baptism Of Desire And Christian Salvation [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Of America Press, 2024], 15-18). As I discussed in a recent post, people like Cyprian thought John 3:5 refers to two sacraments, not just baptism. Cyprian, along with others, also disagreed with Roman Catholicism about the validity of heretical baptism. As I discussed in another recent post, the concept of baptism of desire was widely absent or contradicted early on and didn't become a majority view until well into church history. And there are many other baptismal views the early sources held that are wrong by the standards of modern Roman Catholicism and modern Eastern Orthodoxy. For a discussion of a lot of other examples, see here. The views we find in the early sources include credobaptism and justification apart from baptism.

Paedo/credobaptism

I think the traditional arguments for infant baptism and believer's baptism are indecisive and basically cancel each other out. I think the strongest argument for infant baptism is sociological: Was there a 1C cultural presumption that the religion of (underage) children is the religion of their parents? A default ascriptive status. If so, ir carries the presumption that the rite of Christian initiation extends to children of Christian parents. Conversely, if believer's baptism was, in fact, the original position, then we'd expect the NT to be much more explicit since it would need to counter the cultural presupposition. I recently linked to a detailed exposition of that argument:

https://www.academia.edu/34577884/Infant_Baptism_in_the_First-Century_Presupposition_Pool

I find the sociological argument mildly persuasive, although it's not a knockdown argument. 

I think the best argument for believer's baptism goes like this: the church fathers began to view baptism as a rite that washed away the guilt of original sin. That development led to the complementary development of infant baptism. Dying unbaptized babies were damned because they died in a state of original sin. Given high rates of infant mortality, infant baptism was a preemptive measure to ensure the salvation of dying infants. 

I think that's a plausible historical reconstruction. Although patristics is not my bailiwick, I think it's easy to document that confluence of factors. 

However, it's possible that infant baptism was the original practice, with a different rationale. What happened wasn't the novel introduction of infant baptism, but the novel introduction of a new rationale that co-opted the original rationale. 

As a Zwinglian, I don't think either side has much to gain if they are right or much to lose if they are wrong. The real danger is when faith in the (alleged) efficacy of the sacraments usurps faith in Christ. It becomes important when people make it more important than it is. 

Baptists and paedobaptists: what if both sides are right?

http://www.tyndalehouse.com/TynBul/Library/TynBull_2004_55_1_06_Lane_BaptiseBabies.pdf

"The real reason evangelicals don't baptize babies"

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/troublerofisrael/2016/11/the-real-reason-evangelicals-dont-baptize-babies/

From a sociological standpoint, Morris is probably on to something. Mind you, it's patronizing insofar as you have many Baptists who have thoughtful, principled reasons for opposing paedobaptism. So his analysis borders on a hasty generalization.

But that caveat aside, he's probably right that for many evangelical Americans, opposition to paedobaptism is influenced by a revivalist paradigm. And I share his aversion to decisional evangelism.

However, even though I myself am a tepid paedobaptist, his analysis is one-sided. To begin with, decisional evangelism represents a travesty of conversion. But we shouldn't judge the principle by the travesty.

Moreover, we need to compare and contrast that to the opposite error. The 18C evangelical revival was a heaven-sent reaction to the dead formalism of liturgical churches. If decisional evangelism is bad, so is the presumption that your child is saved because a minister sprinkled water on its head. Many people are only too happy to seek spiritual shortcuts and vest false assurance in religious ceremonies. Ironically, the revivalism of Finney and Graham is just a different kind of ritualism, replacing baptism with the sacrament of the altar call. 

The basic problem is taking a cookie-cutter approach to everyone. But everyone doesn't have the same experience. On the one hand, some people are devout, lifelong Christians. They were Christian for as long as they can remember. For them, there was never a conscious transition. And there couldn't be, since it was real to them as soon as they had the cognitive development to reflect on it.

On the other hand, you have nominal Christians. Some of them lose their hereditary faith. Others assume they are Christian just because they grew up in church. 

A good pastor needs to preach an evangelistic sermon every so often. Take nothing for granted. 

Here and hereafter

I'll comment on Bnonn's sequel: 

http://bnonn.com/what-does-baptism-signify/

The first thing I'd note is that Bnonn's follow-up argument is far more complicated that his original argument. Yet the advertised merit of his original argument was its simplicity. Well, it didn't take long to leave simplicity behind. In order to defend his original argument, the supporting argument becomes fairly complex. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, of course. But that just means we're unlikely to win quick and easy victorious in longstanding theological debates. 

"For instance, many pedobaptists argue that children of covenant members are themselves covenant members, or should at least be taken as such, until they are old enough to explicitly repudiate that membership."

That's certainly a popular contemporary formulation. But it's questionable whether that represents the traditional Presbyterian view:

http://www.westminsterconfession.org/the-doctrines-of-grace/historic-calvinism-and-neo-calvinism.php

"So pedobaptists take a “loose, implicit” approach to membership. Members of the community and members of the covenant seem broadly conterminous in their view."

That wasn't my argument. Indeed, my argument explicitly distinguished the two. I see them as overlapping categories. 

Take this argument: kids that age are viewed as extensions of their parents. They aren't viewed as independent agents. 

It's like belonging to a family. You were born into it. 

"Conversely, credobaptists take a “tight, explicit” approach. There are many members of the community (children, unbelieving spouses, etc) who are not members of the covenant."

I could say the same thing in paedobaptist grounds, although I wouldn't use children to illustrate the point. 

"For my own part, I think pedobaptism is the natural position to take if the new covenant is basically the same as the old, and we are applying its signs in the same way; and if baptism merely signifies membership in the covenant community, or a kind of “implicit” membership in the covenant."

i) No doubt there are crucial differences. But even the OT distinguished between physical circumcision and "circumcision of the heart."

ii) A basic problem I have with Bnonn's position is that it suffers from overrealized eschatology. One reason I distinguish between membership in the new covenant and membership in the new covenant community is because the church isn't heaven. In a fallen world, including the church, the vegetable garden inevitably has wheat and tares. You can't weed out all the tares. You can't even see all the tares.

That doesn't mean you should abstain from church discipline, when the occasion presents itself. But because the church is unavoidably a mixed community, unlike heaven (or the world to come), there is bound to be a distinction between membership in the covenant and membership in the covenant community. 

Here below, the covenant community is a temporary and transitional organization. It's at the halfway mark on the journey. 

So you have to strike a balance. If you are too strict about membership, you will exclude some born-again Christians. Exclude some of the elect. If you are too lax, the church will mirror the world. 

"Christian baptism is modeled on the baptism of John; John’s baptism laid a foundation for and prefigured ours. But John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance (Acts 19:4). Those baptized were adults."

i) Isn't that appeal circular? If, by definition, John's baptism is a baptism of repentance; if, by definition, it was geared to adults, then by definition it's restricted to adults. It's like saying, "by definition, you can't be a married bachelor."

True, but tautologous. Like saying Alfa Romeo is an Italian sports car. No doubt. Does that mean all sports cars are Italian?

ii) Also, what was the age cut-off for John's baptism? Was it for adults, or did it include minors? Was the age of reason the threshold? 

Was John baptizing 7-8-year-old kids? That doesn't seem to be the targeted demographic niche. But that makes it disanalogous with credobaptism.  

"Baptism in Paul’s thinking signifies membership in the covenant because it signifies being made alive in Jesus—something reserved exclusively for covenant members.
Baptism is a symbol of regeneration. Thus it symbolizes covenant membership; not mere membership in the covenant community."
"Notice that baptism saves here. How? Not by removing spiritual dirt as water removes physical dirt, but by signifying our appeal to God through which are justified." 

Bnonn prooftexted this understanding by quoting or citing Rom 6:1-4, 1 Cor 5:17, Eph 2:5, Col 2:9, 1 Pet 3:21.

Several issues:

i) Because the mode of baptism is controversial, translators sidestep that controversy by transliterating the Greek word. If they were to translate the word, that would prejudge the mode of baptism. And their restraint is a prudent policy.

ii) Apropos (i), the English word "baptism" denotes a Christian sacrament (or "ordinance"). In English usage, it's a technical term for the Christian rite of initiation. Sometimes it's used figuratively. 

iii) Apropos (i-ii), this creates a risk of equivocation when citing baptismal texts from the NT. That's because, unlike the English word, the Greek word isn't a technical term for a Christian sacrament. It has more than one meaning. It can denote a Christian sacrament, or it can simply denote an action involving water. In addition, the Bible often uses aqueous theological metaphors.

When we read "baptism" (or "baptize") in the NT, we automatically associate that with a Christian sacrament. But that's conditioned by the connotations of the English word. The Greek word is less specialized and more polysemous. 

In the Gospels and Acts, the Gospels may make it clear that the word is used for water baptism. It's not the word alone, but the word in conjunction with the setting, that makes it refer to baptism. Indeed, that would be implicit even in the absence of the word.

But in the epistles, those narrative clues are often lacking. So you can't just assume, without further ado, that the Greek word denotes a Christian sacrament rather than a picturesque theological metaphor.  

iv) But even assuming, for the sake of argument, that all his prooftexts refer to the rite of baptism, they either prove too much or too little. 

a) These passages are hortatory and idealistic. They urge the recipients of the letter to emulate what baptism signifies. But that implies a gap between the sign and what they actually are. 

And that's a best-case scenario. That's for pious Christians who still fall short.

b) But, of course, Pauline churches also include Paul's opponents. They include heretics and apostates. What baptism signifies is in no sense true of them, even though they were baptized members of a local church planted by Paul. 

Second childhood

i) To my knowledge, Baptists think the administration of baptism should be contingent on faith. On a credible profession of faith.

That may be age-appropriate. They don't necessarily demand the same thing from a 10-year-old as a 20-year-old. I also suspect Reformed Baptist churches have a higher standard for what constitutes a credible profession of faith than easy-believist churches.  

But the basic principle is that children before the age of reason shouldn't be baptized. And after a child reaches or passes the age of reason, baptism is conditional on his desire to be baptized, along with a credible profession of faith. 

ii) With that in mind, there's a striking parallel between infancy and dotage. In old age, or sometimes sooner, some adults become feeble-minded. Their short-term memory goes, then their long-term memories goes. They lose their reasoning ability. They eventually lose consciousness. 

It's as if they are regressing from adulthood to childhood to infancy. Reversing the stages of cognitive development. Indeed, it's called "second childhood."

Some Christians who become senile were baptized as older children, teenagers, or adults. Their baptism was contingent on a credible profession of faith.

But there's now a sense in which they lost their faith. Not because they renounced the faith, but because they lost the intellectual ability to have faith. In a sense, they will die unbelievers–but not apostates. Much like if they died in infancy. 

Then you have Christians who were baptized as babies, in the hope and prayer that by growing up in the faith, they'd grow into the faith. Sometimes that happens, and sometimes not. But in their case they became what their baptism represented. They became believers. 

But now that they are senile, they have reverted to the same cognitive condition they were in when they were baptized as infants. They've come full circle.

Whether a senile Christian was baptized before he came to faith, or came to faith after he was baptized, at this point he is like a child before the age of reason. Or even like a baby who sleeps most of the time.

Yet if senile Christians were ever in the covenant, they remain so, despite their dementia. And their membership in the covenant community doesn't lapse when they lose their mind and memory. 

That's a special case, but hardly a rarity. Indeed, one of the cruel ironies of modern medical science is that we probably have a higher percentage of senile men and women than ever before. Due to medication and surgery, many people who would have died at a younger age live much longer. And the longer they live, the greater the risk of becoming senile.  

Many baptized believers will enter a second childhood which parallels their condition when they were baptized as infants. A spiritual symmetry. They return to God as they came from God. 

"Why I'm not a Baptist"

https://analytictheologye4c5.wordpress.com/2015/07/11/why-im-not-a-baptist/

"A simple argument for credobaptism"

I'm going to comment on this post:

http://bnonn.com/who-is-baptism-for/

Among other things, Bnonn has some interesting things to say about Acts 2:38-39, which is a staple paedobaptist prooftext. However, I prefer to focus on his central argument, which he states thusly:

There are people who have wanted me to write a series on this issue. I’m afraid I am going to disappoint them; I believe the matter of who we should baptize is fundamentally a very simple one; far too many words have been wasted complicating it; thus I am going to focus quite relentlessly on the key question which decides the outcome of all the others. 

Here it is: 

Who is a member of the new covenant? 

This is what it all boils down to, because there is one overriding axiom with which all Christians—or all that I’ve spoken with and read on this matter—agree: 

The sign of a covenant should only be given to members of that covenant. 

If you disagree with this axiom there is little I can say to you; but if you agree with it, then there is little else we need to worry about. The question of what continuities and discontinuities exist between the various old covenants and the new one, between circumcision and baptism, and so on, are all very interesting, but completely beside the point. The question is as simple as determining the qualifications for membership in the new covenant, and giving the sign of that covenant—baptism—to only those people who qualify. 

Is that believers only? Or do infants qualify too? 

[Quotes] Jeremiah 31:31-34

Seems to me that there are two basic problems with his "simple" argument:

1. What kind of membership does baptism signify? He fails to register the following distinction:

i) membership in the new covenant

ii) membership in the new covenant community

His argument requires baptism to signify the (i) former kind of membership. But that, in turn, requires him to either exclude the (ii) second kind of membership from his definition, or show that (i) and (ii) are conterminous. So he needs to resolve that crucial equivocation. 

Even if he could do one of those two things, that goes beyond his original argument. That necessitates a subsidiary argument. 

2. Apropos (1), if baptism is a sign, then to whom or for whom is it a sign? Presumably, it's not a sign for God's benefit. God knows the status of the individual apart from the sign. 

So it's either a sign to/for the baptized Christian, and/or the religious community to which he belongs. It marks him out as a member of the religious community. One of their own. 

If so, that suggests baptism is a sign of membership in the covenant community (i.e. the church). 

3. Apropos (2), this is reinforced by the nature of the sign. Unlike circumcision, which is a permanent physical sign that's verifiable by visual inspection (if need be), baptism leaves no enduring trace evidence. The sign is the baptismal ceremony, and not the result of a ritual action (unlike circumcision). The only evidence would be the recollection of witnesses to the ceremony. And that, once again, singles out the communal nature of the sign. 

4. On the face of it, membership in the covenant community needn't necessarily be equivalent to membership in the covenant itself. Just in general, there are differing degrees and conditions of social affiliation, depending on the type of society or community under review. In principle, the conditions for membership in the covenant community might be looser than the conditions for membership in the covenant itself. Bnonn has a very strict criterion for new covenant membership: regeneration.

However, God made humans social creatures. It's generally families that attend church. At the very least, church attendance and family religion typically overlap. Although some family members may skip church, a person who attends church is usually related to one or more other people who attend the same church. Even in the case of widows or widowers, they used to attend that church with their spouse. Likewise, they used to take their kids to church, until their kids grew up and moved elsewhere. 

Now, I've said "attendance" rather than membership to avoid prejudicial terminology. But given the familial structure of core human relationships and human behavior, it seems artificial to insist that membership in the covenant community is restricted to membership in the covenant itself. And, in any case, if that's what Bnonn's position requires, then the onus is on him to supply a supporting argument.  

I don't think a paedobaptist has to prove that baptism is not a sign of membership in the covenant. Rather, unless Bnonn can prove that baptism is not a sign of membership in the covenant community (or else prove that membership in the covenant and the covenant community are coextensive), his argument fails.

5. In addition, isn't the relationship between the sign and the significate somewhat loose? On the one hand, some people possess what the sign signifies without possessing the sign; on the other hand, some people possess the sign without possessing what the sign signifies. So it's hard to see why one requires the other–not to mention that membership in the covenant (as Bnonn defines it) is, in any event, an unverifiable condition. 

6. A second basic problem with his argument is that it generates a dilemma. Presumably, Bnonn admits that some children below the age of reason already meet the condition of membership in the covenant. Some of them are elect/regenerate. That means whichever position you take carries tradeoffs:

i) On the one hand, paedobaptists will confer the sign on some individuals who aren't members of the covenant. 

ii) On the other hand, credobaptists will fail to confer the sign on some individuals who are members of the covenant.

Put another way, if you baptize every baby, regenerate and unregenerate (or elect and reprobate) alike, then this ensures that you confer the sign on the subset of babies who are, indeed, members of the covenant. Doing more than's necessary is a way of ensuring that you don't miss those who definitely qualify. 

Conversely, if you decline to baptize anyone under the age of reason, then you miss all those who do qualify. 

Now, it might be argued that that's a case of postponing baptism until they reach the age at which they can give a credible profession of faith.

However, in NT times, as well as most of church history, not to mention parts of the Third World today, where infant mortality is high, baptism delayed is tantamount to baptism denied. In many cases it's now or never.  

I'm not suggesting that's a catastrophic loss to the child. I don't think baptism is a prerequisite for salvation. I don't even think it confers special graces. I'm just considering the logic of Bnonn's position. 

INFANT BAPTISM DEBATE: Gregg Strawbridge vs. James White in Orlando (March 23, 2015)

http://www.paedobaptism.com/strawbridge-v-white-debate-orlando-march-23-2015/