Yes, children were present in household baptisms. Biblical evidence.

rturner76 said:

And? What does that have to do with infant baptism?

5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

God knows his babies and they know him.

9 Yet you brought me out of the womb;
you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast.
10 From birth I was cast on you;
from my mother’s womb you have been my God.

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NOTHING!

It proves that people saved were immersed except in the case where NO water was present and there is nothing about infants at all!

Ain't Zwinglian said:

You quoting from extra biblical material. Extra biblical material is NEVER to interpret Scripture.

This practice is not allowed by Sola Scripture, plus it goes against the Sufficiency of Scripture. Meaning the exact divine words of Scripture is all that is needed for faith and life of the Christian faith.

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Now......who do you think does not know that ??? Really!

However....... It is claimed to be the work of the twelve Apostles. The Greek “Apostolic Constitutions” has many references to the Didache, with additional Scriptures added. The Didache seems to have been a sort of church manual for primitive Christians, probably in rural areas dependent mostly on itinerant ministers.

Ain't Zwinglian said:

You quoting from extra biblical material. Extra biblical material is NEVER to interpret Scripture.

This practice is not allowed by Sola Scripture, plus it goes against the Sufficiency of Scripture. Meaning the exact divine words of Scripture is all that is needed for faith and life of the Christian faith.

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You are correct BUT then why would you say and I quote..........

"Christians are authorized to baptize all who compose a nation, men, women and children & infants."

YOU ADDED the words INFANTS. NO WHERE in the Bible is that found.

Why would you use the argument of Sola Scriptura and then say........
"INFANTS" should be baptized.???????

Ain't Zwinglian said:

Baptism is necessary to salvation because the Word of God requires it. For whatever Jesus has instituted and commanded it is to be done. Obedience to Jesus’ commands is always obligatory.

However, baptism is not absolutely necessary for salvation because the way God instituted it. Certain persons by definition are excluded from being baptized. The unborn. If were baptism were absolutely necessary for salvation, all unborn who die before birth would be excluded from salvation. So baptism is not essential unto salvation meaning that is absolutely indispensable.

But while God binds us to observe being baptism, God does not bind Himself to baptism as he does other redemptive events

WHAT IS ESSENTIAL AND ABSOLUTELY INDISPENSABLE FOR SALVATION IS THAT CHIRST SHOULD DIE for us. THIS GOD HAS BOUND HIMSELF TO. Without the shedding of blood there is no remission and can be no remission of sins. Salvation is impossible without Christ’s sacrifice.

So God has not bound himself to baptism in the same way he binds himself to the Atonement.

God binds us to be baptized but it is not absolute where baptism is impossible to be administered. The unborn are a prime example of the impossibility of the administration of baptism.

But wherever baptism is offered, the Christian is baptized. This is NT teaching.

The necessity of baptism is not absolute but ordinary. The ordinary way the Christian life is lived is by being baptized. All Christians are to baptized with no exceptions. This is the normal pattern. Baptism is not optional for the believer, and there is no such thing in the NT as an unbaptized believer.

True faith always results in baptism.

However, outright rejection of baptism is the rejection of Jesus' command in Matthew 28 and Mark 16, thus no true faith can really be present.

We should always publicly teach that Baptism is necessary for salvation except in cases where Baptism is impossible to be administered.

A WARNING: No Christian should ever teach baptism is not necessary or one doesn't have to be baptized especially to new converts or those of weak faith. Jesus warns us: "but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea." This means immediate death is nothing compared to judgment day.

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You are incorrect. You are telling the world of your personal OPINON!

Water baptism is certainly important, and required of every believer. However, the New Testament does not teach that baptism is necessary for salvation.

I have had the blessing of leading men to Christ on the battelfield and there was NO water to anywhere to baptise them or the time to do it.

Do you really think that because those men were not baptized in water that they did not go to heaven. IF you do, why not call there wives and children and tell them that instead of posting on a computer site.

Have YOU personally talked with someone dieing. Have you asked them to accept Christ and be saved and they said YES....and 2 minutes later they died. Did that person LIE????
Would water make them somehow saved.??????

If you believe that then YOU are saying that WATER is more powerful than the Blood of God!!!!!

Major1 said:

It does not date back to the first century, or to the apostle Peter, as it claims to do. In fact it really began to develop properly from AD 312, when the Roman Emperor, Constantine alleged that he had become a Christian.

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THat's odd. Then how dod St Peter found it if it wasn't from the first century? Check again.

Major1 said:

NOTHING!

It proves that people saved were immersed except in the case where NO water was present and there is nothing about infants at all!

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Nothing about whole families getting baptized either?

Furthermore:
St. Paul, being a Jew, as well as all of the apostles, understood the idea that true religion is a family affair. A Jew became a Jew when he was circumcised on the eighth day after his birth. They did not have to first “accept Moses as their personal prophet” before they could be circumcised. And according to Paul, baptism is the fulfillment of circumcision:

In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of flesh in the circumcision of Christ. . . . You were buried with him in baptism (Col. 2:11-12)

Major1 said:

As an INFANT, what did that experience do for you ?

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It caused the Holy Spirit to dwell within me, which enabled me to partake of the Eucharist discerning the Body and Blood of our Lord, to have a rich prayer life, a Guardian Angel to protect me, and the ability to escape nightmares through prayer, among many other blessings.

In fact, of all the gifts my parents gave me in my youth, the greatest gift was Holy Baptism.

What as an INFANT did you experience?

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At least half of my earliest memories, formed when I was very young involve being in church, and the rest involve the experience of pure love. I can even recall with vivid detail my first birthday. My parents bought me a rideable toy bus, and in so doing inadvertently sparked a lifelong fascination with transportation systems.

Did you feel differant?
Did you feel forgiven?
Did you feel relieved?

Did you confess your sin?
Did you know what sin was?

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These are things that for the baptized Christian, since the Nicene Creed prohibits being baptized more than once, that we experience through confession and reconciliation, which takes two forms: congregational prayers for forgiveness, such as the famous Collect for Purity and Prayer of Humble Access from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, and auricular confession, which is private confession with a pastor or priest. Auricular confession is practiced not only by the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Eastern Catholics, although interestingly enough (at least to myself and @Pavel Mosko ) the practice has lapsed in the Assyrian Church of the East, but also by the Anglicans, Lutherans, and Methodists, and to my knowledge, the Moravians. The Anglican and Lutheran churches represent the largest and second largest Protestant churches, and when you add in the Methodists, who are also enormous, the result could be as many as 190 million Protestants, plus 260 million Orthodox and a billion Catholics who practice auricular confession.

And confession isn’t just about sin: a Russian Orthodox priest once delivered me from extremely severe bereavement I was experiencing over the death of my beloved father, memory eternal, and on another occasion, a retired Serbian Orthodox bishop delivered me from a lifelong fear of hearses.

I would also note that in Eastern Christianity, it is rare for penances to be applied during confession; it has never happened to me.

In general, I am of the believe that both forms of confession can be effective, and indeed St. John of Kronstadt introduced a kind of congregational confession into the Russian Orthodox Church: the discipline of Russian, Ukrainian, Belarussian, Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian Orthodox Christians is to engage in auricular confession at least once a month, and frequently at All Night Vigils before every liturgy, or even more frequently than that during Lent, which is incredibly spiritually healthy, by the way. In the case of St. John of Kronstadt, he was one of several figures responsible for the spiritual revival of the Russian Orthodox Church in the 1890s after 200 years of stagnation following Czar Peter putting the church under the control of a government bureaucracy*, and the result was that hundreds of people flocked to his church every Sunday to partake of the Eucharist, far more than he could handle via auricular confession, so he simply had the people shout their sins as loud as possible so that their individual privacy would be retained, before collectively absolving them, which is a solemn duty of presbyters according to Matthew 16:18, just like the Eucharist (Matthew 26:26-28) and Baptism (Matthew 28:19).

Did you ask Christ to pay for your sin?

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I don’t believe in penal substitutionary atonement.

You see, the Bible says in Romans 10:10 that.........
“With the heart man believeth unto righteousness: and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”

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Indeed it does, and this combined with the preaching of St. John the Baptist seems a powerful endorsement of auricular confession.

What the Bible does not say is “don’t baptize infants.”

Charles Haddon Spurgeon said.............
"To make a profession, without having a possession, is to be a cloud without rain—a river-bed, choked up with dry stones, but utterly without water".

Source: July 19, 1863Scripture: Romans 10:10 From: Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Volume 9

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I really don’t care what Spurgeon said. I recognize many people regard him as a great preacher, and I am glad they are able to derive value from his sermons. Personally, among historic homilists, I am more of a fan of St. John Chrysostom, St. Ephrem the Syrian and St. Jacob of Sarugh, and the 18th century Congregationalist preacher Jonathan Edwards, who effectively used a fire and brimstone approach to get through to the Yankees, and more recently, Dr. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, who I did once see in person, which was thrilling, and Archbishop Fulton Sheen. Also, there is a 19th century Anglican bishop whose name I am trying to recall whose sermons I love…

Edit: that would be J.B. Lightfoot, the Bishop of Durham, also a noted scholar of Patristics. His sermon on Pontius Pilate was a brilliant and prescient dissection of moral relativism.

Among preachers alive today, I particularly like the Coptic Orthodox, who unlike many of the other Orthodox churches, are really stressing the importance of homiletics. Alas Coptic services tend to be very long, slightly too long for me to do every Sunday (and I couldn’t go anyway as I have my own parishes to worry about), but their preaching does not disappoint. Indeed I frequently look to them for ideas on what to talk about.

*Fortunately this is no longer the case, and furthermore, in the US nearly all Russian Orthodox parishes belong to either the autonomous Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (also known as ROCOR), whose Ukrainian Canadian leader Metropolitan Hilarion Kapral sadly reposed in May, or the multiethnic Orthodox Church in America, which inherited the massive Russian Orthodox mission in Alaska, and also is responsible for half of the Romanian Orthodox, Bulgarian Orthodox and Ruthenian Orthodox parishes and nearly all of the Albanian Orthodox parishes; both churches are also extremely friendly to converts and have large numbers of American priests, and ROCOR along with the Antiochian Orthodox Church, which is also famously convert-friendly, operate Western Rite parishes whose liturgy is more familiar to Western Christians. Both OCA and ROCOR have raised millions and millions of dollars to help Ukrainians suffering from the tragic conflict, but this hasn’t stopped stupid people from vandalizing their churches because they see the word “Russian”, despite the fact that the majority of Ukrainian Americans and Ukrainian Canadians attend these churches and until May, when Metropolitan Hilarion died of a chronic illness, one of them was run by a Ukrainian, and the other is run by an American who is not ethnically Slavic.

Major1 said:

He did so because he said that he had seen a vision of a cross in the sky and when he was successful in a subsequent battle he attributed it to this. As a result, this Roman Emperor, who had known nothing other than paganism all his life, suddenly “joined” the early fourth century church in Rome. He effectively took it over.

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This is categorically untrue; I have discussed the actual history of the early church and Emperor Constantine’s involvement several times and am disinclined to repeat myself, but suffice it to say, Constantine’s son Constantius became an Arian, and the early church, founded by the Holy Apostles including Saints Peter, Paul and Thomas (who collectively established the largest number of permanent churches), along with Saints John, James the Just, Andrew, and the other Apostles, was persecuted by the non-Trinitarian Arian church from roughly the time St. Athanasius was exiled in 336 AD (when St. Constantine was still on the throne, but his pious mother St. Helena had reposed, and he was likely senile, and was being manipulated by the sinister bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia), until at least 386 AD. And then, while the dogmatic persecution stopped, we had the grotesque spectacle of Eudoxia conspiring with Theophilus of Alexandria to depose St. John Chrysostom after he criticized her for purchasing a solid gold toilet (or the fourth century equivalent thereof…the Romans did have plumbing).

Physical persecution resumed in the 6th century with the genocidal persecution of the Oriental Orthodox under Emperor Justinian, then in the 7th century the Emperor of the time decided it would be a good idea to cut off the tongue of St. Maximus the Confessor for his opposing the Monothelite heresy (which had been supported decades earlier by Pope Honorius I of Rome; it was around the time of St. Maximus declared anathema by the Sixth Ecumenical Council). And then the Empire decided to enforce iconoclasm, and horribly persecuted Iconodules, despite the ruling of the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 AD that Iconoclasm was forbidden. This lasted until 843 AD. Only after this time did the adversarial relationship between the Church and the Byzantine Empire cease, as instead a new adversarial relationship between the Carolignian Holy Roman Empire and the Roman church, and between the Roman church and the Eastern Orthodox church, and between the Byzantine Empire and Venice in the West and the Muslims in the East, both eager to divide up the remaining Byzantine lands. Spoiler: the Muslims won, although their path to victory was greatly aided by the Fourth Crusade, in which Venice under the pretense of liberating the Holy Land once more instead just conquered Constantinople.

years ago there was a thread that popped up on the basic kind of topic and I'm going to quote from some of my favorite posters. @The Liturgist

Infant Baptism



From @Daniel9v9

"It's a common idea in our day that baptism is an outward act of obedience; that it's a public declaration of faith. The problem is, that's not what Scriptures say. If you believe it does, I would challenge you to read everything the Bible has to say about baptism.

Baptism is not what we do for God, but rather, what God does for us. It's the grace and work of God, instituted by Christ Himself — that we are truly baptised into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is not on account of the water, but God's promise through the water; the work of the Holy Spirit.

So the burden shouldn't be on the orthodox Church bodies to defend why children should be baptised, but on those who insist that children should not be. For where in Scripture does it say or even allude to that we must deny children God's grace? Isn't the norm in the Bible that people are born and raised up in faith, as opposed to getting to a point where they have to receive a personal experience and then make a decision to follow God? In the OT, it's very clear that all of Israel belonged to God. Likewise, in the NT, we see that whole households are baptised. More explicitly, Christ has instituted the Church to baptise and make disciples of all nations, which includes everyone. The Gospel is for everyone, for Christ says "Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven."



@Albion

(referencing Christian baby dedication ceremonies in lieu of baptism).

I do not know that we can say there is something dangerous with this ceremony.
It has no scriptural basis, yet it is performed in churches that say they are guided by the Bible to the exclusion of human traditions or theories. And it does nothing that a baptism doesn't do--pledge the parents to bring up the child in the faith, show the whole congregation as standing behind that act, etc.

So what would the correct word for that be? Its sort of like inventing a ceremony for people getting engaged who do not intend to marry. It isn't a mock wedding, so it is hard to call it wrongful, but neither can we say that it is done in accord with anything in the Bible or that it has much religious significance.

It has no comparison to the situation with Joseph and Mary, by the way, because that Jewish practice was a marriage commitment even though it was stretched out over several different steps.



@Albion

The only reason that instances are recorded in the New Testament of followers of Christ speaking to adult converts about being baptized is because, when the whole world is to be evangelized, OF COURSE they would go first to adults! Wouldn't you? You wouldn't expect them to cruise schoolyards trying to convince children, would you???? But when it says that "whole households" were baptized, as the NT says, it means children, too.

In fact, it is ludicrous to assume (which advocates of "believers baptism" often do) either that 1) there were no children in the households of people of that place and time OR that 2) the parents would join a new religion and insist that their own children be excluded from it.


@Daniel9v9

There is a lot of confused statements here, and what I was getting at does actually answer your question, albeit it's very brief and may not be clear.

To be baptised into the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and to be baptised into the name of Jesus Christ, is the same thing because there is only one God. There is one baptism for Christians, and this one baptism was instituted, not by man, but by God, or rather, the God-man Jesus Christ.

Jesus, by virtue of being fully man and fully God (not half and half, not a demi-god), is true God. He is the Son from all eternity, but also, incomprehensively, the whole Godhead dwells in Him bodily. So can we say that Jesus saves? Yes. Can we say that the Father saves? Yes. Can we say that the Holy Spirit saves? Yes. For it is one God, in three persons. God saves. "Jesus", quite literally means "God saves". So when Christ commands the apostles to baptise in God's name, they do exactly that - in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit - or, Jesus Christ. Furthermore, when we include "the Son", in the Trinitarian statement, we do name Jesus specifically as He is the Son. This is the one baptism that the Church has received.

Baptism is not our obedience to God, but rather it's the grace of God. It's not what we do for God, but it's what God does for us. It's His promise to us, that we will truly be baptised into His own name. This is apprehended through faith and effected through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Salvation is not a process. We are justified by grace through faith, once and for all, by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now, sanctification, on the other hand, is a process. The fruit of the Holy Spirit produces faith, trust, obedience and love for God, and joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Where, may I ask, are all the paedobaptist pastors who are professedly committed to baptizing each and every person, born or unborn? Are they in the hospitals baptizing patients (not to mention personnel), in the nursing homes baptizing dying folks (and related personnel), at the malls baptizing shoppers, and at the doors of homes and apartments?

If baptism is entirely unrelated to faith and is a commandment to be obeyed, then it should be no obstacle to obey. It sure beats preaching the gospel and discipling folks.

bbbbbbb said:

Where, may I ask, are all the paedobaptist pastors who are professedly committed to baptizing each and every person, born or unborn? Are they in the hospitals baptizing patients (not to mention personnel), in the nursing homes baptizing dying folks (and related personnel), at the malls baptizing shoppers, and at the doors of homes and apartments?

If baptism is entirely unrelated to faith and is a commandment to be obeyed, then it should be no obstacle to obey. It sure beats preaching the gospel and discipling folks.

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Yeah that is pretty much a strawman / reduction to absurdity argument.

Nobody who believes in infant baptism would do that because we believe that in the basic Jewish notion that until children reach the age of accountability that children are under the spiritual covering of their parents, or more exactly that is the context such a baptism is suppose to take place in. Besides this, Catechism or confirmation are also needed for the Faith.

Pavel Mosko said:

Yeah that is pretty much a strawman / reduction to absurdity argument.

Nobody who believes in infant baptism would do that because we believe that in the basic Jewish notion that until children reach the age of accountability that parents are under the spiritual covering of their parents, or more exactly that is the concept such a baptism is suppose to take place. Besides this, Catechism or confirmation are also needed for the Faith.

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Assuming that there is an "age of accountablity" which many, including yourself, hold to believe, then what is the point of baptizing people before that age is reached?

You are of a different faith tradition than ain't Zwinglian or myself, so you are quite correct in assessing my response to him as being a strawman for Christians such as yourself.

bbbbbbb said:

Assuming that there is an "age of accountablity" which many, including yourself, hold to believe, then what is the point of baptizing people before that age is reached?

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It's the same point in why children were circumcised in the OT.

Young children do have a spiritual life even though they do not have a full understanding of things. Baptism is simply becoming part of the family of God.
`Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. ' (Prov. 22:6.)

Jesse Dornfeld said:

I'm afraid your argument works against you in the verses you have stated as in Acts it doe NOT mention children, which, it would be expected if it was the case that children were present. If you want to associate the words children and household, then only when both children and household are present would it mean children are present.

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Well I'm slowly working my way through the thread!

When I see objections like this I don't think lots of folks get or appreciate how ancient Israel and the early Church operated. Namely things in the early days were less about "making a decision to receive Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior", as a more group minded mentality where worshipped with your family and your tribe. You participated with the seven festivals with your family and other relatives. Unless you were a unweened baby you participated in the festival. And of course young baby boys participated early in their faith via circumcision.


Basically the ancient Hebrews and the early Christians were much less individual focused than many believers today (That was less part of their culture but also less the focus of their faith). Oh and the OT pattern of Faith is really important, because that was the Bible of the early Church. It took 4 centuries to get people to put together and agree on the NT, not to mention copying it etc. IF you look at those early Christian Apologists like Justin Martyr, they are being like saint Paul hitting those OT typologies pretty heavily.



Besides all this there is the aspects of whether or not young children have spiritual lives even if they do not have the cognitive abilities to understand as much as older children and adults do. I can think of a number of passages that imply that is true. Furthermore I don't think the Credo Baptists always appreciate some of the potential limitations of their own viewpoint/ theology. IF you think baptizing babies and other young children is completely useless what is your point of view on people who have severe mental disabilities where a middle aged man may only have the mind set of a kindergartener or worse?

Such problems are not a problem for folks that believe in infant baptism, Jesus himself used the trusting nature of very young children as examples of how our Faith should be in the Gospels after all.


Of course this one of those topics where the familiar saying of "leading a horse to water" applies. It's a free country, you can practice your faith the way you want to.

Ain't Zwinglian said:

• Baptism is an outward sign of an inward change.
• Baptism is an immersion in water as an expression of repentant faith in Jesus.
  
• A public proclamation and a testimony of God’s work in a believer’s life.
• Baptism is a required step of obedience for a disciple, that is, a person who is already saved.

What is the problem with these definitions? THEY ARE NOT FOUND IN SCRIPTURE.

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Yeah I enjoyed requoting @Daniel9v9 post from 2019, where mentions that. Technically speaking that would be something like a Eisegesis interpretation of certain Gospel and Pauline passages right?