PRINCIPLE HERMENUETIC: An absolute inability to perform any command from scripture absolves a person from the obligation to perform it. Any passage of scripture, requiring a qualification or action of which children are incapable is to be interpreted as pertaining to adults.
Hermenuetical Text: II Thess 3:10 For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.”
In I Thessalonians certain people got the idea that the Second Coming was around the corner so they stopped working, insisting other Christians support them. Then Paul writes them this second letter to reminding them “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.”
This passage only refers to adults. Infants don’t work nor can they. What about the infirmed, aged, mentally disabled? These inabilities need to be remedied if you apply this passage to all. God does not require impossibilities. Helping widows, giving alms, feeding the poor, preaching the word, defending the faith studying scripture do not apply to infants.
Paul’s words there are only for adults, and they are only for able-bodied adults who could work but refuse.
An absolute inability to perform any command from scripture absolves a person from the obligation to perform it. Thus a blind man is not bound to read the gospel, nor deaf man to hear the gospel preached, nor an insane person from understanding it. God does not require impossibilities.
“Repent and be baptized” is only addressed to sinful adults. And you can’t bring children into these passages who are not addressed. Had Jesus expected children to repent and be converted, He would have addressed them as He did His adult audience. There is no expressed command for infants to repent.
The Bible was not written to infants and is therefore not going to direct them to do anything. They are under the care of their Christian parents and pastors who can repent, hear, understand, and believe, teach and confess the faith.
Additionally, there is an important distinction to be made between baptizing an infant and an adult believer---one has the need to repent, the other does not. Failure for infants to have intricate knowledge of the Atonement is no more a barrier to baptism than to their future repentance. Furthermore, adults do need to repent, but repentance is not a one time act...what infants and adults have in common is their future repentance.
However, infants have one advantage over unbelieving adults. Infants do not yet have a rebellious reason! Scripture teaches that we are conceived in sin and if we grow up as unbelievers we develop a conscious reason that is hostile to the Gospel. So, unlike infants who are in a position to receive the Gospel, adults need to have their reason humbled through the preaching of God’s Word. Adults must become like “little children” or “spiritual infants” before they can receive Holy Baptism. Infants oppose no emotional, intellectual or willful hindrance to baptism.
I got this analogy somewhere. Unbelieving infants are like a plowed field. They do not have the “seed of life” but they are in a position to receive it. In contrast, unbelieving older children and adults are like a field with hard soil (covered by weeds and rocks) that needs to be broken up and cleared out before it can receive the “seed of life.” This explains why infants are baptized and then taught, whereas older children and adults are taught and then Baptized.
Under the New Testament, little children are introduced into the Kingdom of Heaven by baptism, because there is no hindrance to the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit. The administration of adult baptism requires a removal of a hindrance for its effectiveness, the natural will, which is hostile to God, and resists His grace, must be subdued in repentance as a preliminary to being baptized. Infant resistance to God’s grace is impossible, because the infant has not the mental qualification for rejecting the offered grace.
In this sense infant baptism is not only believers baptism, but the highest form of believers baptism
Hermenuetical Text: II Thess 3:10 For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.”
In I Thessalonians certain people got the idea that the Second Coming was around the corner so they stopped working, insisting other Christians support them. Then Paul writes them this second letter to reminding them “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.”
This passage only refers to adults. Infants don’t work nor can they. What about the infirmed, aged, mentally disabled? These inabilities need to be remedied if you apply this passage to all. God does not require impossibilities. Helping widows, giving alms, feeding the poor, preaching the word, defending the faith studying scripture do not apply to infants.
Paul’s words there are only for adults, and they are only for able-bodied adults who could work but refuse.
An absolute inability to perform any command from scripture absolves a person from the obligation to perform it. Thus a blind man is not bound to read the gospel, nor deaf man to hear the gospel preached, nor an insane person from understanding it. God does not require impossibilities.
“Repent and be baptized” is only addressed to sinful adults. And you can’t bring children into these passages who are not addressed. Had Jesus expected children to repent and be converted, He would have addressed them as He did His adult audience. There is no expressed command for infants to repent.
The Bible was not written to infants and is therefore not going to direct them to do anything. They are under the care of their Christian parents and pastors who can repent, hear, understand, and believe, teach and confess the faith.
Additionally, there is an important distinction to be made between baptizing an infant and an adult believer---one has the need to repent, the other does not. Failure for infants to have intricate knowledge of the Atonement is no more a barrier to baptism than to their future repentance. Furthermore, adults do need to repent, but repentance is not a one time act...what infants and adults have in common is their future repentance.
However, infants have one advantage over unbelieving adults. Infants do not yet have a rebellious reason! Scripture teaches that we are conceived in sin and if we grow up as unbelievers we develop a conscious reason that is hostile to the Gospel. So, unlike infants who are in a position to receive the Gospel, adults need to have their reason humbled through the preaching of God’s Word. Adults must become like “little children” or “spiritual infants” before they can receive Holy Baptism. Infants oppose no emotional, intellectual or willful hindrance to baptism.
I got this analogy somewhere. Unbelieving infants are like a plowed field. They do not have the “seed of life” but they are in a position to receive it. In contrast, unbelieving older children and adults are like a field with hard soil (covered by weeds and rocks) that needs to be broken up and cleared out before it can receive the “seed of life.” This explains why infants are baptized and then taught, whereas older children and adults are taught and then Baptized.
Under the New Testament, little children are introduced into the Kingdom of Heaven by baptism, because there is no hindrance to the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit. The administration of adult baptism requires a removal of a hindrance for its effectiveness, the natural will, which is hostile to God, and resists His grace, must be subdued in repentance as a preliminary to being baptized. Infant resistance to God’s grace is impossible, because the infant has not the mental qualification for rejecting the offered grace.
In this sense infant baptism is not only believers baptism, but the highest form of believers baptism
