I'm not sure where I stand on this. That is why I would like to hear what others think. I am somewhat leaning more towards Credobaptism because:
- There is no explicit mention of a baby being baptized in the NT
- No early church writings say anything about pedobaptism. To the contrary, they only talk about credobaptism. It seems the practice starts to become more common at the end of the second century/beginning of thrid century (Hippolytus, Origen, Cyprian)
We certainly see an implicit recognition of the baptism of infants. St. Polycarp was in his 80's when he suffered martyrdom. According to the witnesses of his martyrdom, when Polycarp stood before the magistrate who condemned him, Polycarp refused saying, "For 86 years I have served Jesus Christ, and He has done me no harm, how then could I betray my God and King?" Polycarp's testimony seems to be that he had been a Christian since infancy. While this isn't an explicit witness to infant baptism, it is certainly an implied witness. For if Polycarp had been a baptized Christian his entire life, then he would have been baptized as an infant--born and baptized in the year 69 AD (he was martyred in 155 AD).
There's no explicit mention of the elderly being baptized in the NT. Nor is there any explicit mention of women being baptized.
The first mention of women being baptized aren't found until the 2nd century writings, such as by Hippolytus and others.
But we don't deny baptism to the elderly, or to women do we for these reasons?
We don't practice "androbaptism" because there are no explicit mentions of women being baptized. We readily acknowledge that when "entire households" received Baptism, this meant women as well as men, young men and old. We don't, on this basis, deny baptism to certain classes of people simply because of a lack of explicit mention--but that baptism is God's power and work for sinners through which He brings us into the Body of Christ because of the word of Jesus Christ, "Make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit" and the promises of God attached to Baptism, "Repent and be baptized, all of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, and this is for you and for your children, for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself." Etc.
I think more important is that we don't see any resistance against the baptizing of infants and small children until Tertullian. Tertullian is the first person to say that children shouldn't be baptized. But his reasoning isn't that children are too young to benefit from Baptism, instead Tertullian knows Baptism benefits children, and in fact that is why he says they shouldn't be baptized. Tertullian argued that children shouldn't be baptized because he wrongly believed that if someone sins after being baptized then they will probably not be able to go to heaven. Tertullian wrongly believed that one, after being baptized, must remain morally pure and holy in order to be saved, and if one stumbles then they forfeit their entire salvation without hope of forgiveness.
And that it is Tertullian who says this needs to be understood: Because Terutllian fell away from the faith, turning to the heresy of the Montanists. And so when we read Terutllian we need to be very careful, because heresy crept into his writings, we don't know for certain which were even written after his becoming a heretic or before (and which were influenced by this heresy even before he joined them).
In fact, even after Tertullian's death there remained in Carthage and North Africa a sect of "Tertullianists" who, like the Novatians and the later Donatists, preached a grace-less moralism and denied the power of the Gospel to forgive and renew us.
So when our singular witness "against" infant baptism is Tertullian, it should be be cautionary for us. While some things Tertullian said and wrote are still good (which is why he is still included in works of the writings of the fathers) it should be read very carefully and with an enormous grain of salt.
Given that in Judaism converts to Judaism receive tevilah (ritual washing in a mikveh or ritual bath), and this includes children (even today when parents convert to Judaism, they also convert their children through the mikveh), it simply wouldn't have even been a question of whether children should be baptized in the early Church. It was a foregone conclusion. The first century believers would never have even had to ask the question of whether children should be baptized, because of course they should be. The precedent already existed in Jewish "baptism", and also in circumcision (recall what Paul says in Colossians 2 concerning our circumcision made without hands).
Which is why we don't actually see opposition against the baptism of infants until the Anabaptists of the 16th century. Every group that opposed it before them were outright heretics, Gnostics. Who did not simply deny baptism of infants, but denied baptism period. And denied the Lord's Supper. And denied the the Gospel, denied the word of God, and rejected Jesus Christ and His atoning death and His resurrection.
I had to reject Credobaptism, though I had been taught it in my youth, because it simply doesn't jive with Scripture, and it cannot be found in the faith of the Church down through the centuries. And I could not agree with the Anabaptists, who deviated from the faith of our fathers and mothers, and introduced innovations according to their personal opinions. While I admire some of the Anabaptists for their stand against violence, when they entertained eccentric, radical, and in many cases anti-Christian teachings they can't be treated as faithfulness witnesses of the Gospel.
-CryptoLutheran
