Evangelical Protestants say that infants are not fit candidates for baptism because they are unable to manifest a desire to “accept Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior.” Baptism, they say, is not regenerative—it does not do anything to the soul but is only a public sign to other Christians that the new believer believes.
In contrast, the Catholic Church (like the Eastern churches and “mainline” Protestant churches) always has taught that baptism forgives sins, infuses grace, and marks one’s entrance into the Faith, and baptism can be conferred on infants validly.
Our Lord said that only the baptized can enter heaven (John 3:5). His words can be taken to apply to anyone capable of having a right to his kingdom. He asserted such a right for children: “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 19:14). If heaven belongs to children, they must be able to be baptized. Evangelicals say this applies only to older children, those capable of “making a decision for Jesus,” not to infants. But Luke 18:15 says, “Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them.” The context here and in Matthew 19 does not suggest that our Lord limited his remarks to children over the age of reason (approximately seven years of age).
Besides, we need to consider the place of baptism in the New Covenant. It replaced the circumcision of the Old Covenant (Col. 2:11-12). It was infants mainly who were circumcised (Gen. 17:12), which suggests that baptism must be able to be administered to infants. What is more, nowhere does Scripture say that baptism is to be restricted to adults. If that were the case, one might expect to find, if not a clear-cut proscription, at least accounts of baptisms in which young children were set apart and refused the sacrament.
On the other hand, one must admit the New Testament does not recount explicitly the baptism of infants or young children. But there are hints.
Lydia, identified as “a seller of purple goods” and “a worshiper of God,” is reported to have given “heed to what was said by Paul. And when she was baptized, with her household” (Acts 16:14-15).
A few verses later comes the story of the imprisonment of Paul and Silas. After their miraculous release, their jailer asked them, “What must I do to be saved?” “And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all that were in his house . . . and he was baptized at once, with all his family” (Acts 16:30-33).
In his introductory remarks to the Corinthians, Paul remarked, “I did baptize also the household of Stephanas” (1 Cor. 1:16). In this and the other two instances entire families or households were baptized. Presumably these included children. If Paul had baptized only the adult members of the families, we would have expected the accounts to note, for instance, that Lydia “and her husband” were baptized, or the jailer “and his wife,” or Stephanas “and his brother,” or some such words. The terms “family” and “household” implied then, as they do today, at least two generations. If children indeed were included in these multiple baptisms, and if the youngest children were excluded because of intellectual incapacity, why no mention of that?
Granted, these verses do not form an indisputable argument, but their implication supports infant baptism.
Likewise with all we know from early Christian history. Origen, writing in the third century, remarked, “The Church received from the apostles the tradition of giving baptism also to infants” (Commentary on Romans). John Chrysostom remarked, “For this reason we baptize even infants, though they do not have sins: so that there may be given to them holiness, righteousness, adoption, inheritance, brotherhood with Christ, and that they may be his members” (Catechesis to the Illuminated).
In A.D. 252, a council at Carthage in North Africa condemned the opinion that baptism should be withheld until the eighth day after birth (the customary time at which circumcision had taken place under the Abrahamic covenant). The council was not settling a dispute about whether infants should be baptized but when: following the old custom or as soon as possible?
It was not until the Middle Ages that some groups, such as the Waldenses and Catharists, began to reject infant baptism. Later, the Anabaptists (“rebaptizers”) echoed them in saying that infants are incapable of being baptized validly. But all this was foreign to the first millennium of Christianity.
The Evangelical position against infant baptism is not a consequence of the Bible’s strictures but of the logic of Evangelicalism’s notion of salvation. To be saved, one must “accept Christ” in a positive and explicit manner. Infants and young children are incapable of making such an “acceptance,” and thus they are excluded from baptism. On Evangelicalism’s terms this makes sense—but it makes no sense on scriptural or historical terms.