256. Infant Baptism
256. INFANT BAPTISM
Baptists seem to have a point: shouldn’t Baptism be freely chosen? If so, infants should not be baptized because they cannot yet exercise personal free choice. It isn’t automatic and impersonal.
Whether children should be baptized?
Dionysius says: Our heavenly guides, i.e., the Apostles, approved of infants being admitted to Baptism.
I answer that, As the Apostle says (Rom 5:17): If by one man’s offense death reigned through one, namely Adam, much more they who receive abundance of grace and of the gift and of justice shall reign in life through one, Jesus Christ. Now children contract original sin from the sin of Adam, which is made clear by the fact that they are under the ban of death, which passed upon all on account of the sin of the first man, as the Apostle says in the same passage (vs. 12). Much more, therefore, can children receive grace through Christ so as to reign in eternal life.
But our Lord Himself said (Jn 3:5): Unless a man is born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Consequently it becomes necessary to baptize children so that, as in birth they incurred damnation through Adam, so in a second birth they might obtain salvation through Christ. . . .
The spiritual regeneration effected by Baptism is somewhat like carnal birth in this respect, that as the child while in the mother’s womb receives nourishment not independently but through the nourishment of its mother, so also children before the use of reason, being as it were in the womb of their mother the Church, receive salvation not by their own act but by the act of the Church (III,68,9).
It is true, as the question assumes, that Baptism is not automatic and impersonal. It is not imposed without free choice. It is also true that infants do not exercise free choice. However, there is a third assumption that is not true: that infants are autonomous individuals and that their relation to their parents is like the relation between two adults. The objection forgets the mystery of heredity. The parents freely choose to ask the Church for Baptism for their children.
The Bible does not clearly and explicitly approve or disapprove of infant Baptism. The early Church had to decide this issue (and many others), and did so, not as an addition to the Bible but by appealing to its texts, by interpreting it.
St. Thomas’ first argument deduces that infants have Original Sin from the premise that they can die. (Before sin, there was no death. “The wages of sin is death”: Rom 6:23.) He then appeals to St. Paul’s parallel between Adam and Christ: as all die “in” one man, Adam, all can be made alive “in” one Man, Christ (Rom 5:12-19). Since infants are humans, they too can “be made alive” or saved in Christ. But Baptism is the cause and beginning of this new life. (That is the point of his second paragraph: Christ’s own words in Jn 3:5.) Therefore infants can be baptized.
St. Thomas’ final paragraph reminds us of the infant—mother relationship, which is very different from the relationship between two free, autonomous adults. The infant is dependent on its mother for life in the womb; and analogously the born infant is still dependent on its parents both physically and mentally, educationally, emotionally, psychologically. There is a womb outside the womb. It is called early childhood.
Mother Church is to parents spiritually what parents are to children both physically and spiritually. The faith of the parents, nourished by the faith of the Church, supplies the free will needed.
This mystery of spiritual heredity, or “in-ness”, was one that pre—modern cultures understood better than our modern post—“Enlightenment” culture does. Perhaps we appreciate individuality and freedom more than our ancestors, but they appreciated solidarity and “in-ness” more than we do.