Baptism now saves us. The language of 1 Peter 3:21, though often misinterpreted, could not be clearer about God’s teaching on New Testament water baptism. If you want salvation from sin, you must be immersed in water. Our Eastern Orthodox friends agree, only they say we don’t go far enough in our defense of baptism. They would argue that baptism is not simply for those who can respond, but for those who cannot. The argument often is posed this way: baptism is necessary for salvation, therefore if you want infants to be saved, you must baptize them. If we put aside the fact that the Eastern Orthodox generally view the eternal fate of unbaptized infants as a matter of optimistic mystery, there are multiple reasons why the case for infant baptism fails.
False Premises: The primary reason for infant baptism in Eastern Orthodoxy is for the remission of Ancestral/Hereditary Sin. This was described in their 1672 Jerusalem Synod as, “man in falling by the [original] transgression to have become comparable and like unto the beasts, that is, to have been utterly undone, and to have fallen from his perfection and impassibility,” (Synod of Jerusalem, Confession of Dositheus, Decree 14). As is often the case, the support for one false doctrine is another one to maintain logical consistency. In his scholarly work on Baptism in the early church, Everett Ferguson noted that infant baptism originated historically with unfounded concern among anxious Christian families with infants facing an early death, seeking to make every possible preparation for their entrance into the afterlife. (Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church, Chapter 23). The Scriptures don’t teach an inherited sinful nature from Adam, but actually go out of their way to indicate the opposite (Matt. 18:2-4). Infants lack any cause for separation from God (Isa. 59:1-2), being incapable and therefore not culpable of sin (Deut. 1:39; Isa. 7:15-16).
The New Covenant: Often, a continuity argument is made for infant baptism. Baptism is connected to things like circumcision (Col. 2:11-12) and the Red Sea crossing (1 Cor. 10:1-5), which included infants. Based on this, they ask why God would exclude them from baptism in the New Covenant. Jeremiah 31:31-34 highlights the fact that under the New Covenant, “No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” (Jer. 31:34). In the Old, one was born into the covenant, and then learned about their Lord. In the New, one is drawn by the Father by hearing and learning (John 6:44-45), so as to enter the covenant by personal faith (Col. 2:12)! The practice of infant baptism for the New Testament church is fundamentally the structure of the broken covenant by our Israelite fathers, not the better covenant we are in today (Heb. 8:6-13).
The Right Question: With Old and New Testament shadows and comparisons, the New Testament elucidates how things like baptism and circumcision, the flood, or the Red Sea crossing, are similar and different. Therefore, the operative question is: What does the New Testament holistically say about what New Testament baptism is and does? Baptism is necessary for salvation (Mark 16:16), because it is for the remission of personal sins (Acts 2:38), which separate us from God (Isa. 59:1-2). Baptism accompanies belief/faith in response to the Gospel (Acts 16:30-34), where we put on Christ by faith (Gal. 3:26-27). Baptism marks the end of the old life of sin, and the new life in Christ, where the baptized are expected to cease from their former sinful living (Rom. 6:1-7). There is no justification for infant baptism that coheres with the overall biblical purpose of baptism.
Though these Scriptures aren’t exhaustive, there is no single baptismal text that necessarily indicates a need to administer it to infants. Being incapable and innocent, infants are held securely in the hands of their Almighty and Benevolent Creator (Matt. 18:2-4), in the hope that in the day when sin arises (Rom. 7:7-12), they may grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us (Acts 17:27).
-Marco Arroyo