Beginning with the Bible, baptism is a concept with some roots in Scripture, yet with no exact timeline regarding its institution. However, when weaving together Christ’s own baptism (Matthew 3:13-17) with his teachings about salvation by water and Spirit (John 3:5), and also with his command to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them…”(Matthew 28:19-20), it is hard to overlook that, at the minimum, baptism was a divine injunction. Combine this with the multiple examples of baptism occurring throughout the New Testament, and it is clear that receiving the Gospel, confessing faith in Jesus, and being baptized were all necessary to a new life in Christ (Power 500, 501).
From the scholarship standpoint, there are a few possible reasons why baptism became a crucial practice among early Christians. For one, purity rites, including frequent washings, were already commonplace in Jewish communities. Also, non-Jews who converted to Judaism experienced a baptism-like rite of passage, except that the meaning was more symbolic of the conversion itself; it did not include a prophetic or eschatological message or significance. On the other hand, John the Baptist, whose rituals somewhat resembled Essene practices — used baptism to prepare believers for salvation through Jesus (Tkacik SLU 2023).
Scholars also rely on the Book of Acts and Paul’s letters to form a more complete picture of baptism. In Paul’s view — and what is now a central part of Christian theology — baptism reflects Christ’s death and resurrection: “The sinner has been crucified with Christ, has died with him, and is buried with him” (Power 501). Therefore, when a believer is immersed into water, the old self dies, and the new self rises up into Christian life (Romans 6:3-11; Colossian 2:12). Then, when coupled the laying of hands to send down the Holy Spirit, the believer is sealed into salvation through Christ (Acts 8:14-17). Scholars view both components as a “two stage-pattern of initiation” (Tkacik SLU 2023).
However, scholars have not suggested that any individual scripture passage in the New Testament gives a thorough explanation about both stages of initiation. For instance, while Acts shows the relationship between the Spirit and new life in Christ, and which supports passages in Paul’s letters and John’s gospel, it does not explain the giving of the Spirit as a rite in itself. Rather, Acts shows the Spirit as instrumental in salvation overall and bringing believers into the Christian community (Power 502, 503).
Because the processes of receiving the gospel, declaring faith in Jesus, receiving baptism, and joining Christian communities were so collectively detailed, second and third century Christians ran a catechumenate program where, for two to three years, believers went through several stages of spiritual formation, all leading up to their baptism during the Easter Vigil. By then, the catechumens had learned well how to pray, fast, and repent for their sins, while also being carefully scrutinized along the way. Then, at the Easter Vigil, the catechumens were baptized by being immersed into water three times. Right after, the bishop performed the laying of hands to communicate the Spirit (the early version of Confirmation). All of these procedures, including having the catechumens the recite the Apostle’s Creed and the Lord’s Prayer beforehand, are well documented in the Didache and works by Justin Martyr and Tertullian (Tkacik Module 2 Slide 11).
Yet with Christianity’s newfound freedom as a legal faith under the fourth century Roman Empire, and with an overwhelming influx of new believers entering into Christian belief, the multi-year catechumenate program turned too cumbersome to manage. In turn, bishops were also spread thin with performing ceremonies, which meant handing off the baptismal rite to priests and then later confirming new believers in a separate ceremony. Thus, the Church not only scrapped the multi-year catechumenate program, per a letter from John the Deacon to Seranius in 492, but also faced another fast-growing challenge: how to deal more directly with infant baptism (Tkacik Tkacik SLU 2023).
Enter Augustine, who wrote extensively about baptism’s sacramental role in the Church, the updated catechumenate process, and why infant baptism is just as necessary as adult baptism. In short, while the debate over infant baptism largely revolved around whether infants were marred by sin or capable of committing sinful acts, Augustine defined baptism as both a sacrament of faith and also the mean to be brought into the Church and Christian life in general. Further, as all humans have inherited the consequence of Adam and Eve’s sin, baptizing infants into the faith puts them in communion with Christ; therefore, they can be raised in God’s grace while having time to mature towards Confirmation (Power 505).
Infant baptism, as well as the six other Catholic sacraments, continued to expand out as standard practice over the next several centuries. By the Scholastic age in the 13th century, and then into the Protestant Reformation three centuries later, the Church found itself both upholding its reasons for offering all seven sacraments and having to defend those same reasons. Although Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure had maintained that all sacraments were a visible sign of God’s grace, that infant baptism allows newborns to be sanctified through Christ’s death and resurrection, and that Augustine himself supported infant baptism (Power 507), Protestant reformers revamped much of Scholastic theology and simplified the sacraments down to the two mentioned clearly in Scripture: baptism and the Eucharist.
Nevertheless, Protestant reformers did have good reasons at first to challenge the Catholic Church’s authority on the sacraments and its understanding of theological and ecclesiological topics. There is no getting around that some clergy abused indulgences, thus causing other Christians to wonder how exactly salvation worked in the first place. Which then meant wondering how the clergy had any spiritual role at all in delivering the sacraments. For the Catholic clergy, baptism as a sacrament meant placing “an indelible mark on the soul of the recipient, empowering them to be children of God as opposed to children of sin” (Tkacik SLU 2023).
For Protestant reformers, baptism turned into a widely varied understanding among an ever-increasing number of splinter movements, all positing a proper understanding of the sacraments. Luther held close to the Catholic understanding of infant baptism, though his views on salvation were so dramatically different, that he saw baptism as how justification is proclaimed, but that faith and the encounter with God’s word and the “theology of the Cross,” were the actual salvific actions. Like Luther, Calvin did not delve so much into baptism as a salvific sacrament; but in Calvin’s case — and because he did not believe that material realities can communicate grace — the sacraments are only visible reminders of the grace that God has already given, and they are only available to the “elect.” Zwingli, meanwhile, somewhat shared Calvin’s view on sacraments, but even further reduced them to having no other value other than being symbolic. Therefore, baptism is merely a sign of joining a Christian community (Tkacik SLU 2023).
Except that none of the above arguments swayed the Catholic Church’s long-standing position on the sacraments as being real, communicable, transferrable signs of God’s grace. Further, and as reiterated in the Council of Trent documents, the Church reinforced the link between infant baptism and Original Sin, as well as tracing its sacramental theology right back to Augustine, and even further back to the early Church / Apostolic age (Power 508, 509).
However, to anyone who has already taken Scripture study, Church History, and Ecclesiology courses in this Theology program, the Catholic Church has certainly had its lion’s share of ups and downs in ironing out theological and ecclesiological pain points. And hence one of the many reasons Vatican II was held now sixty years ago. As Tkacik and McGonigle explain, using Lumen Gentium as a primary source, baptism as a sacrament continues to be a sign of God’s grace and receiving salvation through Jesus’ death and resurrection. This grace is so powerful to those who proclaim faith in Christ and receive grace, Vatican II describes baptism as three-fold dignity: *Priestly: believers connect with the meaning of sacrifice, die to their previous life, and are reborn into Christ’s mission. *Prophetic: The Church and its believers must help usher in the kingdom of God, under the Holy Spirit’s continual guidance. *Kingly: the laity — and all members of the Body of Christ — are all included in the magisterial authority yet must understand that service is at the center of this power (Tkacik and McGonigle 21, 23, 25).
Which brings this post to the final question: Why has the Christian tradition preserved both infant and adult baptism? The short answer, summed up in Sacrosanctum Concilium, is this: The Church wants all the faithful to be fully present, fully active believers who experience — from birth until death, and then beyond — what it means to live out the Liturgy and therefore also live as “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a redeemed people (1 Pet. 2:9; cf. 2:4-5)…”(#14).
Works Cited
Power, David N., author. Fiorenza, Francis S., and John P. Galvin, eds. Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011.
Sacrosanctum Concilium (The Decree on the Liturgy): https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19631204_sacrosanctum-concilium_en.html
Tkacik, Michael J., and Thomas M. McGonigle, O.P. Pneumatic Correctives: What is the Spirit Saying to the Church of the 21st Century? Lanham: University Press of America, 2007
Tkacik, Michael J. Saint Leo University, 2023.