on baptizing infants

Last night, I had the opportunity to attend a lecture delivered by Dr. Anthony Lane, Professor of Historical Theology at the London School of Theology. His topic was, "Should we Baptize Babies? A Study of Early Church Practices?"

The substance of his talk boiled down to two main points:

• The New Testament does not separate the experience of justification and the act of baptism in any way. Indeed, so closely intertwined are these concepts that they sometimes refer to someone's salvation as their "baptism" and vice versa, without even a tip of the hat to the waiting and watching for "internalization" of religious faith with such as we are familiar.
• The best and earliest resources that we have on the subject of baptism suggest that variety was the name of the game. Some families/churches/geographical regions baptized their infants, others waited until their children were 8 days, 3 years, teens. young adults or even urged (in the context where baptism began to be understood more along Roman Catholic lines) their children & others to wait until a point as near death as possible. What was important was baptism. The age of the baptizee, evidences of regeneration, or other factors could be emphasized or deemphasized - no one really cared one way or the other.

It should also be noted that such variety existed not in a time like ours, in which religious practice is in general being flattened and emptied of all value. This variety existed when baptism is an incredibly important issue.

After the lecture, Lynn-nore, Joanna and I sat around in the living room and discussed it for over an hour. All three of us agree both that Kara displays the outward signs of a regeneration, and that no church we're aware of would either baptize her or allow her to take communion. As a result, every door of the Christian faith has been open to her, every question answered until now, and the only reason is tradition.