Bishop
Cohn Buchanan is renowned for his support of infant, baptism over many years
and his arguments drawn from both Old and New Testaments do not need any.
repetition from me. During my 20 years in General Synod I. made many speeches
on the subject and wrote a theological appendix to the Synod Report ‘Christian
Initiation’ (1991).
Buchanan’s
latest piece rightly includes the phrase “we... claim that the Bible is our
supreme authority,” and that has been (and remains) the position of the
Church of England. Indeed, in the House of Bishops’ Report on ‘The Nature
of Christian Belief’ (1986) is the statement that “the Scriptures ... both
Old and New, must always have a controlling authority.” We need, it adds,
“to place ourselves continually under the Scriptures.” Evangelical
Anglicans especially (but not A
uniquely) value such a commitment. Nevertheless, Anglicans have
loyally for centuries recognised a commitment to ‘Scripture, Tradition, and
Reason.’ The excellent books on baptism by Michael Green, Gordon Kuhrt and
Cohn Buchanan all accept this but, like most evangelicals, do not place much
emphasis on the patristic evidence. Sadly, most evangelicals are largely
ignorant of the Fathers and their teaching.
Given
then, that a sound biblical case can be made for covenant theology, rooted
in God’s promise to Abraham, marked by circumcision and developed by Paul
in his letters to the Galatians and Romans, we may properly ask what happened
in the early church concerning the baptism of infants?
In
recent years it has become fashionable to decry the idea that infant baptism
was the normal practice of the church in the first few centuries. I recently
heard of an American Jesuit theologian who maintains that it wasn’t
introduced until the 5th century. So what is the evidence to contradict this
inaccurate and dogmatic denial?
We
begin with lrenaeus, the late 2nd century bishop of Lyons in France. He
probably originated in western Turkey where he knew Polycarp (who had known
John and others ‘who knew Jesus). Irenaeus says of Jesus that he came to “save
all of those who through him are reborn into God, infants, young children,
boys, the mature and older people.” He found no difficulty in the idea of
the ‘rebirth’ of infants. Earlier, Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, spoke of
“many men and women of 60 or 70 years who have been disciples of Christ
since childhood” and Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, at his martyrdom
testified that “Eighty and six years have I served Christ.”
Neither Ignatius nor Polycarp explicitly speak of
infant baptism though it is hard to argue that Irenaeus did not have baptism
in mind while speaking of ‘rebirth’. Their evidence is not conclusive Abut
it is certainly supportive when one turns to Tertullian, Origen and Hippolytus.
As Buchanan reminds us, Tertullian recognised that infant baptism was normal
for the children of Christian parents but went on to argue that the infant
offspring of pagans who had just come to faith should be postponed.
Origen, one of the greatest early theologians and the
son of a Christian leader who taught in Alexandria, says quite categorically
that “the church received from the apostles the tradition of baptising
infants” and he repeats this in his writings. Meanwhile, Hippolytus, the ‘most
important theologian’ in early 3rd century Rome, gives clear instruction
about the manner in which baptism was to be administered. “First,” he
says, “baptise the little ones ... for those who cannot speak, their parents
should speak, or another who belongs to the family.” Cyprian, bishop of
Carthage around 260, countering a sceptical opponent said “no one in our
Council agreed with you.”
By the time of Augustine (around 400) after a short
period of reaction against infant baptism, following Constantine’s ‘Christianising’
of the Empire, both Ambrose, bishop of Milan,.
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