The Faith of a Baby?

On Believing Babies & Believing on Behalf of Babies

This post is about babies, faith, and the combination thereof. This is fitting because in the last post, you will recall, I presented a cumulative case for infant baptism and defended the practice against three common objections. In this post, I want to address two more objections, both of which focus on the relation between the baby and saving faith.

1 Believing Babies?

The first objection goes like this: 

We should only baptize those who have faith. 

Babies can’t have faith. 

Therefore, we shouldn’t baptize babies.

At first glance, the argument looks pretty solid. I mean, babies don’t even have the cognitive ability to believe the proposition “Jesus Christ is Lord” (Rom. 10:9), so how can they have faith? But when you look at the Biblical evidence a different story begins to emerge.

For example, consider the following passages taken from the Psalms:

‘Yet you are he who took me from the womb;

    you made me trust you at my mother's breasts.

 On you was I cast from my birth,

    and from my mother's womb you have been my God.’ - Ps. 22:9-10

‘For you, O Lord, are my hope,

    my trust, O Lord, from my youth.

 Upon you I have leaned from before my birth;

    you are he who took me from my mother's womb.

My praise is continually of you.’ - Ps. 71:5-6

Yes, I understand their Psalms. I get that this is poetry, so we shouldn’t assume it’s literally true! Fair enough. Nonetheless, I think we should all admit that this language provides some evidence for baby faith, however slight it may be, and so I include it as part of my cumulative case.

By my lights, the case of John the Baptist in utero is much stronger evidence:

“he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb.” - Luke 1:15

“In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.” - Luke 1:39-45

This is a remarkable story. When Elizabeth hears the greeting of Mary, the mother of our Lord, baby John leaps in her womb, and then his mother is filled with the Holy Spirit and says that he leaped “for joy.” How should we make sense of this? 

One option is to take this as merely reporting Elizabeth’s fallible interpretation of baby John moving in her womb. She interpreted the movement as leaping for joy when it really wasn’t, but the reader need not believe her interpretation. It’s possible, I suppose, but given the fact that we know from verse 15 that John was filled with the Holy Spirit in his mother’s womb it is exceedingly more probable that, in some sense, baby John knew that he was encountering the mother of God and was filled with joy as a result. This is very strong support for baby faith, perhaps even conclusive for those with a strong doctrine of biblical inspiration.

Even after encountering this evidence in Paedofaith, Rich Lusk’s little book on the subject of infant faith, I had trouble accepting the possibility. I had been convinced that the Scriptures taught the possibility of baby faith, but, if I’m honest, it still seemed a little crazy. And it stayed that way until I received help from an explanation given by Anglican New Testament scholar Tom Wright. Here’s what he had to say in favour of baby faith:

‘If a child is born reasonably healthy, you will be able to establish a very intimate relationship with that child from the very earliest moments. The natural focal point of a newborn’s eyes is the distance between the breast and the mother’s eye, so that the natural thing that the child does is to establish eye contact with Mom while feeding at the breast. I remember establishing eye contact with my children very early on. There’s an extraordinary sense of knowing that passes between parent and child. So I said to my cousin [who opposed the doctrine], “If that is so between a human parent and the child, are you really going to tell me that the living God, who created heaven and earth and made whales and waterfalls and little penguins and all the rest of it, cannot establish contact with a lovely little creature who bears his image, but instead has to wait until that lovely little creature becomes five, six, or seven, or ten? Forget it!”’

2 Believing on Behalf of Babies?

After encountering Wright’s explanation, I was sold on the idea that babies could have some kind of faith, but I still wasn’t sold on infant baptism. Why? Because even if babies can have saving faith they are unable to express their faith, and it seemed to me that Scripture teaches we should only baptize those who can express their faith. This is the second objection I want to cover.

Many are quick to respond by pointing out that baptism is not something we do, it’s something God does. It is God performing the baptism through his body, the church, not us expressing our faith. So, for instance, Paul says, ‘he [God] saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit’ (Tit. 3:5). This is why in many places we are commanded to “be baptized.” Baptism is something that happens to us, rather than something we do (Acts 2:28; 22:16). And this is taken as support for infant baptism because if baptism is something God does to us then, it is argued, it is not an expression of the recipient's faith. 

But this is only half right. There are two agents involved in baptism. God acts upon us, but we also act upon God. Allow me to explain.

1 Peter 3:21 says, ‘Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal [or ‘a pledge’] to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.’ But if baptism is an ‘appeal’ or a ‘pledge’ made ‘towards God’, then it’s not God doing the appealing. Baptism is, as many commentators have pointed out, a kind of enacted prayer, and God doesn’t pray to himself. Who then is offering the prayer? The most natural candidate is the person who submits to being baptized. That’s how it works in cases of adult baptisms, anyways, even in churches that practice infant baptism. So unless someone has the cognitive capacity to make an appeal or pledge or offer a prayer then, I reasoned, they cannot be baptized.

Interestingly, this conclusion is assumed in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. However, whereas I would say that babies cannot make this appeal therefore they cannot be baptized, the Anglican tradition makes a distinction: Babies cannot make the appeal enacted in baptism on their own, but they can through their sureties, i.e., the people (parents or godparents) taking responsibility for discipling the child. Consider the following passage taken from The Ministration of Publick Baptism of Infants:

‘this Infant must also faithfully, for his part, promise by you that are his sureties, (until he come of age to take it upon himself,) that he will renounce the devil … . Dost thou, in the name of this Child, renounce the devil … ? Foreasmuch as this Child hath promised by you his sureties to renounce the devil … it is your parts and duties to see that this Infant be taught … what a solemn vow, promise and profession he hath here made by you.’

The baby is here depicted as acting through his sureties as though he had consciously made this ‘vow, promise, and profession.’ As Anglican theologian John Stott explains:

‘There is no baptism in the Church of England except the baptism of a professing believer, adult or infant. The adult candidate’s declaration of repentance, faith and surrender is followed by baptism and the declaration of regeneration. The same is true of an infant in the 1662 service, where it is not the godparents who speak for the child so much as the child who is represented as speaking through his sponsors. The child declares his or her repentance, faith and surrender, and desire for baptism. The child is then baptized and declared regenerate.’

So, according to the Anglican formularies, the baby is able to make such an appeal through his sureties who make the appeal on the child’s behalf, and then once they are baptized they receive the gift of faith and are regenerated.

But is this really in line with Scripture? Where does the Bible ever say someone can essentially have faith for another person? I used to believe this was not only unbiblical but obviously so, but after careful consideration I began to change my mind.

I first began to question my dogmatic stance against our ability to believe on behalf of someone else while reading the story of the healing of the paralytic. The paralytic’s friends, you will recall, were so desperate for him to be healed that they carried him on top of the house where Jesus was preaching and lowered him through the roof to bypass the crowd. ‘When Jesus saw their faith,’ we read in Mark 2:5, ‘he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”’ The point seemed to fly off the page. It was because of the friends’ faith that he heals the paralytic — not his own!

Having softened to the idea, I was able to recognize other examples. On account of a centurion’s faith, Jesus heals his servant (Mt. 8:5-13). On account of a father’s faith, Jesus heals his daughter (Mk. 5:22-43). When combined with the evidence for infant baptism, the idea that our faith could have a real effect on the life of another human being went from impossible to probable.

After all, we have no trouble believing that through one act of sin, Adam brought all his progeny under the power of Sin and Death. Is it really so hard to believe that our loving and merciful God should give believing parents the means to bring our own progeny into the Kingdom through baptism? Has the Lord in his providence only given the human race power to poison the lives of our children but not the precious remedy to heal them? May it never be said! Rather, in baptism, God has given us the means of grace so that by our faith in his provision we can give to our children the gift of faith and life in Christ. We have become too individualistic in our understanding of salvation. Salvation is a team sport. And God has equipped us to do our part, by His grace.

So, no, we should not be concerned by the idea either that babies are incapable of having real relationship with God, such that it might truly be called faith, or that it’s wrong to think that we can believe for them in bringing them to the waters of baptism so they can be healed from the power of Sin. Or so I say, anyway.

Please let me know what you think in the comments!