"The fact that identity is constituted in covenant bodies requires that
we baptize our babies.
Infant baptism is not explicitly taught in Scripture because it is such a
natural and inevitable consequence of the fundamental pattern of
covenantal integration."
Kip Chelashaw - https://xcancel.com/ChelashawKip/status/1940003362335867137#m
This is a favourite argument of many evangelical Presbyterians. The fundamental reason why, we are told, nothing teaches, requires or alludes to infant baptism in the New Testament is because it's something so integral to everything that a biblically-minded person would already think, that it would be entirely redundant. Not just in keeping with, but "because" it is so "natural and inevitable", it isn't mentioned.
Firstly I'd like to note and bank the true and in honesty unavoidable concession that "Infant baptism is not explicitly taught in Scripture". But is it, as asserted, taught implicitly?
What things does the Bible assume and for that reason not directly state?
I've never yet read an explanation from brethren who hold this belief as to why it is, in their understanding, that the New Testament does frequently and clearly state so many other fundamental beliefs. Infant baptism, we are told, is not taught explicitly because something so important is all-pervasive. But what about other all-pervasive, fundamental truths? Are they not taught explicitly either? Or not taught every often? Quite the opposite....
There is one God; the God of Abraham is the Creator of the world; his blessings are received by grace through faith based upon his own works and not ours; God will judge the world; God deals with people through covenants; the covenants climax and are fulfilled in the coming of the Messiah; etc., etc., etc. Although all of these things are as inherent and integral as you could get, yet, they don't therefore escape mention - on the contrary, they are mentioned early, often, and late, and often again. Of course they are: it was the intended purpose of Christ and the apostles he sent to manifest the truth openly and clearly, so that even a child could grasp the essentials. As wise teachers, dealing with weak, foolish and fallible human beings, Christ and his servants therefore made sure to lay out their teachings clearly and frequently. Moreover, since these things were in many cases being taught to those who were either strangers and foreigners (Gentiles), who were previously bathed in all kinds of wrong understandings, or who even as Israelites had been indoctrinated in very wrong ideas by the Pharisees or others, it was necessary to rewire them at every level.
The idea that because infant baptism is so obvious a teaching to those to whom the apostles wrote, that therefore it is not something that we'd expect them to openly mention, flies in the face of everything they did mention.
Things that the first Bible readers needed explicitly stated for them
I see this idea as something from Presbyterian fantasy-land (do feel free to share with me the things that you think come out of Baptist fantasy-land). Let us look at the actual churches and Christians we find in the New Testament. To the Galatians, the idea that justification was by faith alone apart from the works of the law, had become vague and cloudy; the very doctrine that underpinned their salvation was being twisted and lost. To the Hebrews, it was no longer entirely clear that Christ's coming meant that all the Old Covenant ordinances were annulled and done away with in Christ. To the Corinthians, the fact that our bodies would be raised from the dead, and that Christians should not consort with prostitutes, was something they were losing their grip on and needed strong instruction and exhortation over. And so on, and so on. In the gospels, Jesus must patiently and repeatedly explain to his hearers that God requires mercy, not sacrifice; that the fundamental commandments are of love; that it is no part of God's law that we treat human beings worse than animals; and many other fundamental things that are part of the warp and woof of all the Scriptures to that point.
But, but, but.... all of these brethren, we are assured, of course never wavered for even a minute in their inevitable and unshakeable understanding that wherever there was a divine covenant, those whose immediate physical parents were covenant members must also be thereby be entitled to that covenant's sign. This was a point, we are solemnly assured, beyond the possibility of anyone's misunderstanding; merely appealing to the idea of a "covenant" was enough to make this perfectly plain. And anyone who doesn't see this just doesn't understand covenants at all. He is still a babe, and the apostles, supposedly, didn't stoop to explaining things necessary for babes.
Is not merely to state these ideas to expose their complete absurdity? The Corinthians, the Galatians, the Hebrews, the first disciples of Jesus, the crowds, etc., suffered from great darkness and prejudice (as is common across the entire human race and our own personal experience too) on the most fundamental and basic topics of Scripture.... but somehow, all with the marvellous exception that they were fine covenant theologians who were beyond all possibility of error on any of the relevant details and important consequences? Are you being serious?
The fact that infant baptism is nowhere, whether directly or indirectly, alluded to (without painful contortions), is, in reality, a great embarrassment to the paedobaptist case. The fact that, where historically churches have practised it, they have done so on mutually contradictory and incompatible grounds, is equally embarrassing. Which is to say, if the Presbyterian "covenantal" argument were such a clearly Biblical one, then Lutherans, Roman Catholics, etc. would have been glad to take it up and add it to their arsenals. The fact that the Presbyterian argument for paedobaptism has to appeal at its heart (having conceded that there is nothing explicit) to a priori claims is not a strength, but a significant "tell".
You and your seed, according to Scripture
Kip's fundamental error above is not, in fact, in noticing that the covenant is "to you and your children"; he is quite correct to hold that when God promised to Abraham that he and his seed would be his people forever. The error which pervades Presbyterian argument for infant baptism is the failure to notice how the New Testament has, explicitly and consistently, explained the fulfilment of the concept of "seed", and what it means to be born into the covenant. It is not silent, but speaks loudly, telling us who the "children" are. That concept has, as with many others, attained a point of transformation and fulfilment in the New Testament. See Romans 9, Galatians 3, Matthew 3, John 3, and many others. The Scriptures explicitly clarify who are the seed of Abraham, and directly deny that physical descent alone, under the New Covenant, means that you are one of them. The promise is to Abraham and his children - and it is those who are of faith who are believing Abraham's children. The preparatory shadow of literal, physical descent gives way to the glorious intended final reality of being born again, by the Holy Spirit, into the final family of God (and this often results in earthly households divided against themselves).
Fulfilment and reality
We do baptise babies: babes in Christ. But we do not baptise babes born only of the flesh, because there is neither command nor example to do so. If you've been following, that silence is something that cannot be accounted for, if you believe that Christ and his apostles wished every Christian family anywhere and ever to do so, no matter their level of maturity. If you study everything (and there is plenty) that the New Testament does say about baptism, then amongst all the rich variation, one constant is the note of fulfilment, of reality, of accomplishment, of a meeting of the sign and the thing signified. Baptism is tied together conceptually with the coming of the Holy Spirit and receiving him, repentance unto life, the exaltation of the Messiah, being born into his kingdom, etc.... but universally this is depicted in terms of experienced reality, not of a kind of covenantal promise that still looks ahead to the baptisee being initiated into the personal experience of it if he will, when he reaches a stage of being able to respond, believe and personally appropriate it. He always already believes and is glorying in what he already experiences; the Spirit is come, and the New Age has dawned, not objectively only, but personally, too.
Doctrines of the gaps
Infant baptism is a "doctrines of the gaps". Such doctrines end up functioning as hermeneutics. i.e. They are used as controlling paradigms to pre-interpret Biblical texts, instead of allowing the texts which explicitly and directly discuss those subjects to determine what our hermeneutics will be. Overlooking and minimising the many things we are directly taught, "doctrines of the gaps" come in, with the claim that they are the real background, the fundamental assumption which must control the reading of everything else. The "a priori" conclusions rewrite the actual conclusions that the apostles explicitly and directly wanted us to understand when they exegeted the meaning of Christ and the nature of the New Covenant to us. Then when those hermeneutics are worked out, they lead on to all sorts of other mistakes as they are applied in other areas.
Kip is a Protestant, not a Roman Catholic. Thus, when a traditional Roman Catholic denies the explicit and direct teaching of Romans 3-4 or Galatians 3-4 with his claim that the fundamental hermeneutical assumption of The Church (TM) leads us to see justification as being channelled through the sacraments, Kip will rightly urge his antagonist to try, for a moment, to take off his glasses and first deal with what it was the direct concern of the apostles in these and other passages to seek to assert, as revealed firstly by their context and wording; and then to re-shape his doctrine of the church in the light of that, and not the other way round. But Kip needs to do the same when he reads all the direct and intentional teaching in the Bible about the New Covenant, and its relationship to what went before, and how this transforms our understandings of covenant membership, birth into the covenant, being a child of Abraham, the privileges of covenant membership, etcetera. The traditional Roman Catholic asserts that every member of the people of God always understood in every age that the church on earth has a visible head, whom we must all be in direct submission to. Kip will urge him to try to understand the Newness of the New Covenant, and that we do indeed still have a head, and he is actually visible; but that does not lead to the conclusions about Popes that the Roman Catholic holds to. The matter is not pre-determined by what comes before, but rather the fulfilment explains for us how to understand the earlier stages of the plan. I similarly urge Kip and all those who hold his views to try to understand analogous things in respect of Christian baptism.
