This article is a foray into systematic theology. Who are we? Or better, where we created perfect or imperfect, complete or incomplete, graced or un-graced? As a Catholic, baptised 2 weeks after birth, I came to find out that the main reason I was baptised was so that original sin could be removed. That sounded like I was born with some congenital virus for which I had to wait for the vaccine of baptism. After many years of studying and teaching theology I came to the conclusion that I was created incomplete but capable of evolving. I was born into an incomplete world still revolving. It is through the dual lenses of what I call essenceless creation and theistic existentialism, I wade into the infant baptism versus adult baptism debate. I argue that this is a non-controversy. At whatever age you sign up or your parents sign you up in a faith community matters not as what you make of that membership. I beg to differ with prominent fellow Catholic, Mary McAleese, former president of Ireland who argued that infant baptism was equivalent to “infant conscripts who are held to lifelong obligations of obedience.” Original sin is not helpful in the infant baptism versus adult baptism debate. It gives fuel to Richard Dawkins’ god, if he had one, but instead it is more accurate to describe this as his caricature of the Jewish god, a god who is jealous, petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak, vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser, misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent, a god who would demand his pound of flesh from an innocent child for a sin committed by Adam and Eve.
Inhalt
Introduction
A Little Lesson in History from the Bible
So, Why Baptise Children Today?
What would Richard Dawkins say about Infant Baptism?
Infant Baptism and Human Rights
Infant Baptism Versus Adult Baptism and the Newer Denominations
Why Catholics continue to baptise babies
Help from Essenceless Creation and Theistic Existentialism
Let’s keep original sin out of Baptism
Conclusion
References
Introduction
If there is one dogmatic tenet likely to raise theological ire from proponents of adult baptism, so-called Credobaptists, it is a very Catholic sacramental tradition of baptising babies. Once on a bus, a young lady sheepishly, “My mother tells me you baptised me at Sinia Parish when I was a baby.” There was pride in her voice. I was rather nonchalant. She was now in her late teens. What spooked me was her desire to meet her baptising hero. Catholics have used infant baptism as their signature sacramental tune. And between the Paedobaptists and Credobaptists, there is a proverbial “great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot” Luke 16.26 NIV). It is a matter of never the twain shall meet. As a Catholic and theologian, I have thought and reflected about infant baptism with mixed feelings. Perhaps that explains my nonchalance at being outed as a Catholic Paedobaptist. Surprisingly, I am more in favour of infant baptism in my 60s than I was in my 30s but I am not going to put pressure on my son and his wife how soon or even if, they will have my five-month-old granddaughter baptised. Catholic defence of infant baptism has not been helped by the theologoumenon original sin, thanks to one of our earliest theological exports to global Christianity, Augustine of Hippo whose Manichean understanding of human nature and human sexuality has probably done more harm than good. But I would leave it to the Augustinians to correct that. But help is at hand from a very unlikely bedfellow, existentialism, particularly from two concepts I borrow from John Lane, essenceless creation and theistic existentialism (Lane 2015). By essenceless creation, I mean that creation is incomplete and evolving to its end, which according to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is the Omega Point and by theistic existentialism, I mean simply taking life at its terms, warts and all — but as a Christian — and not influenced by any supposed essentialism, whether good or bad. Regarding infant baptism, even adamant Paedobaptists do not completely agree on the reasons for baptising infants, and they offer different reasons in support of the practice. I argue that the controversy between infant baptism and adult baptism is a non-controversy. At whatever age children or adults are baptised, there are good reasons for that, none of which have to do with essentialist original sin. I want to underline that the reason given for infant baptism as removal of original sin is not helpful to explain to sceptics why Catholics baptise children. If anything, it gives fuel to Richard Dawkins’ god, if he had one, but instead it is more accurate to describe this as his caricature of the Jewish god, a god who is jealous, petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak, vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser, misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent (Dawkins 2006: 51), to which we may add child abuser and human rights abuser — a god who would demand his pound of flesh from an innocent child for a sin committed by Adam and Eve. Unlike the famous “Don’t mention the war” episode from the sitcom Fawlty Towers, I will mention original sin several times. On the current count I have already mentioned it 11 times.
A Little Lesson in History from the Bible
The starting point, and I think erroneously, is what the Bible prohibits infant baptism. What we call sacraments, at least some of them, and their minutiae of canonical requirements, developed after the New Testament period. Sacramental Churches would argue otherwise. At the Council of Trent (1545–1563), the Roman Catholic Church formally fixed the number of sacraments at seven: baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, penance, holy orders, matrimony, and anointing of the sick. The theology of the Eastern Orthodox churches also fixed the number of sacraments at seven. The reformed tradition begs to differ. Many Protestant denominations, such as those within the reformed tradition, identify two sacraments instituted by Jesus Christ, the Eucharist and Baptism. To me, it is not necessary to run to the Bible for justification whether a sacrament was instituted as a sacrament by Jesus Christ with marching chapter and verse in the Bible. But to be fair, there are allusions to baptism in the first part of our Christian Bible. But that is all they are: allusions not proofs. There are several mentions of baptism in the second part of the Christian Bible. None of them discuss infant or adult baptism per se. On the basis of this silence, uncritical readers can be excused for holding on to either infant baptism or adult baptism for dear life. The argument offered by Credobaptists sounds fool proof and hermetically at first. There is no mention of infant baptism. I think there is a perfect explanation for that. Christianity was just beginning, who were you going to target as disciples? I think, adults. Does that silence preclude a later development of infant baptism? I think not. Read the Great Commission carefully, it is about recruiting new disciples. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matt 28.19‒20). Thankfully, Jesus did not say, “baptising adults in the name of the Father and the Son and Holy Spirit.” I think this silence leaves room for later changes both in the meaning of baptism and the targets to be baptised. If, for instance your emphasis is on baptism as a conditio sine qua non for salvation, and I do not share that view, you are unlikely to leave out children. St Augustine of Hippo, Africa’s greatest theologian, barring Tertullian, was so obsessed with sin, sex and the fate of babies who die without baptism that he was forced to invent limbo — an intermezzo between heaven and hell. He would be a brave Catholic who today would preach that limbo with a straight face. I would recommend the offender to be sent to the local equivalent of the Gulag Archipelago for theological re-education.
So, for a little lesson in biblical history. Most scholars believe Christian baptism has its origins in Levitical purification rituals. Jewish priests would bathe themselves in water before they performed their duties. If I am beginning facetious, it was a way to cleanse nocturnal emissions or simply the demands of hygiene even for a non-Levite. But the connection is important. In Judaism, babies were not under the Torah. Only when one reached the age of 12, and only boys for that matter, because Judaism is one of the most patriarchal religions, did the Jew come under the Torah. Girls just did not matter, as they still do not in many cultures. The villain is patriarchy, not religion. Girls did not even need to go to the synagogue. When we get to the second part of the Christian Bible, we find many Bible verses pointing to the importance of water baptism for the believing Christian (1 Peter 3.21, Romans 6.3‒5, Colossians 2.12, Galatians 3.26‒29), not the age at which it is to be administered, I hasten to add. Remember that it is early stages yet, so who was going to be your target? Naturally, adults. Readers of the second part of the Bible even rope in Jesus Christ’s famous baptism in the Jordan River by John the Baptist (cf. Matt 3.13‒17, Mark 1.9‒11, Luke 3.21‒22) replying to John the Baptist’s objections, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfil all righteousness” (Matt 3.15 NRSV). We forget that Jesus was not a Christian. His own baptism was exemplary but he does say something about the requirement of baptism for new recruits for the Kingdom, new disciples, in the Great Commission we mentioned above. “Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” (Matt 28.19 NIV). Both the actions and commands of Jesus Christ stressed the importance of baptism in the early Christian Church principally for one reason: to recruit disciples. Not even Nicodemus is a great argument for adult baptism. He is told by Jesus, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit” (John 3.15 NRSV). Nicodemus, despite his learning, is completely bamboozled or discombobulated. The point was that the new religion was drawing followers even from the elite. There was never any mention by Jesus, such as, oh by the way bring your children along. At that moment, it was the elite who were the target.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, early baptism was only ever meant to be a symbol or membership card for adult believers, an “outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace” as St Augustine rightly pointed out. Symbolically, by immersion baptism, going under the water represents visually the death of the person, symbolically linking them to Jesus’s death on the cross, and coming out of the water represents Jesus Christ’s resurrection after three days in the tomb. Jesus expressed the importance of public faith to his disciples, numerous times during his ministry. “Those who are ashamed of me and of my words, of them the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels” (Luke 9.26 NRSV). It was what they were signing up for as new followers of Jesus through baptism — to join those holy angels. Elsewhere, Jesus reminds his hearers, “Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.” (Matt 10.32‒33 NRSV). Jesus made it clear he wanted his followers to love him enough to profess their love and faith publicly. There is an important passage in the second part of the Christian Bible which should make us even question baptism for salvation. A robber, who had been condemned to die by crucifixion alongside Jesus, asked him to remember him when he came into his kingdom. Jesus told the man he would be in paradise with him that very day, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise (Luke 23.43 NRSV). Jesus did not say, quickly let’s fetch some water for you to be baptised. It will only take a few minutes before both us pop off.
So, Why Baptise Children Today?
Some supporters of infant baptism argue that circumcision is the sign of the covenant God made with Abraham and should be received by all the members of his covenant. No qualms with that. Even today, to be a Jew you need to be circumcised. The argument gets dicey when, following St Paul, you argue that the children of members of Abraham’s covenant — Christians — are themselves members of Abraham’s covenant. This was simply an analogy, not be understood literally. That Christians are members of Abraham’s covenant was meant as a way to convince early Jewish Christians that they were not losing out on the Abrahamic spiritual gene pool and promises, “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Gen 12.1‒3 NIV). By extension, all the children of Christians — even non-Jews — are members of Abraham’s covenant and commonwealth. Since baptism is the New Testament form of circumcision, the children of Christians should receive the sign of the covenant by being baptised. Once again, at no point is the age question brought into the discussion.
When I was a young altar boy, aged about 12, the biggest reason I heard from my first Zambian priest, the late Marius Chimenya, the first indigenous priest for Ndola Diocese, for baptism was original sin. Paedobaptists also point to Psalm 51, which reads, in part, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51.5 NRSV), as indication that infants are sinful, that is, with original sin and are thus in need of forgiveness that they too might have salvation. I do not know what the Psalmist’s problem was. Credobaptists agree that infants are in need of salvation but they would rather leave baptism a little later. But Paedobaptists push the point a step further arguing that it makes no theological sense for infants to need salvation but for God to make no provision for them to be saved (cf. 1 Cor 7.14 where Paul says that the children of a believer are holy — separated — and therefore, perhaps, would not need baptising even if baptism saved). Credobaptists seem to agree that there is a provision through which God enables infants to be saved, belief in Jesus Christ (cf. Mark 9.42, John 3.14‒21, John 11.25‒26, Acts 2.21, Romans 10.1‒21) but they do not say how. Furthermore, Credobaptists argue that paedobaptism is affirming believer’s hereditary grace, a doctrine not found in Scripture. Some Credobaptists who agree with the interpretation of Psalm 51, argue that even though infants are sinful they are not accountable, because of the “age of accountability” although many theologians would argue that an “age of accountability” is nowhere mentioned in the Bible. This is how the Catechism of the Catholic Church describes infant baptism, “Born with a fallen human nature and tainted by original sin, children also have need of the new birth in Baptism to be freed from the power of darkness and brought into the realm of the freedom of the children of God, to which all men are called. The sheer gratuitousness of the grace of salvation is particularly manifest in infant Baptism. The Church and the parents would deny a child the priceless grace of becoming a child of God were they not to confer Baptism shortly after birth” (CCC 1992: par 1250). Such “priceless grace of becoming a child of God” is not too far from the Marxian Christianity as “opium of the masses.”
What would Richard Dawkins say about Infant Baptism?
Richard Dawkins, the celebrity British atheist born in Kenya, has said a lot about God, but perhaps more accurately, about his non-existence. I doubt he would bother about infant baptism. That is why the question is hypothetical. I think the first thing he would say is to confirm the picture of the Old Testament God he painted in the God Delusion where he opined that “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully” (Dawkins 2006: 51). But I spoke too fast. He did pontificate about infant baptism, well not directly. He is a proponent of children not being made members of a Church such as through Catechism or baptism. The children have not rationally signed up to the religion. Observing my soon-to-be six-month-old granddaughter, I am wondering how much time we should wait until she has reached the age of reason to sign her up to either Methodism or Catholicism or even on more mundane natures whether we should wait for her to read the packaging on the Cereal baby food my wife took her. Presumably we would have to wait until she has been to school for which she needs the age of reason. By that time, she will be a teenager and the Cereal well out of date. In an interview with the Mail Online, Richard Dawkins declared that forcing religion or Church down the throat of children, which for him infant baptism does, was equivalent to “indoctrination of religion.” He added that “What a child should never be taught is that you are a Catholic or Muslim child, therefore that is what you believe. That’s child abuse.”1 How that would work out in practice, he does not say. So, I will help him out. If the child was Catholic, they would ask you, as my son frequently did “why can’t I go up with you to receive that thing [holy communion]? Would a Richard Dawkins’ answer, “you are not rationally competent to make that decision yet” have sufficed? I know what my son would have said, “That’s not fair” and throw a tantrum.
Infant Baptism and Human Rights
And because belief in a God who imposes obligations is an infringement of human rights, Richard Dawkins would also agree with the former President of Ireland, Mary McAleese. In a 2018 Irish Times interview, she described babies baptised into the Catholic Church as “infant conscripts who are held to lifelong obligations of obedience.” She went on to argue that “You can’t impose, really, obligations on people who are only two weeks old and you can’t say to them at seven or eight or 14 or 19 ‘here is what you contracted, here is what you signed up to’ because the truth is, they didn’t.’” She further plugged the human rights angle, saying that “you and I know, we live now in times where we have the right to freedom of conscience, freedom of belief, freedom of opinion, freedom of religion and freedom to change religion. The Catholic Church yet has to fully embrace that thinking.”2 She did not say anything about the small matter of taking children to school at the age of 5 or 7 years old, choosing the type of school they should attend or to school them at home. In the UK, it is even a criminal offence to have your child not in school until 16 for which parents can be imprisoned. According to Mary McAleese, it is okay to remove their human rights in this instance. It was said of her when she met John Paul II privately that when the Pope tried an ice breaker by asking her husband “As your wife is the President of the country, who is boss at home?” The Pope got the full Monty, “You are bung out of order!”
Infant Baptism Versus Adult Baptism and the Newer Denominations
Newer denominations tend to be more conservative and less Paedobaptist. If it is not in the Bible, forget it. How they interpret the Evangelist John’s rather wise conclusion to his Gospel, “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written” (John 21.25 NIV) would obviously be irrelevant. They also tend to read the Bible more literarily or fundamentally. They tend to be averse to the more critical historico-critical method. Most of the newer denominations of Christianity don’t baptise infants at all and are against the practice of infant baptism, believing that, since baptism is meant to be a public expression of faith, babies should not be baptised since they could not possibly understand the commitment the ritual is intended for and aren’t really consenting to doing so anyway. Undergoing it at the behest of their parents would be unbiblical. Some would even rope in the child abuse ticket which is clearly nonsensical. We can argue, at least those of us who were born in colonial Northern Rhodesia, schooling was a form of oppression and child abuse. It was intended to educate the future workforce from which taxes would be extracted to run the colonies. Unfortunately, the postcolony has not corrected that. However, infant baptism tends to hold a different meaning for baptism in some of these denominations. Some call baptism a sacrament and require it for joining the Church and being noted in the Church’s registry.
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1 Rob Cooper (22 April 2013), “Forcing a religion on your children is as bad as child abuse, claims atheist professor Richard Dawkins,” Mail Online, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2312813/Richard-Dawkins-Forcing-religion-children-child-abuse-claims-atheist-professor.html (Accessed on 10.12.2020)
2 Patsy McGarry (27 June 2018), “Mary McAleese: Baptised Children ‘Infant Conscripts,’” Irish Times, https://www.richarddawkins.net/2018/06/mary-mcaleese-baptised-children-infant-conscripts/ (Accessed on 10.12.2020)
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- Dr. Tarcisius Mukuka (Autor), 2020, The Infant Baptism vs. Adult Baptism Debate. The Perspective of Richard Dawkins, Múnich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/976023
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