Christian doctrine has never been determined by one or two proof texts. It’s always a matter not only of considering everything Scripture teaches on a subject, but then also using reason to collate and systematize all of that teaching. The classic example would be the doctrine of the Trinity. There’s no one passage explicitly teaching that there is one God who exists eternally in three distinct persons. Instead, that’s been formulated taking into account the full scope of what the Bible teaches about God and working with it.
I submit that a failure to realize this is behind much opposition to infant baptism. The easy thing to argue is that the Bible nowhere commands it or gives an explicit example of it; therefore it ought not to be done. Easy, but also simplistic. With the same theological reasoning, Jehovah’s Witnesses reject the Trinity.
Behind the question of infant baptism, there are two other key questions needing to be answered. Once those questions are answered, it should be apparent that infant baptism, while not explicitly biblically commanded, makes biblical sense and is according to God’s will. Both of these questions relate to covenant theology. Read more»
Wes Bredenhof | “A Concise Case for Infant Baptism” | August 24, 2026
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these examples are a precedent/model for all believing households throughout Acts and church history. there is 100% probability that there were teenagers and infants in all the believing households in Acts, the example is not limited to just the 3.
thank you, very helpful. Regarding the household baptisms in Acts where you say ” I wouldn’t marshal the household baptisms of the New Testament (Acts 16:15, Acts 16:33, 1 Cor. 1:16) as a strong argument for infant baptism. I wouldn’t dismiss them too easily either. We’re dealing here with probabilities, so it’s an inductive argument. Statistically speaking, how likely is it that none of these three households had young children? It beggars belief that none of them did.” I have reasoned a different way: these are just 3 examples that set a precedent for all households. another head of a house is converted and he says, ‘I’m going to baptize my family like in these other examples’, surely there would be infants in the households of the thousand of believers recorded as converting in Acts, what stops them from following suit?
Marc,
That’s interesting. Check out these resources on this issue:
thank you Dr Clark