Covenant baptism

The primary reason that the Reformed have always baptised their children, over against the practice of believers' baptism, is that the Reformed see God's friendship as something He gives to a people in all their generations. We do not find, in Scripture, a God of isolated individuals, but of entire families. This applies as much in judgment as in blessing. Hence, all of humanity - even those yet to be born - were included in God's relationship with Adam, and then with Adam were excluded from God's place in the Garden. Adam was a king, a federal head to represent and in some sense to rule everyone. And so, when God was pleased with Noah, Noah's whole family went into the ark - and, symbolically, the whole creation went too, in all the animals. Again, when God established a relationship with Abram, that relationship involved Abram's entire household - adult servants and all. They were all circumcised. Thus, the mark of belonging to God under the old dispensation - circumcision - was applied to everyone in a particular household. Through that household's head, the entire hosehold had been brought into a restorative relationship with God. God said to Abram, "I will be a God to you and to your children". The relationship established is with the whole group; all generations.

The application of covenant thinking can be compared to someone building a house for your mother and father when the old one burned down. The Reformed view would let you and your brothers and sisters live in the new house; the typical believers' baptism view would only let the parents in. So, when the Reformed baptise an infant, we are saying that God has made Himself God to that child by providing a house for the entire family. So, God gives the child the privileges of Christain family membership and expects them to respond faithfully in return. This pattern of God-initiated relationship and expectation of faithfulness in return is what we mean when we say covenant.

The house analogy above is not meant to imply that the adult-baptist has no legitimate concerns. Believers' baptism emphasises the individual's response: at some point the child will self-consciously take upon themselves, and begin to exercise, the identity and privilege God has called them to. They will begin to look after the house. This is well and good, and there is nothing wrong with expressing this commitment formally. However, the function of baptism, just as with circumcision, is not to speak of this response. Something more glorious than that response has happened prior to it, and it is this something to which both circumcision and baptism point (all the while, of course, requiring the faithful response): God has chosen to be God to us. He has built the house. It is therefore crucial to understand that the Reformed are not saying something about the child's response when they baptise. They are saying something about God's grace.

It is much more amazing that God could love and restore rebellious, disowned sons than it is that those sons could respond to such love. For this reason, the Reformed have always rightly emphasized God's grace as the most marvelous of the matters to be highlighted. So, because the covenent ceremonies God instituted point to it, and because the initiation is greater than the response, the Reformed have always held that to give the proper content, meaning and application to baptism is to give the proper glory to God.