295 - Infant Baptism In the First Four Centuries

Infant Baptism In the First Four Centuries
By Joachim Jeremias
111 p. Philadelphia, Westminster Press, 1961. $3.50.

This book concerns one of today's liveliest theological questions: the validity of infant baptism. New Testament authority for the custom is at best ambiguous. Many scholars, including Karl Barth, insist there is none. Further, a rite which receives tiny babies into a religious faith which they cannot comprehend seems to vast numbers of people to be a violation of common sense or of common decency or of both.

Professor Jeremias, of Göttingen University, makes his greatest contribution in his study of the early tradition concerning this practice as it may be found outside the Scriptures. He offers exegesis of pertinent New Testament passages, but his exegesis falls short-often by his own admission-of adding any new insights or offering any substantial evidence in favor of the custom. Most readers, however, will be impressed with the extra-Biblical evidence he produces to support the virtually universal observance of the rite in the post-Apostolic generations. And this is as it should be, for he states his purpose thus: to "law before the reader the historical material relating to the history of infant baptism in the first four centuries in as concrete and sober a manner as possible."

Most of this historical material is "unexpected new knowledge" resulting from recent research. This category includes newly learned information concerning proselyte baptism, evidence gained from studies of early Christian epitaphs, and insights obtained from certain other ascriptions. His conclusion, as has doubtless been guessed, is that early tradition argues overwhelmingly in favor of baptizing infant children of believers.

296 - Infant Baptism In the First Four Centuries

Professor Jeremias builds his case in four chapters. The first raises the question, "Were the children of converts baptized along with their parents?" His affirmative response is based upon: (I the "oikos formula," according to which the Jewish household was viewed as a corporate entity; (2) the parallels between Christian baptism and proselyte baptism, which included children; and (3) certain separate or unrelated pieces of evidence. The section on the "oikos formula" is especially valuable.

The next chapter asks, "What did the primitive Church do when a child was born to Christian parents?" The author's exegesis of three New Testament passages sheds little light. However, the evidence he presents from the "unexpected new knowledge" does seem to justify his conclusion "that in the Gentile Church (we have no information about the Jewish Christian Church) children born in the fellowship were baptized as early as the first century" (p. 57).

The other two chapters continue to build the same kind of case on the same kind of evidence. One section, however, is especially interesting: the one which considers the thirty-five year period in the fourth century when it became common practice for persons to delay their conversion as long as possible, ideally until the hour of death, and then to be baptized. Why did this unfortunate practice arise? What brought it to a sudden halt?

The book is well written and even carries an element of subtle suspense, doubtless a tribute to the translator, David Cairns, as well as to the author. The force which the book bears for a given reader will depend largely upon the significance which that reader attributes to the authority of tradition.

John W. Meister
Fort Wayne, Indiana.