Why Do We Baptize Infants? A Book Review

Shawn reviews Bryan Chapell's Why Do We Baptize Infants? Shawn, who is a proponent of believer's baptism, looks at Chapell's short book to try and learn more about the practice of infant baptism. He shares his opinon on how this book will be received by those who practice infant baptism and shares his own problems with Chapell's arguments.

[lukemorrison]

Great review. I have never heard that definition for a seal either. That seems like grasping for straws to prove something that has no defense.

[anthonym.]

It's a pamplet because there is not much to back up their position. Infant baptism and how adamant reformed believers are about it make me question reformed theology as a whole.

[TronJC]

The Reformed view of infant baptism isn’t historically why infants were baptized. To get better understanding, see this by Cyprian who along with other fathers held to infants are regenerated, saved and forgiven in baptism:

2. But in respect of the case of the infants, which you say ought not to be baptized within the second or third day after their birth, and that the law of ancient circumcision should be regarded, so that you think that one who is just born should not be baptized and sanctified within the eighth day, we all thought very differently in our council. For in this course which you thought was to be taken, no one agreed; but we all rather judge that the mercy and grace of God is not to be refused to any one born of man. For as the Lord says in His Gospel, The Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them, Luke 4:56 as far as we Can, We must strive that, if possible, no soul be lost.

5. For which reason we think that no one is to be hindered from obtaining grace by that law which was already ordained, and that spiritual circumcision ought not to be hindered by carnal circumcision, but that absolutely every man is to be admitted to the grace of Christ, since Peter also in the Acts of the Apostles speaks, and says, The Lord has said to me that I should call no man common or unclean. Acts 10:28 But if anything could hinder men from obtaining grace, their more heinous sins might rather hinder those who are mature and grown up and older. But again, if even to the greatest sinners, and to those who had sinned much against God, when they subsequently believed, remission of sins is granted — and nobody is hindered from baptism and from grace— how much rather ought we to shrink from hindering an infant, who, being lately born, has not sinned, except in that, being born after the flesh according to Adam, he has contracted the contagion of the ancient death at its earliest birth, who approaches the more easily on this very account to the reception of the forgiveness of sins— that to him are remitted, not his own sins, but the sins of another.