The practice of infant baptism is not in the Bible. The theology supporting it might be but not the practice itself. By that I mean there is no description, mention or clear evidence of infants being baptised in the pages of the New Testament1.
In fact there are no mentions of infant baptism for at least 150 years after the resurrection of Christ and the first really clear mention of it (by someone who opposed the practice) was Tertullian around 200 AD2.
The great church historian Henry Chadwick thought that even at the time of Augustine in 387AD that, ‘it was still rather unusual for infants to be baptised.’
Hendrick Stander and Johannes Louw offer a impressive and comprehensive study of the early church literature3, tomb inscriptions and artwork in their book Baptism in the Early Church and clearly demonstrate that it wasn’t until sometime into the 4th century that infant baptism became the standard. They conclude,
Finally it needs to be remarked that the contention often found in modern literature, viz that adult baptism in the early church entailed a missionary situation, cannot be substantiated by the relevant patristic literature, since the transition from adult baptism to infant baptism occurred at a time when Christianity was already a widespread phenomenon in the ancient church. Therefore, it is also unsound to scrutinize the New Testament writings for allusions to infant baptism, since the latter involved a historical development (bold added)
Baptism in the Early Church, Stander & Louw, p186
Given that the majority of the world’s Christians practice infant baptism in one form or other (and with a wide variety of theologies to support the practice) it’s worth asking, how did that happen? In other words, what explains the historical development?
Francesco Arduini has a suggestion, and I think it’s a compelling one. Arduini has built on his 2021 article for Biblical Archaeology Society (which I wrote about here) and turned it into The Infant Baptism: The Case for a Pandemic Origin. Arduini covers similar ground to Stander & Louw by reviewing the early church literature that mentions baptism between 100-165AD and comes to the same conclusion, namely that infant baptism is not mentioned and all the references to baptism refer to believer’s baptism. Arduini then moves forward to 180-200AD and notes that by the time Tertullian mentions it, it has become something of an established if not yet the dominant practice.
Then Arduini does something, which I’m not aware of anyone else doing before and asks, what was it that happened in the Roman Empire between 165 & 180AD that might account for the development of infant baptism? The answer is: The Antonine Plague.
Arduini notes in his postscript how during the Covid pandemic church practice changed rapidly when churches around the western world were forced to close. Sunday & Easter services went online, new habits & meeting practices were developed. And in response to these changes it sent pastors, bishops and theologians scrambling for biblical and theology justification of these new ways of taking communion and discussing the meaning of community, presence, worship, pastoral support and so on. We can clearly see how the church changed as a result, even if those changes may have proved temporary.
Well by comparison the Antonine Plague was far more devastating than Covid. It was either smallpox or measles or possibly both and estimates range from 2% to 33% affected and so deaths anywhere between 1.5 million to 25 million, with people often settling for something in the middle around 7-10 million deaths. This out of a population of 75 million meant that around 10% of the population died. Covid is only now reaching that lower figure out of a population one hundred times larger. The plague lasted, in waves, for about 15 years and decimated the Roman army and considerably weakened the Empire for a number of years and may even have taken the life of one if not two emperors, including Marcus Aurelius.
Given the absolute devastation that the plague wreaked across the Roman Empire is it any surprise that Christians would have pressed and pushed their infants to be baptised at birth, not because of any link with circumcision but because they might die and they wanted them to go to heaven? Only later did the churches thinkers go scrambling for theological backup begin to land on connections such as circumcision, and then much, much later, covenant.
Arduini’s short book, translated from Italian, is a straightforward read, but it is worthy of consideration because the argument is both simple yet extremely effective. I think it would have been worthwhile spending time describing the scale and impact of the Plague so the reader appreciates the urgency and power of it, and bringing the postscript reflection on the Covid pandemic into the body of the book and expanding on it so the reader can how this change happens. Yet the core argument remains strong: there was no mention of infant baptism for 150 years, then twenty years later there appear mentions of infant baptism, and so what happened in the middle? A deadly plague. In fact I think it should force proponents of infant baptism to give a better historical account of the evidence if they can.
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