Proponents of infant baptism can make a biblical case and they often suggest that history backs it up. None other than Francis Schaeffer argued that, “Those who would teach that the practice of the early Church was not infant baptism should be able to show in Church History when it started. There is no such break recorded.”((https://www.theopedia.com/infant-baptism))
Can Schaeffer’s challenge be answered? Francesco Arduini thinks it can1.
Writing for the Spring 2021 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Franceso Arduini proposes in his article “The Pandemic Origins of Child Baptism” to connect the emergence of infant baptism with the ground-shaking experience of the Antonine Plague. The so-called Antonine Plague, which was probably smallpox, devastated large swaths of the Roman Empire in the late 160s. Arduini cites Christian writers who first mention the baptism of babies to argue that the documented appearance of this new religious practice coincides with, or rather follows, the Antonine Plague. The rationale behind infant baptism was simple: to guarantee salvation for the babies before they could be ripped from their parents’ arms by the merciless disease.
The Pandemic Roots of Infant Baptism
As we well know pandemics have a way of changing how we live. Practices we didn’t have before become accepted and everyday. That’s just as true today as it was in 165AD when the Antonine Plague killed its millions. Maybe as many as 20% of the total population of the Roman Empire died of this plague.
Unsurprisingly this catastrophe resulted in a resurgence of appeals to the gods((https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/ancient-cultures/daily-life-and-practice/the-antonine-plague-and-the-spread-of-christianity/)). Arduini says, “Marcus Aurelius restored temples and shrines, summoned priests, and called for every form of prayer to calm the divine anger that he believed was at the origin of the plague. These unusual religious manifestations probably began around 166.”
This plague was thought to be either smallpox or measles both particularly devastating for infants and it is precisely at this time we get the first reference of any kind to infant baptism.
Throughout the subapostolic period, there is no explicit reference to the baptism of children. Every time the topic is tackled, children are considered pure regardless. This was orthodoxy up to the time of the Christian theologian Justin (in 150 C.E.), who was the last apologist to write about baptism before the Antonine Plague struck the Roman Empire (First Apology 61.9–10). Thirty years later, with Irenaeus, the situation seems to have changed, and, after 20 more years, we learn from Tertullian that the practice of infant baptism was implemented unreservedly.
Between 150 and 180 C.E. something must have happened that would justify such an important and unprecedented change. The Antonine Plague fits perfectly in the history of baptismal theology, presenting itself as a crucial event on the world stage.
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