Did the Babies Stay Home?

What this is about

The author of this site holds that a plain reading of the household baptisms includes infants, and that excluding them means reading something into the text. He asked three questions. If the Bible keeps mentioning household baptisms, how can it be shown from the text that infants were left out? Does the plain reading not suggest that Baptism was received in faith as God’s gift, rather than offered as a declaration of a personal conversion? And when Jesus says the little children should be allowed to come to him, on what basis do we say he does not mean Baptism?

There are two ways of reading these texts. On the first, “household” means everyone in the house, children included, and Baptism is chiefly God’s gift, which an infant can receive. On the second, Baptism is a believer’s act of obedience and testimony, so the households must have been people who heard and believed, and either there were no babies or the babies were not baptized. Millions of sincere Christians hold the second view, and this page gives it a full hearing.

The short answer

Reading out, reading in

Exegesis means drawing out of a text what its words actually say. Eisegesis means reading into it something you brought with you. Everybody does both every day.

A wedding card says, “We’re coming as a family.” Nobody sets one place fewer for the baby. If the couple wanted no children, they would have printed “adults only, please,” because a limit like that has to be said. A label says “two tablets three times a day,” and a patient who decides it means “only when I feel ill” has brought his own rule to it. A notice says “staff may leave early on Friday”; a manager who later says he meant full-time staff is adding a limit the notice did not state.

One more, because the whole debate turns on it. “The whole family came to Christmas dinner.” The baby did not eat the turkey. Nobody concludes that the baby was not at Christmas. Whether someone was there, and whether he could take part in everything, are two different questions. Keep that in mind.

What the texts actually say

Lydia, a trader in purple cloth at Philippi, listened to Paul, and “the Lord opened” her heart. “And when she was baptized, and her household …” (Acts 16:15). The same night, Paul told the city jailer, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.” They “spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house,” and he “was baptized, he and all his, straightway” (16:31–33). Paul writes, “I baptized also the household of Stephanas” (1 Corinthians 1:16). Two more come close: Cornelius was told he would be saved “and all thy house” (Acts 11:14), and Crispus “believed on the Lord with all his house” (18:8).

No account names an infant. No account names an exception. Both readings have to add something. One adds that there were children, since households nearly always had them. The other adds that there were none, in every household, or that “household” meant only those old enough to believe. Only the second has to narrow the word.

Six statements about these accounts. Does the text state it, or is it supplied by a reader?

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A lamb for an house

Luke did not invent the word “household.” His readers knew the Old Testament, where God deals with houses. Abraham circumcised “every male among the men of Abraham’s house,” and the rule was “he that is eight days old.” The Passover was “a lamb for an house,” counted by the number of souls, and the blood covered every firstborn, infant or grown. At Moab, “your little ones” stood before the LORD to “enter into covenant.” Even a terrible text shows what the word meant: when Saul condemned a priest “and all thy father’s house,” the killing reached “children and sucklings.”

There is one honest exception. “Elkanah, and all his house, went up to offer unto the LORD … But Hannah went not up … until the child be weaned.” So “all his house” could be said while a mother and baby stayed home. But look at what the writer does: he names the exception in the next breath and gives the reason. When a baby stayed home, the Bible said so.

A first-century listener would have heard the same. A Jewish father had circumcised his sons at eight days. A Roman expected a household to follow its head’s religion; a writer of the time told a new bride “to worship and to know only the gods that her husband believes in.” Paul calls the children of a believer “holy,” and his letters speak to children in church directly: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord.”

Five Old Testament houses. Were the little ones in them?

“To your children,” and “forbid them not”

At Pentecost Peter said, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you … For the promise is unto you, and to your children.” He was speaking to Jews whose sons had all received the covenant sign as babies, under the promise “to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.” Some readers take “your children” to mean later generations who will repent; others hear the old covenant words. The verse does not settle it alone, but it puts “children” in the first sentence about Christian Baptism.

People brought children to Jesus, and the disciples tried to stop them. Luke calls them brephē, “infants.” Jesus “was much displeased,” and said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.” He “took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.”

Be fair about this passage. It does not mention Baptism, and Jesus did not baptize them. What it does say is that babies can be brought by others, that the kingdom is theirs, and that everyone receives it “as a little child.” Elsewhere the kingdom is entered by being “born of water and of the Spirit” (John 3:5), and God “saved us, by the washing of regeneration” (Titus 3:5). If babies can have the kingdom, what keeps them from the way it is given? That is the author’s question, and it is a question about what Baptism is.

The early Church made the connection quickly. About the year 200 a writer named Tertullian argued for delaying the baptism of little children, and he had to answer people quoting this very verse: “The Lord does indeed say, ‘Forbid them not to come unto me.’ Let them ‘come,’ then, while they are growing up.” A few decades later a council of sixty-six bishops was asked whether babies should wait until the eighth day, like circumcision. They said no: God’s grace “is not to be refused to any one born of man.” In the fourth century, though, many Christian families did delay, and some famous bishops raised in Christian homes, Augustine among them, were baptized as adults. Scholars still argue about what happened before 200.

The case for the other side

The other side has real arguments. No baby is ever named. Some households are described as hearing and believing: at Caesarea the Holy Spirit fell on everyone listening, and Crispus believed “with all his house.” Stephanas’s household later served the church, which sounds like grown-ups. The commands say “repent” and “believe” before Baptism. And firm evidence for baptizing babies begins only about 200.

Inside this case are two different claims, and they should be kept apart.

The first claim: there were no babies in any of these households. For one household, that is quite possible. Lydia may have had no children. But it has to be true of all of them, and the text never hints at it. Ancient homes were large and full of children. And the silence cuts both ways: the New Testament never records a child of Christian parents being baptized later, after making his own profession.

The second claim: everyone in each house heard, believed and was ready the same day. This fits Caesarea well. But at Philippi it means a jailer, his wife, any grown children and his slaves all came to their own personal faith within one night. If each decides alone, that becomes very unlikely as the numbers grow. It makes sense only if the household acted together under its head, which is exactly the picture of a household that includes its babies.

What Baptism is

In 1527 a group of Anabaptists wrote one of the first statements against baptizing babies. Look at the order. First a definition: “Baptism shall be given to all those who have learned repentance and amendment of life.” Then the conclusion: “This excludes all infant baptism.” The exclusion came from the definition. And among the texts they listed for that definition was Acts 16, the chapter with Lydia’s household and the jailer’s.

That is the heart of it. Remember the Christmas dinner. Whether the babies were in the household is a question about a word, and the plain reading says yes. Whether they could receive what the household received depends on what was being given. If Baptism is chiefly our testimony, a baby cannot give one. If it is chiefly God’s act, a gift needs only someone to receive it. The Lutheran catechism says Baptism “works forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this.” Luther added that a child is baptized “solely upon the command of God,” with prayer that God will give it faith, since Scripture calls faith “the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8).

Six texts about Baptism. In each, who is doing the acting?

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Check it yourself

Five things. The first takes fifteen minutes. The last is the one that matters.

1. 1. Read Acts 16:11–34 and 1 Corinthians 1:14–16. Mark every “house” and “household.” Does anyone stay behind?
2. 2. Read Genesis 17:9–14, Exodus 12:1–4 and 1 Samuel 1:21–22. Who is in each house? What happens when someone is left out?
3. 3. Read Mark 10:13–16 and Luke 18:15–17, then John 3:5 and Titus 3:5. What does each say about the kingdom, and how it is received?
4. 4. Read Tertullian, On Baptism 18, and Cyprian’s letter to Fidus. Both are short and free online. What were they arguing about?
5. 5. Make one list. Do this one. Write down every reason you hold for including or excluding babies from Baptism, and the verse each comes from. Then mark which come from a household text, and which come from a belief about what Baptism is.