The infant baptism debate goes much deeper than the question of whether it is proper and right to baptize babies. The heart of the question is the very definition of Christian baptism. What is it? What does it symbolize? What does it signify? What does it mean? Once these questions are fully and comprehensively answered, the matter of baptizing infants will be more easily settled.

What is baptism supposed to symbolize? Wayne Grudem, Research Professor of Bible and Theology at Phoenix Seminary, holds to the traditional Baptist view.  He believes baptism represents “the symbolism of union with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection.” This view holds that all New Testament baptisms were carried out by the subject being put completely under water.  This mode of baptism is commonly called immersion.  Grudem, and most Baptists, believe support for this line of reasoning is found in two Scriptural passages:

Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:3, 4)

and

…buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, ?who raised Him from the dead (Colossians 2:12)

Wayne Grudem comments on these two verses by stating:

Now this truth is clearly symbolized in baptism by immersion. When the candidate for baptism goes down into the water it is a picture of going down into the grave and being buried.  Coming up out of the water is then a picture of being raised with Christ to walk in newness of life.  Baptism thus very clearly pictures death to one’s old way of life and rising to a new kind of life in Christ.  But baptism by sprinkling or pouring simply misses this symbolism.

Traditionally, however, theologians have always maintained the above verses are not speaking of water baptism, but of spiritual baptism. As Louis Berkhof, the great theologian who taught for almost four decades at Calvin Theological Seminary, writes in his Systematic Theology:

…even these are not to the point, for they do not speak directly of any baptism with water at all, but of the spiritual baptism thereby represented.  They represent regeneration under the figure of a dying and a rising again. It is certainly perfectly obvious that they do not make mention of baptism as an emblem of Christ’s death and resurrection.  If baptism were represented here at all as an emblem, it would be an emblem of the believer’s dying and rising again.  And since this only a figurative way of representing his regeneration, it would make baptism a figure of a figure.

Traditional reformed theology holds a much different opinion on what baptism symbolizes.  The vast majority of Christian scholars since the death of Christ have held that Baptism signifies purification.  As the Heidelberg Catechism states:

Christ instituted this outward washing and with it gave the promise that, as surely as water washes away the dirt from the body, so certainly His blood and Spirit wash away the impurity of my soul, that is, all my sins.

Later it reads:

Is then the external baptism of water, the washing away of sins? It is not: For the blood of Jesus Christ alone cleanses us from all sin.  Why then does the Holy Spirit call baptism the washing of regeneration, and the washing away of sins? God speaks thus not without sufficient cause, not only that He may teach us, that just as pollution of the body is purged by water, so our sins are expiated by the blood and Spirit of Christ; but much more that He may assure us by this divine symbol and pledge, that we not less truly are cleansed from our sins by inward washing, than that we are purified by external and visible water.

Louis Berkhof writes:

This idea of purification was the pertinent thing in all the washings of the Old Testament, and also in the baptism of John, Ps. 51:7; Ezek. 36:25; John 3:25, 26.  And we may assume that in this respect the baptism of Jesus was entirely in line with previous baptisms.  If He had intended the baptism which He instituted as a symbol of something entirely different, He would have indicated this very clearly, in order to obviate all possible misunderstanding. Moreover, Scripture makes it abundantly clear that baptism symbolizes spiritual cleansing or purification…

Some of the New Testament passages that back up this historically orthodox view are:

Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. (Acts 2:38)

And now why are you waiting? Arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord.  (Acts 22:16)

And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. (I Cor. 6:11)

…not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit…   (Titus 3:5)

...let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.   (Hebrews 10:22)

There is also an antitype which now saves us—baptism (not the removal of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God), through the resurrection of Jesus Christ… (I Peter 3:21)

...and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth.  To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood…   (Revelation 1:5)

The washing, or purification, is exactly the thing the Bible repeatedly emphasizes while never portraying the descending and rising in baptism as essential. This is the point I am trying to make in this post.  I realize that I have touched on the subject of the proper mode for baptism, but that subject will be more fully examined in upcoming articles. For now, I merely wanted to show what baptism is meant to symbolize according to Scriptures.

Editor’s Note:  For the rest of this series please see: Part 1, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, and Part 8.