My thoughts on child baptism changed dramatically. I used to think that child baptism was not acceptable in the church but this week’s readings and lecture have showed me that it is a disputed subject. However, while there are many reasons that child baptism could be performed in the church, the drastic change in my understanding to now accept child baptism is surrounded around one thing and that is that child baptism changed in the evangelical thought through Anabaptist and Baptist individualistic Western thought instead of the collectivist mindset of first century Church.
All baptism is infant baptism. It is a point of rebirth. Thus, the kingdom of God is not for the adults but for those that are little children. Children and infants should get baptized regardless of their personal human experience because our human experience is not dependable and baptism is about God’s promise to us and not our experience of God or our promises to Him. Karl Barth further explained that baptism is not in the understanding or experience of faith, since they are limited, but the power of baptism is in the assurances of God.
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Brownson says that, “One of the most basic and important Reformed assumptions underlying infant baptism is that baptism is the sign of God's covenant with us.” Brownson continues to explain that Reformed theology highlights the continuity of God's covenant purposes throughout the metanarrative of Scripture and that this continuity is because the whole of Scripture finds its core in Christ. Thus, there is a basic continuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament where we notice a movement from exclusion to inclusion which shows a collectivist abd theological inclusion infants and families in