Before I started digging into this topic I was skeptical about there being a stable middle ground between the Baptist the Presbyterian views on Baptism. I reasoned that if such a thing could exist then it should already exist—but it doesn’t, therefore there it can’t. Not exactly a rigorous proof, but it is a useful rule of thumb for simplifying things. The other problem I saw was that the Churches of Christ attempted to find a stable middle ground through compromise two hundred years ago and ended up with something completely unique.
As I began to sort out the arguments on both sides however the idea of locating baptism on the grounds discipleship occurred to me. Might it not be possible for the Baptist view of promise to God and the Presbyterian view of promise from God to be bypassed? If so, the argument from discipleship might perhaps work. It would go something like this:
P1: All disciples must be baptized (Matt 28:19)
P2: Children of believers are disciples (Acts 21:4-5)
C: Children of believers must be baptized.
At first glance this seemed to push the age of baptism down for the credo-baptists, and fits well with the evidence in Acts the Baptist holds in such high regard (since all who were baptized also became disciples at the same time). It also seemed to push the age of baptism up for the paedo-baptist, since infants can't really be disciples. And if nothing else it skewers the stricter credo-baptists into accepting that children have a right to baptism, and that the idea waiting for them to grow up and make an adult profession of faith before letting them have the sacrament is wrong.
But unfortunately that’s as far as this idea can go, because before either side will compromise they start disputing meaning of the word disciple. The credo-baptists will argue that a disciple is someone who can give-and-take, a question-and-answerer, a trainee taking dance instruction from an expert. In this sense children can be disciples but infants can’t, so infants are not valid candidates for baptism. The paedo-baptist on the other hand will say discipleship is something you do to someone, not necessarily something they share in. Just as the word “tempt” can either mean “to outwardly attempt to entice someone” or “to be moved inwardly toward sin,” the word “disciple” should be understand in the external sense only. It’s an obligation from the older disciple to train the younger one, and in this sense an infant can be disciple, making them a valid candidate for baptism.
So this notion of locating baptism on the grounds of discipleship doesn’t settle the matter, it just moves the discussion five feet left. The credo-baptists imports his preconceptions, the paedo-baptists his, and the deadlock is once more engaged. So on the whole my suspicions are confirmed that there is no stable middle ground between the credo and paedo-baptists.
Having presented both sides, let’s now try and sort out which is the more Biblical. To that end I’m now going to work through a handful of tough New Testament problems and see how well each side handles it.
Next: How each definition of baptism fits the New Testament Evidence
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