Today at our Catechism service someone asked the question: "But how can a two week old baby believe?"
I was so glad it was asked, because the thought surely floats around in many a person's head. It just seems so impossible. What helps is to remember how utterly impossible faith is for anyone - adults included. Faith isn't something we conjure up on our own; faith is something which God gives. "And that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God." Eph 2
And so that leads to a change, an important shift in the question. NOT "how can a two week old baby believe?" BUT "can God give faith to a two week old baby?"
About that, we needn't have any doubts. Think of the beautiful words of Psalm 22:9,10:
"Yet you are he who took me from the womb, YOU MADE ME TRUST YOU AT MY MOTHER'S BREASTS. On you was I cast from my birth and from my mother's womb you have been my God."
Knowing, then, that God CAN give faith to an infant; knowing further that God wants all people, including this infant, to be saved and come to know the truth; the Church in the rite of Baptism asks a mighty thing of God: "bless N. with true faith by the Holy Spirit!"
Confident that God's answer to that prayer is "yea and amen" the Church dares to speak on behalf of the infant and confess the faith in the God who by Baptism makes the child His own. It is not an accident that our Lord used "birth" as a picture of Baptism. "You must be born again of water and the Spirit." Just as in your natural birth, you were nothing but given to, life was bestowed unasked and unsought, and yet there it was; so it is in the rebirth of Holy Baptism. Life is given, forgiveness given, the Holy Spirit given, faith given. All without you lifting a hand to help or prevent it - such is the way of the God who calls into being the things that are not.
11 comments:
Interesting that with natural life, some find it impossible to ascribe until at least the foetus is "viable", able to do something on its own outside the womb, and with supernatural life, some find it impossible to ascribe to the infant until it is "viable", able to make a "decision for Christ".
If faith is given to the young infants, why is it still the practice in the West to deny infants and young children the Holy Eucharist? We don't deny them baptism, which is, certainly a gift of God and faith is required in that (from the parents and sponsors making answers in place of the infant). Why make the distinction?
It is a long and complicated history that led to where the practice is today in the Western Church. Thanks be to God that the matter is being re-examined and among a number of Lutherans, the baptized are being given their birthright at significantly younger ages than in the past.
Sadly, our children have believed our actions rather than our words (our actions conveying to them: "you really don't need the Supper!") and that is, in my opinion, the number one cause in the "post-confirmation" drop out phenomenon.
Taking the Catechism seriously leads to a much younger age of first communion (and/or confirmation) than the rather arbitrary 14!
Luther's words in Table Talk on the matter are also of interest. He basically dismisses 1 Cor. 11 as in any way preventing young children from coming to the Sacrament.
Just a few thoughts from a Lutheran not born Lutheran.
First, Amen to this posting. I, however, like many a Lutheran, was born and raised in an entirely different denomination wherein baptism was purely symbolic and occasionally practiced. Consequently, many of us were not baptized until years after we were brought to faith, by that means of Grace--the preaching of the Word.
Unfortunately, I have heard several Lutheran pastors (not you) remark in their sermons how "all of you first came to faith in the waters of baptism." (There are numerous variations of this statement too.) Well, I would look around at fellow Lutheran Christians in the pews with me who were baptized in a Baptist, Methodist, or Assemblies of God church long after their conversion by the Holy Spirit of God operating through Holy Scripture.
So, I guess my feelings are that we all say AMEN to the miracle of faith given in infancy at baptism, but please remember not ALL Lutherans in those pews had that experience.
We too, however, are saved by Grace. Like the thief on the cross, we were somewhat indisposed and could not be baptized when the Word came, but unlike the thief God in His mercy took us down from the cross of our wayward denominations and blessed us with adult baptism.
And surprise, now we are Lutheran!
All glory be to Him.
Philip,
I got to teach on Baptism at our daycare today. The teacher when I was done reminded the class that you don't only have to be a baby when you're baptized, that older children and adults can be baptized too. So I got to tell them about my baptism, which I remember distinctly. I believe I was 11 or 12. The year escapes the memory at the moment.
But you are quite right. The Word is the normal means to bring an adult to faith, but Holy Baptism remains for us all, the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit. Maybe it's silly, but I like to use the analogy between conception (the Word is the SEED after all) and birth. Some of us just had longer gestation periods!!! :)
Yes. And to use your analogy, I take it that we should not practice abortion.
That is, we would be wrong to condemn or reject those Christians who have not yet experienced birth/holy baptism by telling them they are not Christians or that they have never been "saved" even though they may have faithfully lived in the womb for years. To do so, I believe, would so discourage or confuse them that they would not accept their need for baptism. They would be better coaxed into birth (baptism) by gracious teaching.
I like your analogy. It's not "silly."
Oh, I was 11 when baptized, full immersion. Quite an experience. Sprinkling is valid, of course, but immersion--(I think Luther said this)--provides us with the added benefit of a more powerful visible metaphor or witness of what God is doing in baptism.
Friend Bill, you are hanging your hat for this argument on the wrong hook, a shaky, at best, interpretation of an off-the remark Luther made over dinner.
A reading of Luther and our Lutheran fathers gives us every indication that they assumed children would be receiving Holy Communion usually around the age of seven or so.
But there is nothing in the Scriptures or Lutheran Confessions to justify force-feeding the Sacrament to infants and toddlers.
But I'm too tired and not crabby enough right now to pursue this further. Maybe I'll be more crabby later.
Paul T McCain, I too would find it helpful to hear more on this, so perhaps one of you two will become crabby enough to explain if St. Paul did or did not say what he meant or meant what he said in 1 Corinthians 11.
St. Paul writes, "Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself." So this is one difference between the Supper and baptism -- baptism doesn't have a similar requirement. I believe infants neither examine nor discern in this sense. I've known children "around the age of seven or so" who are capable, though.
David
On the question of an infant having faith, I find the medieval distinction between having (the habitus of) faith and making an act of faith to be helpful, both in understanding it myself and explaining it to others... while we certainly can and do make "acts" of faith, we can also have faith in the sense connoted by the concept of the habitus, which makes sense when you think of our language regarding believers who obviously don't make an explicit act of belief 24/7/365, yet are correctly described as "always" being believers.
FWIW.
Paul,
I think Luther's words are clear enough. How much beer factored into the equation is always up for grabs with Tischreden.
David,
Luther's words that I referred to simply say that the 1 Cor. passage does not preclude giving the sacrament to small children - it was aimed at the adults who were arguing. But see the caveat above about the beer.
Chris,
The distinction mirrors the one that is common in Lutheran theology between fides directa and fides reflexa. Faith itself is what holds onto the promise; it is to be distinguished from faith's ability to reflect on itself.
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