Baptism in the Early Church

In much of modern evangelicalism baptism is treated as a symbol, an outward sign of a decision already made, often observed some time after the "real" moment of a prayer. The New Testament and the earliest church saw it very differently. Baptism was God's appointed way, faith's first act of obedience, tied so closely to coming to Christ that the apostles never imagined the two apart. It is more than a bare symbol, and it is not mechanical magic. It is the new birth's outward act, real and effective by grace, received through faith.

What the apostles did

Jesus commanded it as the very form of making disciples: "go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" (Matthew 28:19), and tied entry to the kingdom to it: "except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" (John 3:5). So on the first day of the church, Peter's answer to "what shall we do?" was not "pray a prayer" but "repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins" (Acts 2:38). And it happened at once, the same day, the same hour, for the Ethiopian on the road, for Cornelius, for the Philippian jailer "and all his, straightway" (Acts 16:33). There is no unbaptized Christian in the book of Acts.

More than a symbol

Paul does not treat the water as a mere picture. He says we are baptized "into" Christ's death and raised with Him: "buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead… even so we also should walk in newness of life" (Romans 6:3-4; Colossians 2:12). Peter goes further still: "baptism doth also now save us," and then immediately guards it from superstition, "not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 3:21). The water saves the way the ark saved Noah and the blood saved Israel: not by the substance itself, but by the God who works through it and the faith that receives Him.

And Calvin says something on the older sacraments that is rarely quoted. Expounding Paul on the wilderness generation, who were “baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea,” he draws a conclusion about how much the ancient signs carried:

when he says that the fathers ate the same spiritual meat, he shows, first, what is the virtue and efficacy of the Sacraments, and, secondly, he declares, that the ancient Sacraments of the Law had the same virtue as ours have at this day. For, if the manna was spiritual food, it follows, that it is not bare emblems that are presented to us in the Sacraments, but that the thing represented is at the same time truly imparted, for God is not a deceiver to feed us with empty fancies.

John Calvin, on 1 Corinthians 10:3

He is arguing about manna and a cloud, not about a font. But the principle he states is general, and it is the principle this page has been arguing from the texts: a sign God appoints is not an empty one. Calvin then refuses both ditches by name, “Papists confound the reality and the sign… profane men separate the signs from the realities. Let us maintain a middle course,” which is where this page stands too.

What the earliest church did with the water

The oldest church manual we possess, the Didache, gives the actual instructions, plain and practical:

Justin Martyr, describing the church to a Roman emperor around AD 155, calls it the new birth and the washing of regeneration; and Tertullian opens his whole treatise on it with wonder:

How, and how much water

The mode argument is louder than the evidence for it. The earliest Christian manual we have settles it in one sentence, and it settles it in favour of not fussing.

"And concerning baptism, baptize after this manner: Having first recited all these precepts, baptize into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost in living water; but if thou hast not living water, baptize into other water; and if thou canst not in cold water then baptize in warm. But if thou hast neither, pour out water upon the head thrice, into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost."

— The Didache, chapter 7, c. 50–110

Translation note: our library carries this passage in the older rendering, "Concerning baptism, thus baptize ye: having first said all these things, baptize into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in living water." Same passage, different English. The wording above is the familiar one; ours is what the check verifies against.

That instinct is not confined to baptism, and the same document states it as a principle one chapter earlier: if thou canst not bear the whole yoke, do that which thou canst. It has its own letter, Do That Which Thou Canst.

Running water is the preference, and everyone in the room knows it. Standing water will do. Warm will do. And if you have neither, pour three times over the head and it is a baptism. The document that gives us the earliest church order does not treat the quantity of water as the thing that makes it real, and it says so before any of the later arguments existed.

Households, and what they do and do not prove

Three times in the New Testament a household is baptized. Lydia: "when she was baptized, and her household" (Acts 16:15). The jailer at Philippi: "was baptized, he and all his, straightway" (Acts 16:33). And Paul: "I baptized also the household of Stephanas" (1 Corinthians 1:16).

Both sides overreach here, and it is worth being plain about it. The word for household covers everyone under a roof, which in the first century means servants and dependents and very often children. It does not say children were present, and anyone who claims it does is reading in. It also does not say they were absent, and anyone who claims a household in that world meant only consenting adults is reading in from the other direction.

What the passages actually show is a pattern: the faith of one person brings a whole house to the water, quickly, sometimes the same hour of the night. Whatever that pattern implies, it is not the modern picture of individuals arriving one at a time on their own account.

Infants, and what the record actually says

The site does not draw a line here, and the reason is that the record is older and stranger than either side's summary of it.

The earliest clear evidence is a council. Around AD 253 a bishop wrote to Cyprian asking whether newborns should be made to wait until the eighth day, on the analogy of circumcision. Cyprian reports the answer:

"as to what you say of infants, which you say ought not to be baptized within the second or third day after their birth, and that the law of ancient circumcision should be regarded, so that you think that one who is just born should not be baptized and sanctified within the eighth day, we all thought very differently in our council. For in this course which you thought was to be taken, no one agreed; but we all rather judge that the mercy and grace of God is not to be refused to any one born of man."

— St. Cyprian of Carthage, c. AD 253

Read what the question is. Not whether to baptize infants; a room full of African bishops takes that for granted on both sides. The question is whether to make a newborn wait a week. And "no one agreed" with waiting.

Augustine, a century and a half later, treats it as settled and grounds it in grace rather than in the infant's capacity: God "engrafts into His body even baptized infants, who certainly have not yet become able to imitate any one."

And here is the strongest early argument against us. This page used to say we could not show it, because we did not hold the text. We do hold it, and had done all along, so here it is in his own words rather than ours.

Around AD 200 Tertullian argued that baptism should be delayed in the case of little children. His reason is not that infant baptism is invalid, and that distinction matters: he argues it is imprudent. Baptism washes sin, and an infant has not sinned; so the church is taking a risk on a promise made by somebody else, and the somebody else may die or the child may turn out badly.

—that the sponsors likewise should be thrust into danger? Who both themselves, by reason of mortality, may fail to fulfil their promises, and may be disappointed by the development of an evil disposition, in those for whom they stood? The Lord does indeed say, "Forbid them not to come unto me." Let them "come," then, while they are growing up; let them "come" while they are learning, while they are learning whither to come; let them become Christians.

Tertullian, On Baptism XVIII · Ante-Nicene Fathers, public domain

Read it slowly, because he is doing something clever with the verse. "Suffer the little children to come unto me" is the standard proof text for infant baptism, and Tertullian does not deny it or reinterpret it. He takes the verb seriously instead. Come. Let them come, he says, while they are growing up, while they are learning where it is they are coming to. He reads coming as something a person does, and a person who does not yet know he is going anywhere has not yet come.

What his argument concedes, and what it costs each side. It costs the believer-baptism side something first: Tertullian is arguing against a practice that already exists. You do not write a treatise urging that a custom be delayed unless people are doing it. So the earliest surviving objection to infant baptism is also among the earliest evidence that the church baptized infants. It costs our side too: the objection is not late, not Anabaptist, not a sixteenth-century invention. It is there by AD 200, from a man nobody can accuse of being soft on the sacraments, and it deserves an answer rather than a date.

The answer this page gives is that his caution is prudential and real, and that the church weighed it and went the other way for a reason he does not address: if baptism is what Scripture says it is, entry into a covenant, then covenant membership in Scripture has never waited for the member to understand it. Tertullian is right that a sponsor may fail. Circumcision on the eighth day carried exactly the same risk, and God commanded it anyway.

So the honest shape is this. Infant baptism is early, earlier than most Protestants are told and less unanimous than most Catholics are told. It was being practised widely enough by 253 that a council argued about the calendar rather than the principle. And it had a serious objector before that. Where Scripture is silent about the age of the person in the water, we are silent too.

The strongest answer against us

Gill puts the case plainly, and part of it is scriptural rather than systematic, which is what gives it teeth. Commenting on Titus 3:5BH he says the washing of regeneration is "not the ordinance of water baptism; for that is never expressed by washing, nor is it the cause or means of regeneration; the cause being the Spirit of God, and the means the word of God: and besides, persons ought to be regenerated before they are baptized; and they may be baptized, and yet not regenerated, as Simon Magus."

Simon Magus is the hard part, and Luke does not soften it. "Then Simon himself believed also: and when he was baptized, he continued with Philip" (Acts 8:13). Baptized, by an apostle's own colleague. And a few verses later Peter tells him, "Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: for thy heart is not right in the sight of God" (Acts 8:21), and "I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity" (Acts 8:23). Whatever the water did, it did not do that.

We think Simon proves something narrower than Gill needs, and something we already hold. He proves the water is not machinery. It does not work on a heart that is not there, and nobody is saved by getting wet. What he does not prove is that baptism is therefore only a sign, because Peter does not tell Simon his baptism was empty; he tells him his heart was wrong.

And Gill is not the Reformed position, only one of them. Calvin, reading the same verse, goes the other way: "By the washing of regeneration I have no doubt that he alludes, at least, to baptism, and even I will not object to have this passage expounded as relating to baptism; not that salvation is contained in the outward symbol of water, but because baptism tells to us the salvation obtained by Christ." Gill says the washing is not baptism. Calvin says he has no doubt it alludes to baptism and will not object to the reading. Two Reformed men, one verse, opposite moves, and the modern memorial view usually quotes neither of them on it.

Chrysostom holds both ends at once and we would rather stand where he stands: "though the element of water is the subject-matter, the whole work is done by the Spirit of grace... by the immersion of our heads in the water, the old man disappears and is buried as it were in a sepulcher, whence he ascends a new man." The water is real and the water is not the worker. That is the tension this page keeps, and Simon Magus is the reason it has to be kept.

Pressed from both sides at once

This page holds that baptism is neither an empty symbol nor a second ingredient added to faith, which means it gets attacked from opposite directions. The verse where both attacks land is Titus 3:5: God "saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost" (Titus 3:5). Here is each side in its own words.

From the symbol side: is that verse even about baptism? Albert Barnes works the Greek carefully rather than assuming:

In order to a correct understanding of this important passage, it is necessary to ascertain whether the phrase here used refers to baptism… The word rendered "washing" (loutrou) occurs in the New Testament only in this place and in Ephesians 5:26BH… The word properly means "a bath;" then water for bathing; then the act of bathing, washing, ablution… The word here does not mean "laver," or the vessel for washing in.

Albert Barnes, Notes on Titus 3:5

That is honest work and the caution is fair: the word means a washing, not a font, and Paul does not say "baptism" here. But notice that Barnes's own two witnesses go against the memorial reading. Ephesians 5:26BH, the only other place the word appears, is Christ cleansing the church "with the washing of water by the word," which is not a picture of an ordinance being remembered. And the commentators who differ from us most on other things do not take his caution here. Adam Clarke: "Δια λουτρου παλιγγενεσιας— Undoubtedly the apostle here means baptism." John Wesley, glossing it: "the laver of regeneration, (that is, baptism, the thing signified, as well as the outward sign)." Neither man is a sacramentalist, and both read it as baptism.

From the sacramental side: does the washing do it by itself? Ambrose reads Titus 3:5BH straight and hard: "This certainly is he who is regenerated by water and the Holy Spirit, since we receive the hope of eternal life through the laver of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit." If that is all you read, baptism looks like a machine.

The answer to that comes from inside the ancient church, not from the Reformation. Cyril of Jerusalem, instructing people who were about to be baptized, hands them a warning built out of Acts 8:

Even Simon Magus once came to the Laver: he was baptized, but was not enlightened; and though he dipped his body in water, he enlightened not his heart with the Spirit: his body went down and came up, but his soul was not buried with Christ, nor raised with Him.

St Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures

Scripture gives him the case and it is not ambiguous. "Then Simon himself believed also: and when he was baptized, he continued with Philip" (Acts 8:13), and a few verses later Peter tells the same baptized man, "Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: for thy heart is not right in the sight of God" (Acts 8:21). A properly baptized man with a wrong heart, in the apostolic church, and the apostle says he has no part in it. Anyone teaching that the water works on its own has to get past that verse first, and a fourth-century bishop teaching baptismal candidates is the one pointing at it.

And the position this page holds turns out to have a name and a sentence. Adam Clarke, on this verse, states both refusals in a row and does not try to smooth them:

Baptism is only a sign, and therefore should never be separated from the thing signified; but it is a rite commanded by God himself, and therefore the thing signified should never be expected without it… Baptism changes nothing; the grace signified by it cleanses and purifies.

Adam Clarke, on Titus 3:5

Read the two halves against each other. Never expect the thing signified without it is the answer to treating baptism as optional decoration. Baptism changes nothing; the grace signified by it cleanses is the answer to treating the water as the agent. Clarke will not let go of either, and neither will this page. That is not a compromise reached to keep two camps happy. It is what the verse says, joined to what happened to Simon Magus.

The blood, and the doorpost

One image on this page is worth slowing down over, because it is the one most likely to be misused in our favour.

On the night of the Passover the people were told to take the blood of the lamb and “strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses” (Exodus 12:7). And the promise attached is exact about what God is looking at: “when I see the blood, I will pass over you” (Exodus 12:13).

The blood. Not the door.

The doorpost saved nobody. It was the appointed place where the blood was put — outward, visible, on the side the destroyer would pass. And the command was not that the blood be believed sufficient and left in the basin. It was “take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the bason, and strike the lintel and the two side posts” (Exodus 12:22).

So we will not say baptism is the doorway of the new birth, though the phrase is tempting and something near it is true. Baptism is not the blood. It is where the blood is struck — the appointed, visible, outward place where what Christ did is applied to this house and no other.

And notice how much they were required to do, none of which was the thing that saved them. Take a lamb for a house, on the tenth day. Keep it until the fourteenth. Kill it in the evening. Roast it with fire, and eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, standing: “with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste” (Exodus 12:3-11). Strike the posts. And then “none of you shall go out at the door of his house until the morning” (Exodus 12:22).

Every one of those is a command, and Scripture records that they kept them: “the children of Israel went away, and did as the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron, so did they” (Exodus 12:28). And not one of them killed the destroyer. The lamb did that. The obedience was real, it was commanded, it was the only way the blood ever reached a door — and it earned nothing. That is the whole argument of this page in a single night in Egypt.

Including the last one, which is easy to skip. They were told to stay inside until morning. The blood was struck, the house was marked, and they were still told to remain under it.

Hold it that way and it answers both errors at once, which is what the whole page has been trying to do. To the man who says the water is only a picture: the blood in the basin saved no one, and God said He would look at the posts. To the man who says the water itself regenerates: there was never any power in the wood, and the lamb had already died before the hyssop was lifted.

Where this lands

Baptism is not how you earn your way in; it is how you come in, the first obedient step of a living faith (see Faith Is a Verb), the moment the Passover blood is struck on your own door. It is the answer of a good conscience, the burial of the old self, the public, bodily, unmistakable "yes" to Christ. The modern habit of separating it from conversion, or quietly shelving it, would have puzzled the church of the first thousand years. If you have come to Christ, the next thing the New Testament asks of you is the water.

Study the passages

Read them in context. Links go to BibleHub.

• Matthew 28:19; John 3:5: the command, and the new birth of water and Spirit
• Acts 2:38; 8:36-38; 16:33: repent and be baptized, at once
• Romans 6:3-4; Colossians 2:12: buried and raised with Christ
• 1 Peter 3:21, baptism saves: the answer of a good conscience
• Titus 3:5: the washing of regeneration

Related: What About the Children?, Holy Things, and the Counting of Them, Believe Into Christ, Who Walked Away in John 6, What Does It Mean to Be Born Again?, The Lord's Table, The Sinner's Prayer, and The Witnesses. The Didache and Tertullian quoted verbatim from the Ante-Nicene Fathers (public domain). Scripture from the King James Version, linked to BibleHub.