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A Thought for Reformed Peado-Baptists to Ponder

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Here's a thought that I have not read anywhere else that I thought of the other day. 

Everyone agrees that other than a very brief flirtation by Irenaneus with the notion of covenants as a common Biblical theme, John Calvin was the first to really expound on the idea of Covenant as a theological framework in Covenant Theology. The only way a Calvinist can agree with the idea of paedo-baptism is through the idea of the Covenant of Grace continuing from the Old Testament into the New Testament and the replacing of one sign of that covenant (circumcision) with another in the new covenant (paedo-baptism).

Think about it for a minute. This means that for at least 1000+ years the official church teachings on paedo-baptism have been based on faulty theology right? Ever since the teachings of Augustine on original sin around 399 A.D. the church had really ramped up it's enforcement of paedo-baptism because it was the only way to get rid of Original Sin. Other ideas of paedo-baptism also cropped up over the years but a Calvinist wouldn't agree that any of those ideas were Biblical either. Even the ideas of the fellow Reformer - Martin Luther would not be tolerated in the Calvinist camp because according to Luther there is actual power in the ceremony of baptism - much more than just an initiatory sign of covenant inclusion.

So what exactly am I getting at? Basically, for a Calvinist, paedo-baptism was done for all the wrong reasons for at least 1000 years, but most likely from the early years of the church (since they didn't have Covenant Theology, they obviously couldn't teach people that baptism was for covenant inclusion but rather if people did baptize their children in the early church, they did it for other reasons or at the very least, with other ideas). This is a significant problem for the Reformed peado-baptist! A Calvinist position on paedo-baptism must admit that the Christian church, promoted and practiced paedo-baptism for all the wrong reasons until Calvin formalized Covenantal Theology and it was accepted as Reformed doctrine. This introduces a whole bunch of very interesting questions for the Calvinist:

  1. For the 1500 years before Calvin, were any of the infants in the Church really baptised?
    1. If you say 'Yes' to the above question, then obviously baptism is only a physical act with no theology or preaching of the word really needed to back it up. It's only a ceremony and as long as you say the right words and are paedo-baptised it doesn't matter what you actually believe, either as parents or as an infant. (Essentially this is a Lutheran position.) You'll have to show me from scripture where you read of this sort of baptism because I haven't found it anywhere, and believe me, I've searched!
    2. If you say 'No' to the above question you are denying that any infants were really baptised until the 1500's. That is a very bold statement with obvious implications regarding the practical usefulness of Calvin's theology.
  2. Since, obviously, the first believers were not baptised covenantally (since the theory didn't exist yet - how could they believe in it or practice it?), baptism must have changed at some point right? Where is this change recorded in scripture? Where does baptism change from a believer's faith-ceremony to an infant's sign and seal of the covenant ceremony?
  3. If Calvin was especially gifted to give the church the only Biblical theological framework for infant baptism, what does that say about Reformers and the idea of tradition or extra-Biblical theological foundations? Since a clear teaching of covenant theology isn't found in the New Testament and certainly not around the practice of infant baptism, why are so many people who claim to primarily follow the Bible, eager to follow the ideas of one man when the Christian church didn't come up with these ideas for over 1500 years?


I could go on here but the basic problem for Calvinist paedo-baptists is that for 1500 years the church did not teach covenant and infant baptism (including the patriarchs of the New Testament church). So what would you rather put your trust in? Clear Biblical teaching, or complicated theology that has motivation to continue an un-Biblical practice in order to maintain a practice already done in the Roman Catholic Church of which John Calvin was originally a member?