In Robert Louis Wilken’s The
First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity (Yale, 2012), he
offers an interesting description of the development of early Christian
practices, like baptism. He draws upon the descriptions of baptism in the Apostolic Tradition, an early third
century treatise. Wilkin notes:
After a long period of
instruction and moral formation, those who had been accepted for baptism were
to bathe, fast, and present themselves to the bishop…. Baptism took place at
daybreak. A tank or pool would be filled with water, and the catechumens (those
who had been instructed) would take off their clothes to prepare for immersion.
At this period of
Christian history most people who were baptized were adults. But in the midst of
the description of baptism the Apostolic Tradition inserts the surprising
sentence: “You are to baptize the little ones first.” Apparently infant baptism
was permissible—though not conventional—and parents or guardians would speak
for the children. Then came the men, followed by the women, who were to let
down their hair and take off any jewelry. Nothing could be taken down into the
pool. First, the bishop would anoint each person with oil, “hand over” the
trinitarian rule of faith, immerse the catechumen three times, and anoint him
or her with oil a second time. Then the newly baptized were clothed, and the
celebration of the Eucharist followed (176).
I was interested in the fact that Wilken affirms both that
baptism was practiced by the mode of immersion and that the baptismal
candidates were typically adults. We see the practice of infant baptism
developing, but, according to Wilkin, it was not “conventional.” Paedobaptist
Protestants not only have to explain the lack of warrant for infant baptism in
the NT but also in the predominant practice of Christianity in the opening
centuries of its existence.
JTR
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