Augustine (354–430) reshaped much of Western thinking. His legacy impacted the Middle Ages and continues today. He taught that God created Adam with the power to choose. But Adam’s “original sin” passed to all his descendants, robbing them of choice and eternally condemning them all, including babies. God only empowered response for salvation in certain “predestined” and “elected” individuals. Once saved, they could never fall so badly as to lose Christ’s gift of eternal life. However, for a person to claim to be among the elect was evidence of pride and damnation. Thus, even good Christians could never be sure whether they were chosen or rejected, saved or damned.
From about the fifth century, it became normal to ‘baptize’ babies to cleanse them of Adam’s sin. But New Testament baptism was always for hearers who believed the Gospel and repented (Matthew 28:19; Mark 16:16; Acts 2:38, 41; 8:12-13; 18:8). Such conditions are not suited to infants. Bible writers showed that the person being baptized must have faith (Acts 22:16; Galatians 3:26-27; 1 Peter 3:21; Romans 6:3-4, 17).
…having been buried with Him [Christ] in baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised Him from the dead. (Colossians 2:12)
Baptism’s purpose as a burial fits the first century practice of immersing the believer in water (Mark 1:5, 9; John 3:23; Acts 8:36-39). The New Testament’s Greek term baptizo means to dip or plunge under (Greeks still understand it that way today). In the period after the apostles, some introduced sprinkling and pouring as substitutes for immersion in cases of special need. But sprinkling took many centuries to become a general practice. Legislatively, the Roman church fully endorsed sprinkling at the Council of Ravena in 1311.
“MAKE DISCIPLES, BAPTIZING THEM….”
True baptism involves choice and commitment, of which babies are incapable. Having been “christened,” they consider themselves Christians, whether converted or not. Thinking they received baptism at birth, they never receive the biblical baptism required by Christ. They never participate “by faith” in His death, burial and resurrection at baptism (Colossians 2:12; Romans 6:3-4). Jesus said, “Make disciples, baptizing them…” (Matthew 28:19). Tradition reverses that order, saying, “Sprinkle them; later they should become disciples.” This wide-spread ractice, added to state-imposed religion, ensured that unconverted masses far outweighed committed disciples within Christendom. The watching world did not know the difference. They saw the good, but they also saw crimes and atrocities committed in the name of Christ. Thinking those represented Christ, they turned away in disgust. They cursed Christianity as evil, helping to fulfill Peter’s prediction, “because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed” (2 Peter 2:2).