Tertullian's Rejecting Infant Baptism

I’ve said before that the Church Fathers are unanimous in their belief in regenerative baptism: that is, they believe that Baptism actually saves us (as 1 Peter 3:21 explicitly says), by causing us to be born again by water and the Spirit; that it actually washes away our sins, and creates in us a clean heart, enabling us to approach God all of which is prophesied by Ezekiel. It’s because of this belief that the Church permits infant baptism: baptism isn’t some good work that we do for God, showing Him how truly Christian we are; it’s a Sacrament, meaning that it’s something that He does for us, cleansing us from our sins.

So while Scripture is totally silent on the direct question of infant baptism, the Scriptural teaching on regenerative baptism settles the question. If baptism is something God does for us, and if it incorporates us into the Kingdom, and if Christ says to let the little children come unto Him, then it’s clear that we should permit infants to be baptized, and in fact, should encourage it to remove original sin.

Several things are wrong with this claim. First, Tertullian doesn’t reject the practice of infant baptism. He discourages it, but he doesn’t forbid it (that’s an important distinction, since it shows he viewed as possible). Second, his basis for discouraging it isn’t because the young children don’t know Christ. It’s because he’s concerned that once they’re baptized, they’ll be damned forever if they fall into mortal sin. To understand why he was concerned about this, you need to know something about the controversy giving rise to a heresy called Novatianism.

As the above commenter rightly points out in the second half of his comment, there was an open theological question in the early Church about whether or not post-baptismal mortal sins could be forgiven. This was due in no small part about an interpretative dispute about Hebrews 6:4-6, which says: For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they then commit apostasy, since they crucify the Son of God on their own account and hold him up to contempt.

The references to being enlightened, tasting the heavenly gift, and becoming partakers of the Holy Spirit are references to Baptism, Communion, and Confirmation respectively. These are the three “Sacraments of initiation,” by which one becomes a fully-incorporated member of the Church, the Body of Christ.

Given this, can Christians who fall into mortal sin ever be saved? Certain Christians said no, based on their reading of Hebrews 6:4-6 and a few other passages. Others said yes, since nothing is impossible to God. This dispute eventually exploded into a heretical movement called the Novatians, who denied penance to mortal sinners, who were opposed (ultimately successfully) by the Catholics. St. Ambrose’s book Concerning Repentance does a good job refuting the Novatian arguments. He points out that in trying to affirm the workings of grace in the Sacraments, the Novatians were actually demeaning them, by treating the Sacrament of Penance as powerless. In Book II, Chapter 2, he shows why the Novatian interpretation of Hebrews 6 is wrong.

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But while Tertullian was alive, this dispute was still young, and the position that the Novatians would later hold wasn’t obviously heretical. There were still open questions about whether Hebrews 6 permitted reconciliation for a baptized Christian who commit a mortal sin. Moreover, penances during this period were quite severe, sometimes lasting an entire lifetime. Given all this, it’s perhaps unsurprising that even many orthodox Christians put off getting baptized, often until their deathbeds.

Trying to turn Tertullian into a proto-Protestant on the question of Baptism is particularly ironic, given that the very first words of On Baptism are “Happy is our sacrament of water, in that, by washing away the sins of our early blindness, we are set free and admitted into eternal life!”

That is, the entire work begins from the position that Baptism is regenerative. None of Tertullian’s arguments make sense without that framework. He’s not arguing for a “believer’s baptism” or anything remotely close. Quite the opposite. The Catholic position holds that Baptism washes away sins, which Protestants typically deny. But Tertullian doesn’t just hold to the Catholic position, he goes much further (too far, even), arguing that only Baptism washes away mortal sins. He literally couldn’t be further from the standard Protestant view on this doctrine.

Step back, and a jarring picture emerges. Here’s a dispute in the early Church over whether to baptize right away, or whether to wait. But what’s noteworthy is that nobody holds to the Protestant view. Nobody says that baptism is just an expression or symbol of our faith. Nobody is denying that Baptism is regenerative: in fact, the whole dispute only makes sense if you realize that both sides firmly believe in baptismal regeneration. Furthermore, neither side is denying that infant baptism is permissible: that whole sub-argument turns on whether or not it’s a good idea.

All of this shows how radically Protestantism broke with early Christianity: there’s no way to read Protestantism back into the story of the Church without seriously perverting the historical data.

Finally, an ironic point. On the actual dispute between the Catholics and Novatians, Protestants agree with us (or at least, agree with us more than they do the Novatians). Typically, Protestantism doesn’t have any concept of venial v. mortal sins, or any way to distinguish between the sort of sins that believers commit every day from the sort of sins that cut us off from the Body of Christ. But they do believe that, even if you “fall away” at some point in your life, it’s still possible for you to be ultimately saved. So again, citing to someone closer to the Novatian camp to support the Protestant position is an ironic sort of historical eisegesis.