Relocating To Elfland

On the question of whether children in the covenant community must be regarded as believers, our Reformed forefathers have given some interesting answers. I offer a few of those here, for our reflection.

John Calvin responded thus to the Anabaptists’ argument that infants are incapable of faith:

“But since they think that it would be quite absurd for any knowledge of God to be attributed to infants, to whom Moses denies the knowledge of good and evil, let them only tell me, I ask, what the danger is if infants be said to receive now some part of that grace which in a little while they shall enjoy to the full? For if fullness of life consists in the perfect knowledge of God, when some of them, whom death snatches away in their very first infancy, pass over into eternal life, they are surely received to the contemplation of God in his very presence. Therefore, if it please him, why may the Lord not shine with a tiny spark at the present time on those whom he will illumine in the future with the full splendor of his light – especially if he has not removed their ignorance before taking them from the prison of the flesh? I would not rashly affirm that they are endowed with the same faith as we experience in ourselves, or have entirely the same knowledge of faith – this I prefer to leave undetermined – but I would somewhat restrain the obtuse arrogance of those who at the top of their lungs confidently deny or assert whatever they please.” (Calvin, Institutes, 4.16.19)

Perhaps even more telling is another passage that follows:

“Since God communicated circumcision to infants as a sacrament of repentance and of faith, it does not seem absurd if they are now made participants in baptism – unless men choose to rage openly at God’s institution. But as in all God’s acts, so in this very act also there shines enough wisdom and righteousness to repel the detractions of the impious. For although infants, at the very moment they were circumcised, did not comprehend with their understanding what that sign meant, they were truly circumcised to the mortification of their corrupt and defiled nature, a mortification that they would afterward practice in mature years. To sum up, this objection can be solved without difficulty: infants are baptized into future repentance and faith, and even though these have not yet been formed in them, the seed of both lies hidden within them by the secret working of the Spirit.” (Institutes, 4.16.20, emphasis added)

It is fairly standard in Reformed circles to affirm (as Calvin does here) that it is possible for God to work faith in infants; but should we regard all infants in the covenant as possessing the “seed” of repentance and faith? The Westminster Larger Catechism offers a strongly positive answer to this question when it says baptism is “a sign and seal of our regeneration and ingrafting into Christ, and that even to infants” (Question 177, emphasis added). If baptism seals regeneration (the seed of faith and repentance) to infants, they ought to be regarded (like adult professors) as regenerate, having the seed (at least) of faith and repentance. And this way of viewing the infants in God’s flock has solid support elsewhere. Zacharias Ursinus, for example, one of the co-authors of the Heidelberg Catechism, speaks as follows:

“This is sure and certain, that God instituted his sacraments and covenant seals only for those who recognize and maintain the church as already made up of parties of the covenant, and that it is not His intention to make them Christians by the sacraments first, but rather to make those who are already Christians to be Christians more and more and to confirm the work begun in them. . . . Hence, if anyone considers the children of Christians to be pagans and non-Christians, and damns all those infants who cannot come to be baptized, let him take care on what ground he does so, because Paul calls them holy (1 Cor. 7), and God says to all believers in the person of Abraham that He will be their God and the God of their seed. . . . Next let him consider how he will permit them to be baptized with a good conscience, for knowingly to baptize a pagan and unbeliever is an open abuse and desecration of baptism. Our continual answer to the Anabaptists, when they appeal to the lack of faith in infants against infant baptism, is that the Holy Spirit works regeneration and the inclination to faith and obedience to God in them in a manner appropriate to their age, always with it understood that we leave the free mercy and heavenly election unbound and unpenetrated.” (Quoted in Geerhardus Vos, “The Doctrine of the Covenant in Reformed Theology,” in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos, ed. Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., pp. 264–65)

Centuries later, we find the same conclusion reached by a different path by Herman Bavinck:

“We can no more judge the hearts of senior members of the church than we can the hearts of infants. The only possibility left for us who are bound to externals is a judgment of charity. According to that judgment, we consider those who make profession of faith to be believers and give them access to the sacraments. By that same judgment we count the children of believers as themselves believers because they are included with their parents in the covenant of grace. The likelihood that the baptized are true believers is even greater in the case of children than adults.” (Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, pp. 4.530–31, emphasis added)

Bavinck emphasizes the objective covenant promise of God to children rather than the subjective “seed” of faith within them, but the conclusion is the same – they are to be regarded precisely as we regard adult professors: as regenerate, repentant, believing disciples of the covenant Lord. It is not our place to call their faith into question, but rather to nurture it.