Josiah,
Here is a really good resource that the webmaster very modestly calls
“Biblical Truth for baptists.” In truth, it is an excellent resource for **ALL ** Christians!
The link to the main page is [
members.aol.com/uticacw/baptist/bibletruth.html](
http://members.aol.com/uticacw/baptist/bibletruth.html)
Click on the first item: “Are Baptist Teachings about Baptism Biblical?”
This takes you to nine individual webpages on Baptism.
The first article is “The Mode and Subject of baptism in Acts” - which treats with, among the larger picture, your query on Infant Baptism. The direct LINK is
[
members.aol.com/uticacw/baptist/baptism8.html](
http://members.aol.com/uticacw/baptist/baptism8.html)
Here is an extract:
**Subject: The Question of Personal and Individual Belief Preceding Baptism **
All of the baptisms described in Acts resulted from one or more persons professing their faith or belief in Christ Jesus. However, this is not to say that all of the persons baptized necessarily professed their own personal and individual faith in Christ.
The baptism of entire households poses a thorny problem to the modern, casual reader of the Bible. Certainly, there is the strong possibility that some of these households contained young children. But the issue runs much deeper than the question of infant baptism, for the baptismal narratives in Acts strongly imply that even adult dependents of the household allowed the head of the household to dictate the faith that they were to profess. If this is the case, then the New Testament Church would seem to have admitted and baptized members who professed faith without necessarily manifesting a genuine personal and individual belief in Jesus Christ.
Such an idea seems foreign to us, nursed as we are on deeply-rooted ideologies of individualism, personal liberty, and personal responsibility. But in the ancient world, the notion of the individual was not so well developed, especially as it pertained to women, children and slaves. Within the Bible itself, we find a clear expression of the idea that the head of the household was responsible for the religious profession of his entire household (e.g., Josh. 24:15). So too, the families and servants were also liable for the religious offences of the leaders of the household or tribe (e.g., Num. 16:31-35). In the ancient world, in the case of minors, women and domestic slaves and sevants, religious belief was seemingly more a matter of corporate identify than individual conviction.
Of course, five of the ten baptismal narratives in Acts say nothing of the baptism of children or household dependents. Philip baptized both men and women in Samaria (8:12), without any mention of household dependents, and Paul baptized twelve adult male disciples of John the Baptist without any reference to households. So too, the baptisms of Simon (8:13), the Eunuch (8:38) and Saul (9:18; 22:16) all treat the reception of an individual believer into the Church.
Each of the remaining five baptismal narratives in Acts, however, touch upon the relationship of the faith of the head of a household to the religious actions and affiliation of his dependents. The first, and most complicated, of these narratives is the baptism of the three-thousand on the first Pentecost. Now, modern-day advocates of the notion that only those who believe in their hearts should be baptized often point to Peter’s exhortation, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you” (Acts 2:38), as evidence that only true believers could have been baptized. Nonetheless, when taken as a whole the narrative makes it fairly clear that Peter addressed his offer of baptism and the gift of the Holy Spirit not only to individuals, but to their households as well, to include children and servants.
Salvation is from the Triune God - not, ultimately, the Church.
