Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig.

Today, the Doctrine of the Church, Part 6.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

We've been talking about the doctrine of the church, and in particular the sacraments or ordinances of the church.

Thus far, we focused our attention on baptism. We examined a case for a sacramentalist view of baptism,

and then last time, a case for viewing baptism as an ordinance.

Today, we want to take up a different question, the question of infant baptism.

Now, once again, I'll want to present two competing views,

and I'll try to present each one as fairly and convincingly as I can,

and then at the end of the day, you'll need to make up your own mind as to which view you find

the most plausible. The first view that we want to look at is called Pado baptism or infant baptism. Pato is the word

for child or infant. Pato baptism is practiced by both sacramentalists and non-sacramentalists.

Catholics, for example, see infant baptism at the moment at which one receives

justifying grace and becomes regenerate. But in the Reformed Church, infant baptism may not be the

moment at which one is saved, but rather it serves as a sign or a seal

of being part of the covenant. So there is a range of views on what baptism is as practiced by Pato-Baptists.

It can be seen as salvific, where you actually are regenerated in baptism,

or it could be seen simply as a sign or seal that shows that this infant, as the child

of elect parents, is part of the covenant.

So what arguments might be offered on behalf of infant baptism?

Well, first of all, the advocate of infant baptism will appeal to the Jewish notion of the solidarity of the family and then household baptism

in the New Testament Church, where every member of a household was baptized because of the solidarity

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