Faithful children

How can we baptize those who cannot believe and obey? asks the Large Emden Catechism (1551), written by John a Lasco for the churches in Emden, Friesland, in 1546. When he fled to England, Jan Utenhove translated it into Dutch in 1551.

The answer is that the grace of God, which was “declared to infants under the old covenant, embraces them now, without any change or decrease” (q. 237). Note that: The children of believers are “embraced” in the grace of God.

But how are we to understand this? How can they be embraced by the grace of God without faith? Here the catechism gets really interesting, as it moves in a Christological direction (q. 238). First, children lack faith and obedience, but Jesus bears their infirmities, and “whatever may be lacking in children, is shared with them in Christ.” More, what they lack is imputed to them: Christ “imputes to them by grace his faith and obedience, which are consecrated in the sanctuaries of God.” This imputation occurs so long as “we confess Christ as their head and Savior, and actually count them as members of the body of Christ.”

Thus (q. 239) we can baptize infants in good faith and offer our children in baptism as faithful, since we may be confident that “they are counted as faithful in the judgment of God, through Christ, who, as we have affirmed, supplies every need in himself.” All this being true, in fact they “must be baptized as faithful, that the office of the Church may show them the testimony that they are members of Christ the Lord.” This is the whole purpose of the church, namely, “that the members of the Lord should be separated from the members of the Devil.” Note that too: Children are members not merely of the church, much less the “visible” church, but are “members of Christ the Lord” Himself.