Infant baptism is the New Covenant practice rooted in the Church’s Apostolic Rule of Faith, which carries forward and adapts the Old Covenant practice of infant circumcision. Because mankind is created in God’s image as a covenantal being with both an individual and a collective nature (Gen. 1:27), Basileia rejects the false dichotomy between individual and collective expressions of faith. Biblical faith is covenantal faith, which means that it is a faith greater and more holistic than even the sum of its individual and collective expressions. Thus, infant baptism, no less the Liturgy or the Eucharist, if these are all regarded as “collective” expressions of faith, is not a substitute for, in competition with, or a violation of “individual” expressions, professions and confessions of faith. Abraham did not respond in faith to God’s blessing (i.e., God’s gift of salvation) only as an individual, but he at the same time also placed his entire household under the covenant by means of the Old Covenant sign of circumcision (Gen. 17:23; cf. Ex. 12:43-48). Abraham’s faith response to God’s initiative was covenantal, that is, both individual and collective. Thus, Basileia positively affirms that God’s high and loving intension, as witnessed to by the Apostolic Rule of Faith, is for parents today to place their entire household, including their infant children, under the covenant by means of the New Covenant sign of baptism (Acts 10:38; 16:15; 16:30-34; 1 Cor. 1:16; also, consider Acts 18:8 together with 1 Cor. 1:14). God’s blessing is not merely a salvation limited to life in heaven after we die, but is the power of His divine life at work in and through us that makes Word flesh, resulting in us, His Church, becoming totus Christus, the dwelling of God with mankind on earth now and in the ages to come. The greater thing that infant baptism, just like adult believer baptism, brings into visible, actual, cultural form is the Church, the divinely ordained covenantal environment in which salvation in all of its individual and collective expressions is alone possible.
Also see Baptism, “The Capital C Church,” The Case for Covenantal Infant Baptism, and Rite of Incorporation.