Infant baptism and the disposition to saving faith

Oliver D. Crisp

doi:10.1017/S0036930622000631

Infant baptism and the disposition to saving faith

Oliver D. Crisp^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

School of Divinity

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Reformed accounts of infant baptism are usually covenantal and promissory in nature. They are about bringing the child into the ambit of the visible church in the hope the infant will own the faith upon reaching the age of reason. This paper sets out an alternative Reformed account of baptism, drawing on the Scottish confessional tradition. On this account, infants have a disposition to faith conveyed to them in baptism that will in due course become dispositional faith exercised in saving faith. Thus, baptism involves regeneration – or something close to it.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	363-373
Number of pages	11
Journal	Scottish Journal of Theology
Volume	75
Issue number	4
Early online date	14 Oct 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1017/S0036930622000631
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 14 Oct 2022

Keywords

Baptism
Disposition
Faith
Reformed theology
Regeneration

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10.1017/S0036930622000631Licence: CC BY

Crisp_2022_SJoT_Infant-baptism_CC
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Final published version, 211 KBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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Infant baptism and the disposition to saving faith

Abstract

Keywords

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