With this post, I want to raise the question of whether those of us in the Church of Christ tradition should start reckoning the age of accountability for baptism as closer to 20 than to 13.

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, some background will be necessary:

I come from a Christian tradition called the Church of Christ, whose most defining characteristic is its insistence on believers baptism: people are baptized (= immersed) only once they are old enough to choose. We may disagree on many things among our congregations, but I am confident that you could search the nation without finding a CofC that uses the Believer’s Prayer or infant sprinkling to initiate members.

Personally and theologically, I fully support this practice: it emphasizes Christianity as a voluntary response to God’s call, entailing commitment and obedience. The New Testament lacks the notion of a nominal Christian, and believers baptism proclaims that fact in a graphic way.

The practice also demonstrates the belief that conversion is rebirth into a new life, in which the believer lives in obedience to God, empowered by the Holy Spirit. It sees baptism as an antidote not merely for original sin as found in an infant, but for the gritty reality of an adult who knows exactly how he or she has betrayed God.

But who can be a “believer”?

Although Martin Luther argued that God can give the gift of faith to an infant as easily as to an adult, most people would admit that the kind of faith typically portrayed in the New Testament requires a person to be a bit older. As a result, those who practice infant baptism often focus on the parents’ faith as well as their role in raising the child with a faith they can grow into. This is a worthy goal, but I think baptism is intended to signify an individual’s rebirth, not a family’s intentions.

Believers baptism is not without its problems either. For example, it raises the question whether young children are saved if they die before they are baptized.

Because certain scriptures describe young children who do not know the difference between right and wrong, some have argued that such children cannot actually sin. At some point, it is argued, they do come to know right from wrong, at which point they become accountable for their sin, and thus in need of salvation.

This age of accountability is kind of a nebulous boundary, and it guarantees that some children will die having reached this age of accountability but not having realized it. If we wanted to assure that no child died after reaching accountability but before baptism, we could push baptism to an earlier age, but that would require us to encourage baptism before the age of accountability, which would undermine the meaning of believers baptism in the first place. As a result, believers baptism requires an assumption that God will show mercy for borderline cases.

Some of this probably sounds silly to those not acquainted with the tradition, but these things matter to people, and they need to be reasoned out. Churches face the genuine pastoral concern of communicating to children (and their parents) that people need God’s forgiveness, but that children should not be bullied with the fear of hell.

There is an age, however, where the church needs to speak clearly about sin and the need for salvation, and the trick is determining what that age is. 4? 8? 13? 18?

Churches of Christ have tended to asssociate that age with the age of accountability, which more or less means the age of moral responsibility. Kids around age 13 start to develop ways of thinking very similar to adults, so it’s a natural time to view young people as making the leap from childhood to adulthood, and thus to accountability. In practice, this age varies from kid to kid and from family to family, but my sense is that the bell curve, if you took a survey, would peak at age 13.

However, it’s clear that kids have at least some notion of right and wrong by the time they start kindergarten. And what’s more, kids’ thinking at 13 is really only an approximation of adult thought. It seems to me, then, that we’re pretty much picking an age according to our best guess and assuming God will honor it since we don’t have anything more specific in Scripture to go on.

Personally, I’m not persuaded that 13 is a good age for young people to make a decision for Christ and be baptized. If we have to pick an age more or less arbitrarily anyway, let’s pick one that reflects the struggle young people go though when deciding whether to live a Christian life.

The Scriptural witness: Warriors in the desert

As for age of accountability in Scripture, there is nothing close to a clear guideline associated with baptism. However, the Old Testament has at least one important instance where age appears to be used as a criteria for accountability.

When Moses takes a census at two points in Numbers, he counts only men aged 20 and older (e.g., Num 1:3; 26:2). When the people of Israel refuse to take the promised land, God responds by holding these men responsible: all those who were counted in the census would die in the desert before the later generation entered the land. Only Joshua and Caleb, because they were ready to obey Yahweh, would be allowed to enter (Num 14:29-30; 32:11-12).

It seems most reasonable that this specific group was punished because they were qualified for battle, and thus could have stepped forward to fight in obedience to Yahweh; Deut 2:14 supports this explanation. However, another passage in Deuteronomy suggests a different explanation:

And as for your little ones, who you thought would become plunder, your children, who today do not yet know right from wrong, they shall enter [the land]; to them I will give it, and they shall take possession of it. (Deut 1:39)

It seems that the children under 20 weren’t held accountable for their parents’ mistake because they did not yet know right from wrong. This suggests 20 as the closest thing we have to a biblical “age of accountability.”

Guidelines for the church?

My point here is not to be a legalist in search of a proof text, but rather to wonder whether this seemingly arbitrary number from the OT is nearer to the reality of when the typical person indeed knows better.

In one sense, we never know better. At every stage of my life so far, I’ve been able to recognize how badly I misunderstood the world in the previous stage, and I suspect that will continue for a long time. I’ve been studying scripture, theology, and ministry for 10 academic years now, and what I have learned has challenged, at times harmed, and at times strengthened my faith in many way. However, the primary doubts I have––the ones that make me ask why I follow Jesus in the first place––are the ones that started when I was 17.

The fact is, at age 13, kids don’t understand what the primary questions concerning their faith are going to be. By 25, they usually have a good idea. I could name off a veritable parade of my peers who have seriously questioned their faith either in college or in early adulthood. Most of them were baptized in early adolescence, and most of them had no idea how much their perception would change between ages 18 and 24.

The goal is not complete understanding or complete certainty, because many/most faithful believers continue to have doubts throughout their lives. But when we encourage 13-year-olds to be baptized, we almost may as well use infant baptism instead. While kids that age clearly understand the content of their faith, the questions that so often arise in later adolescents suggest that 13-year-olds lack an adequate understanding of what faith really entails.

We don’t encourage young people to jump into marriage before they have a good idea of who their future spouse is and what some of the struggles of an adult relationship will be; I don’t think we should encourage kids to commit to Christ before they understand what adult faith entails.

In light of all this, it seems to me that advocates of believers baptism should shift our expectation of when a young person is truly “qualified” to commit to Christ for life. To me, the biblical age of 20 seems like a good target.

How it might work:

Here’s what I would envision: through high school, kids are encouraged to learn the Christian faith, but they are neither expected nor allowed to be baptized. Parents and churches teach Christian values just the same, and teens are still taught about the reality of sin. In fact, teens can even think of themselves more or less as Christians (just like young kids in the church do now), but everyone acknowledges that they’re basically just living out their parents’ faith (which, let’s face it, is the reality for most baptized teens now).

As kids approach age 20, the church clearly communicates to them that they are becoming adults, and that it is time to count the cost of following Christ.

For 20-year-olds who have not yet encountered the issues of adult faith, this is an opportunity for them to do so, knowing that they are old enough that no one can force them to be baptized. It’s an opportunity for a young person to ask adults in the church difficult questions about the faith, and maybe even do some reading. Then, if she makes an adult decision to follow Christ, she can be baptized.

Concerns

One risk that parents will point out is that some kids will act out during high school, planning on being forgiven later. St. Augustine famously held a similar attitude as an unbaptized adolescent in the 4th century, when he prayed, “Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.”

My sense, though, is that most teenagers are going to do what they want, baptized or not. Christianity may be a useful tool to prevent some teens from acting out, but on the whole I think it’s only marginally successful, plus I’m not sure God wants us to “use” it in that way in the first place.

The other risk is that some young people who would have been baptized at 13 will choose not to be baptized at 20. I agree that this would happen. But my question is: Isn’t the whole point of believers baptism that people cannot be Christians by default? If a person is going to be a true adult disciple, won’t she choose baptism at 20 just as sure as she would have at 13? Shouldn’t we recognize that the person who has lost their faith by 20 was really just making an immature (though sincere) decision at 13?

In the end, I think this concern reflects the same kind of desire that leads most Christians to practice infant baptism. We might claim that our concern is for the children, but I think the real concern is for the adults in the church, who want reassurance that their children are saved. To put it bluntly: if we baptize our kids before they know better, then we can think of them as Christians even if they end up losing interest in the faith as adults.

Delaying baptism until age 20 would help us all see things for what they are. For those who profess to follow a Lord who despised hypocrisy and heartless religion, I think this is a better path.