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- IN ADAM. CHRIST IN YOU, REGENERATION. For Further Reading: Harkness, Mysticism: Its Meaning and Message, 15-75; Howard, Newness of Life
- INBRED SIN. See
- For Further Reading: Baillie, God Was in Christ.
- For Further Reading: Greenwood, ed., A Handbook of the Catholic Faith, 288-92; Klotsche, History of Christian Doctrine, 152-54. MELVIN EASTERDAY DlETER
- INFANT BAPTISM (CON), INFANT SALVATION, BAPTISM. For Further Reading: Bromiley, Children of Promise: The Care for Baptizing Infants: Small
- Infant Baptism in the First Four Centuries.
- BAPTISM, INFANT BAPTISM (PRO), SACRAMENTS, BAPTISMAL REGENERATION, REBAPTISM, INFANT SALVATION. For Further Reading: Aland, Did the Early Church Baptize Infants
- (Ann Arbor Microfilms, 1965); Fisher, Christian Initiation: Baptism in the Medieval West; Cho
- Turner, "Infant Baptism in Biblical and Historical Context," WTf
- For Further Reading: Smith, A Short History of Christian Theophagy, 83-91; Smith, A Sacramental Society.
- For Further Reading: Hills, Fundamental Christian Theology, 1:433-38.
- INFIDELITY. See
- For Further Reading: Wiley, CT, 3:217ff.
For Further Reading: Howard, Newness of Life, 37-44, 61-65, 84-87; Jeremias, "Adam," in Kittel, 1:141-43; Richardson, ed., "Adam, Man," A Theological Word Book of the Bible, 14-15; NIDNTT, 1:84-87; Wiley, CT, 2:108, I25ff, 133-37. John G. Merritt IN CHRIST. The term "in Christ" and its spectrum of equivalents is an expression which occurs at least 164 times in the NT. There has been a growing consensus among many scholars that the centrality of the frequent occurrence of this term in the structure of his Epistles points to union with Christ as the heart of Paul's theology (see James S. Stewart, A Man in Christ, 7:150-52; Niel-son, In Christ, 48-50). As perhaps the core concept of Paul's message, the expression "in Christ" may be summarized under at least four rubrics: First, "in Christ" is a comprehensive term: it embraces and undergirds such significant biblical themes as justification, reconciliation, sanctification, the Church (cf. Lightfoot, Sermons in St. Paul's, 227; Plummer, Second Corinthians, 69). Second, "in Christ" is a mystical term. Because the concept is relational—union with Christ—-it places the central, historically rooted biblical themes in the arena of Spirit-attested human experience. This warmth which radiates from "in Christ" derives from the mysticism that inheres in the concept. However, this is not a union in which the human is absorbed in and obliterated by the divine; it is a redemptive permeation of the human personality by the divine through the indwelling presence of Christ (see Nielson, ibid., 18; Stewart, ibid., 160-73). Third, "in Christ" is an ethically solidaric concept. The solidarity expressed by "in Christ" is indicated in Rom. 5:12-21, where it is placed in a consistently antithetical relationship with the contrastive solidaric concept, "in Adam." In its larger context of 5:1—8:17, "in Christ" as a solidaric concept reaches its high point of significance in the experience and life of holiness, in which union with Christ centers in subjective identification with His death and resurrection (6:1-14). This solidarity is ethical in nature and is thus potential rather than automatically causal or actual in effect. This is seen in Paul's apparent assertion in 5:15-16 that Christ's obedience resulted in the justification of all men. However, this seeming actuality in 5:16, 18 is observed to be potential when seen in the light of the provisional nature of justification in 5:15, 17-18. INBRED SIN—INCARNATION 279 Thus, for the potential to become actual, an act of the will must be exercised to appropriate the provisional effects of Christ's obedience. The antithetical structure between Adam and Christ in Rom. 5:12-21 and the relationship men sustain to either one becomes the interpretive key to understanding holiness in 6:1-14: Simply because a person is "in Adam," he does not experience the effects of the inherited sin-principle in terms of guilt (i.e., in the sense of full responsibility and condemnation) until he embraces it by personal transgression. In like manner, simply being "in Christ" does not necessarily mean one has fully received experiential holiness, or entire sanctification, in Him. Thus, what can and should be ours by virtue of being "in Christ" is not actually ours until we make it our own by faith. Fourth, "in Christ" is an eschatological concept. "The very phrase describing the status of the believer, 'in Christ,' is an eschatological term. To be 'in Christ' means to be in the new age and to experience its life and powers. 'If any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold the new has come' (II Cor. 5:17)" (George Eldon Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament, 551). By "eschatological" is meant that through the redemptive work of Christ and the coming of the Holy Spirit, the age to come has invaded this present evil age (Ladd, 364-65). It is against this eschatological backdrop that life in the Spirit with its soteric content is to be understood. For those "in Christ," the perfect and consummated liberation of the new age has "in part reached back into the present" (Ladd, 371). As both a solidaric and an eschatological term, "in Christ" in Romans has holiness as its high point. As he reaches the climax of his presentation of holiness in Romans, Paul indicates that part of this "reaching back" into the present embraces the experience and life of holiness (8:1-2). Since the new age reaches back to those "in Christ," the eschatological concept has ethical overtones because it intersects with the solidaric. Thus the soteric content of the eschatological invasion is not automatically effective; it must be appropriated in an ethical act. Therefore, "in Christ" is a solidaric concept that is escha-tologically understood and ethically interpreted. See IN ADAM. CHRIST IN YOU, REGENERATION.
In what C. H. Dodd called the "not-yet" times of the OT, God had spoken to us in diverse ways through prophets, priests, and kings; and in the last time span, the last salvific age, God spoke to us through His only begotten, eternally generated Son (Heb. 1:1 ff; John 1:18). Incarnation means that God was not content simply to think good thoughts about us, nor to help us while keeping a safe distance from us. It means that God visited us for our salvation—"in our sorry case," as the ancient Athanasius expressed it. Heretical views regarding the Incarnation have sometimes been advocated. In some of them, Christ's humanity has been overstressed in relation to His deity. Ebionism is one such view. Others have overstressed Christ's deity. One such, certainly, is Docetism, a Gnostic view that Christ was fully divine (and, many of them said, conceived by a virgin); but that He only appeared to be human. Apollinarianism also over-stressed His deity in a sense. In this heresy, Christ was said to be human in body and soul, but not in spirit or ego or person. This aspect of Christ's nature was solely divine—the eternal Logos, a person, having amalgamated himself with humanity from the standpoint of assuming a human body and a human soul. Eutychianism, too, overstressed Christ's deity, with its understanding that Christ's humanity got absorbed into His deity at the time of His baptism. In still other heresies, the error was of a different nature than in the overstress of either Christ's humanity or His deity. One such was the fourth-century Arian position, which became the most serious of all these threats to what came to be hammered out as the Christian teaching. Arius taught that Christ is neither human nor divine, but a third existent, in between—and that He was the first and highest created being. Nestorianism had to do with the relation of the two natures (human and divine) to the person.
280 INDULGENCES—INFANT BAPTISM (PRO) Nestorius pictured Christ's humanity and deity as so separate that this devout heretic was perceived to be saying that Christ possessed two persons (one, human; and the other, divine). The orthodox Christology, decided upon at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, is that Christ possessed two natures, a fully human one and a fully divine one, and that He possessed only one person—its dictum being that we should not "confuse" the two natures (making them one) nor divide the person. See christ, christology, hypostasis, hypostatic union, virgin birth, docetism, apollinarianism, arianism, nestorianism.
J. Kenneth Grider INDULGENCES. In Catholic theology, this is the church's remission or waving of the temporal punishment for sins whose guilt has already been forgiven. Remission is granted out of the treasury of merit of the church created by the holiness of Christ and the saints. Such indulgence may be granted to the living or to the dead who are suffering in purgatory. This teaching grew out of the penitential discipline of the church in earlier centuries. A distinction was made between the guilt of sin and the temporal punishment required for complete absolution, the former to be forgiven by the work of Christ, the latter to be satisfied by acts of penance in this life and, as the doctrine of purgatory developed historically, in purgatory. Gradual development of the teaching expanded the theology and practice of indulgence granting to include not only the plenary remission of temporal and purgatorial penalties but of the guilt of sins already or yet to be committed. Souls of persons living holding such plenary indulgences would go straight to heaven upon death, or those in purgatory would immediately be released from further suffering. The blatant abuse of such liberal indulgence teaching aroused Martin Luther to challenge the authority of the medieval church and papacy. Since the Protestant Reformation, the granting of indulgences within the Roman Catholic church has steadily diminished even though their dogmatic validity was affirmed by the Council of Trent. See catholicism (roman), penance, repentance.
H. Orton Wiley, Oscar Cullmann, and many other scholars understand, furthermore, that infant baptism is the NT counterpart of the OT circumcision of male infants. Just as an infant, on the eighth day of his life, was to be circumcised, and thereby brought within God's special covenantal favor, so an infant is to be baptized. In some kinds of covenants, humans needed to enter into individual agreement with God; but in others, God made agreements without regard to human cooperation. In circumcision and infant baptism, the covenant is of this nature—except that, of course, the parents agree, in infant baptism, to rear the child to come to know Christ. Infant baptism, further, is the sacrament which affirms prevenient grace. In the Arminian-Wesleyan tradition, in which infants have been baptized for centuries, the doctrine of prevenient grace has been emphasized. That is, in this tradition, it has been emphasized that we love God "because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19); that no one comes to the Father except the Spirit first summons him (see John 6:44; Ps. 85:4; Jer. 31:18-19). And to baptize infants affirms this kind of grace. Evangelicals do not believe that infant baptism obviates the need of the new birth, when the child comes to the age of accountability and senses the awakening of the Spirit to his personal sinning. Infant baptism is the practice of all but a very small percent of Christendom, and it has been, from the earliest centuries. Only Tertullian, con-
INFANT BAPTISM (CON)—INFANT COMMUNION 281
nected with an early offshoot group (the Mon-tanists), oppsed it, among the Greek and Latin fathers. It is taught in the Didache, the Early Church "manual" dating to around a.d. 100. Even the fifth-century Pelagius, who denied original sin, taught it. It was taught by Luther, Calvin, Arminius, Wesley, Wiley, etc. See INFANT BAPTISM (CON), INFANT SALVATION, BAPTISM. For Further Reading: Bromiley, Children of Promise: The Care for Baptizing Infants: Small, The Biblical Basis for Infant Baptism; Wall, The History of Infant Baptism; Wesley, Thoughts upon Infant Baptism; Jeremias, Infant Baptism in the First Four Centuries. J. Kenneth Grider INFANT BAPTISM (CON). The baptism of infants in the Christian Church had its origin, according to its proponents, in the Apostolic Church. It is assumed that the household of Cornelius (Acts 10:44-48) and the jailer at Philippi (16:33-34) included infants. Against this assumption it is noteworthy that those baptized with water in Caesarea were those who previously had been baptized with the Holy Spirit and spoke with tongues, "acclaiming the greatness of God" (10:46). Those on whom the Spirit came were "all who were listening to the message" (v. 44), who in turn were "relatives and close friends" of Cornelius (v. 24, all neb). Were those who gathered to listen to Peter, and who later acclaimed the greatness of God, infants as well as those old enough to comprehend the message? It seems unlikely. The Philippian jailer and his household became believers between midnight and dawn; were sleeping infants -aroused to participate in the baptism? Again, it seems an unwarranted assumption. Some go back of the Apostolic Church to the ministry of Jesus who welcomed children to His embrace and declared, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 19:14). It may be asked, "Does baptism make them such, or are they 'of the Kingdom' without baptism?" The OT is often cited in defense of infant baptism. Since children of Hebrew parents were circumcised, and thus brought into the Abrahamic covenant, and since Christians are the "true Israel," therefore infants, to be made participants in the covenant relation, are to be baptized. Pauline support is sought: "In him also you were circumcised . . . and you were buried with him in baptism" (Col. 2:11-13, rsv). Here Paul uses circumcision as a metaphor, the "circumcision made without hands" being equated with the removal of sin. Paul would be the last one to insist on circumcision as the condition for being a Christian; his concern was that believers experience "real circumcision ... a matter of the heart, spiritual and not literal" (Rom. 2:29, rsv). John the Baptist, Jesus, and the apostles emphasized that outward rites are not essential and that parents cannot bring their offspring into a saving relationship to Christ by any outward rite. The NT consistently and emphatically asserts that salvation is a personal matter and cannot be passed from generation to generation as the Jews believed (John 8:39-59). Infant baptism is properly linked with confirmation, hence the importance of the latter in Catholic churches. Both are widely practiced in state churches of Europe including the Anglican, and thence via the Wesleys to the Methodist churches. Because of the embarrassment of seeing that baptized adults often continue to live in sin, the Anabaptists arose in wake of the Reformation to make baptism available only to believers. Recently in Europe, for the same reason, theologians including Karl Barth have called for believers' baptism rather than the administration of the rite to helpless infants. Many who wish to give baptism its maximum significance are sympathetic to this position and prefer to dedicate their infants while reserving baptism to the time when the candidate becomes a willing participant. See BAPTISM, INFANT BAPTISM (PRO), SACRAMENTS, BAPTISMAL REGENERATION, REBAPTISM, INFANT SALVATION.
The practice was discontinued in medieval times in Roman Catholicism after it had officially accepted the teaching of transubstantiation— that at the priest's consecration of the elements, their substance becomes the actual body and 282 INFANT SALVATION—INFIRMITIES blood of Christ. The Council of Trent, in one of its sessions in 1562, supported its withholding Communion from children by saying that Communion, for them, is "not a divine command." Protestantism in general has likewise withheld Communion from infants—except that, if a child accepts Christ at a very early age, he is usually considered to be a proper recipient for the Communion Supper. See child (children), sacraments. For Further Reading: Smith, A Short History of Christian Theophagy, 83-91; Smith, A Sacramental Society. J. Kenneth Grider INFANT SALVATION. Infant salvation refers to the destiny of those who die in infancy. Wesleyan-Arminians affirm that all infants who die will be saved through Christ's atonement, though they are born in pollution and in some sense bearing legal guilt. Jesus said, "Do not look down on one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven" (Matt. 18:10, Niv). In Romans 5, Paul contrasts the consequences of Adam's sin with the benefits of the atonement made by Jesus Christ. Verse 18 declares, "So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men" (nasb). All who fell in Adam are provisionally restored in Christ. His atonement provides salvation for all men—not to justify them immediately and unconditionally, but according to God's plan. Adults are justified by faith when they repent and believe. If an infant dies, the Spirit of God regenerates, justifies, and prepares it for heaven. Infant salvation thus depends on the prevenient grace of God, and not on baptism. Olin A. Curtis (The Christian Faith, 403-4) rejects any concept of "unconditional regeneration." He contends infants are moral persons who reach full personal experience in the "intermediate state," as children do in this life. They come to know and freely accept the Savior as individuals under moral test. In companionship with Him, they achieve the equivalent of Christian perfection. See prevenient grace, original sin, infant baptism (pro, con). For Further Reading: Hills, Fundamental Christian Theology, 1:433-38. ivan A. beals INFANTICIDE. This has to do with the intended killing of an infant after it has been born. The practice has had a long history in primitive societies, especially in the case of unwanted females and of malformed infants. It is illegal in most societies today. But the permission, as in the U.S.A. (unless states make special prohibitions), of abortions even during the last three months of the gestation period is considered by many to be not entirely different from the permission of infanticide. In fact, when there are late abortions, and the fetus exits the womb alive, it is sometimes at least permitted to die. See murder, abortion, child (children). J. Kenneth Grider INFIDELITY. See unbelief. INFINITE, INFINITY. Infinite (Lat. infinitos) is defined by Webster as "without limits of any kind." Infinity is defined as "unlimited extent of time, space or quantity." Webster quotes Raleigh: "There cannot be more infinities than one; for one of them would limit the other." Since this is true, only God can be said to be infinite. In Christian theology infinity is treated as one of the absolute attributes of God. All created beings, including man, are limited in respect to space, size, origin, power, and mind; hence, finite. Man finds it impossible to comprehend infinitude even though he may define it. In mathematics, optics, music, logic, metaphysics, or any other discipline he can do no more than point toward what he calls infinity. One of the problems of theology is that of describing the interrelation between infinity and finiteness. Leighton says: "God cannot be infinite in the sense that he can be anything we can think of ... He cannot will things that contradict his fundamental purposes and aims ... the only limitations on his actions are the self limitations involved in his own creative love and providence . . . God must be an unchanging being, the changeless ground of the coherent and intelligible order of change" (The Field of Philosophy, 337 ff). See god, attributes (divine), divine sovereignty. For Further Reading: Wiley, CT, 3:217ff. John E. 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