What did Chrysostom mean when he said that infant baptism was not for the remission of sins at all?

By CopticBot.ai (Coptic Space Inc.) · Last reviewed 2026-10-10

When St. John Chrysostom stated that infants have "no sins," he meant that infants have committed no personal or actual sins of their own. He did not deny the reality of the Sacrament, nor did he deny that infants need salvation. Rather, he rejected the false notion that a newborn baby bears the personal legal guilt (reatus) of Adam.

The famous passage comes from his Baptismal Instructions (Instruction to Catechumens):

"For this reason we baptize even infants, though they have no sins, so that there may be imparted to them holiness, righteousness, sonship, inheritance, to be brothers and members of Christ, and to become dwelling places of the Spirit."

1. Distinction Between "Actual Sin" and the "Fallen State"

To understand Chrysostom, one must understand the Orthodox doctrine of ancestral sin:

• Personal/Actual Sins: These are deliberate, conscious transgressions of God's commandments committed by an individual exercising their own will. A newborn infant has done nothing evil, thought nothing evil, and possesses no personal guilt. Thus, Chrysostom accurately says infants have "no sins" to be pardoned in that personal sense.
• Ancestral Corruption and Mortality: What mankind inherits from Adam is not his personal crime, but a damaged human nature subjected to death, corruption, and the passions. Because infants are born into this dying, fallen world separated from the uncreated life of God, they desperately need Christ.

2. What Baptism Accomplishes for an Infant

Baptism is far more than a legal courtroom transaction where a record of guilt is wiped clean. It is regeneration, a new birth from above (John 3:5), and grafting into the resurrected life of Christ.

For an adult convert, baptism accomplishes two things:

1. The remission and washing away of all personal sins committed throughout life.
2. Liberation from the power of death and the devil, spiritual rebirth, adoption as a child of God, and receipt of the Holy Spirit.

For an infant, who has no personal sins to remit, baptism accomplishes the second, supreme reality:

• Liberation from death and the tyrant (Satan): It rescues the child from the realm of darkness and ancestral corruption.
• Adoption and Sonship: It makes the infant a child of God by grace.
• Sanctification: It clothes the child with Christ and prepares the soul to be a temple of the Holy Spirit.
• Divine Life: It implants the medicine of immortality, uniting the child to the Body of Christ so that they may grow in grace from their earliest days.

3. The Historical Dispute with the Pelagians and Augustine

This statement by Chrysostom became a central point of debate during the Pelagian controversy:

• The Pelagian claim: Julian of Eclanum, a follower of Pelagius, cited Chrysostom’s quote to argue that infants are born morally neutral and that grace is merely an unnecessary add-on.
• Augustine’s reaction: Augustine, defending his novel doctrine of inherited guilt, scrambled to interpret Chrysostom in his work Against Julian. Augustine had to admit that Chrysostom meant infants have no personal sins, but Augustine still attempted to force his own idea of inherited guilt into Chrysostom's words.
• Chrysostom's actual position: Chrysostom was neither a Pelagian nor an Augustinian. He held the pure, apostolic faith: man is fallen and cannot save himself; infants need Christ, need grace, and need baptism to escape the corruption of the world and be born anew into the Kingdom of Heaven—not because God holds a grudge against an innocent baby for an ancestor's crime, but because human nature cannot enter eternity apart from the life of Jesus Christ.