through the operation of the rite of baptism itself. It conveys God’s grace to the recipient unless he or she “places a spiritual impediment (obex) in the way of grace.”13 However, this is not the paedobaptist theology that we are primarily answering in this volume.14 Our desire, rather, is to respond to evangelical paedobaptists, primarily in the Reformed tradition, who baptize infants not because they believe that baptism regenerates the child but because they believe that baptism brings the child