Baptismal Regeneration Revisited

I posted previously on Baptismal Regeneration here, noting the tension in the Reformed view between recognizing Baptism as a sign and seal of the believer's entrance into the Body of Christ and forgiveness of sins, and denying its inherent regenerative power.

When defending paedobaptism (i.e., infant baptism) to those of an anti-paedobaptist bent, the Reformed are accused of retaining the Catholic-like belief that the act of sprinkling water can regenerate, can make a damned baby right with God (i.e., justified). The Reformed do not believe that the infant has his debt from Adam wiped clean at the Baptismal font by that mechanical act. But we do say that the act is a sign and seal of regeneration (WCOF 28.1). The Heidelberg Catechism makes clear that the external baptism washes no sins at all, but is to assure us that as water washes exterior filth, so Christ's blood washes the interior (see Q&A 72 and 73).

I wonder if different understandings of original sin badly widen the gulf in the disparate beliefs on baptism (as acutely seen when discussing infant baptism) held by Reformed and Catholic Christians.

A Reformed expression of the doctrine of original sin stresses the complete depravity it works in its victims (which is all of us), "It is a corruption of all nature-- an inherited depravity which even infects small infants in their mother's womb, and the root which produces in man every sort of sin. It is therefore so vile and enormous in God's sight that it is enough to condemn the human race, and it is not abolished or wholly uprooted even by baptism, seeing that sin constantly boils forth as though from a contaminated spring." (Belgic Confession, Art. 15, emphasis added).

The Catholic Catechism of the Catholic Church contrarily maintains that "It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin - an inclination to evil that is called concupiscence". Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ's grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle" (at para. 406, emphasis added and internal citations omitted).

My wife and I chose years ago not to go to a Reformed Anglican denomination because they believed in baptismal regeneration. To us, this position was untenable because we knew that those baptized retained a "corrupt nature". But the Catholic position (and probably that of this Anglican group as well) says that the corrupt nature is not what is washed away, but rather our deprivation of original holiness and justice.

Baptismal regeneration v1.0 and v2.0 will not reconcile so long as they each use the language "original sin" in two mutually exclusive ways.

Baptismal Regeneration

The title of this post is a dirty phrase in Reformed circles. Quite dirty. We are caught between the claims of our Western Catholic roots (that baptism washes away the guilt of original sin), and those of later Protestant bleachings of sacramentalism (that it is an entrance symbol for believing adults).

A tradition of disbelief in baptismal regeneration kept my wife and me from looking too far into the conservative branches of Anglicanism many years ago, before I could ever entertain Roman Catholic claims.

The Reformed view teaches that baptism is a type of entrance rite into the Visible Church, and that it is a real means of some grace, but that it does not effect a forgiveness of original sin nor guarantee membership in the church invisible on the part of the infant. Therefore, if a child dies before the age of determination (of faith), their state of salvation is known only to God in his divine and sovereign decree of election. Here, for me, is the rub. At the loss of a child in utero, I was starkly faced with this idea that the salvation or damnation of a child of the kingdom was a horrifying mystery, seemingly random to my pathetic perceptions.

No one in our church or family would tell us that the eternal disposition of our stillborn son was completely indeterminable by man. Stranger still, they would not have been willing to tell us that this child, had he died shortly after baptism, was any more assured of salvation than by his death in the womb. Double election/predestination does not work that way. To posit otherwise is to effectively embrace Baptismal Regeneration (or some effective baptismal regeneration by parental desire, in the case of our stillbirth).