Baptismal Regeneration and History

The Light Shines in the Darkness...

Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Lutheranism, the Church of Christ, and many of the various cults teach that one must be water baptized in order to be saved. The position of the Roman Catholic Church according to the Council of Trent is this:

“Canon II: If any one saith, that true and natural water is not of necessity for baptism, and, on that account, wrests, to some sort of metaphor, those words of our Lord Jesus Christ: Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost: let him be anathema.

Canon V: If any one saith, that baptism is free, that is, not necessary unto salvation: let him be anathema.”

-Council of Trent, “On Justification”: Chapter IV

According to the Roman Catholic Church, water baptism is the cause of spiritual regeneration:

“What is baptism?

Baptism is the sacrament of spiritual rebirth. Though the symbolic action of washing with water and the use of appropriate ritual words, the baptized person is cleansed of all his sins and incorporated into Christ. It was foretold in Ezekiel, “I shall pour clean water over you and you will be cleansed; I shall cleanse you of all your defilement and all your idols. I shall give you a new heart, and put a new spirit in you” (Ezekiel 36:25-26).

What are the effects of baptism?

The effects of baptism are the removal of the guilt of sin and all punishment due to sin, conferral of the grace of regeneration and the infused virtues, incorporation into Christ and his Church, receiving baptismal character and the right to heaven.”

-John Hardon, The Question and Answer Catholic Catechism (Garden City: Image, 1901), Questions #1140 and 1151.

According to the Reformed sect of the Protestant Reformation, however, belief in water baptismal regeneration is tantamount to works-salvation. The Westminster Catechism explains the majority Protestant view:

“I. Baptism is a sacrament of the New Testament, ordained by Jesus Christ, not only for the solemn admission of the party baptized into the visible Church, but also to be unto him a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, or his ingrafting into Christ, of regeneration, of remission of sins, and of his giving up unto God, through Jesus Christ, to walk in newness of life: which sacrament is, by Christ's own appointment, to be continued in his Churchy until the end of the world.

V. Although it be a great sin to contemn or neglect this ordinance, yet grace and salvation are not so inseparably annexed unto it as that no person can be regenerated or saved without it, or that all that are baptized are undoubtedly regenerated.”

-Westminster Catechism, Chapter 28, parts I. and V.

So, which of the two views are right (if any)? This article will deal with the history of water baptismal regeneration.

A Little History

John the Baptist According to Josephus

The ancient Jewish historian, Josephus, records John the Baptist’s doctrine of baptism (emphasis mine):

“John, that was called the Baptist…who was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism; for that the washing [with water] would be acceptable to him, if they made use of it, not in order to the putting away [or the remission] of some sins [only], but for the purification of the body; supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness.”

-Josephus, Antiquities 18.5.2

http://www.ccel.org/j/josephus/works/ant-18.htm

Josephus tells us that John the Baptist taught that water baptism was an outward symbol of the inner purification of the soul. He denied that it actually forgave sin and taught that one would only come for baptism if they had already been ‘purified’ (i.e. regenerated) by repentance beforehand. This is consistent with Matthew 3:7-8. [This verse will be discussed in the article on Baptismal Regeneration and the Scriptures.]

The Early Church

Water baptismal regeneration is perhaps the one issue that the Roman Catholic Church has that can be supported by the ‘unanimous consent of the Church fathers’ (except for the apostolic fathers who don’t mention the issue). Apart from the apostolic fathers, every church father from the mid-second century on believed that water baptism was the cause of the remission of original sin and all sin up to that point:

“The doctrine of baptism is one of the few teachings within Roman Catholicism for which it can be said that there is a universal consent of the Fathers. The Council of Trent declared that baptism is the sacrament which effects remission of sins and regeneration.”

-William Webster, The Church of Rome at the Bar of History (Carlisle, Pennsylvania: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1995), pp.95-96.

According to Protestant historians, baptism was one of the first doctrines to drift away from Biblical truth (emphasis mine):

“Gregory Nazianzen sees in baptism all blessings of Christianity combined, especially the forgiveness of sins, the new birth, and the restoration of the divine image… According to Gregory of Nyssa, the child by baptism is instated in the paradise from which Adam was thrust out. The Greek fathers had no clear conception of original sin. According to the Pelagian Julian of Eclanum, Chrysostom taught: We baptize children, though they are not stained with sin, in order that holiness, righteousness, sonship, inheritance, and brotherhood may be imparted to them through Christ…Augustine brought the operation of baptism into connection with his more complete doctrine of original sin. Baptism delivers from the guilt of original sin, and takes away the sinful character of the concupiscence of the flesh…”

-Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol. 3, ch.7, part 92

http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/history/3_ch07.htm

While the Church was more focused upon Christological issues, it drifted away into theological speculation on soteriological issues (i.e. those issues having to do with salvation). As was highlighted in the above quote, some of the most prominent of the early fathers didn’t believe that men were born with Original Sin, one of the most clearly taught doctrines of the Old and New Testaments (Genesis 6:5, Romans 3:23, 5:14-19, etc.). Since there was no controversy on the subject (which caused a closer look into the Biblical text), many of the fathers would read their preconceived notions into the text of Scripture. These preconceived notions were highly influenced by pagan Greek philosophy:

“The earlier patristic period represents the age of the exploration of concepts, when the proclamation of the gospel within a pagan culture was accompanied by an exploitation of both Hellenistic culture and pagan philosophy as vehicles for theological advancement.”

–Alister E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 2^nd edition (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, reprinted 1998), p.17.

Roman Catholic apologists constantly use the Church fathers to try to convince Protestants to convert to Catholicism. However, why should someone value the beliefs of men who were influenced by pagan Greek philosophy any more than one’s own interpretation? Why should one value the beliefs of men who might have had different beliefs if the center of Christianity ended up in India or China? [For more on this, read the article on The Consent of the Church Fathers.]

Tertullian

In discussing his support for baptismal regeneration, one father admitted a little too much:

“And so they say, “Baptism is not necessary for them to whom faith is sufficient; for withal, Abraham pleased God by a sacrament of no water, but of faith.” But in all cases it is the later things which have a conclusive force, and the subsequent which prevail over the antecedent. Grant that, in days gone by, there was salvation by means of bare faith, before the passion and resurrection of the Lord. But now that faith has been enlarged, and is become a faith which believes in His nativity, passion, and resurrection, there has been an amplification added w the sacrament, viz., the sealing act of baptism; the clothing, in some sense, of the faith which before was bare, and which cannot exist now without its proper law.”

-Tertullian, On Baptism 13

http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-03/anf03-49.htm#P11466_3245563

Here, Tertullian admits that Abraham was saved by faith alone (Genesis 15:6), something that would be the death knell of Roman Catholic theology if one of its apologists ever admitted it. Why, you might ask? It is because the Apostle Paul makes Abraham the standard and example for how Christians are saved (Romans 4:1-3, 9-13). If Abraham was justified by faith alone, then all Christians are justified by faith apart from all works, including water baptism.

Empirical Evidence Against Baptismal Regeneration

According to God speaking through the prophet Ezekiel, spiritual regeneration causes one to love the commandments of God, and the specific sin that was used as an example of what regeneration cleanses us from is idolatry:

“Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will be careful to observe my ordinances.”

-Ezekiel 36:25-27

John Hardon, in his Question and Answer Catholic Catechism, even cited Ezekiel 36 as a prophecy that foretold Christian baptismal regeneration. So, if water baptism by a priest causes one to be cleansed from idolatry and follow the laws of God, then we can test this belief by looking into history to see if this was the effect of water baptism.

During the early Medieval Era, coined ‘The Dark Ages’, many Christian missionaries were traveling all over Northern Europe converting the pagan tribes. Many times, a chieftain or king would convert (mostly for political reasons) and order his entire people to convert as well. So, the Christian bishops would converge at a certain place and give mass baptisms. However, as was the case quite frequently, the people would revert back to their idolatry en masse. Church historian, D’Aubigne, recounts the instance of Augustine of Canterbury attempting to convert the Anglo-Saxons:

“The forty-one missionaries having landed in the isle of Thanet, in the year 597, the king of Kent consented to receive them, but in the open air, for fear of magic…Augustine [of Canterbury] baptized ten thousand pagans in one day…The hierarchical rather than Christian conversions effected by the priests of Rome were so unreal that a vast number of neophytes suddenly returned to the worship of their idols. Eadbald, king of Kent, was himself among the number of apostates. Such reversions to paganism are not unfrequent in the history of the Romish missions.”

-J.H. Merle d’Aubigne, History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, trans. Dr. H. White, Vol. V (Rapidan, VA: Harland Publications, reprinted 1846 London edition), pp. 683, 685.

The barbaric Anglo-Saxons were never cleansed from their idols and they were not careful to observe the commandments of God. They came as a bunch of dirty barbaric pagans and left as a bunch of clean barbaric pagans. Thus, it is clear that water baptism did not effect the regeneration of these people in the way that God promised regeneration would happen (in Ezekiel 36), and so, this is evidence that baptismal regeneration can not be Biblical. On the other hand, one can never prove that a doctrine is false through empirical means, and thus, it shall be proven that water baptismal regeneration is anti-biblical in the next article.

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All Scripture quotes are from the NASB.

Also, some helpful audio on this topic can be found at:

http://www.straitgate.com/webster/