Subject: what is baptism |
Bible Note: Whether you adhere to baptismal regeneration or not, it is incorrect to say that this doctrine did surfaced 200 years ago. Rather, it is the Church of Christ's teaching which is the newer doctrine. From Chapter 28 of the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647): "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 Church 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." From the Heidelberg Catechism (late 1500's): "73. Q. Why then does the Holy Spirit call baptism the washing of regeneration and the washing away of sins? A. God speaks in this way for a good reason. He wants to teach us that the blood and Spirit of Christ remove our sins just as water takes away dirt from the body. But, even more important, He wants to assure us by this divine pledge and sign that we are as truly cleansed from our sins spiritually as we are bodily washed with water." Therefore, the concept was clearly a part of the thought of the Reformation. Speaking of church history, another problem surfaces when we insist that believers must be immersed in order to gain regeneration. That problem is the historical tradition of infant baptism. Whether or not one agrees that infant baptism is a biblical practice, one cannot deny that the sprinkling or pouring upon infants was almost exclusively the mode and timing of baptism until the Anabaptists came on the scene in the middle of the 16th century. Therefore, what happened to the church is EVERYONE was baptised as an infant for century upon century. Are you prepared to say that God's church completely dies out until believer's baptism came (back) into the picture? No one was saved for at least 1200 years? Some sovereign God we have there, if that is the case! The baptismal regeneration of believers only is most definitely a product of the restorationist tendencies of modern America. --Joe! |