Baptismal Regeneration & Election

ratchet30 said:

Hello again, my next concern is, when you baptize an infant does it mean each one is saved? From what I understand unconditional election has God saving people according to His own will and timing. It seems not all infants will be saved at baptism, perhaps some at a later time in life.

So, if Lutheran theology teaches that each baptized infant is saved than why not go around baptizing as many infants as possible?

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Tampasteve has given you solid information on this subject.

The only thing I would add is how election comes into it.

Election doesn't mean the same thing, exactly, in Lutheranism as it does in Calvinism (for example). Yes, there is God's unconditional election--but this isn't something hidden or secret that we can't know, it is instead revealed through God's Means of Grace.

The baptized person IS elect.

Note, also, that we don't believe that Christians can't fall away, so if a person is baptized as an infant, and later falls away from the faith, it doesn't mean that they weren't elected to salvation by God's grace--they absolutely were. Because Election isn't about God picking and choosing who He will and won't save--it's about God's choosing us in Christ, God saving us in Christ, and God works this in us and for us through His Means of Grace. Through Word and Sacrament.

That is why we can say "I am baptized" as being the assurance of our salvation. Baptism means that we have indeed truly been chosen and elected of God in Christ.

It's so important that it really bears repeating here: Election and Predestination have nothing to do with God picking and choosing who will and won't be saved; it has everything to do with God's gracious choosing, predestining, electing, and saving us; and His accomplishing this for us--unconditionally, not based on anything we have done. It is entirely apart from us, given to us, as pure gift.

-CryptoLutheran

tampasteve said:

Although we do not claim to understand how this happens or how it is possible, we believe (because of what the Bible says about Baptism) that when an infant is baptized God creates faith in the heart of that infant.

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I love it when a person can be honest & humble enough to say the words “I don’t know”

I apologize for the double post, but something else I wanted to touch upon.

One of the things that Baptism means, what it signifies, what it does and accomplishes is that it is our new birth in Christ, and that means new birth into being part of the Church, being born into the family of God. Think of it this way, when a child comes into the world, that child is not simply born isolated and alone, but is born into a family, and into a community--a network of parents, siblings, uncles, aunts, cousins, and friends, etc. It's a similar thing with our new birth, our being born again. We are born into God's family, born into Christ's Church, born into the life of faith in the Church.

When we baptize, we baptize with the understanding and the assumption that the person being baptized is now part of us, part of our life together as God's people, part of our life together as the Church. And we make our commitment as the Church with the baptized, that they will be brought up, nourished, and lived-together in our life of faith and confession together.

As such, going around forcefully and randomly "baptizing" people wouldn't be baptism. Baptism is more than just the water, it is more than just the Rite itself, it is more than just the formula of words used--it is the covenant promise of God upon a person, the work of God of new life and new creation, of a brand new life in Jesus Christ, with our sins forgiven, and now a member of God's people.

Baptism never happens apart from the Church--even if one is baptized on a deserted island far away from anyone else, it is always within the context of the Church as the universal, believing, confessing, Word-bearing Christian people.

That means we baptize adults who are converting as adults, as well as the children of believers--because it is the same commitment, the same thing happening, the same bringing into the house of faith. And that bringing into the house of faith is one of the essential qualities of what Baptism is about.

Because it is still about faith.

-CryptoLutheran