What is baptismal regeneration?

mark1 said:

1) I don't think Lucaspa and I disagree on any doctrine discussed here. I was somewhat surprised with his statement implying the the Creed was an approximation of the faith and that our new ideas and understandings have superseded the Creed.

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That would be a sound conclusion if "one baptism for the remission of sins" meant baptized once and all sins thruout life were automatically remitted. Wesley obviously didn't teach that or believe that.

However, if it means we are only to be baptized once, then the problem Maid Marie brought up goes away.

2) We are saved by the Grace of God. We are forgiven through the Grace of God. No act of man (including water baptism) can constrain God to do anything, not even forgive our sins. Pelagianism was a serious heresy. God is indeed sovereign.

So, yes be can be forgiven of our sins by God even if we are not baptized. Jesus decides who will be his friends and who will have eternal life. he does not ahve to follow man's rules.

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There are two issues here.

First, the lack of baptism should be an extremely unusual situation within Christain countries. Baptism is a sacrament isntituted by Jesus. He has commanded us to be baptized and to baptize others. Sure there can be situations (perhaps mental illness, perhaps a person who is becoming a Christain and dies, perhaps a baby who dies before being baptized). But IMHO to not be baptized because I decided to wait is a serious trangression of what God has providfed for us.

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I was thinking of people not in Christian countries or places that had never heard of Christ at all. Not many of those left, obviously, but they were the majority thru most of history.

Th second issue is that the one baptism is not about eternal life. Baptism is an initiation rite, a sacrament of obedience. It is the beginning of the salvation process.

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That's what I thought and Methodism teaches. However, if you read the Creed a certain way, seems to be saying something different from this: one baptism and sins are remitted forever. This understanding would go against what you said above and would justify lucaspa saying the Creed had been superceded in this particular, narrow case. Change the understanding of what the Creed is saying and this all goes away.

Eternal life is about prevenient Grace and our acceptance of the free gift of eternal life. We are justified, we have eternal life, by Grace through faith in Christ Jesus. As I daid before, Jesus can choose to accpet who he will. Certainly we hope and expect that he will accept children who have yet to believe.

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Or people who have not heard of him. I personally would hope God would accept nearly everyone He possibly can. I believe in a loving and inclusive God, not a nitpicker exclusive on.

Baptism does not remove our inherited human nature, and our ancestral heritage of being sinful creatures. Accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior does not remove our tendency to sin. We spend our lives struggling with sin. We are converted each day. Each day we become more Christ-like. This is one of Wesley's great gifts to the Western Church, an understanding of sanctification as a lifelong process. The Orthodox call this "theosis".

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This is how I understand it.

I wonder how Gadfly's view of "born again" fits in with this. I would think, in general, the "evangelical" view of born again is antithetical to this. Born again seems to be used as a "get out of jail free" card.

revanneosl said:

Why yes there was, or rather "there were" because there was more than one of them. However, they all pretty much amounted to the same thing.

Furthermore, they insisted that any converts to the faith who had been baptized by a Bishop (only Bishops did the baptizing in those days) who was on the more forgiving side were not, in fact, truly baptized. So - if they got hold of them, they baptized them again.

The more forgiveness-minded wing of the church, on the other hand, recognized the validity of the baptisms performed by their more hard-nosed bretheren, and so did not rebaptize converts who had been baptized in the other branch, and then later found their way to the forgiveness party.

In the general clean-up of doctrine that was the 4th Century, this was one of the little things that got cleaned up.

And that, Virginia, is why we say "we acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins."

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Thank you. Could you give us some resources for this, please? I for one would like some more particulars.

If we read the Creed as saying "one and only one baptism for the remission of sins" instead of "one baptism for the remission of sins for the entire lifetime", then the problem Maid Marie raised simply goes away.

theistic evol said:

I would think, in general, the "evangelical" view of born again is antithetical to this. Born again seems to be used as a "get out of jail free" card.

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This is some of my difficulty. But, since pondering this more deeply, I have noticed that even those who believe in baptismal regeneration will still say the person needs conversion later on in life. That helped me to see that baptism is not everything nor is being born again everything but that the two are needed.