What Wesleyan groups believe in baptismal regeneration?

[Dave-W]

When we turn baptism into a requirement for salvation, we have reverted back to people who find our relationship with God something that is a work and made baptism as much a part of the law as circumcision ever was. Neither fits the message of the Gospel.

I fear you have misunderstood me which means I have not made myself clear. Sorry.

I am not saying that baptism is in any way regenerative. (although it does have specific benefits to the believer) It is not a requirement FOR salvation. I do not believe that at all.

And while circumcision and baptism are both covenantal signs - (as is a wedding band) their similarity ends there.

Paul calls baptism a "burial." We bury dead bodies. Any believer who is not baptized has a part of them (the old nature?) that is dead but not buried. To me it is an important first step in the sanctification process.

 

[circuitrider]

OK. But what do you "bury" in an infant baptism?


Romans 6:4 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

Colossians 2:12 having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.

The burial is spiritual and not physical no matter what mode of baptism you use. I don't generally immerse adults either. My church uses sprinkling almost exclusively.

Even when someone performs an immersion baptism the practice of dunking people backwards is a recent practice. In Jesus day you likely kneeled and then leaned forward to dunk you head under water. That doesn't look anything like a burial.

 

[GraceSeeker]

And here's a question; just for philosophical purposes and to throw a wrench into the oatmeal; must one get 'wet' to be Baptized?

I think the Christian life begins at Baptism and I don't think anyone is 'excused'.

Yes.


No.

Care to expand for the purposes of discussion and edification? I could've predicted you'd disagree with at least the first point (I disagree with the first point; but I wanted to bring out that perspective so that it might get picked apart).

But I didn't disagree. I said "Yes" as a response to the first question.

As to the second 'No', I guess I'd like more clarity there. You don't believe that nobody is excluded? You don't believe the Christian life begins at Baptism? Both? Explain?

See above response to DaveW-Ohev.
Salvation is a gift from God, not a human work. When baptism becomes a requirement, a hoop we have to jump through, then it become something that *we* are doing, rather than God. According to Paul, we are saved by grace (not by baptism), through faith (not through baptism). Baptism is an obedient response of the faithful to the experience of being saved, it is therefore not the cause of it. As it is not the cause of it, it also can not be the origin of it, either in a logical sense nor in a temporal sense. And if it is neither of these, then our salvation is actually independent of baptism. And we see this to be true when we examine what is actually occurring with the people who are baptized:

1) When we practice believer's baptism we are baptizing people who have already come to faith and believe in Jesus. These people are being saved BEFORE being baptized. Their Christian life had already begun before they got wet.
2) When we practice infant baptism we are baptizing people who have not yet come to faith, or at least not yet expressed faith so that we are aware of it (I don't want to say that God could not have been having a faith conversation with a person even before birth to which the may have already responded in way unintelligible to other, indeed I wouldn't be surprised by that at all). These people are baptized BEFORE they have the experience of being saved. Their Christian life begins after they get wet.
​

Hence, baptism and the beginning of a Christian life are in no wise linked so that one can be used as the predictor of the other.

 

[circuitrider]

I agree with you Graceseeker other than the tendancy of "saved" to be interpreted in the Calvinist way by many that "saved" means a once and done event in the past. I like what Gayle Felton says in, "United Methodists and the Sacraments" that salvation in a Wesleyan understanding isn't an event it is a journey. English doesn't do this as well as Greek. In the New Testament being saved means having been saved in the past with continuation of being saved each day in the future.

"I am being saved" makes more sense Biblically than "I was saved" or "I am saved."

 

[GraceSeeker]

I agree with you Graceseeker other than the tendancy of "saved" to be interpreted in the Calvinist way by many that "saved" means a once and done event in the past.

Editted to hopefully correct any misreading.

 

[circuitrider]

Thanks Graceseeker,

I do think when people think of salvation as a one time event that happens in the past it makes it harder to understand the sacraments. If Christ is giving you grace all along the way and saving you all along the way then baptism can easily be understood as an experience of grace on the journey of salvation.

If you getting saved is something that happens once and that all the grace you need is provided in tha moment then it makes it hard to understand God providing grace in the sacraments because either the person will wonder why you need it since you are "saved" or they will assume you mean that the salvation event is at baptism rather than at the instant they want to assign it to.

When I understood faith as a journey Wesleyan theology really opened up for me.

 

[Dave-W]

"Though we can't think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion? Without all doubt, we may" ~ John Wesley

CircuitRider - I really like that quote in your signature. It sounds so Jewish. It is EXACTLY what Paul wrote about in Ephsians 4 when he said to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace ... until we attain to the unity of the faith. (v 3, 13)

 

[circuitrider]

CircuitRider - I really like that quote in your signature. It sounds so Jewish. It is EXACTLY what Paul wrote about in Ephsians 4 when he said to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace ... until we attain to the unity of the faith. (v 3, 13)

It is one of my favorite quotes of John Wesley from his sermon "Catholic Spirit."