Let me say at the outset that if it turns out that my reasons are not sufficient, and that I really do believe in baptismal regeneration, I couldn’t care less. If that were true I’m still a Reformed believer who is subservient to Scriptural teaching within the scope of the Reformed Tradition and my ordination vows. End of story.
But, as it happens, I’ve never “owned” that term and there have been definite reasons (or a definite reason depending on how you wish to quantify things).
First of all, I’ve consistently held that people who are baptized are ordinarily already regenerate.
Here is an extract from a paper I wrote in seminary (probably around 1996 but maybe 1995):
So far, I have argued that all the Biblical evidence suggests that baptism is a rite which initiates (or, better, by which God initiates) the person baptized into the covenant—confers citizenship in the Kingdom upon him. Is there any additional reason from Scripture to modify this conclusion or it’s implications? Perhaps.According to the Psalms, infants in the Church have a saving relationship with God while yet in the womb (8.2; 22.9-10; 71.5-6, 17). This is significant because the Psalms are the songs of Israel’s public worship. Thus, they teach us not about what might possibly happen to someone in Israel, but rather what was the general expectation in Israel. In my own tradition, the popular hymns were “And Can It Be” or “Just As I Am,” because I was brought up in a tradition which expected a conscious and remembered conversion from unbelief to faith in Christ. In Israel, there was a different view of how and when one entered into a saving relationship with the Lord.
It would perhaps be possible (barely) to consign these songs to the “secret work of the Spirit” and maintain that they leave the rite of initiation unaffected. But there is more data to be considered: The fact that Samson is a nazirite even from his mother’s womb entails that his mother must not violate the dietary restrictions for a nazirite while Samson is in utero within her (Jud 13.4, 14). Here we have a principle which not only serves as yet another argument for paedocommunion, but which declares that all churches which don’t bar pregnant women from the Lord’s Supper also practice paedocommunion. This verse reveals not only that the Israelites knew that the fetus fed on the food of the mother, but that God considers the relationship to be sacramentally significant. Thus, unless one is prepared to argue that pregnant women were banned from Passover, it is inescapable that unborn Israelites were “communing members” of God’s people.
How do we synthesize the fact that circumcision initiated a person in the covenant, as baptism now does, but that an unborn and unbaptized child is a communicant member of the Church? Did circumcision and does baptism simply readmit the child into table fellowship with the Lord? If so, why would such a readmission be necessary?
Perhaps it is significant that, under the Mosaic economy, giving birth barred a mother from the Tabernacle and the sacramental feast until she had been properly cleansed (Lev 12.1-8). This is simply an application of the general principle that anything from the flesh rendered one unclean and unfit for God presence. For example, a blemish on the body was considered leprosy if it was “deeper than the skin” (Lev 13.3). A flow from the inward parts of a man or women rendered them unclean (Lev 15). Indeed, the woman’s uncleanness from childbirth is explicitly compared to this: “When a women gives birth and bears a male, then she shall be unclean for seven days, as in the days of her menstruation she shall be unclean” (Lev 12.2; c.f. v. 5). Since a person become unclean by contact with a woman “in the days of her menstruation,” the question naturally arises as to whether or not the newborn is unclean as well. This would seem an obvious consequence from the ceremonial law, and the prophet Ezekiel certainly suggests it as well:
As for your birth, on the day you were born your navel cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water for cleansing, you were not rubbed with salt or even wrapped in cloths. . . When I passed by you and saw you squirming in your blood, I said to you in your blood, “Live!” I said to you while you were in your blood, “Live!” (16.4, 6).
This, I think, gives us a clue as to the Old Testament (and therefore the Biblical) theology for the initiation of newborns into the covenant. While in the womb, an unborn child is “covered” by his mother. He may partake of the sacraments because he is considered “in” her. At birth, however, there is a revelation that this child of the covenant is “of the flesh” and therefore unclean. At that point, the child must be readmitted to the sacramental life of Israel. But this would not be a mere readmission because, for the first time, the child enters into the covenant as an individual. Circumcision and baptism do not so much have to do with family solidarity, for that is where the uncleanness originated. Rather, the rite of initiation is their adoption into God’s family.
Of course, this “fall” and transition “from wrath to grace,” should not be taken as actually indicating that the individual child has become an object of wrath, any more than a women’s menstrual period under the Mosaic economy would indicate that she was now personally under God’s wrath and curse. Nevertheless, there is a demonstration that “flesh and blood will not inherit the Kingdom of God.” Furthermore, the child goes through an eschatological elevation from being simply counted in the mother as belonging to God’s people, to being directly made a member of the Church.
To provide a concrete example. If a Church is forced to excommunicate a pregnant woman without a Christian husband, then the child shares in her excommunication. He is born outside the Church. If, however, the child is born and baptized, then the child remains a member of the Church even if the mother is excommunicated. (Of course, the child will probably be raised to apostatize, so it would still be a tragedy.)
I have never seen any reason to change my basic stance on this point. And as a pastor, the application has been to give Christian parents the absolute assurance that their stillborn children are with Jesus and that they will be reunited in Christ at the resurrection. God’s covenantal promises are trustworthy because God is trustworthy. He promises to be the God not only of us, but of our children (upon condition of perseverance in the faith) and children who die in utero have persevered. There is no need to fear God would be robbed of his child because the child was not born to be baptized before he or she died.
Also, I have always regarded those who make a profession of faith as already regenerate. No one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit, so anyone who actively desired baptism must already be regenerate by the Holy Spirit. Whatever is conferred in baptism it is not that gift of saving faith, and I call the giving of saving faith (whether in maturity or in seed for in infants) “regeneration.”
Which brings me to a final point, I’ve always held that the elect and only the elect are ever regenerated–i.e. only the elect are given saving faith which reveals itself as authentic by perseverance. I read a paper by Jim Jordan that argued for a different perspective (that was no less calvinistic and monergistic) but I wasn’t convinced by his interpretations of the texts. As I see it, some people are given saving faith which perseveres and other people are not given saving faith. And even though one could easily use a different term, I’m comfortable using the term “regeneration”–which means that I’m not really interested in using the same term to refer to what happens at baptism.
Which brings me to my final point. Even though there is a great deal of Reformed precedent for seeing baptism as “the instrument and occasion of regeneration,” I find making the affirmation and then giving the qualifiers to be tiresome. I’d rather not give the affirmation so I don’t need the qualifiers. I’m much more interested in what John Murray called “covenantal common grace,” so that baptism is a significant gift by which the elect are ordinarily advanced in the faith and the non-elect are advanced into a grace that they will reject leading to greater condemnation. What I mean is that I prefer to concentrate on the central affirmation of WCF 28.1, that baptism solemnly admits the person baptized, each and every time it is performed rightly, into the kingdom of Christ and the house of family of God outside of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation–i.e. it is admission into the visible church.
Of course, using “regeneration” only for the gift of saving faith and not for admission into the house and family of God, the visible Church, is somewhat arbitrary. I certainly don’t mind if others want to use the term. I suppose someone could say “conversion” for what I call “regeneration.” If the visible church is God’s family then both birth and adoption language would be appropriate for the initiation rite. But since I’m used to using the term “regeneration,” the way I do, and the Bible doesn’t make any command one way or another, or even use the term that often, I think I’ll stay with my current practice.
PostScript (06/11/2010) Of related interest: Unbaptized Infants
That is all.