John
Calvin likewise taught that baptism was a means of regeneration and
salvation. He declared that “God, regenerating us in
baptism, ingrafts us into the fellowship of his Church, and makes us his by
adoption . . . whatever time we are baptized, we are washed and purified . . .
forgiveness, which at our first regeneration we receive by baptism alone . . .
forgiveness has reference to baptism. . . . In baptism, the Lord promises
forgiveness of sins.”[i] However, defining regeneration as the
renovation of the new man which continued over the course of one’s life, rather
than the work of an instant, he asserted that the guilt of sin is removed in
baptism, but regeneration only begins at that moment of time. Calvin wrote, “We assert that the whole
guilt of sin is taken away in baptism, so that the remains of sin still
existing are not imputed. That this may be more clear, let my readers call to
mind that there is a twofold grace in baptism, for therein both remission of
sins and regeneration are offered to us. We teach that full remission is made,
but that regeneration is only begun and goes on making progress during the
whole of life. Accordingly, sin truly remains in us, and is not instantly in
one day extinguished by baptism, but as the guilt is effaced it is null in
regard to imputation. Nothing is plainer than this doctrine.”[ii] However, while the Holy Spirit wrought
the work of regeneration, and the blood of Christ washed away the sins of
baptized infants through the instrumentality of the ordinance, Calvin held,
however, contrary to the Catholic and Lutheran doctrines, that baptism was not
absolutely essential to salvation, but people could be saved by faith who had
no opportunity to be baptized. For
“when we cannot receive [baptism] from the Church, the grace of God is not so
inseparably annexed to them that we cannot obtain it by faith, according to his
word.”[iii] Grace is annexed to baptism, and the
sacrament is the ordinary vehicle for sealing grace, remission of sins, and
regeneration, but God may perform an extraordinary and unusual work to save
some even apart from baptism. Calvin
stated, “We, too [as do the Catholics], acknowledge that the use of baptism
is necessary—that no one may omit it from either neglect or contempt. In this
way we by no means make it free (optional). And not only do we strictly bind
the faithful to the observance of it, but we also maintain that it is the
ordinary instrument of God in washing and renewing us; in short, in
communicating to us salvation. The only exception we make is, that the hand of
God must not be tied down to the instrument. He may of himself accomplish
salvation. For when an opportunity for baptism is wanting, the
promise of God alone is amply sufficient.”[iv] Ordinarily, baptism is the means of
communicating salvation. However,
in the rare situations where one cannot receive the sacrament, then God “may”
of Himself save the unbaptized.
The limitation of this exception to situations where “an opportunity for
baptism is wanting” is significant—no hope of heaven is set forth for the
unbaptized in the great majority of situations where access to the sacrament is
possible. Nonetheless, infants who
die without baptism, as long as they have Christian parents and the omission of
sacrament was not on account of “sloth, nor contempt, nor negligence,”[v]
can expect to be saved. Indeed,
elect infants are “received into the Church by a formal sign [of baptism]
because, in virtue of the promise [of a saving covenant between God,
Christians, and the children of Christians], they previously belonged to the
body of Christ. . . . the children of believers are not baptized, in order that
though formerly aliens from the Church, they may then, for the first time,
become children of God.”[vi] Since the children of the Church were
already part of the body of Christ from the womb by virtue of God’s covenant,
they can be saved even without the seal of baptism. Their membership in the Church before baptism explains how
Calvin can maintain both the salvation of the children of Reformed parents and
the doctrine that outside of the visible Church there is no salvation. Since
infants with Reformed parents were also not “aliens” but already “the children
of God” at that time, it would also be unnecessary, indeed, sinful, for such
“covenant children” to come to a place where they recognized themselves as
lost, hell-bound sinners who were certain of present damnation on account of
their sins and needed to, for the first time, consciously repent and believe
the gospel, and so become Christians and be adopted into God’s family through a
conversion experience. “Our
children [those in the Reformed faith], before they are born, God declares that
he adopts for his own when he promises that he will be a God to us, and to our
seed after us. In this promise their salvation is included.”[vii] All that was required for eternal bliss
on the part of these infants was perseverance in their adherence to the
Reformed faith and perseverance in the type of life consistent with Christian
morality, thus evincing their election and regeneration in infancy.
As
already noted, Calvin taught that the visible Church was necessary for
salvation. He wrote:
It is now our
purpose to discourse of the visible Church. Let us learn, from her single title of Mother, how useful,
nay, how necessary the knowledge of her is, since there is no other means of
entering into life unless she conceive us in the womb and give us birth, unless
she nourish us at her breasts, and, in short, keep us under her charge and
government, until, divested of mortal flesh, we become like the angels (Matt
22:30). For our weakness does not permit us to leave the school until we have
spent our whole lives as scholars. Moreover, beyond the pale of the Church no
forgiveness of sins, no salvation, can be hoped for, as Isaiah and Joel testify
(Isa 37:32; Joel 2:32). [Of course, for this argument to be even the slightest
bit convincing, one must reject literal interpretation and equate Israel with
the church.] To their testimony Ezekiel subscribes, when he declares, “They
shall not be in the assembly of my people, neither shall they be written in the
writing of the house of Israel” (Ezek 13:9), as, on the other hand, those who
turn to the cultivation of true piety are said to inscribe their names among
the citizens of Jerusalem. For which reason it is said in the psalm, “Remember
me, O Lord, with the favour that thou bearest unto thy people: O visit me with
thy salvation; that I may see the good of thy chosen, that I may rejoice in the
gladness of thy nation, that I may glory with thine inheritance” (Ps 106:4-5).
By these words the paternal favour of God and the special evidence of spiritual
life are confined to his peculiar people, and hence the abandonment of the
Church is always fatal” (Calvin, Institutes, 4:1:4).
The
notion that outside of the visible church there is no salvation is not
inconsistent with the doctrine of an invisible church made up of the
elect; Calvin’s favorite patristic
writer, Augustine, held both dogmas, affirming that the invisible church of the
elect consisted of a portion of the members of the visible catholic church, but
nobody was a member of the invisible church who was not as well a member of the
visible Catholic denomination.
The
Reformed doctrine of baptism as a sign and seal of saving grace has no support
in Scripture. The Biblical uses of
the words “sign” and “seal” give no support whatever to the idea that baptism
is a vehicle of saving grace. A
Biblical “sign” was by no means a method of bestowing grace that led to the
forgiveness of sin. The censers of
false worshippers who were burned by the fire of God and eternally damned were
a “sign unto the children of Israel” (Numbers 16:38), but they neither saved
those that worshipped with them nor any other Israelite from hell. No use of “sign” in either the Old or
New Testament provides any support whatever to the idea that “signs” are
conjoined to justifying grace.
The
use of the word “seal” (sphragis) in
Romans 4:11—for the already justified and already believing Abraham—by no means
supports the Reformed sacramental notion that infant baptism is a vehicle
conveying saving grace and that through baptism grace is “conferred by the Holy
Ghost” upon the elect (Westminster Confession of Faith, Article 28).
Since Romans 4:11 is the only verse in Scripture that could with any
plausibility be used to support the Reformed view, its advocates argue from
this text that circumcision is a “seal” of grace, that their sacrament of
infant baptism is equivalent to circumcision, and that, therefore, infant
baptism seals or conveys grace to their infants. This argument breaks down at many points. First, the verse does not say that
circumcision was a seal of grace to Jewish male infants. While circumcision was a “sign” by
nature, it is not affirmed to have been a “seal” to all, but only personally to
believing Abraham, who received it when he had already been justified by
faith. A recognition of this
distinction in Romans 4:11 explains the Old Testament use of the word sign or token
(Hebrew ‘oth) in connection with
circumcision (Genesis 17:11) but the complete absence of references in the Old
Testament to the ceremony as a “seal.”
Second, the New Testament does not equate circumcision with baptism or
state that the latter replaces the former. Third, the Biblical immersion of believers has nothing to do
with the ceremonial application of water to infants that Catholics and
Protestants claim is baptism.
Fourth, a seal is a visible mark or impression evidencing the authority
of the one who authorizes the seal to the genuineness or correctness of
whatever is witnessed to by its presence.
However, baptism does not leave a visible mark upon those who receive
it, and it is not administered to single individuals by Divine authority—the
authority given the church to administer baptism is general (Matthew
28:18-20). No man can put marks
upon the elect of God which shall authoritatively certify that they are His,
and neither baptism nor the Lord’s Supper authenticate one’s personal election
to himself or to others; such
authentication is given to the regenerate individual himself by the presence of
true faith and the manifestation of that faith in a changed life, as taught in
1 John (cf. 5:13). Unlike the
ordinance of baptism, the “seal” of circumcision given to Abraham was indeed a
visible mark and was applied to the individual man Abraham by direct Divine
authority. Circumcision was a seal
to Abraham, but to nobody else.
Finally, when advocates of Reformed theology and other Protestants speak
of baptism as a “seal” or vehicle of grace, they use the word in a sense
entirely absent in Scripture. None
of the appearances of the word “seal” (sphragis) in the New Testament indicate that grace is
conveyed through a “seal” (Romans 4:11; 1 Corinthians 9:2; 2 Timothy 2:19;
Revelation 5:1-2, 5, 9; 6:1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 12; 7:2; 8:1; 9:4). Those who think that infant baptism was
the instrument of their receiving forgiveness, those who think that they
received the sacrament as confirmation and evidence that they were already regenerated
in the womb, and those who think they had water applied to them in infancy as
evidence that they were certain to be regenerated in the future unless they
consciously rejected the “sacrament” and its efficacy are underneath a terrible
spiritual delusion. They will
certainly be damned unless they recognize that their unbiblical religious
ceremony did nothing beneficial for them, admit they are still lost, and then
repent and believe the gospel.
Indeed,
baptism is not even a “sign” in the sense regularly employed in Reformed
theology. The ordinance is indeed
a sign of what Christ did and suffered, but it is not a “sign” promising that
any saving work will be done in the one who receives it—yet it is in this
latter sense that the Reformed generally speak of the ordiance as a “sign.”
--TDR