David F. Wright was Professor Emeritus of Patristic and Reformed Christianity at the University of Edinburgh at the time of his death in 2008. From 2003 to 2004, he served as Moderator of the Presbytery of Edinburgh. In his essay, “Baptism at the Westminster Assembly,” he makes a case that a form of baptismal regeneration was affirmed in the Westminster Confession of Faith:
Baptismal
Regeneration
What then about the efficacy of
baptism according to the Westminster Confession? Its central affirmation seems
clear: ‘the grace promised is not only offered, but really exhibited and
conferred by the Holy Ghost’ (28:6). It is true that a variety of
qualifications to this assertion are entered in the chapter on baptism:
efficacy is not tied to the moment of administration (28:6), grace and
salvation are not so inseparably annexed to baptism that no person can be
regenerated or saved without (28;5). But these qualifications serve in fact
only to highly the clarity of the core declaration, which is set forth as
follows in the preceding chapter on sacraments in general:
neither doth the efficacy of a
sacrament depend upon the piety or intention of him that doth administer it,
but upon the work of the Spirit, and the word of institution; which contains .
. . a promise of benefit to worthy receivers (27:3).
The Westminster divines viewed
baptism as the instrument and occasion of regeneration by the Spirit, of the
remission of sins, of ingrafting into Christ (cf. 28:1). The Confession teaches
baptismal regeneration. We should note also that while
the Catechisms use the language only of ‘sign and seal,’ the Directory for
Public Worship has the following passage in the model prayer before the act of
baptizing:
That the Lord . . . would join the
inward baptism of his Spirit with the outward baptism of water; makes this
baptism to the infant a seal of adoption . . . and all other promises of the
covenant of grace: That the child may be planted into the likeness of the death
and resurrection of Christ.
But if the Assembly unambiguously
ascribes this instrumental efficacy to baptism, it is not automatically enjoyed
by all recipients: it contains ‘a promise of benefit to worthy receivers’
(27:3), who from one point of view are 'those that do actually profess faith in
and obedience unto Christ, but also the infants of one or both believing
parents’ (28:4), and from another, ‘such (whether of age or infants) as that
grace belongeth unto, according to the counsel of God’s own will, in his
appointed time’ (28;6). But it would surely be a perverse interpretation of the
Confession’s chapter on baptism if we allowed this allusion to the hidden
counsel of God to emasculate its vigorous primary affirmation. (David F.
Wright, “Baptism at the Westminster Assembly,” Infant Baptism in Historical
Perspective: Collected Studies [Studies in Christian History and Thought;
Milton Keynes, U.K.: Paternoster, 2007], 244-45, emphasis in bold added)
