Wednesday, April 27, 2022

David F. Wright on the Westminster Confession of Faith and Baptismal Regeneration

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)