The
rejection in the “Church” Fellowship literature of the “Lutheran” doctrine of baptismal
regeneration often indeed lacks nothing in sharpness. Thus Pastor Lüdecke of
Stassfurt gives information as to the Fellowship Movement in the province of
Saxony and in Anhalt:
Something
as to Baptismal Regeneration.
The “Lutheran Treasury” writes: “Nowadays one hears so many speak slightingly
of baptismal regeneration. But as soon as we cease to see in baptism the bath
of regeneration, thus soon, as regards the new birth, are we dependent only on
our inner experiences and ourselves smother the sure comfort which Christ would
offer us with baptism.” Upon this we remark that from the first the Fellowship
Movement has protested against the unbiblical doctrine of regeneration by
baptism, which we have to thank for a great part of our Church misery. It is
not baptism which makes us sure of our standing in grace, but “the Spirit of
God gives witness to our spirit that we are children of God” (Rom. 8:16).
According to the Augsburg Confession salvation is offered in baptism, but
personal appropriation of the salvation comes only through faith, in the
conversion and surrender to God. Luther himself, as regards the doctrine of
baptism, in the second half of his development, could not free himself from the
leaven of Catholicism. Through this the Reformation lost its full fruit, and
not long after Luther’s death fell into an external formalism, which was only
broken by the pietism of Spener and his adherents.
Sören
Kierkegaard, one of mankind’s spiritual heroes, whom we must thank for the
clearing away of much rubbish in the theology of the Church of the nineteenth
century, finds sharp words concerning baptismal regeneration: “We take the
children, give each one a few drops of water on its head, and thereby it is a
Christian. If a few have not properly received their drops of water, that does
not matter; they have merely to imagine that in their case all has been
performed according to the ordinance, and that thereby they are Christians.
Thus in a short time we have more Christians than herrings in the fishing
season millions of Christians, and thus we are the greatest power the world has
ever seen. For this minting of false Christians is too horrible.”
Thus
far the sarcastic and very keen Kierkegaard. Justified are his reproaches that
through the Church doctrinal practice Christians are placed in the world en
masse who are no Christians at all. We ask the “Treasury,” where are the
thousands upon thousands who by baptism have been born again unto a living
hope? The fact of the present general falling away of our people form even the
outward Church forms has long since pronounced judgment upon the doctrine of
baptismal regeneration. In Lutheran circles one should not delude himself with
shibboleths as to the manifest bankruptcy which this doctrine has involved.
This
protest against the doctrine of baptismal regeneration is certainly gladdening,
and there is probably no pastor within the Fellowship Movement in Germany who
would not declare as did pastor B. Cörper: “If anyone would say as did that
pastor, as he was about to baptize a child, ‘Let us proceed to the act of
generation,’ then we would have to protest decidedly.” (Johannes Warns, Baptism:
Studies in the Original Christian Baptism: Its History and Conflicts Its
elation to a State or National Church and its Significance for the Present Time
[2d ed.; trans. H. G. Lang; 1922], 161-62)
Notwithstanding the above, Warns
notes that those who hold to baptismal regeneration within the Lutheran
traditions are in the majority:
But
it is still incontestable that outspoken Lutherans, who adhere to children’s
faith and baptismal regeneration, have the Confessions on their side,
and thus represent the official teaching of the Church, and the Fellowship
pastors do not . . . Moreover, even today the number of pastors in the State
Churches is not small who adhere consistently to the Lutheran doctrine of
baptism. (ibid., 162, emphasis in original)
