False Repentance: Reformed / Calvinist Infant Baptism vs. Baptist Justification by Faith Alone (5.6)

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Have those repented who have been baptized as infants? John Calvin and the Calvinist and Reformed Protestant denominations reforming Roman Catholicism taught a subtle form of baptismal regeneration. Many Calvinists today are lost because of the Reformed heresy that makes infant baptism a seal of saving grace. How does Presbyterian and Reformed paedobaptism corrupt the gospel, connect to the rise of Calvinism through Augustine of Hippo, and contrast with the Anabaptist and Biblical, Baptist teaching of justification by repentant faith alone? Find out in Bible study 5.6, which continues the series teaching through Bible study #5, “How Can I Receive the Gospel?” from the FaithSaves website, the section "Saving Repentance: What it is Not."

While the Bible teaches justification by faith alone before baptism, the heresy of baptism for salvation is taught in the following ways. Baptism is:

1.) In Catholicism, simply the way infants are saved and become Catholics.
2.) For some Reformed / Calvinists, baptism gives saving grace that may or may not take effect at that moment—a “terrorist sleeper cell” view of baptism.
3.) In Lutheranism, Infants are given the gift of faith through the sacrament of baptism and are saved by faith alone apart from works at the moment of baptism.
4.) For other Reformed / Calvinists, baptism seals God’s covenant to babies, so infants of believers are probably elect and regenerate even from the womb; a conscious conversion experience is not necessary as long as one repents and believes every single day.
5.) For Campbellites and many other cults that reject infant baptism such as Oneness Pentecostalism and Mormonism, past sin is taken away at the moment of adult baptism.

Anglicans and Episcopalians often believe in baptismal regeneration, as do many, but not all, Methodists, following John Wesley, who likewise affirmed the heresy.

The Catholic and Lutheran heresies of infant baptism were examined in the last Bible study. John Calvin (from whom the Presbyterian, Christian Reformed, Protestant Reformed, Congregationalist, and other denominations arose) taught:

“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.” 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. ... Nothing is plainer than this doctrine.” In one of his last sermons, Calvin taught: “[I]n Baptism we truly receive the forgiveness of sins, we are washed and cleansed with the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are renewed by the operation of his Holy Spirit.”

Calvin thought that the children of the Church were already part of the body of Christ from the womb by virtue of God’s covenant; they could then be saved even without the seal of baptism. Their membership in the Church before baptism explains how Calvin can affirm both the salvation of the children of Reformed parents and the doctrine that outside of the visible Church there is no salvation. 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.” 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 Reformed doctrine. See “Were the Reformers Heretics?” by Thomas Ross for sources and more information.

The Roman Catholic theologian Augustine of Hippo developed the Calvinist teaching of unconditional election to heaven and unconditional reprobation to hell from infant regeneration. Infants have no choice or free will when baptized, yet God (supposedly) regenerates baptized infants and saves them while condemning unbaptized infants to everlasting torment in hell fire. If infants are saved or lost apart from their choice through baptism, then adults are also; the "U" in John Calvin's TULIP comes from the baptismal regeneration of infants in Augustine.

From the days of the Apostles to today Baptists or Anabaptists have always rejected infant baptism and baptismal regeneration, following the Bible to teach salvation by faith alone.