No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Birthing Waters: An Anglican View of Baptismal Regeneration
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 February 2023
Abstract
In what sense do Anglicans believe in baptismal regeneration? This article contends that according to historic Anglicanism, baptism effectually regenerates those who faithfully receive it. While this is a disputed claim even among Anglicans, it is consistent with the formularies of the Church of England, and it largely represents a predominant position held by Anglicans across the centuries. Article XXVII of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion will serve as the primary point of reference for assessing the above question. The following study is organized in three sections that respectively address: (1) the sacramental efficacy of baptism; (2) the regenerative nature of baptism; and (3) the need for faith to accompany baptism. Each section examines diverse historical expressions relevant to these doctrines in light of their scriptural basis. A brief reflection on infant baptism concludes the paper.
Keywords
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust
Footnotes
1
Esteban Crawford is a doctoral student at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, UK.
References
2 Evelyn Underhill, The School of Charity: Meditations on the Christian Creed (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1956), pp. 91-92.
3 ‘Of Baptism’, in Martin Davie, Our Inheritance of Faith: A Commentary on the Thirty Nine Articles (Malton: Gilead Books, 2013), p. 489.
4 It is worth noting that among Anglicans there is a great variety of interpretations regarding baptism in general and baptismal regeneration in particular. The intention of this paper is not to explore all views in exhaustive detail, but rather to thoroughly examine one prominent view that has largely remained consistent over the last five centuries. While not specifically focused on baptismal regeneration, Kenneth Stevenson’s book The Mystery of Baptism in the Anglican Tradition (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1998), is a superb survey of diverse Anglican understandings of the sacrament. He studies the writings of nine seventeenth-century figures (such as Richard Hooker, William Perkins, George Herbert and Richard Baxter) and outlines how they each highlight different aspects of God’s baptismal action and our faithful human response. Despite this wide range of emphases, Stevenson concludes that there is little in Article XXVII ‘with which any of our writers would have quarreled, with the exception of Perkins and possibly Baxter’ (p. 169). Accordingly, this article will serve as the primary point of reference for investigating the notion of baptismal regeneration in the Anglican tradition.
5 Davie, Our Inheritance of Faith, p. 490.
6 ‘Of the Sacraments’, in Davie, Our Inheritance of Faith, p. 467.
7 Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, vol. 2 (Ellicott City, MD: Via Media, 1994), V.lvii.5, p. 258. Original emphasis.
8 Davie, Our Inheritance of Faith, p. 492.
9 Peter J. Leithart, The Baptized Body (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2007), p. 51.
10 Michael Green, Baptism: Its Purpose, Practice, and Power (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1987), p. 19.
11 Green, Baptism, p. 19.
12 Frank Colquhoun, Your Child’s Baptism (Bungay: Hodder and Stoughton, 1969), p. 18.
13 ‘Of Baptism’, in Davie, Our Inheritance of Faith, p. 489.
14 ‘A Catechism’, in The Book of Common Prayer (1662) (London: Everyman’s Library, 1999), p. 293.
15 ‘The Ministration of Publick Baptism of Infants’, in The Book of Common Prayer (1662), p. 268.
16 Cyril of Jerusalem, The Catechetical Lectures of S. Cyril, Archbishop of Jerusalem (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1838), pp. 26-27.
17 Cyril, Catechetical Lectures, p. 27.
18 Gerald Bray, The Faith We Confess: An Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles (London: The Latimer Trust, 2009), p. 151.
19 Bray, The Faith We Confess, p. 151.
20 Leithart, The Baptized Body, pp. 80-81.
21 Leithart, The Baptized Body, p. 81.
22 Leithart, The Baptized Body, p. 81.
23 Leithart, The Baptized Body, p. 77.
24 Leithart, The Baptized Body, p. 77.
25 Leithart, The Baptized Body, p. 77.
26 ‘The Ministration of Publick Baptism of Infants’, in The Book of Common Prayer (1662), p. 273.
27 A.E. Barnes-Lawrence, ‘Baptismal Regeneration in Church History’, Churchman 16.163 (April 1902), pp. 347-57 (347).
28 Barnes-Lawrence, ‘Baptismal Regeneration in Church History’, pp. 348.
29 Green, Baptism, p. 57; Bray, The Faith We Confess, pp. 155-56; Davie, Our Inheritance of Faith, p. 492.
30 All three of them signed a document protesting the decision reached by the Judicial Committee. Pusey and Keble conversed with each other to see if Gorham could be legally tried for heresy. Soon after this incident Manning joined the Roman Church. Michael Chandler, An Introduction to the Oxford Movement (New York: Church Publishing, 2003), pp. 97-103.
31 Edward B. Pusey, ‘Scriptural Views of Holy Baptism’, Tract 67 in Tracts for the Times Vol. 2 (New York: AMS Press, 4th edn, 1969), p. 27.
32 ‘That life,’ continues Pusey, ‘may through our negligence afterwards decay, or be choked, or smothered, or well-nigh extinguished, and by God’s mercy again be renewed and refreshed; but a commencement of life in Christ after Baptism, a death unto sin and a new birth unto righteousness, at any other period than at that one first introduction into God’s covenant, is as little consonant with the general representations of Holy Scripture, as a commencement of physical life long after our natural birth is with the order of His Providence.’ Pusey, ‘Scriptural Views of Holy Baptism’, p. 28.
33 David J. Phipps, ‘John Henry Newman’s Adoption of Baptismal Regeneration, and the Relative Importance of John Bird Sumner, Richard Mant and William Beveridge to his Development’, New Blackfriars, 76.898 (November 1995), pp. 500-10 (509).
34 Peter Toon, Mystical Washing and Spiritual Regeneration: Infant Baptism and the Renewal of the Anglican Way in America (Philadelphia, PA: Preservation Press of the Prayer Book Society of the USA, 2007), p. 20.
35 J.C. Ryle, Knots Untied (Moscow, ID: Charles Nolan, 2000), p. 141.
36 Bray, The Faith We Confess, p. 155.
37 Bray, The Faith We Confess, p. 155.
38 Bray, The Faith We Confess, p. 155.
39 Toon, Mystical Washing, p. 23.
40 Toon, Mystical Washing, p. 23.
41 ‘There is no doubt but that Anglicans of an Evangelical sympathy or mindset have been profoundly affected by the Evangelical tradition of separating regeneration from Baptism, and that many assume that this separation is specifically what is taught by the Holy Scriptures and assumed by the Anglican Reformers.’ Toon, Mystical Washing, p. 23.
42 Davie, Our Inheritance of Faith, p. 492.
43 Alexander Nowell, Nowell’s Catechism (ed. G.E. Corrie; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press/Parker Society, 1853), pp. 208. Cited in Davie, Our Inheritance of Faith, pp. 492-93.
44 Davie, Our Inheritance of Faith, p. 493. In concert with Davie’s middle way, Toon similarly believes that the Reformers ‘did accept that regeneration occurred at Baptism, but only because of the Gospel from God received by faith. For them the Rite in and of itself and rightly performed did not, in and of itself, automatically produce spiritual regeneration … Rather the Rite/Sacrament as God’s ordinance caused regeneration where there was active repentance for sin and belief in the gospel.’ Toon, Mystical Washing, p. 20.
45 Cited in Green, Baptism, p. 57.
46 ‘Of Baptism’, in Davie, Our Inheritance of Faith, p. 489.
47 ‘“Rightly,” here does not mean that the right acts have been performed in the sense of the candidate being baptised with water in the name of the Trinity. What it means is that those who have been baptised must receive rightly what God has given to them.’ Davie, Our Inheritance of Faith, p. 493.
48 ‘Of the Sacraments’, in Davie, Our Inheritance of Faith, p. 467.
49 ‘Of the Lord’s Supper’, in Davie, Our Inheritance of Faith, p. 503.
50 John H. Rodgers, Essential Truths for Christians: A Commentary on the Thirty-Nine Articles and an Introduction to Systematic Theology (Blue Bell, PA: Classical Anglican Press, 2011), p. 472.
51 ‘A Catechism’, in The Book of Common Prayer (1662), p. 293.
52 Ryle, Knots Untied, p. 149. Original emphasis.
53 Scot McKnight, It Takes a Church to Baptize: What the Bible Says about Infant Baptism (Grand Rapids MI: Brazos Press, 2018), p. 103. Original emphasis.
54 Green, Baptism, p. 56.
55 Stevenson, The Mystery of Baptism, p. 169.
56 In light of Col. 2.11-12, baptism ‘corresponds to circumcision under the Old Covenant. It is a mark of the covenant or agreement between God’s grace and our response. Not just of his grace, nor just of our response. It is the seal both on his initiative and our response.’ Green, Baptism, p. 25.
57 Green, Baptism, p. 50.
58 ‘Of Baptism’, in Davie, Our Inheritance of Faith, p. 489. While the explanation given by the article is fairly general, the Reformers are more specific in Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum. ‘[T]he children of Christians do not belong any less to God and the church than the children of the Hebrews once did, and since circumcision was given to them in infancy so also baptism ought to be imparted to our children, since they are participants in the same divine promise and covenant, and have been accepted by Christ with the greatest human kindness.’ Cited in Davie, Our Inheritance of Faith, p. 497. For further arguments for infant baptism see Green, Baptism, pp. 65-77.
59 ‘The Ministration of Publick Baptism of Infants’, in The Book of Common Prayer (1662), p. 270.
60 J.I. Packer, Baptism and Regeneration (Newport Beach, CA: Anglican House, 2014), pp. 16-17. Cited in McKnight, It Takes a Church to Baptize, pp. 92-93.