(a) Since only those who give credible evidence of regeneration are proper subjects of baptism, baptism cannot be the means of regeneration. It is the appointed sign, but is never the condition, of the forgiveness of sins.
Passages like Mat. 3:11; Mark 1:4; 16:16; John 3:5; Acts 2:38; 22:16; Eph. 5:26; Titus 3:5; and Heb. 10:22, are to be explained as particular instances “of the general fact that, in Scripture language, a single part of a complex action, and even that part of it which is most obvious to the senses, is often mentioned for the whole of it, and thus, in this case, the whole of the solemn transaction is designated by the external symbol.” In other words, the entire change, internal and external, spiritual and ritual, is referred to in language belonging strictly only to the outward aspect of it. So the other ordinance is referred to by simply naming the visible “breaking of bread,” and the whole transaction of the ordination of ministers is termed the “imposition of hands” (cf. Acts 2:42; 1 Tim. 4:14).
Mat. 3:11—“I indeed baptize you in water unto repentance”; Mark 1:4—“the baptism of repentance unto remission of sins”; 16:16—“He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved”; John 3:5—“Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God”—here Nicodemus, who was familiar with John's baptism, and with the refusal of the Sanhedrin to recognize its claims, is told that the baptism of water, which he suspects may be obligatory, is indeed necessary to that complete change by which one enters outwardly, as well as inwardly, into the kingdom of God; but he is taught also, that to “be born of water” is worthless unless it is the accompaniment and sign of a new birth of “the Spirit”; and therefore, in the further statements of Christ, baptism is not alluded to; see verses 6, 8—“that which is born of the Spirit is spirit ... so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”
Acts 2:38—“Repent ye, and be baptized ... unto the remission of your sins”—on this passage see Hackett: “The phrase ‘in order to the forgiveness of sins’ we connect naturally with both the preceding verbs (‘repent’ and ‘be baptized’). The clause states the motive or object which should induce them to repent and be baptized. It enforces the entire exhortation, not one part to the exclusion of the other”—i. e., they were to repent for the remission of sins, quite as much as they were to be baptized for the remission of sins. Acts 22:16—“arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on his name”; Eph. 5:26—“that he might sanctify it [the church], having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word”; Tit. 3:5—“according [pg 947]to his mercy he saved as, through the washing of regeneration [baptism] and renewing of the Holy Spirit[the new birth]”; Heb. 10:22—“having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience [regeneration]: and having our body washed with pure water [baptism]”; cf. Acts 2:42—“the breaking of bread”; 1 Tim. 4:14—“the laying on of the hands of the presbytery.”
Dr. A. C. Kendrick: “Considering how inseparable they were in the Christian profession—believe and be baptized, and how imperative and absolute was the requisition upon the believer to testify his allegiance by baptism, it could not be deemed singular that the two should be thus united, as it were, in one complex conception.... We have no more right to assume that the birth from water involves the birth from the Spirit and thus do away with the one, than to assume that the birth from the Spirit involves the birth from water, and thus do away with the other. We have got to have them both, each in its distinctness, in order to fulfil the conditions of membership in the kingdom of God.” Without baptism, faith is like the works of a clock that has no dial or hands by which one can tell the time; or like the political belief of a man who refuses to go to the polls and vote. Without baptism, discipleship is ineffective and incomplete. The inward change—regeneration by the Spirit—may have occurred, but the outward change—Christian profession—is yet lacking.
Campbellism, however, holds that instead of regeneration preceding baptism and expressing itself in baptism, it is completed only in baptism, so that baptism is a means of regeneration. Alexander Campbell: “I am bold to affirm that every one of them, who in the belief of what the apostle spoke was immersed, did, in the very instant in which he was put under water, receive the forgiveness of his sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit.” But Peter commanded that men should be baptized because they had already received the Holy Spirit: Acts 10:47—“Can any man forbid the water, that these should not be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit as well as we?” Baptists baptize Christians; Disciples baptize sinners, and in baptism think to make them Christians. With this form of sacramentalism, Baptists are necessarily less in sympathy than with pedobaptism or with sprinkling. The view of the Disciples confines the divine efficiency to the word (see quotation from Campbell on page [821]). It was anticipated by Claude Pajon, the Reformed theologian, in 1673: see Dorner, Gesch. prot. Theologie, 448-450. That this was not the doctrine of John the Baptist would appear from Josephus, Ant., 18:5:2, who in speaking of John's baptism says: “Baptism appears acceptable to God, not in order that those who were baptized might get free from certain sins, but in order that the body might be sanctified, because the soul beforehand had already been purified through righteousness.”
Disciples acknowledge no formal creed, and they differ so greatly among themselves that we append the following statements of their founder and of later representatives. Alexander Campbell, Christianity Restored, 138 (in The Christian Baptist, 5:100): “In and by the act of immersion, as soon as our bodies are put under water, at that very instant our former or old sins are washed away.... Immersion and regeneration are Bible names for the same act.... It is not our faith in God's promise of remission, but our going down into the water, that obtains the remission of sins.” W. E. Garrison, Alexander Campbell's Theology, 247-299—“Baptism, like naturalization, is the formal oath of allegiance by which an alien becomes a citizen. In neither case does the form in itself effect any magical change in the subject's disposition. In both cases a change of opinion and of affections is presupposed, and the form is the culmination of a process.... It is as easy for God to forgive our sins in the act of immersion as in any other way.” All work of the Spirit is through the word, only through sensible means, emotions being no criterion. God is transcendent; all authority is external, enforced only by appeal to happiness—a thoroughly utilitarian system.
Isaac Erret is perhaps the most able of recent Disciples. In his tract entitled “Our Position,” published by the Christian Publishing Company, St. Louis, he says: “As to the design of baptism, we part company with Baptists, and find ourselves more at home on the other side of the house; yet we cannot say that our position is just the same with that of any of them. Baptists say they baptize believers because they are forgiven, and they insist that they shall have the evidence of pardon before they are baptized. But the language used in the Scriptures declaring what baptism is for, is so plain and unequivocal that the great majority of Protestants as well as the Roman Catholics admit it in their creeds to be, in some sense, for the remission of sins. The latter, however, and many of the former, attach to it the idea of regeneration, and insist that in baptism regeneration by the Holy Spirit is actually conferred. Even the Westminster Confession squints strongly in this direction, albeit its professed adherents of the present time attempt to explain away its meaning. We are as far from [pg 948]this ritualistic extreme as from the anti-ritualism into which the Baptists have been driven. With us, regeneration must be so far accomplished before baptism that the subject is changed in heart, and in faith and penitence must have yielded up his heart to Christ—otherwise baptism is nothing but an empty form. But forgiveness is something distinct from regeneration. Forgiveness is an act of the Sovereign—not a change of the sinner's heart; and while it is extended in view of the sinner's faith and repentance, it needs to be offered in a sensible and tangible form, such that the sinner can seize it and appropriate it with unmistakable definiteness. In baptism he appropriates God's promise of forgiveness, relying on the divine testimonies: ‘He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved’; ‘Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.’He thus lays hold of the promise of Christ and appropriates it as his own. He does not merit it, nor procure it, nor earn it, in being baptized; but he appropriates what the mercy of God has provided and offered in the gospel. We therefore teach all who are baptized that, if they bring to their baptism a heart that renounces sin and implicitly trusts the power of Christ to save, they should rely on the Savior's own promise—'He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.'”
All these utterances agree in making forgiveness chronologically distinct from regeneration, as the concluding point is distinct from the whole. Regeneration is not entirely the work of God,—it must be completed by man. It is not wholly a change of heart, it is also a change in outward action. We see in this system of thought the beginnings of sacramentalism, and we regard it as containing the same germs of error which are more fully developed in pedobaptist doctrine. Shakespeare represents this view in Henry V, 1:2—“What you speak is in your conscience washed As pure as sin with baptism”; Othello, 2:3—Desdemona could “Win the Moor—were't to renounce his baptism—All seals and symbols of redeemed sin.”
Dr. G. W. Lasher, in the Journal and Messenger, holds that Mat. 3:11—“I indeed baptize you in water unto (εἰς) repentance”—does not imply that baptism effects the repentance; the baptism was because of the repentance, for John refused to baptize those who did not give evidence of repentance before baptism. Mat. 10:42—“whosoever shall give ... a cup of cold water only, in (εἰς) the name of a disciple”—the cup of cold water does not put one into the name of a disciple, or make him a disciple. Mat. 12:41—“The men of Nineveh ... repented at (εἰς) the preaching of Jonah” = because of. Dr. Lasher argues that, in all these cases, the meaning of εἰς is “in respect to,” “with reference to.” So he would translate Acts 2:38—“Repent ye, and be baptized ... with respect to, in reference to, the remission of sins.” This is also the view of Meyer. He maintains that βαπτίζειν εἰς always means “baptize with reference to” (cf. Mat. 28:19; 1 Cor. 10:12; Gal. 3:27; Acts 2:38; 8:16; 19:5). We are brought through baptism, he would say, into fellowship with his death, so that we have a share ethically in his death, through the cessation of our life to sin.