Advocates of baptismal regeneration sometimes claim that it didn't go into effect until the time of the Great Commission, thereby avoiding arguments against the doctrine from the thief on the cross and other earlier individuals justified apart from baptism. There are some problems with that position, however:
- There's no reason to think that if baptismal regeneration is true, it originated at the time of the Great Commission. The fact that baptism is mentioned at that point doesn't prove that baptism became regenerative then. It's the earliest record we have of baptism being referred to with the Trinitarian formula, but it doesn't follow that baptism was never practiced in such a way earlier or that the use of the Trinitarian formula makes baptism regenerative. The Great Commission also mentions other aspects of the Christian life, even obeying "all that I commanded you" (Matthew 28:20). It doesn't follow that those other things mentioned in the Great Commission became regenerative, justificatory, highly efficacious, or some other such thing at that point in time. Claiming that baptismal regeneration went into effect at the Great Commission isn't the same as proving that it did.
- It's not as though all advocates of baptismal regeneration have been in agreement about when it supposedly went into effect. See my discussion of the differing views of Tertullian and Augustine here, for example. The same post documents widespread disagreement about other baptismal issues among the pre-Reformation sources. Even those who held some kind of highly efficacious view of baptism widely disagreed over the nature of that efficaciousness and advocated highly inconsistent views of the alleged efficaciousness of other rites. Passages like John 3:5 and Titus 3:5 were interpreted in at least a few ways prior to the Reformation, including being interpreted as not involving baptismal regeneration. For some examples of people who rejected baptismal regeneration in the patristic and medieval eras, see here.
- If baptismal regeneration didn't go into effect until the time of the Great Commission, then what are we to make of the frequent appeal, by advocates of the doctrine, to John 3:5, which occurred earlier?
- While placing baptismal regeneration so late does avoid some problems, like with the thief on the cross (and many other such individuals, like those discussed here), we continue to see people justified apart from baptism after that point in time. Cornelius' prebaptismal justification is referred to as if it's normative in Acts 11:15-18 and 15:8-11. Paul's comments about being justified "when you believed" (Acts 19:2) and in the context of "hearing" (Galatians 3:2) are most naturally taken to refer to being justified as soon as you have faith in response to the gospel message, not when you're later baptized. The reasoning of Romans 10 likewise makes more sense if we're justified through prebaptismal faith, as I've discussed elsewhere. And so on. Placing baptismal regeneration at the time of the Great Commission only partly addresses a line of contrary evidence that extends beyond the time of the Great Commission.
- John's gospel emphasizes Jesus' statements about salvation during his public ministry (John 3:16, 5:24, 11:25-26, etc.), and John tells us that he wrote his gospel to lead people to salvation (John 20:31), using language similar to Jesus' language earlier in the gospel. If the means of being justified had changed so much at the time of the Great Commission, then John's emphasis on Jesus' earlier teachings about justification makes less sense.
- Then there's the appeal that Paul, Clement of Rome, and other early Christians made to the continuity between how people were justified during the Old Testament era and how they're justified after Jesus' coming. There's often an appeal to Abraham, sometimes to Genesis 15:6 in particular, which illustrates justification apart from baptism, not baptismal regeneration. Having baptism added as a means of justification, whether at the time of the Great Commission or elsewhere, makes less sense of the continuity individuals like Jesus, Paul, and Clement appealed to.
- Christian baptism of some type began prior to the resurrection (John 3:22-4:2). Notice that the passage in John 3-4 just cited distinguishes between John's baptism and that of Jesus. By having baptismal justification go into effect at the Great Commission, the advocate of baptismal regeneration isn't just distinguishing that later Christian baptism from John's baptism, but also is distinguishing the later Christian baptism from earlier Christian baptism. If both types of baptism mentioned in John 3-4 were non-justificatory, as the evidence suggests and as advocates of the Great Commission view concede, then the burden of proof is on the shoulders of those who want us to depart not only from the precedent of John's baptism, but also from the precedent of the baptism of Jesus mentioned in John 3-4. If multiple types of baptism were non-justificatory, that gives us precedent for thinking later baptism would be as well.
What if somebody were to place the start of baptismal regeneration earlier than the Great Commission, in order to avoid problems like the ones mentioned above? That would only avoid some of the problems mentioned, not all of them. And it would bring up some new problems. For example, if you place the origin of baptismal regeneration at the time of John 3:5, then you're left having to explain the many instances of people being justified apart from baptism in the gospels. If you're going to make John's baptism justificatory in an attempt to avoid the point I made about earlier forms of baptism giving us precedent for the non-justificatory nature of baptism, then how do you explain Josephus' testimony about how John's baptism wasn't a means of justification?
Baptismal regeneration doesn't make sense under any timing, whether you place it at John 3:5, Jesus' resurrection, the Great Commission, or whenever else. For a discussion of a lot of other problems with the doctrine, see here.
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