In a post last year, I discussed several implicit lines of evidence for belief in justification apart from baptism among the early extrabiblical sources. As I mentioned there, all of us rely on implicit reasoning across many contexts in life, including when making judgments about Biblical and patristic issues. You wouldn't be able to function for a single day in your life without relying on implicit reasoning at some point. I gave some examples of how advocates of baptismal regeneration use some implicit arguments to support their own position. Yet, people often reject implicit arguments because of their implicit rather than explicit nature, or they assign implicit arguments less significance than those arguments actually have. Even many opponents of baptismal regeneration seem to get taken in by that sort of bad reasoning, to the point that they won't cite any extrabiblical sources who seem to support their view in an implicit way, since the evidence isn't explicit. Whether that's due to peer pressure, confusing a preference for explicit evidence with a need for it, or whatever else, it's a mistake.
What I want to do in this post is provide another line of evidence that advocates of baptismal regeneration are dependent on implicit reasoning. In fact, it's the same kind of implicit reasoning that can, and should, be used to argue that some of the extrabiblical (and Biblical) sources contradict baptismal regeneration.
On rare occasions, an opponent of baptismal regeneration will make an effort to cite support for his position among the extrabiblical sources before the Reformation. I'm one of the few people who do that. When I do it, I sometimes mention that individuals like Clement of Rome and Polycarp only bring up faith when discussing the means by which justification is obtained. A common response, on the unusual occasions when there's any response, is to object that the author might have intended to include baptism without mentioning it, that the inclusion of baptism was taken for granted as a background assumption, that I'm making an argument from silence, or some such thing. Those responses are inadequate, for reasons I've discussed elsewhere, like here.
But notice what happens when we move on to other sources. Let's go from Polycarp to, say, The Epistle Of Barnabas. Section 11 of the epistle refers to the washing away of sin in baptism. And it's often cited by advocates of baptismal regeneration as evidence of early belief in the doctrine. They're right to cite it as such. However, they're relying on the same sort of reasoning that their opponents use when appealing to a source like Clement or Polycarp.
As I've documented elsewhere, many of the early extrabiblical sources included works (or sacraments, rites, or whatever you want to call them) other than baptism as a means of justification. They added the laying on of hands, anointing with oil, foot washing, etc. So, if we can't cite sources who only mention faith in support of justification through faith, why can we cite sources who only mention faith and baptism in support of justification through faith and baptism? How do you know somebody like the author of The Epistle Of Barnabas wasn't also including the laying on of hands, anointing with oil, or whatever else? Is it an invalid argument from silence to conclude that the comments of The Epistle Of Barnabas are best explained by faith and baptism alone, without the laying on of hands, foot washing, giving money to the poor, and so on? No, it isn't an invalid argument from silence. It's a valid one, for reasons I've explained elsewhere, like in the post linked earlier. Just as we don't need an explicit statement from The Epistle Of Barnabas telling us that he's not including anointing with oil, participating in the eucharist, etc., we don't need an explicit statement from somebody like Clement or Polycarp telling us he's not including baptism.
As I said before, we all rely on this kind of reasoning in many other contexts. In addition to the examples I've already cited here and elsewhere, think of canonical issues. If a source lists collection of books X when discussing the contents of his canon, it's not an invalid argument from silence or problematic in some other way to conclude that the most likely meaning of his comments is that he held to collection X as his canon. If you want us to think he held to X + Y, you bear the burden of proof. Maybe he left out some books he meant to include when he only mentioned X (because of a memory lapse or whatever). But we would need additional evidence to justify concluding that he believed in a canon consisting of more than X. To criticize the person who concludes that the source in question only held to canon X when no evidence has been provided to justify adding anything to X would be perverse. The conclusion of X alone (sola X) makes the most sense under those circumstances. Talking about how the source in question might have believed in a larger canon than he mentions, objecting that I'm appealing to silence, etc. is an inadequate response.
People sometimes object to an argument like the one I'm making by saying that just as we can assume the inclusion of faith or repentance in passages that don't mention it, we can do the same with baptism. But, as I've discussed in other posts, the fact that the inclusion of one thing is implied doesn't prove that the inclusion of something else is as well, unless the circumstances surrounding that something else are the same or comparable. And baptism isn't the same as or comparable to faith or repentance. Faith is foundational and assumed in the context of baptism (Romans 14:23, Hebrews 11:6, etc.). And, as I've argued elsewhere, faith and repentance are two sides of the same coin, implying each other. By contrast, neither faith nor repentance implies that baptism has already occurred or is presently occurring. Faith and repentance can, and should, be present before baptism. We shouldn't be baptizing faithless people. Faith and repentance, on the one hand, and baptism, on the other hand, aren't symmetrical. Faith and repentance are of a different nature than baptism in a relevant way, so the fact that baptism implies faith and repentance doesn't mean that faith and repentance imply baptism in a relevant manner.
There's a double-digit number of people in the New Testament who are referred to as being justified apart from baptism (far more than just the thief on the cross or the thief and Cornelius). That's why even advocates of baptismal regeneration frequently concede that baptismal regeneration wasn't in effect during Jesus' public ministry, that Cornelius is an exception to baptismal regeneration, and so on.
Furthermore, if somebody is going to claim that the inclusion of faith or repentance where it isn't mentioned justifies assuming the inclusion of baptism where it isn't mentioned, then is the advocate of that view also going to assume the inclusion of the laying on of hands, anointing with oil, foot washing, etc.?
Somebody could respond to what I'm saying in this post by claiming that the appeal to baptismal regeneration in The Epistle Of Barnabas, Justin Martyr, and other sources isn't meant to be an appeal to those individuals as we'd normally interpret a historical source. Rather, it's an appeal to how we know they should be interpreted in light of church authority. So, the church tells us that only faith and baptism are involved in obtaining justification (or faith, baptism, and the anointing of oil for those who hold that view, etc.), and we interpret a source like The Epistle Of Barnabas in line with that church authority. But that appeal to church authority is only as good as the church authority in question, meaning that it isn't good. And what's the relevance of bringing up the historical sources without mentioning church authority if you just have church authority in mind or some combination of the two? People frequently bring up sources like The Epistle Of Barnabas without saying anything about church authority, so to change your approach by adding an appeal to church authority part way through the discussion is a tacit admission of defeat and an attempt to change the subject. And why do advocates of baptismal regeneration keep claiming that nobody opposed the doctrine before the Reformation and such if they aren't appealing to historical sources as we'd normally interpret them? Such a claim isn't inherently about church authority.
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