The book is useful in a lot of contexts. The history of a belief tells you something about its credibility. How disagreements over the issue were handled by past generations gives you some information about other subjects, such as issues pertaining to church authority and how unified or disunified Christians were in the past. And so on.
In a previous post, I discussed the early history of Christian beliefs about initiatory rites, including baptism. The post largely cites the work of G.W.H. Lampe. I argued, there and elsewhere, that the history of beliefs about those rites is evidence against some popular claims that have often been made about baptismal regeneration, such as that it's an apostolic tradition always held by the church or that nobody or almost nobody rejected the concept before the Reformation.
Baptism of desire isn't the same as baptismal regeneration. However, the history of beliefs related to baptism of desire gives us some significant information that's relevant to baptismal regeneration. How far back can we trace a belief that a baptism of desire was necessary for the salvation of those who died without water baptism? How widely was some kind of concept of baptism of desire accepted at different points in church history? Was the concept defined consistently or defined differently by different sources? Are those who hold beliefs like the ones Lusvardi's book addresses being consistent? Are the objections they raise against justification apart from baptism consistent with the history of their beliefs on the subjects discussed by Lusvardi? Etc.
Here are some of Lusvardi's relevant comments:
The group he [Cyprian] mentions had at least attempted baptism as heretics, and eventually they ended up professing the true faith, so the elements necessary for salvation were present, if not in the right order....Though the Ambrosian concept of baptism of desire would be able to account for the salvation of the unusual category of believers Cyprian mentions, the passage cannot represent the foundation for a doctrine of baptism of desire because it is based upon Cyprian's false premise of the invalidity of the original baptisms....
Thus, despite their hard line against the possibility of salvation outside of the Church, in both Cyprian's work and On Rebaptism [a document from an anonymous source in the third century], we find baptism of desire distinctly foreshadowed....
In fact, when he [Basil of Caesarea] directly addresses the question of what would happen to catechumens if they were to die before baptism, it is to warn dramatically that no amount of groaning or repentance will save them in the afterlife....All of this suggests that the atmosphere of fourth century Christianity in the east was generally unfavorable to baptism of desire....
The incident shows that, although Gregory [Nazianzen] speaks of the sacrament as the fulfillment of our highest desires, he does not seem to have put any stock in the salvific power of those desires alone. In his "Oration on Holy Baptism" he explains why with a devastatingly simple argument: If you desire something, it means you do not have it....
In Ambrose's theology, baptism is necessary for two reasons: to wash away sin and to impart life-giving faith. He believes that all people need baptism for both of these reasons, differentiating him from Cyril of Jerusalem, who maintained that those who had never committed a personal sin required baptism only for the second reason. Ambrose's thinking more closely aligns with the doctrine of original sin that Augustine would articulate....
Augustine's final position on baptism of desire is neither entirely clear nor entirely consistent....Often enough he is working out his theology as he goes - all the while rethinking previous opinions. Marcia Colish wryly observes that, although Augustine was the privileged authority in medieval debates over baptism of desire, his writings were sufficiently ambiguous to be cited by all sides, often resulting in a debate of "Augustine against Augustine." Nonetheless, even if he himself expressed doubts about the theory, a concept of baptism of desire to complement Ambrose's teaching is clearly present in Augustine's writings....
John Chrysostom (ca. 349-407) affirms the necessity of baptism for salvation and, in line with the other fourth century eastern theologians we have examined, makes no exception for catechumens who die prematurely....
The footnote [in another book, attributing belief in the concept of invincible ignorance to Chrysostom] illustrates the tendency to read modern concepts back into the Fathers; "invincible ignorance" is not a patristic concept and there is not a shred of evidence in Chrysostom's words to support the footnote's interpretation....
Gennadius of Massilia (d. ca. 496) categorically rules out the possibility of salvation even in the specific case of a catechumen dying "in good works." Martyrdom is the only exception, and Gennadius goes on to describe, point by point, how the martyr's testimony fulfills the essential actions of the ritual [baptism]. A partial sacrament is not, for Gennadius, sufficient for salvation. At a minimum, Gennadius's work demonstrates that Ambrose's teaching [of baptism of desire] in De obitu Valentiniani did not achieve universal approval in the century after it was delivered. Gennadius does not treat the question as controversial - he straightforwardly asserts his position as the Church's belief - and does not provide any supporting argumentation....
While baptism of desire is sometimes referred to as a medieval doctrine - and its systematic vetting would only really begin in the twelfth century - it originates in the patristic era. To be sure, the idea likely never enjoyed universal - or perhaps even majority - support at any time in that epoch....
The true test of the doctrine [of baptism of desire], however, would come several centuries in the future, when baptism of desire would be rediscovered, given a name, and put through the theological crucible - where it would be opposed, supported, mangled somewhat by all parties, and, eventually, established in the Catholic theological consensus....
The first part of this chapter will focus, then, on the underappreciated question of changing sacramental practice, even if this happened mostly in the early Middle Ages, when baptism of desire had disappeared from view....
We should not imagine, however, that twelfth century support for baptism of desire was universal....In fact, now that the age of martyrdom has passed [one twelfth-century source argues], even baptism of blood no longer provides a guide for present practice. In an aside to his account of the death of Valentinian in his Chronicle of the Two Cities - a kind of update of Augustine's The City of God - the German bishop and historian Otto of Freising rejects baptism of desire....
Students of the Sentences [of Peter Lombard] would have had no way of knowing that the position that would carry the day from the twelfth century onward [baptism of desire] had most likely been held by a minority of theologians for most of Christianity's first millennium....
the favorable treatment of baptism of desire in the Lombard's Sentences was the key moment in its twelfth century transformation from marginal hypothesis to mainstream doctrine...
Aquinas seems to accept Peter's contention that baptism of desire does not fully remit the temporal punishment of sin, though he does not make much of this in the Commentary....
He [Robert Bellarmine] also notes that Bernard's letter on the subject [baptism of desire] demonstrates that the doctrine had opponents in his day as well....
He [Antoine Arnauld, a seventeenth-century Jansenist] would thus seem to rule out baptism of desire - though without providing an argument beyond the analogy of conception and birth....
A number of patristic thinkers, probably the majority, took this to mean that, with the sole exception of martyrs, those who died without the waters of baptism were not saved....
The consensus in favor of baptism of desire reached by the end of the Middle Ages, by and large, seems to have convinced posterity.
(39, 42, 54-55, 58, 67-68, 77-78, 97-98, n. 96 on 98, 102, 106, 109, 111, 149, 153, 157, 168, 235, 249, 333, 337)
There's a lot of other significant material in Lusvardi's book. For example, on page 119, there's a discussion of patristic and medieval disagreements over how many types of baptism there are (baptism of water, baptism of blood, baptism of desire, baptism of tears, etc.). Gregory Nazianzen referred to five, whereas others referred to three or two, for instance. And there was widespread disagreement among the pre-Reformation sources about what was required for salvation during the Old Testament era (228-29). Elsewhere, Lusvardi writes of how, in the late medieval era, "Even limbo did not enjoy unanimous support." (n. 51 on 209) At the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century, views of justification were still so diverse that debate over the doctrine among the Roman Catholic participants was "lengthy, complex, and, once, so heated it led to a scuffle" (224). Lusvardi cites Michael Moriarty's conclusion that "the belief that the elect are a minority was almost universal among Catholic theologians until the nineteenth century" (n. 127 on 237). In response to an attempt to apply the concept of invincible ignorance to Hans Kung in one of Kung's obituaries, Lusvardi writes, "Kung was a Catholic theologian of global stature, not a pre-Columbian Inca. But broadening the reach of invincible ignorance was a distinctive characteristic of mid-twentieth century theology." (281) Elsewhere, Lusvardi writes of how the work of many modern theologians makes it "hard to distinguish theology from wishful thinking" (n. 120 on 288). It's "hardly obvious" how the concept of no salvation outside the church was understood by the Roman Catholic Church in the middle of the twentieth century (295).
Despite comments like the ones cited above, Lusvardi frequently refers to the necessity of baptism for salvation as Biblical, apostolic, widely accepted throughout church history, and so forth. For example, "The doctrine of the necessity of baptism and, even more importantly, the rite of baptism belong to the most ancient core of the Christian proclamation. Christianity's first eight centuries show remarkable stability in the fundamental conviction that baptism is necessary for salvation" (106-107). However, to his credit, he occasionally acknowledges some exceptions, like some opponents of baptismal regeneration in Tertullian's day (31) and at the time of Augustine (83). He refers to "the anti-sacramentalism of the Waldensian movement" in the twelfth century (122). On the individuals Tertullian referred to, see here. On belief in justification apart from baptism among some pre-Reformation Waldensians, read this post. I may discuss the people referred to by Augustine in the future. Though Lusvardi acknowledges the existence of some Christian opposition to baptismal regeneration before the Reformation, the large majority of the evidence to that effect isn't addressed by his book, which has a different focus. See my posts on the history of belief in justification apart from baptism here.
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