As I discussed in another post, we find baptismal regeneration contradicted in a large number and variety of ways in the extrabiblical sources before the Reformation. Sometimes an exclusion of baptism as a means of justification is implicit rather than explicit.
And people will often object to the use of implicit evidence. But we all rely on it. For example, we depend on implicit evidence when deciding how to translate a word in a document, basing our conclusion on what the surrounding context seems to imply. Christians have often said, rightly, that it's unreasonable for a Muslim to ask us for a passage in the gospels in which Jesus says "I am God. Worship me." or some equivalent. A term like "Trinity" doesn't have to appear in the Bible for Trinitarianism to be Biblical. Roman Catholics often use arguments from typology that aren't explicit. And so on. Advocates of baptismal regeneration rely on implicit argumentation in the context of supporting that doctrine. The appeal to alleged references to baptism in terms like "water" in John 3:5 and "washing" in Titus 3:5 relies on implicit argumentation, so does their reasoning that baptismal regeneration has been in effect during certain circumstances and not in others (e.g., not being applicable during the Old Testament era and some portion or all of Jesus' public ministry), etc. Since proponents of baptismal regeneration rely on implicit argumentation in their reasoning about the subject, they're not in a position to object to their opponents' use of implicit argumentation. The fact that we prefer explicit evidence doesn't mean that implicit evidence has no value. Something can be less valuable, yet still have value to some extent. The nature of life is such that evidence comes in both implicit and explicit forms, with people sometimes disagreeing about whether something is implicit or explicit, and we have to take all of the evidence into account.
Part of my post linked above is about implicit evidence against baptismal regeneration in the early extrabiblical literature. What I want to do in this post is list several categories of that sort of evidence that we should look for. I'm not trying to be exhaustive.
- Baptism isn't mentioned when the means of justification is described. The absence of baptism becomes increasingly significant the more often it's left out. For example, Ignatius wrote seven letters and discussed justification several times in the process, repeatedly mentioning faith as the means of obtaining justification without mentioning baptism. He does discuss baptism at times, but not as a means of obtaining justification. See my post on Ignatius here for more.
- Works are excluded. As I've discussed elsewhere (here, for example), the earliest Christian sources repeatedly define works in ways that seem to go beyond the Mosaic law, the ceremonial aspects of the Mosaic law, and such, and baptism seems to meet the standards laid out for a work. An exclusion of works most naturally suggests an exclusion of baptism.
- The means by which we're justified is paralleled to how unbaptized individuals were justified. Some of the early sources, like Clement of Rome, say that God has always justified individuals the same way they're justified in this New Testament era. You could add a qualifier to his comments, so that there's only partial continuity between the Old Testament and New Testament eras, with baptism later being added as a requirement, but that sort of qualification isn't suggested by the text or context and is a more complicated and less likely interpretation.
- The means of justification is compared to something that seems to exclude baptism. See my post on some Christians described by Celsus, for example. Celsus parallels the means of justification in Christianity to fideism. As I explain in that post, the parallel makes the most sense if faith is alone, not accompanied by baptism.
- The view of justification in question is paralleled to the view of some other individual or group who contradicted baptismal regeneration. My Celsus post linked above provides an example. Tertullian discusses some opponents of baptismal regeneration in his day who seem to be either part of the same group Celsus referred to or part of a similar group. There isn't much of a parallel, so this particular form of the argument doesn't have much strength, but my point is that the paralleling of two or more sources can have this kind of evidential significance, even though some parallels are less significant than others.
- The context of a person's justification excludes baptism. Just as we conclude that the context of the thief on the cross (and the tax collector in Luke 18:9-14, etc.) likely excludes baptism, the same principle is applicable in extrabiblical contexts. See my discussion of Caecilius here, for example.
- The audience of the document implies the exclusion of baptism. A pagan audience, for example, wouldn't be assuming the inclusion of baptism where it isn't mentioned. The best explanation for why sources like Aristides and The Letter To Diognetus only mention repentance or faith without mentioning baptism when presenting Christian soteriology to a pagan audience is that the authors didn't believe in baptismal regeneration.
Some sources include more than one of the characteristics discussed above (e.g., Clement of Rome, First Clement 32-33). There's a cumulative effect. To use the example I just cited, it's unlikely that Clement believed in baptismal regeneration, yet never referred to it when discussing how we're justified and, instead, expressed his view in a few different ways that seem to contradict baptismal regeneration. And it's not enough to respond by saying that he might have believed in baptismal regeneration anyway, since the issue is what's the best interpretation of his comments, not just a possible interpretation. When a source like Clement has so many of the characteristics under consideration, an advocate of baptismal regeneration might appeal to a larger context, such as the alleged popularity of baptismal regeneration in other sources around the time of Clement, to justify concluding that he probably held that view. For an explanation of why that sort of appeal to a larger context doesn't work, as well as why I think it instead adds further weight to the argument against baptismal regeneration in a context like Clement's (because of his earliness, relational closeness to the apostles, etc.), see my comments about Polycarp in a post I linked earlier.
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