1. No, it doesn't make my view irrelevent at all. You're dodging the question. Are you suggesting that regeneration DOESN'T happen at the same time as justification? Christ IS our justification and sanctification. Or are you suggesting that infants are regenerate apart from believing?
Before you say that Rev. Winzer is "dodging", maybe you ought to review his body of work, and see if "dodging" is his style.
Maybe you haven't understood what he's saying. Or,
maybe you have, you just don't know what to do with it. Because as a Calvinist, you certainly agree that
believing is a
product of regeneration, and as Protestant, you believe that
justification is a
product of belief (saving faith). Therefore,
regeneration is
prior to justification, both logically and temporally.
Therefore, the answer to your question, "Are you suggesting that regeneration DOESN'T happen at the same time as justification?" is:
Possibly, sometimes.
How much prior? Well, the answer to that question might be person-variable. Re: your use of the word "apart". It seems that you are using that word
temporally. Neither I nor Rev. Winzer. would ever say that an infant is regenerate "apart from believing." The one produces the other as sure as certainly as the Sun's activity warms the earth. However, WHEN a person--whether infant, child, or adult: a) is regenerated, and b) believes unto his justification, has no
necessary temporal union or close-connection.
2. Again you're dodging the question. The discussion isn't about whether God can do what He wants (we all agree), its about what has He said He will do in His Word. Are you suggesting that infants believe on the Son of God? The immediate fruit of regeneration is belief and repentence is it not? If you say that baptism regenerates (baptismal regeneration) then you are saying that baptised infants are regenerate.
You seem awfully confident that Matthew is "dodging", instead of asking whether or not he might assent to your (incredulous?) follow-on propositions.
Of course Rev. Winzer is
more than merely suggesting that infants could "believe on the Son of God." He confidently believes it may indeed happen and ought to be hoped for, on the authority of God's Word.
Psa 71:5-6 "For thou art my hope, O Lord GOD: thou art my trust from my youth. By thee have I been holden up from the womb: thou art he that took me out of my mother's bowels: my praise shall be [or contextually, has been, the words being supplied in translation] continually of thee."
Similar to: Psa 22:9-10 "But thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother's breasts. I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother's belly."
So, faith in God is possible
in utero, according to Scripture, and if from that point, then certainly at any moment thereafter, according to the mystery of Holy Spirit's operation.
Why must belief/repentance be the "
immediate fruit of regeneration"?
What demands this? Why not simply "inevitable"?
All Rev. Winzer proposed is that SOME baptized infants might be regenerated; he certainly never stated that the application of water regenerated. Furthermore, baptism symbolizes regeneration (Titus 3:5), so if an infant has been regenerated (the possibility of which has has already been demonstrated from Scripture) then
ipso facto he has been "baptismally regenerated" not by man's work but by Holy Spirit's baptism.
What we say is, that we are supposed to believe and act on the promises of God, for example: "I will be God to you, and to your children after you." We are to teach to those children "repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ," with the expectation that such are the means of bringing out the natural effect of regeneration in our children,
whenever that regeneration may have occurred.
3. No one denies that Baptism is required; I deny that it has any affect on regeneration. If someone denies receiving baptism then they deny the faith and prove themselves unregenerate but thats very different from believing in baptismal regeneration (baptism as a cause of regeneration).
Part of the terminological problem in this discussion is the fact that Baptists and Presbyterians use the same terms in different ways.
On our side, we really don't draw hard distinctions between God's acts by himself and his acts as revealed through his church, when they pertain to the ELECT. We don't concern ourselves with the "timing" of baptism beyond a concern to obey God's commandment, because it isn't vital that we do so according to our theology.
For this reason, we seldom spend time trying to figure out whether a certain text is talking about "water" baptism or "Spirit" baptism. We simply consider those questions as differently applicable to the elect and the non-elect, secret things that we cannot detect in particular persons. For us, a baptized apostate (non-elect) is just that: an apostate baptized by the church, not by God himself, but liable to severer judgment for his former association and profession.
Whereas the Baptist does not consider the apostate to be baptized
at all, because only believers (present tense) are baptized according to their ecclesiology. If the apostate comes back to the fold, if he (or the church) doesn't think he was a believer previously, then he must be baptized--not "once again", whatever ceremony he went through before, but again
following his new (and improved) profession.
What it boils down to is that whomever the ELECT are, we (Presbyterians) associate baptism by the church with baptism by Holy Spirit, and we pay no attention to "when" his secret work takes place. We merely act on what we have seen or have record of.
It comes down to cause and effect. To place ANY work as the cause of regeneration is backwords and a salvation of works. Baptists and Presbyterians alike believe that baptism is a work produced by regeneration. Credo-baptists make it a result of the one being baptized's regeneration, while paedo-baptists make it a fruit of the parent's regeneration (from what I've been told by presbyterians). Either way its false to place it as even a partial cause of anyone's regeneration whether Paedo or Credo.
No one on our side in this debate is placing faith in what men do. We are placing faith in what God does.
We are placing faith in what he SAYS when his church SPEAKS, when it speaks according to God's direction in the Bible, that is when it speaks "according to this Word" (Is. 8:20).
You are just speaking incorrectly when you say that we all believe baptism is a WORK
produced by regeneration. This kind of view is one distinctly produced by the Baptist's ecclesiology. And the "what you've been told by Presbyterians," while it may have sufficed to try and explain in short-hand fashion, within your Baptist frame of reference, a correlation between your views and ours, it really fails the test of clarity within our ecclesiology and sacramentology.
What we (Presbyterians) are supposed to do is look at what the church has said (its outward performance of baptism) as the utterance of God's promise: "I will save all those who have faith in the suffering, dying, dead, buried, and rising Son." We are supposed to believe God's Word of gospel, whether it is printed, vocalized, or turned into a (authorized) symbol that we can see and feel.
Baptism is very suitable to a statement of the gospel, because it is not something we DO, but something that was DONE to us. When I look back at my (infant) baptism, I have FAITH that God has, somewhere in my past, begun a good work in me, in my spirit, through baptism of the Spirit (which is regeneration) that he is carrying through to completion and perfection in the resurrection of my body, on account of the work of Christ "who loved me and gave himself for me." This is the import of my external baptism.
What we musn't do is put false confidence in the FACT that it was done to us outwardly and without regard to saving faith as necessary to its salutary effect (as a species of the Galatian error), or that it was done to us by XYZ CHURCH, and therefore placing faith in such and such a ministry, and not in the Holy Spirit's ministrations.
Matthew. Now let's see how this will be misconstrued.
ing about it all the time.
