Scott
Puritan Board Graduate
What are thoughts from non-Baptists on the quote below, which is from Richard Muller, "baptismus," in Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, 56?
[quote:f410315148]Baptism is a sacramentum because it is a ritual act commanded by God, consisting in a visible sign of God's grace and accompanied by a divine promise. The purpose or goal and the effect of baptism are, immediately or proximately, the regeneration or renovation of the baptized and, ultimately, their eternal salvation. The scholastics here recognize a distinction between the baptism of infants and the baptism of adults. For infants the sacrament of baptism provides the ordinary or ordained means of regeneration and only secondarily functions as a seal of faith insofar as it is a seal of the foedus gratiae, or covenant of grace, into which children of believers are born. Lutherans as well as Reformed view baptism as the sign or seal of the covenant of grace, but the Lutherans argue that infants do not belong to the covenant or partake of covenant-holiness before baptism, whereas the Reformed argue the covenant before baptism. For adults the sacrament of baptism provides principally a seal and a testimony of the grace already bestowed by the Word and, secondarily, an augmentation of the regenerating grace of God. Thus, infants are baptized before hearing the Word, in the expectation that they will receive from their baptism the first-fruits of the gracious work of the Spirit, including faith, whereas adults must first hear the Word and be brought by it to faith and only thereafter are baptized. Against the Anabaptists, who refuse baptism to infants on the ground that infants cannot have faith, both the Lutherans and the Reformed argue the efficacy of divine grace and the fact that faith arises because of grace in the case both of infants and of adults. [/quote:f410315148]
[quote:f410315148]Baptism is a sacramentum because it is a ritual act commanded by God, consisting in a visible sign of God's grace and accompanied by a divine promise. The purpose or goal and the effect of baptism are, immediately or proximately, the regeneration or renovation of the baptized and, ultimately, their eternal salvation. The scholastics here recognize a distinction between the baptism of infants and the baptism of adults. For infants the sacrament of baptism provides the ordinary or ordained means of regeneration and only secondarily functions as a seal of faith insofar as it is a seal of the foedus gratiae, or covenant of grace, into which children of believers are born. Lutherans as well as Reformed view baptism as the sign or seal of the covenant of grace, but the Lutherans argue that infants do not belong to the covenant or partake of covenant-holiness before baptism, whereas the Reformed argue the covenant before baptism. For adults the sacrament of baptism provides principally a seal and a testimony of the grace already bestowed by the Word and, secondarily, an augmentation of the regenerating grace of God. Thus, infants are baptized before hearing the Word, in the expectation that they will receive from their baptism the first-fruits of the gracious work of the Spirit, including faith, whereas adults must first hear the Word and be brought by it to faith and only thereafter are baptized. Against the Anabaptists, who refuse baptism to infants on the ground that infants cannot have faith, both the Lutherans and the Reformed argue the efficacy of divine grace and the fact that faith arises because of grace in the case both of infants and of adults. [/quote:f410315148]