When a Baby Dies, by Ronald Nash.
Baptismal Regeneration.
A number of denominations teach baptismal regeneration - Nash puts it like this:
According to this teaching, God uses the means of water baptism to produce the inward change in the human heart that theologians call regeneration. Children or adults who have not been baptized are not saved, they are not born again, and their sins are not forgiven. Water baptism is a necessary condition for the new birth.
If baptism is necessary for salvation, that leaves us with the obvious conclusion that there is no hope for the millions of babies (born and pre-born) that have died without being baptized over the centuries. So we need to look at the question of whether or not baptismal regeneration is taught in Scripture.
One of the things to keep in mind: when a Scripture passage can be read in two different ways, and one of those ways is in conflict with the rest of Scripture, then the interpretation that leads to the conflict must be discarded.
Read John 3:16,18,36.
Regeneration is a matter of the Holy Spirit and the heart of man.
John 3 is a passage that some use as a proof text for baptismal regeneration.
"I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit (...)"
Use of this passage assumes that
- being "born of water" is identical to the baptism that Jesus would institute after His resurrection (Matt 28:19)
- it is the baptism that produces regeneration.
Looking at the historical context of the encounter, we can ask, "what would Nicodemus have understood Jesus to be saying?"
- Would he have understood Jesus' baptism by John the Baptist to be identical with "born of water?" (no, the New Testament is clear that the baptism of John is different than the Christian baptism - Acts 19)
- Would Nicodemus have understood Jesus to be speaking of the Christian baptism? (no, that had not been instituded yet)
On the other hand...
Charles Hodge, (19th Century, Princeton Theological Seminary) argued that John 3:5 sets up an analogy between the way water cleanses the body and the way that the Holy Spirit cleanses the soul. In other Biblical passages, the sign and the thing signifiec are often united (Isa 35 and 55, Jer. 2:13, John 4:10). It is CHRIST that is the water, not baptism.
So we have two conflicting interpretation: 1) born of water = baptism 2) born of water = born of Christ.
The Bible never "waters down" the gospel of grace: we are not saved by anything we DO, our salvation is based on God's unmerited favor; grace. Regeneration comes about through the work of the Holy Spirit.
Since the passage never specifically refers to baptism let along baptismal regeneration, we can come to the conclusion that Nicodemus would not have understood "water" to be physical baptism and that "water" (as used here) can be understood as an analogy for the soul-cleansing work of the Holy Spirit.
Conclusion: the doctrine of baptismal regeneration is not the basis of hope for the families of babies who have died. It gives false hope to those who believe that they or their children are fit for heaven because of a ceremony that happened sometime in the past and it (of necessity) entails the belief that unbaptized infants are in hell because their parents did not participate in a sacramental ceremony of a church.