Confessing Evangelical

Just found an interesting exchange of emails buried away in my "Personal Correspondence" email archive folder. This time last year, I was just beginning to look into Lutheran teachings, and had printed out a copy of the Small Catechism to read while on holiday at the end of April. It appears my response was the usual one for evangelicals discovering Lutheran teachings at first-hand: "They believe what about baptism???"

I emailed the LCMS's Church Information Center with the following query. This email will give a pretty clear indication of "where I was at" at that stage:

From: [John H]
Sent: Sunday, May 04, 2003 8:38 AM
To: infocenter@lcms.org
Subject: Baptismal regeneration query

I'm having some difficulty understanding the Lutheran view on baptismal regeneration. My parents, being nominally Christian, had me baptised as a baby. My main contact with the church was then several years as a choirboy but I never really encountered or understood the biblical gospel.

For most of my teens I was an out-and-out atheist. However, during my last year at university I became a Christian.

While I wouldn't want to identify one particular moment when this happened, at the start of 1994 I was certainly giving every indication of being dead in my sins, without hope and without God in this world, but by the end of 1994 I was a new creation in Christ. Within a Reformed perspective, this seems to make sense -- I rejoice in God's promise to me in my baptism as an infant (and find Luther's description of baptism as water combined with the Word of the gospel extremely helpful), but I did not actually appropriate this promise until my regeneration 21 years later.

However, I do not understand how my experience (not an uncommon one) would be expressed within a Lutheran framework. To be frank, the concept of infant faith being imparted by baptism seems to me to verge on the nonsensical. As I do not believe Lutherans are given to believing nonsense, I would appreciate further explanation on this point.

Yours in Christ,

John H

A couple of days later, I received the following reply:

From: Otto C Hintze
Sent: 05 May 2003 21:03
To: infocenter@lcms.org
Cc: H, John
Subject: Re: FW: Baptismal regeneration query

Dear John,

Your concern has been referred to me for response.

Yes, your experience is more common that we like to think. It happened to me also, although in a different context. The Scriptural (Lutheran) explanation of that goes as follows:

As an infant we were made a disciple of Christ by being baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Matthew 28:19-20.

We were not baptized into a church denomination, but into the death and resurrection of Christ, which can only be appropriated through faith, which in turn was given you through the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Romans 6:1-10.

Faith was GIVEN us; we did nothing to become God's own child, a member of His Kingdom. Faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit by God's grace alone. Ephesians 2:8-9 Faith comes by hearing the message, and the message is heard through the Word of Christ. Romans 10:17

We were born again by water and the Spirit. John 3:5 - regenerated Titus 3:4-5, "saved by the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit".

We were saved by baptism. Titus 3:5; 1 Peter 3:21

When baptized as an infant we were given all the benefits and blessings of baptism.

However, we fell away and lost those benefits, although God still pursued us and brought us to saving faith in Jesus again through the Gospel by the power of the Holy Spirit at a later point in our lives. We believe that we can fall from grace and faith. Galatians 5:4; Jude 24 And that we do ourselves, and is our own grievous fault. If we had died in that fallen state, we would have gone to hell, baptism or not. Falling from grace is falling from our baptismal salvation. Now we have been regenerated through the Gospel by the power of the Holy Spirit and are saved. Thus, the way of the Scriptures.

Hope I have helped.

In His service, Rev. Otto C. Hintze ThD, LCMS
International Center Chaplain

"Hope I have helped": more, as it turns out, than you could have imagined, Revd Hintze. I know many of you (eg Josh) have a very negative view of the LCMS denominational infrastructure, quite probably 100% justified for all I know. But to get a response like that from a denominational information office is pretty impressive. I dread to think how the Church of England would have responded to a similar enquiry.