Is regenerate church membership a common Christian doctrine?
In Calvinistic/Reformed traditions, people often use the term “regeneration” synonymously with “conversion.” Answering the question in the title: is regenerate church membership a common Christian doctrine, is essential for understanding how a healthy church is to function. Without understanding true Christian conversion, we can’t properly understand church polity (church governance and structure).
Mark Dever, pastor of Capital Hill Baptist Church, caused an internet sensation with his comments that Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism believed in regenerate church membership, not only Baptists. He insisted, to the notable perplexity of others on a panel discussion at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, “That’s what the East and Rome always taught.”[1] Was he right? While it is true that today usually only Baptists talk about regenerate church membership, I did some digging and some interviewing and found that it is, indeed, the common, historical Christian doctrine.
Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy
In sacramental traditions like Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, baptism is taught to be the instrument of regeneration. That is, when people, even infants, are baptized, they are believed to be “born again” (John 3:3) and included in the church. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) wrote, “Baptism is a spiritual regeneration.”[2] Membership in the church is a result of this. Contemporary Roman Catholic apologist Trent Horn states, “Baptism to make infants Christians or regenerate members of the body of Christ was the norm in the church.”[3]
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Some Baptist scholars interpret Augustine’s (354–430) claim that the visible church on earth is a corpus permixtum — a mixed body — as an acknowledgment that Roman Catholicism does not teach regenerate church membership.[4] Augustine wrote, “In this wicked world … there are many reprobate mingled with the good, and both are gathered together by the gospel as in a drag net.”[5] However, Augustine is not claiming churches intentionally include unbelievers in the church. Rather, he is recognizing that some professed believers may eventually reveal themselves to be unregenerate. Today’s Baptists acknowledge the same problem. Pastor Garrett Kell explains, “We aim to welcome only true, born-again believers into the fold ... Though churches lack the omniscience to guard membership perfectly, we still aim for the names on the membership rolls to reflect the names in the Lamb’s book of life.”[6]
Eastern Orthodoxy likewise teaches that baptism is a “new birth” and “regeneration.” It is, in their theology, the instrument that “accomplishes the washing away of sins, incorporation into the Body of the glorified Christ, the Church, and renewal by the Holy Spirit.”[7] This baptism, according to Eastern Orthodoxy, unites one to Christ and thus the body of Christ. The result is that the baptized are regenerate church members.[8]
Lutheranism
Martin Luther (1483-1546) also held to regenerate church membership. In his catechisms, he referred to baptism as “a laver of regeneration.”[9] However, this mention of regeneration, on the subject of baptism, is the only time Luther refers to “regeneration.” Mark Swanson, director of the Advanced Studies Program at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (LSTC) admitted, “I don’t use or encounter the word ‘unregenerate’ very often.”[10] Kurt K. Hendel, the Bernard, Fischer, Westberg Distinguished Ministry Professor Emeritus of Reformation History at the LSTC states, “Lutherans do, indeed, affirm baptism as the initiating rite through which an individual, typically an infant, … is welcomed into the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. The baptized becomes a member of the church catholic…”[11] Therefore, according to Hendel, in Lutheran confessional theology, baptism ensures membership in the body of Christ, as the Holy Spirit generates the faith that results in membership.[12] For Lutherans, as Swanson explains, “in baptism one becomes a member of Christ’s church.”[13] Peter Vethanayagamony, professor of modern Church History at the LSTC, clarifies, “Lutherans do believe in baptismal regeneration,” and since baptism is a prerequisite for church membership — “the initiating rite” — then Lutherans adhere to regenerate church membership.[14]
Anglicanism and Methodism
The Church of England’s First and Second Prayer Books of Edward VI (1552) prayed that the one being “baptized with water” would also be baptized with “the holy ghoste, and received into Christes holy church, and be made lively members of the same.”[15] Thus, in Baptism, God was invoked to regenerate infants and admit them into the church.
Methodists, following the Church of England, maintained the belief in baptismal regeneration, according to Mike Pasquarello III, PhD, the Methodist Chair of Divinity at Beeson Divinity School.[16] For Methodists, like Anglicans and Roman Catholics, baptism, even of an infant, is “a sacrament which mediates the regenerating power of the Spirit in the form of Christ.”[17]
This regenerating baptism results in inclusion in the church. Therefore, as Randy Maddox, William Kellon Quick Professor Emeritus of Wesleyan and Methodist Studies at Duke Divinity School, explains, a child baptized in Methodism “is considered a member of Christ’s holy Church (i.e., the universal Church, not a local congregation).”[18] Pasquarello notes that for Methodists, “baptism is not limited to the congregation or denomination, but is incorporation into One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.”[19] Hence, Methodists, like their Anglican predecessors, hold to regenerate church membership.
Anabaptism
With the Anabaptists (like the Mennonites), the basis of church membership shifts from the effect of baptism to the identity of the church. Baptism was no longer seen as the instrument of regeneration but the traditional doctrine of the church as consisting of the regenerate was retained. Baptism, for Balthasar Hübaier (1480-1528), did not “have the power to regenerate ... Rather, it is the outward public testimony of the inner baptism.”[20] Hence, “Anabaptists rejected the idea that one could be born into the church.”[21] So, for Anabaptists, regenerate church membership is not a fruit of baptism but vice versa: baptism is a fruit of regeneration. That is, the believers who make up the church baptize.
Baptist
There is no doubt that Baptists hold to regenerate church membership. The question is how they came to believe that only they (and the Anabaptists) did so. John Hammett, Senior Professor of Systematic Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, described regenerate church membership as “a historic distinctive of Baptists.”[22] However, we have seen this is not accurate.
This confusion regarding regenerate church membership stems from the way Baptists narrate their own history as if they were a unique movement, emerging from the swamp of church history, distinct from other movements, even Congregationalism (with whom, in fact, they shared all doctrines and practices except believers’ baptism). Accounts of Baptist origins have left Baptists with what Thomas Nettles, church historian at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, calls an “identity crisis.”[23] Disconnected from nearest theological relatives, like an orphaned child, Baptists have accepted the notion that regenerate church membership is exclusively their doctrine (shared only with the Anabaptists). Ironically, the movement that champions regenerate church membership today also inadvertently suggests that the doctrine is their trade-marked property.
Verdict
Mark Dever’s assertion that regenerate church membership had “always” been taught is essentially true. Regenerate church membership was a universal Christian doctrine. Ironically, the people today who promote it the most don’t know that.
[1] “9Marks at Southeastern 2022 – Church Membership & Biblical Discipline: Session 5 Panel,” Southeastern Seminary, 4 March 2023, https://youtu.be/Ny13nMF7eHE?si=3tXwdmuBby2BYNzs, beginning at 2:47.
[2] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 3.69.1.
[3] Trent Horn, “Rebutting Gavin Ortlund on Baptismal Regeneration,” Catholic Answers, 29 March 2022, https://www.catholic.com/audio/cot/rebutting-gavin-ortlund-on-baptismal-regeneration.
[4] Hammett, Biblical Foundations for Baptist Churches, 87.
[5] Augustine, The City of God 18.49.
[6] Garrett Kell, “Counting Sheep: A Case for Regenerate Church Membership,” Desiring God, 26 June 2023, https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/counting-sheep.
[7] John Breck, “Baptism in Christ,” Orthodox Church in America, 1 January 2010, https://www.oca.org/reflections/fr.-john-breck/baptism-in-christ.
[8] Thomas Fitzgerald, “Becoming an Orthodox Christian,” Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, https://www.goarch.org/-/the-church.
[9] Martin Luther, The Large Catechism 27, https://bookofconcord.org/large-catechism/#lc-iv-0027.
[10] Mark Swanson, email message to author, 13 August 2023.
[11] Kurt Hendel, email message to author, 14 August 2023.
[12] Kurt Hendel, unpublished review comments to this essay, 22 August 2023.
[13] Swanson, email message to author, 13 August 2023. Emphasis original.
[14] Peter Vethanayagamony, email message to author, 12 August 2023.
[15] The Church of England, First and Second Prayer Books of Edward VI (Exeter, England: Short Run, 1999), 394.
[16] Mike Pasquarello, email message to author, 13 August 2023.
[17] Pasquarello, email message to author, 14 August 2023. Randy Maddox, email message to author, 13 August, 2023.
[18] Randy Maddox, email message to author, 13 August 2023.
[19] Pasquarello, email message to author, 13 August 2023.
[20] Fesko, Word, Water, and Spirit, 71.
[21] Fesko, Word, Water, and Spirit, 66.
[22] Hammett, Biblical Foundations for Baptist Churches, 17, 81, 98.
[23] Thomas Nettles, email message to author, 20 December 2023.
John B. Carpenter, Ph.D., is pastor of Covenant Reformed Baptist Church, in Danville, VA. and the author of Seven Pillars of a Biblical Church (Wipf and Stock, 2022) and the Covenant Caswell substack.
