The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

10. On this point, all sound theology of every part of our common
Christianity is a unit. It is not distinctively a Lutheran doctrine. The
Romish and Greek Churches recognize the impossibility of the salvation
of any human creature without a change from that condition into which he
is born. The Calvinistic theory (including that of the Calvinistic Baptists,)
involves the doctrine that infants need regeneration to fit them for heaven;
that they are capable of regeneration, that it actually takes place in the case
of elect infants, and that it takes place in this life. Calvin: 264 "How, say
they (the Anabaptists), are infants regenerated, who have neither the
knowledge of good or evil? We answer, that it does not follow that there is
no work of God, because we are incapable of grasping it, for it is clear that
infants who are to be saved (as certainly some of that age are saved) are
previously regenerated (ante...regenerari), by the Lord." That milder
school of Calvinism, which mercifully, and perhaps illogically, departs
from the rigor of the older and more self-consistent Calvinism, and believes
that none but elect infants die in infancy, does not, nevertheless, depart
from the old and true view, that the saved infant is regenerate, and can only
as regenerate be saved.
This great fact must not be forgotten, that on the main difficulty of
this part of the doctrine of original sin, all but Pelagians are in unity of faith
with our Church. The testimony of the Church through all ages is most
explicit on this point: That no unregenerate human being, infant or adult,
Pagan or nominal Christian, can be saved. Without holiness, no man shall
see the Lord--but no man can be holy with his natural heart unchanged.
Except we have the Spirit of Christ we are none of His; but this Spirit is
given to us in and by the new birth alone.
Eleventh Thesis. The Holy Spirit the sole author of the new birth.
XI. We have seen the absolute necessity of the new birth to every
human creature, and we now affirm as our Eleventh Thesis: That as the
new birth is absolutely essential to the salvation of every one of our race,
so the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential to the new birth. "Durch heiligen
Geist," "Per spiritum sanctum."
264 Instit. (IV, xvi. 17.)