TJieodore W. Jennings, Jr. The Meaning of ... - Quarterly Review

our thinking," respectively, with regard to the sacraments. In many
ways they and our new baptismal liturgies are taking our church in a
direction it has not formerly gone.
Consider an all-too-superficial glance at the baptismal stance
taken theologically by the predecessor denominations in America
that form the United Methodist Church today.
In the Articles of Religion, which, in 1784, John Wesley sent
over for use by his American followers, baptism was described in
Article XVII:
Baptism is not only a sign of profession and mark of difference
whereby Christians are distinguished from others that are not
baptized; but it is also a sign of regeneration or the new birth. .
Article XVII makes a somewhat lesser claim than Article XXVII
of the Anglican thirty-nine Articles, from which it is adapted.
Wesley's article uses the Anglican "sign of regeneration or the New
Birth," but it does not suggest in any bold form that it conveys the
New Birth. It seems to be a sign of God's renewing grace that may
operate outside of the sacrament itself.
Although the former Methodist Church held firmly to the practice
of infant baptism, it did not clearly delineate a doctrine of baptism.
Where it did do much thinking about baptism, it was, as Hoyt
Hickman suggests, done for the purpose of justifying the practice of
infant baptism. 16
Over a quarter century ago, Colin Williams stated
that Wesley had a creative tension between the objective and the
subjective, between the givenness of Christ's holiness in the Word
and Sacraments and the responsive holiness of life effected in the
lives of Christian believers, but that he did not spell this tension out
with any force. Thus, Methodism has experienced had a great deal
of confusion on the subject. Williams concluded:
Apparently, understanding only the second emphasis in Wesley,
American Methodism has since reduced the service of baptism to
the point where it is little more than a dedication, and in British
Methodism, while far more ofthe structure ofthe service has
been kept, all references to regeneration were excluded in
1882.
BAPTISMAL REGENERATION 45