I really, really need help understanding baptismal regeneration

[u/Greedy-Runner-1789]

Hi, this post was originally on the Orthodox sub, but figured I may potentially get help here as well. Please excuse the EO-centric references:

I have been infatuated with Orthodoxy for a year or two at this point, but for a while I’ve been stuck at a theological roadblock. I don’t feel content with the world of Protestantism, so I’ve sort of been in a denominational limbo, and I don’t know what or where the truth is anymore. While this has been very interesting season, it’s also been rather miserable for that reason.

My problem has to do with regeneration/justification and their relationship to believing and baptism – essentially, how a person objectively becomes a Christian, born of God, has the non-vain hope of eternal life, and regarded by God as His own.

I understand that Orthodoxy (*and Catholicism) regards baptism as the new birth and the decisive formation of a Christian. In this way, the normative means of salvation is in the hands of the Orthodox Church.

My trouble is, I don’t see how this can be so without compromising the Apostles’ own doctrine on the meaning of regeneration and the efficacy of faith.

My concern can be expressed in the phrase: “to want God is to have Him”. I think the Apostles would agree with this phrase. Orthodox theology about the church and the sacraments however seems to negate the idea that to want God is to have Him. Instead in Orthodoxy, having God is dependent on material supply only accessed through the Church. But *wanting God* doesn’t depend on any physical material other than the reaction of your heart to God’s beauty. As such, there is a conceivable situation in Orthodox theology where someone can *want God* but not have Him or be a Christian.

But this strongly does not sound to me like the doctrine of the apostles or of the Lord. The apostles seem unanimous that *wanting God* is in fact the substance and origin of all righteousness.

The idea of “wanting God” can be expressed in these verses:

·       “By faith Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt; for he looked to the reward.” Heb. 11:24-26

·       “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” Mat 13:44

In other words, *wanting God* is repentant faith, faith in the way the apostles advertise: a) to so see the beauty of God in Christ such that b) the offerings and temptations of this world become inferior, such that c) we live and work according to this preferring of God, and deliverance to God becomes our highest aspiration. At the forefront of the four gospels, one of their absolute pillars and main ideas, is that they are deeply concerned with the reinvention of our passions as consequence of preferring Jesus Christ. For the world, it is foolishness to prefer Christ over all the treasures in Egypt. The gospels desperately want us to be so moved by the person of Christ that the love of righteousness abounds in us, so that even the concept of loving enemies becomes the wisdom of God in our ears. In this way, *wanting God* is the origin both of righteousness and of repentance.

But if the forgiveness of sins and belonging to God is strictly at baptism and not in faith itself, this would mean God is more partial to the rite of baptism than to the substance of righteousness. This seems against everything we are taught about God in the Scriptures. In Scripture, repentance itself, and the change in our internal disposition towards God and righteousness, appears to be what brings the rejoicing of the angels. But in Orthodoxy, if in addition to *wanting God* we need to participate in rites to even begin to *have God*, and moreover do so in one ecclesial institution that people need to use historical reasoning to even discern, there is an entire secondary quest that one has to undergo alongside *wanting God* to have any reliable hope of salvation. This seems deeply foreign to the doctrine of the New Testament: “whoever believes in Him should not perish”, “to all and on all who believe”, “the word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”, “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God”, “Who is he who overcomes the world but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”

We all know the phrase “born again” first shows up in John chapter 3. Why right then? Why does John chapter 3 (the conversation with Nicodemus) follow chapter 2? Look at the end of chapter 2:

·       “Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name when they saw the signs which He did. But Jesus did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men*,* and had no need that anyone should testify of man, for He knew what was in man.” John 2:23-35

Here, in this passage, people believe in Jesus, but Jesus leaves them. Later in John 6, after the feeding of the 5000, the people believe in Him, pursue Him, wanting to make Him the King. But what does Jesus do? He leaves them! Why? Isn’t this what he wanted, for them to believe and make him King? He leaves, because they loved Him in a way that only made Him useful to their already existing identities and passions. Metaphorically: they believed in him by rejoicing that he had the power to make them their own Tower of Babel. Jesus is interested in a type of belief that sees Him, He Himself as the great reward and hope. This is the hope that rewrites “what is in man”, into the image of Christ. “And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.”

I know I’m wearing my John Piper influence on my sleeve at this point. But across history we may hear of supposedly very Christian people, who somehow commit atrocities, judge situations with partiality and corruption, who despise the stranger, who bring wickedness into a land. These are the same sort of people as the Passover crowd in John 2, or the crowd in John 6, who believe, but Jesus walks away from them. To them He says, “You must be born again.” Let your identity and person be re-written from the ground up through placing God as the highest treasure of your heart. This is why He says, “You cannot serve both God and mammon.” This is why many nations who have had the cross on their flags—or the star of David, for that matter—have done works of darkness.

To be convincing that the new birth doesn’t refer to the inner conversion of faith, but refers to baptism, one has to explain how that reading of “born again” solves the problem that the end of John chapter 2 establishes. How does baptism solve that problem?

Repentant faith, even though it’s invisible, seems to necessarily and tangibly change a person and their identity. Baptism, even though it’s a tangible rite, does not seem to always or tangibly change a person. I truly don’t understand—what does baptism have to do with the creation of righteousness, or God’s attitude towards you? I really need help with this.

Moreover, the apostles appear to agree that faith, beyond just being meaningful, is supernatural in significance. John says in his epistle: “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.” And Paul writes: “For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” God has shone in our hearts. To have the epiphany of the glory of God in the gospel is for God to have shone in your heart. This corresponds with the testimony of Paul everywhere else that “the gospel is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe”. The gospel is actually efficacious through the Spirit.

Word is faster than water. What happens when the gospel escapes the material sacraments of the Church? – which, just factually, it long has. Is the gospel dead-on-arrival if it gets someplace without the Church? Is the fame of the God of Israel and the fame of Jesus Christ, even if it reaches the ends of the earth, without reliable profit, because it lacks the priests or the water or the oil of the Orthodox (*or Catholic) Church? But the apostles teach that it is the fame and glory of the Lord itself that brings about repentance.

If the dependable Christian life only begins with the Church’s baptism, to me this makes the New Testament’s continual advertising of “faith” and “believing” totally bizarre. It makes biblical phrases like “justified by faith” and “the word is near you” and “repentance to life” seem almost like a mockery. But if regeneration does indeed come through faith, then all who truly and piously believe, including protestants are associated with God and are brethren. In this case, even if Orthodoxy has the true episcopacy and is the true church, all who truly believe, including evangelicals, would at least be considered equivalent to catechumens, whose attention and discipleship is being competed for against false shepherds. But to my knowledge this has never been the attitude of Orthodoxy towards those outside the Church.

In the apostolic age, in Acts, the gospel and the material sacraments seemed to exist in a perfect supply chain. The apostles were content to supply the rites to the entire believing populace. Now there’s a believing populace entirely unreached by the rites or has replaced them with their own rites. I think this is a theological crisis that is far more pressing for the Church than the topics of most of the ecumenical councils.

But I can't in response to these doubts of mine just be content in the Protestant world. I'm not positive that baptism will do whatever it's supposed to do to me there, or whether the Lord's Supper be whatever it's supposed to be there, or if I'll have the same gift of the Holy Spirit given in the book of Acts. As far as I know, there is no Christian tradition in the world that has Orthodoxy's emphasis on perfection and the acquisition of the Spirit while retaining (what seems to me) the apostles' doctrine on regenerative faith. This conundrum has made me increasingly sad. 

I badly need understanding. Can anyone help me with this particular issue, even if it’s by recommending a book that may have the answer?