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By contrast, Anabaptist and Evangelical Protestants recognize baptism as an outward sign of an inward reality following on an individual believer's experience of forgiving grace. Reformed and Methodist Protestants maintain a link between baptism and regeneration, but insist that it is not automatic or mechanical, and that regeneration may occur ...
Westminster speaks of "a sacramental relation, or a sacramental union, between the sign and the thing signified; whence it comes to pass that the names and effects of the one are attributed to the other". [71] Baptism is for infant children of believers as well as believers, as it is for all the Reformed except Baptists and some Congregationalists.
Only the elect receive the sacramental sign and the grace. This is because faith—which is a gift only the elect are given—unites the outward sign and the inward grace and makes the sacrament effective. This position was in agreement with the Reformed churches but was opposed to the Roman Catholic and Lutheran views. [11]
For the Lutherans, baptism is a "means of grace" through which God creates and strengthens "saving faith" as the "washing of regeneration" [63] [64] in which infants and adults are reborn. [ 65 ] [ non-primary source needed ] Since the creation of faith is exclusively God's work, it does not depend on the actions of the one baptized, whether ...
They are also defined as “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.”. [2] Lutherans believe that, whenever they are properly administered by the use of the physical component commanded by God along with the divine words of institution, God is, in a way specific to each sacrament, present with the Word and physical ...
John Calvin was influenced by Martin Luther's idea of baptism as God's promises to the baptized person attached to the outward sign of washing with water. Calvin maintained Zwingli's idea of baptism as a public pledge, but insisted that it was secondary to baptism's meaning as a sign of God's promise to forgive sin. [11]
The Catholic Church teaches that the sacraments are "efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us." [ 18 ] The Church teaches that the effect of a sacrament comes ex opere operato , by the very fact of being administered, regardless of the personal holiness of the minister ...
Aquinas also states, in the Summa Theologica: "a sacrament is nothing else than a sanctification conferred on man with some outward sign. Wherefore, since by receiving orders a consecration is conferred on man by visible signs, it is clear that Order is a sacrament." [2]