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John Calvin and Baptismal Regeneration

Many evangelicals have been given the impression that John Calvin taught baptismal regeneration, not least because of the zealous pseudo-scholarship of certain Fundamental Baptists. Through their persistent quote mining of passages where Calvin places a metaphorical gloss over his sacramental doctrines, such propagandists have succeeded in convincing people that when Calvin says baptism is "a true and effectual sealing of the promise", he literally means that baptism effects regeneration in the soul. However, a comprehensive and honest reading of Calvin's works will reveal that he frequently expressed his disdain for anyone who teaches that baptism effects anything further than reassuring the believer that he is, in fact, a child of God who has had his conscience cleansed of sin. I submit to you just one of many examples: "We must not suppose that there is some latent virtue inherent in the sacraments by which they, in themselves, confer the gifts of the Holy Spirit upon us in the same way in which wine is drunk out of a cup, since the only office divinely assigned to them is to attest and ratify the benevolence of the Lord toward us..." (Institutes, IV.xiv.17) When, therefore, Calvin emphasizes that the sacrament of baptism is "not dead, [for] God truly performs and effects by baptism what he figures", what Calvin means to say is that baptism reinforces our already-existing saving faith by showing to us in a physical picture just what we have placed our faith in.