Martin Luther on Baptism
Infants included, and effective for regeneration
Therefore state it most simply thus, that the power, work, profit, fruit, and end of Baptism is this, namely, to save... for by the Word such power is imparted to Baptism that it is a laver of regeneration, as St. Paul also calls it.
THE POSITION
Infants are baptized, and baptism genuinely does something: it is 'a laver of regeneration,' it works forgiveness, and its power, work, profit and end 'is this, namely, to save.' Luther refuses to make the child's faith the ground — 'we do not baptize it upon that, but solely upon the command of God' — and he equally refuses to make the water a physical cause; the efficacy is God's Word joined to the element and received by faith.
5 He saved us, not by the righteous deeds we had done, but according to His mercy, through the washing of new birth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.
8 OTHERS HOLD THIS
ABOUT THIS FIGURE
Augustinian friar whose protest over indulgences opened the Reformation, and the theologian for whom justification by faith and the bondage of the will are the whole of the gospel. This entry rests on his own writings only — The Bondage of the Will (1525), the Smalcald Articles (1537), the Large and Small Catechisms (1529), Concerning Christian Liberty (1520), the Heidelberg Disputation (1518), the Church Postil and his biblical prefaces — and deliberately excludes the Augsburg Confession and the Formula of Concord, which are not his.
Cite this page
"Martin Luther on Baptism", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/luther/baptism (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/luther/baptism).