Tertullian on Baptismal Regeneration

Tertullian lived from c. 160 to c. 225.

Happy is our sacrament of water, in that, by washing away the sins of our early blindness, we are set free and admitted into eternal life! (On Baptism, ch. 1)

Water was the first to produce that which had life, that it might be no wonder in baptism if waters know how to give life. (On Baptism, ch. 3)

To our flesh — as it emerges from the font, after its old sins flies the dove of the Holy Spirit, bringing us the peace of God, sent out from the heavens where is the Church, the typified ark . . . (On Baptism, ch. 8)

. . . the prescript is laid down that without baptism, salvation is attainable by none (chiefly on the ground of that declaration of the Lord, who says, Unless one be born of water, he has not life ), . . . (On Baptism, ch. 12)

Here, then, those miscreants provoke questions. And so they say, Baptism is not necessary for them to whom faith is sufficient; for withal, Abraham pleased God by a sacrament of no water, but of faith. But in all cases it is the later things which have a conclusive force, and the subsequent which prevail over the antecedent. Grant that, in days gone by, there was salvation by means of bare faith, before the passion and resurrection of the Lord. But now that faith has been enlarged, and has become a faith which believes in His nativity, passion, and resurrection, there has been an amplification added to the sacrament, viz., the sealing act of baptism; the clothing, in some sense, of the faith which before was bare, and which cannot exist now without its proper law. For the law of baptizing has been imposed, and the formula prescribed: Go, He says, teach the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. The comparison with this law of that definition, Unless a man have been reborn of water and Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of the heavens, has tied faith to the necessity of baptism. (On Baptism, ch. 13)

We enter, then, the font once: once are sins washed away, because they ought never to be repeated. (On Baptism, ch. 15)

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. . . we are taken up (as new-born children), . . . (The Chaplet [De Corona], ch. 3)

The uncleanness, indeed, is washed away by baptism, . . . (Scorpiace, ch. 12)

The flesh, indeed, is washed, in order that the soul may be cleansed . . . (On the Resurrection of the Flesh, ch. 8)

Nor could even baptism be properly ordered for the flesh, if by its regeneration a course were not inaugurated tending to its restitution; the apostle himself suggesting this idea: Do you not know, that so many of us as are baptized into Jesus Christ, are baptized into His death? We are therefore buried with Him by baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised up from the dead, even so we also should walk in newness of life. [Romans 6:3-4] And that you may not suppose that this is said merely of that life which we have to walk in the newness of, through baptism, by faith, the apostle with superlative forethought adds: For if we have been planted together in the likeness of Christ’s death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection. By a figure we die in our baptism, but in a reality we rise again in the flesh, even as Christ did, that, as sin has reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness unto life eternal, through Jesus Christ our Lord. [Romans 5:21] (On the Resurrection of the Flesh, ch. 47)

Finally, granting that upon the centurion Cornelius, even before baptism, the honourable gift of the Holy Spirit, . . . (On Fasting, ch. 8)

[Baptism produces] . . . the remission of sins, . . . deliverance from death, . . . the regeneration of man, . . . the bestowal of the Holy Ghost, . . . (Against Marcion, Book I, ch. 28)