Sacramentalism and Perseverance of the Saints
From a comment exchange on the Federal Vision/Sacramentalism controversy within the conservative Presbyterians, Pastor Wegener lays out the extremes:
How do our children become Christians?
A sacramentalist answers, through the church and her sacraments. So my four children became Christians at their (infant) baptism, according to this line of thinking.
The Baptist will answer through repentance toward God and faith in His Son Jesus Christ. And they arrive at this conversion at a particular point in time. So my children’s baptism didn’t help or contribute a bit.
I like David’s polar extremes of the Sacramentalist and the Baptist. The Sacramentalist position helps me make sense of a doctrine I’ve always thought of dubious value: Perseverance of the Saints.
If you believe that somebody is Saved by baptism, then unless you’re *really* extreme, you’d have to believe that he can be unsaved by later events such as backsliding. So if you can get someone to believe in Perseverance, you can get them to avoid crude Sacramentalism.