Controv. XII: Does baptism regenerate infants inwardly, bind the Spirit to the water, and admit lay or even women baptizers in necessity?

Controversy XII. On Baptism. Is holy Baptism so effective that every infant washed with by that very act inwardly regenerated by the Holy Spirit — and so must have actual faith, since baptism profits nothing without faith?

Is baptism's washing only an outward means God ordained, a sacrament or symbol and seal of our regeneration (Titus 3:5; Acts 16:22), and a moral instrument of it, under the condition of faith — faith already present in adults (Mark 16:16), or faith still to come in infants who will live — and so necessary only hypothetically, as a divine command?

Or is it also a physical means and an inward efficiency without which regeneration does not ordinarily happen, and by which that regeneration is altogether worked — and so absolutely necessary, a means without which it cannot be?

On that reading, mere lack of baptism in infants, if it does not damn them outright, at least puts them in danger of damnation; and Christ's words about being born of water and Spirit are pressed that way (John 3:5).

From this they ask whether, in necessity, private persons ordinarily called laypeople — and even women — may baptize, though they may not preach (1 Corinthians 14:34–35).

The Lutherans say yes; the Reformed say no.