High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Baptismal regeneration is the name given to doctrines held by some Christian denominations which maintain that salvation is intimately linked to the act of baptism, without necessarily holding that salvation is impossible apart from it. The etymological background the term might be taken as implying it means "being born again" (regeneration, or rebirth) "through baptism" (baptismal). However as G.B. Caird has pointed out, etymology deals with the origins and root meanings of words and these “continually change their meaning,… …sometimes moving out of any recognisable contact with their origin … It is nowdays generally agreed that current usage determines meaning”. In this case there is no standard usage: for Reformed theologian Louis Berkhof, “regeneration” and "new birth" are synonymous; for Herbert Lockyer, they are not. Critics of the doctrine frequently allege that it tends to emphasize external form (including the role of water) rather than internal content; supporters associate the two closely.