Pardon my Protestantism, but if we do “NOTHING on our own to bring about justification,” explain how we must be baptized to be justified.
Justification doesn’t simply fall on us like manna from heaven. Jesus made justification possible through his work on the cross, and we did nothing to bring that about. Baptism is how we participate in the justification made possible by Christ. Whether it’s the normative means of baptism of water or the extraordinary means of baptism of blood (martyrdom) and baptism of desire (we’d accept baptism if we knew such a thing existed and what it meant), we must reach out and take hold of the hand Jesus is offering us. God is not going to grab us if we don’t want to be grabbed. Otherwise the Fall of Man would never have happened in the first place.
From how you’ve previously described your beliefs, you most likely believe in predestined salvation. That means you believe God, through a conscious act rather than permission for us to exercise our free will in the matter, justified who he wanted to justify and didn’t justify anyone else. As you apparently believe justification did simply fall on us like manna from heaven, then it makes sense you don’t believe baptism is necessary.
Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong in my assumptions about what it means to be “Strongly Reformed Calvinistic Fundamental Anabaptistic Evangelical”
Predestination is not what the Christians in the early Church believed and practiced based on the historical documents we have available from the time and based on Tradition. They believed we weren’t justified without an act of the will on our part to accept the grace of God in believing Jesus is our savior. You’re certainly free to disagree with the early Church on that. Your disagreement with the Church does mean, however, that I won’t accept your teaching as coming from any reliable authority.
It doesn’t make sense anyway. Why bother to proselytize if God’s already decided who wins and who loses? The only reason to do so is if choice is possible.
Romans 4:5–“And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.” If baptism were necessary to be justified, Paul would have mentioned it here.
As context is important, here’s that chapter of Romans up to verse 5:
What then can we say that Abraham found, our ancestor according to the flesh? Indeed, if Abraham was justified on the basis of his works, he has reason to boast; but this was not so in the sight of God. For what does the scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” A worker’s wage is credited not as a gift, but as something due. But when one does not work, yet believes in the one who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness.
On the surface it appears that this can be used to claim that Abraham was justified by faith alone and not by works at all. But would that be entirely correct? Let’s look at James 2:20-26 and see what that says:
Do you want proof, you ignoramus, that faith without works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by the works. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called “the friend of God.” See how a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And in the same way, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by a different route? For just as a body without a spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.
Hmmmm, here we see Scripture stating that Abraham was NOT justified by faith alone but that works were a part of the picture. In fact, here we see the clear use of the word alone to state that faith alone is not enough. Do we agree with James 2:20-26, or do we agree with Romans 4:1-5? They both use the exact same quote of “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness” to claim what appear to be two contradictory things. They’re both considered inspired books by virtue of their inclusion in the bible. Scripture cannot contradict itself. What do we do?
I do what any good Catholic would do and defer to the authority of the Church in the interpretation of Scripture. The Church tells us that Romans 4:1-5 doesn’t ever claim that faith alone is what we should teach. It can be interpreted to mean that works simply don’t justify us in and of themselves. The Church then points to James 2:20-26 and tells us that our works do have merit, but ONLY when we first have faith. When we don’t have faith, our works avail us nothing in the eyes of God.
That’s what any disagreements we have are going to come down to in the end. I choose to accept the authority of the Catholic Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, in how Scripture and Tradition are to be interpreted. You choose to accept a different authority. This will be only one of many differences based on your choice of a different authority than Christ’s Church. You may quote from Scripture all you like, but your voice will not move me so long as it’s reliant only upon a personal interpretation of Scripture which is divorced from both Tradition and the consistent teaching of the magisterium.
