Thank you.
I would like to try and articulate what I am asking a little better. I know of the various scriptures used to support baptism as something salvific.
That’s good!
What I am having trouble with is the opposing line of reasoning. If the opposing veiw is not taken care of what we would have is a contradiction which can not be.
Don’t confuse apparent logical consistency wtih truth. There are some very smart people who are Protestants. There are very intelligent people who are Baptist, non-Denominational, Assembly of God, Seventh-day Adventists, or even Jehovah’s Witnesses. Never underestimate the ability of people to convince themselves that they’re already right
If you go to a Christian (i.e., Protestant) bookstore, you’ll find a whole lot of books titled “Systematic Theology.” These are attempts by the aforementioned intelligent people to defend and show the logical consistency of their interpretation of Scripture. What most of them ignore is that logical consistency is not our only measure of the validity of an interpretation of Scripture. We have more evidence to integrate than just the words of the Bible; we should also bring in history (how did the original recipients of the gospels and epistles understand them?) and, as Catholics, the consistent teaching of the Church (what has the Church always taught?)
Even the latter, however, is not needed to disprove the line of reasoning you’re asking about. I’ll even argue that the facts of history aren’t even utterly essential; if you recognize that the Bible clearly teaches that baptism is salvific (and who could deny that? “Baptism now saves you”), then first of all note that any interpretation which denies the ordinary necessity of baptism for salvation denies the salvific nature of baptism. It completely ignores the passages cited by many of the Catholics here. You’ll note that even here, we Catholics are not contending with reasonable alternative interpretations of the passages we present, instead, our opponents are simply throwing new verses into the mix. If the line of reasoning you’re concerned with were truly sufficient, it would
require a reasonable explanation of the passages we cite. We can do likewise with any of the passages our opponents present; ask yourself why they haven’t done the same with ours
But when we integrate history into the facts by which we measure biblical interpretations, we find even more evidence against the line of reasoning you’re concerned with. The interpretation we Catholics are asserting is the consistent interpretation of the early Church, the interpretation of the very people who were taught (both by preaching and by writing) by the Apostles themselves. There are no historical accounts of Christian churches who denied the necessity of baptism in salvation. There are no first-century Baptist churches, teaching that baptism is only an ordinance, not the essential sacrament of faith that it is. We can even trace the origin of the line of reasoning you’re concerned with back to the Reformation, nearly 1,500 years after the last Apostle died.
And then we look at the Church, and we see that from the very beginning, a person was not a Christian until he was baptized. Even in the earliest descriptions of liturgy, it was noted that after the reading of the Apostle’s memoirs, non-baptiz people (even Catechumens) were required to leave before the Eucharist, because they were not Christian, they were not “in Christ,” they had not been buried with Him through baptism. The Church has
always taught that people must be baptized to be Christian, and they are not Christian prior to that.
We can measure biblical interpretations by looking at their logical consistency, their historical consistency, and their consistency with the teaching of the Church. Even without the latter (which Protestants clearly reject, of course) “Baptism is not ordinarily necessary for salvation” is an interpretation we can easily reject.
Jeremy
