R
Ron_Conte
Guest
Jesus did not NEED to be Baptized. But it was fitting for him to be baptized because baptism is the path to salvation, and he was leading the way to salvation for us. Also, Baptism imprints a character on the soul, and it was fitting for his human soul to have this character, since he asks all his disciples to be baptized and receive the character.
- Why did Jesus need to be baptised in the first place? Since He is “like us in all things but sin,” Jesus had no original sin to be washed away by baptism. So what was the point?
The requirement for a Trinitarian formula is, in my opinion, a matter of discipline. It may well be that in the very early Church a formula was used which was not explicitly Trinitarian.
- The Catholic Church only recognizes the Trinitarian baptism formula as valid (“I baptise you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit…”). There is no possible way that John the Baptist would have used the Trinitarian formula, since Trinitarian theology was still in its infancy and had yet to be developed.