Water baptism, unnecessary for heaven?

[souldiver]

Didn’t the thief beside Jesus get to heaven after he believed Jesus not having any water baptism?

 

[Vico]

Didn’t the thief beside Jesus get to heaven after he believed Jesus not having any water baptism?

The just were released from Hades when Jesus descended there after his death, prior to his glorious resurrection.

**Catechism
**633 Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, “hell” - *Sheol *in Hebrew or *Hades *in Greek - because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God.480 Such is the case for all the dead, whether evil or righteous, while they await the Redeemer: which does not mean that their lot is identical, as Jesus shows through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was received into “Abraham’s bosom”:481 "It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Savior in Abraham’s bosom, whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into hell."482 Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him.483

 

[R_C]

Didn’t the thief beside Jesus get to heaven after he believed Jesus not having any water baptism?

Did you not read that God spoke and said: “Unless you are born of water and Spirit you cannot enter the Kingdom of God”?

God, however, is not tied by His own Sacraments (Aquinas) and obliges no one to do the impossible (Bonaventure). He can freely confer sanctifying grace on whomever He wills, if the ordinary means of salvation are unavailable to them.

The Church has since time immemorial recognized three souls that may be saved in an extra-ordinary way by the Lord:

1 - infants who died (before birth or before the age of reason) without being baptized,

2 - those who were invincibly ignorant of Christ and His Church, governed by His Vicar and the bishops in communion with him, yet strived to follow God’s will to the best of their knowledge,

3- those who laid down their life and were killed in witness of the Faith or of a Christian virtue, without having been baptized.

Of the **second **case, the Church has sometimes adopted the expression “baptism of desire”, though this is not a baptism, nor a sacrament. St. Alphonsus of Liguori thus writes:

baptism of desire is perfect conversion to God by contrition or love of God above all things accompanied by an explicit or implicit desire for true baptism of water, the place of which it takes as to the remission of guilt, but not as to the impression of the baptismal character or as to the removal of all debt of punishment. It takes place by the impulse of the Holy Ghost. It is “de fide” that men are also saved by Baptism of desire, by virtue of the Canon Apostolicam, “de presbytero non baptizato” and of the Council of Trent.

The Church further clarifies this matter in papal teaching - which in matters of faith, as part of the ordinary and universal magisterium, is inerrant - as in the teachings of Pius IX and Pius X:

Here, too, our beloved sons and venerable brothers, it is again necessary to mention and censure a very grave error entrapping some Catholics who believe that it is possible to arrive at eternal salvation although living in error and alienated from the true faith and Catholic unity. Such belief is certainly opposed to Catholic teaching. There are, of course, those who are struggling with invincible ignorance about our most holy religion. Sincerely observing the natural law and its precepts inscribed by God on all hearts and ready to obey God, they live honest lives and are able to attain eternal life by the efficacious virtue of divine light and grace. Because God knows, searches and clearly understands the minds, hearts, thoughts, and nature of all, his supreme kindness and clemency do not permit anyone at all who is not guilty of deliberate sin to suffer eternal punishments. - Pius IX

he who finds himself outside without fault of his own, and who lives a good life, can be saved by the love called charity, which unites unto God, and in a spiritual way also to the Church, that is, to the soul of the Church. - Pius X

Concerning the **third **case,St. Alphonsus would write:

Baptism of blood is the shedding of one’s blood, i.e. death, suffered for the Faith or for some other Christian virtue. Now this baptism is comparable to true Baptism because, like true Baptism, it remits both guilt and punishment as it were ex opere operato. I say as it were because martyrdom does not act by as strict a causality “non ita stricte”] as the sacraments, but by a certain privilege on account of its resemblance to the passion of Christ. Hence martyrdom avails also for infants seeing that the Church venerates the Holy Innocents as true martyrs. In adults, however, acceptance of martyrdom is required, at least habitually from a supernatural motive.

Church Father St Basil clearly states:

There have been some who in their championship of true religion have undergone the death for Christ’s sake, not in mere similitude, but in actual fact, and so have needed none of the outward signs of water for their salvation, because they were baptized in their own blood. Thus I write not to disparage the baptism by water, but to overthrow the arguments of those who exalt themselves against the Spirit; who confound things that are distinct from one another, and compare those which admit of no comparison.

Again, inerrant ordinary and universal magisterium confirms this through papal teaching, as is the case of St. Pius X (<<The absence of Baptism can be supplied by martyrdom, which is called Baptism of Blood>>) and Innocent II (<<We assert without hesitation that the priest whom you indicated had died without the water of baptism, because he persevered in the Faith of Holy Mother Church and in the confession of the name of Christ, was freed from original sin and attained the joys of the heavenly fatherland>>).

The fact remains that the Lord, in Sacred Scripture, has publicly revealed the necessity of baptism of water and spirit, in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and the Church, in Sacred Tradition, has confirmed this in stating, free of error, that the sacraments of the New Law are necessary for salvation. We are not free to say that Baptism of water is unnecessary for heaven - in fact, this is condemned by Scripture and Tradition.

We are however free to say, with Christ and the Church, that there is the possibility - the hope - that those who were not baptized with water may have, through grace outside of the ordinary, found salvation by being incorporated in a mystical way in the Church.

 

[Iron_Donkey]

God can of course do whatever He wants, and so make exceptions to the rules. But He pretty explicitly says that baptism is necessary several times. So while He may make an exception for the good thief, who expressed explicitly faith in Christ, but died before able to act on it by seeking baptism, or someone who dies on their way to their baptism, or someone who cooperates with what grace God offers, but never hears of Christianity and so is never baptized, these are all exceptions. Baptism is ordinarily required.

 

[Evan]

The thief was, most likely, a Jew. He would then have been circumcised under the covenant with Abraham. SO, as with St Elijah, St David, St Solomon, he would be saved under that covenant and released from the Hell of the Just when Jesus freed all the old testament saints after his death.

 

[TK421]

Didn’t the thief beside Jesus get to heaven after he believed Jesus not having any water baptism?

Baptism is necessary for man to be saved by God, but baptism is not necessary for God to save man.

If the owner of a store says the Soup & Salad special is on Wednesdays, then it is necessary for customers to get the Soup & Salad special on Wednesdays. However, the owner may still offer the Soup & Salad special to a person on a Thursday, if he were to so choose. It would be absurd to say that the owner is bound by his own devices.