ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: Is Baptism necessary for salvation?

MODERN CHRISTIAN: Baptism is not necessary for salvation.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: How do you know this?

MODERN CHRISTIAN: Well, first of all, I know the Bible unlike you ancients.

Image © Charles Rondeau, 2015

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: You have to remember that the Bible was written, copied, translated, and brought down to the present time because of the ancients.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: Okay, whatever.  Let me tell you why salvation is not essential to salvation.  First of all, according to Romans 10:9, it says, “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”  Nowhere there does it say you must be baptized; it only talks about faith.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: But our Lord Jesus said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God… unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:3, 5).

MODERN CHRISTIAN: If Baptism is necessary, then this is a contradiction.  Jesus cannot contradict Himself or His Apostles whom He sent, since He is God.  Of course, He does not contradict Himself.  You understand this verse wrong.  When Jesus says, “unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God,” “born of water,” means natural birth.  You know, when a woman is about to give birth, we say, “her water broke.”  That is what it means here.  So one has to be physically born and then receive the Holy Spirit in order to be saved.  Also, notice, nowhere else in Scripture does it refer to Baptism as a birth.  This verse is not talking about Baptism.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: Actually, Scripture does refer to Baptism as a birth somewhere else.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: Where?!

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: In Titus 3:5, where it says, “According to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.”  The word regeneration in the original Greek is palingenesias which means “born again.”  It goes right back to our Lord Jesus’s words, “Unless one is born again” in John 3.  Notice also that it says “washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.”  It is the pattern of water and Spirit exactly as our Lord Jesus explained in John 3:3, 5.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: Okay, well Scripture then does refer to Baptism as a birth, but it is still not essential to salvation.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: How can you say that?  Our Lord Jesus Himself said, “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”  Entering the kingdom of God is salvation.  He says you cannot enter without Baptism.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: Because by doing so, Jesus will contradict other times He spoke and other Scriptures like Romans 10:9.  For example, think about the thief on the cross next to Jesus at His crucifixion.  Jesus told him, “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43).  The thief was not baptized, yet he was saved.  He was saved without Baptism.  Do you doubt he was saved?  Do you see the contradiction in your own thinking?

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: There is no contradiction at all.  It is actually in perfect harmony with the rest of the Scriptures.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: How?!

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: In Romans 6:3-4, St. Paul the Apostle says, “Do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?  Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”  Also, later on in Romans 6:8, it says, “Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him.”  Therefore, Baptism equals dying with Christ.  The good thief actually died with Christ, so according to this definition he was baptized.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: Hmm.  That is really interesting.  I never thought about it that way, but you are forgetting other examples that speak against your point.  In your ancient church, there were many who believed in Jesus and were martyred without ever having received Baptism, take, for example, St. Victor of Braga, St. Rogatien of Nantes, and St. Emerentiana.  These are three you call saints in your church.  They were not baptized, and you all confess that they are saved.  They truly are saved, yet you say that Baptism is necessary for salvation.  You are clearly contradicting yourself.  You can’t have it both ways.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: Actually, all three of them were baptized.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: No, they were not!  In your own church books it says clearly they were not baptized.  Do you want me to pull out the references for you?

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: It says they were catechumens meaning they still had not received Baptism.  You are right, yet they were baptized.  Let me explain how.  When our Lord Jesus Christ replied to the request of St. James and St. John the Apostles that they could sit each at his right hand and left, He answered them, “Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”  They answered that they were able, and He said, “You will indeed drink My cup, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with” (Matthew 20:22, 23).

What is this cup that our Lord Jesus talks about?  What is this Baptism that He talks about?  The image of the cup appears again when our Lord Jesus Christ is talking about His sufferings on the cross.  This Baptism is therefore referring to the sufferings and shedding of blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.  He said that St. James and St. John would indeed be baptized in this way.  Since our Lord Jesus died for the Gospel on the cross, then those who also die for the Gospel receive this type of Baptism as His, a Baptism in blood.  St. James was the first from the Apostles to be martyred according to Acts 12:1-2.  St. John according to church history was tortured for his faith and was almost killed several times, so he still suffered.

The early church understood that those who died in faith yet had not received Baptism were actually baptized in their blood as an offering to our Lord Jesus Christ.  Their understanding was based on this verse.

You see, in the ancient church, our understanding of Scripture was whole.  We did not take a verse from here and there and then built our conclusions.  We took everything together: the description of Baptism in water in the gospels, the Acts, and the epistles, then the description of Baptism as a dying with Christ in addition to our Lord Jesus’s description of it as related to suffering and bloodshed.  Therefore, we had a complete picture of it.  You only think about Baptism as simply an act of immersion in water.

MODERN CHRISTIAN: You’ve made some good points, but you’ve still not explained how Baptism does not contradict salvation through faith.  It clearly does.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: No it does not; on the contrary, it shows a person’s faith.  It is the result of a person’s faith.

If I believe someone, then I do what they say.  When I was young, I believed my parents who told me that going to college would help me have a good job.  So, I went to college.  When I was in school, I believed my teachers who said that what I was learning was important, so I learned and have kept what they taught me.  How much more then should I believe what our Lord Jesus Christ and his Apostles said?

When our Lord Jesus said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” (Matthew 28:19), then I will receive Baptism.

When He said, “He who believes and is baptized will be saved,” (Mark 16:16), then I believe that salvation is tied to Baptism.

When He said, “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God,” (John 3:5), then I believe one does not enter the kingdom of God, salvation, without Baptism remembering that Baptism is also dying with Christ and dying for Him as a martyr even if one had not been baptized in water, yet they were baptized in their blood for Him.

When St. Paul the Apostle said, “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ,” (Galatians 3:27), then I believe Baptism is essential to salvation.  How else will I put on Christ?

When St. Paul also said, “Do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?  Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life…  Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him” (Romans 6:3-4, 8), then I believe Baptism is essential to salvation.

When St. Paul in his final epistle wrote, “If we died with Him, we shall also live with Him” (2 Timothy 2:11), and I remember that dying with Christ equals Baptism, then I believe Baptism is essential to salvation.

When I see that all the ones who preceded me from the Apostles up until my days who received the Word of God, kept it under persecution, and passed it down to us by dying for it, and all these kept Baptism and said it is essential for salvation, then I believe it.

You see, I am not sitting in a room by myself thinking about the Bible.  I am surrounded by those who lived it both in the past (who received it from the Apostles) and those in my time, the Body of Christ.  I do not simply sit in a room by myself severed from the guidance of the disciples of the Apostles and try to understand by myself; the Body’s members all work together in their journey following Christ.  I listen to the voices of those who were filled with the Holy Spirit from the beginning of the church up until my days whom our Lord Jesus Christ raised up to carry the message of His Gospel.

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