1) Is Baptism necessary or not? If it’s necessary, then surely it does something. What does it do?
Baptism is commanded by The Great Commission. It is a tangible gift by which we grasp the Promise of His Word that the water is attached to. Hence, it is a great source of comfort to those baptized as they sojourn through this life. Because you believe God’s Word regarding Baptism, you are saved. For you cannot believe that God created the world with merely His Word and selectively not believe what He says about Baptism. Either you believe God or you don’t.
1 Peter 3:18-22 says “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.
It is NOT a ritual you do for God to exhibit YOUR faith in God. It is a pledge FROM God of clean conscience to you despite your many sins that Christ has taken punishment for your sins and has paid the penalty in full.
Having said that, you cannot make Law out of Gospel. Is it possible to be saved without baptism? The thief on the cross wasn’t baptized but was going to be in paradise with Jesus on the very same day. But the source of the thief’s salvation was not whether he is baptized or not, but the faith God gave to the thief who Jesus is and what Jesus did on the cross for him. That is exactly the same faith the baptized exhibits in receiving the gift of baptism. Then the baptized has a time and place of a concrete event that he remembers of the promise by God to kill his old sinful nature and resurrect him in new life DAILY.
Luther was famous for flashing his baptismal certitude whenever tempted by the devil not to believe God’s promise.
2) If it does nothing, then why would it be required?
People pervert it and turn it into something they are doing for God to exhibit their obedience (mostly to themselves and others); mostly to favor merit in man’s eyes. God is not fooled by that.
3) If it does something, it must be unseen rather than just a nice ceremony, so what does it do to a soul?
It not only saves the soul, it also serves as a public confession as well as an anchor every day and the challenges it brings including death.
4) If it does something to a soul, and one would have to believe it does something positive for a soul, then why believe in sola fide since no faith is necessary on the part of the infant being baptized?
When the infant John the Baptist was in his mother Elizabeth’s womb, he physically responds to the mere physical presence proximity of his cousin, Jesus, who was also in his mother Mary’s womb.
If you define faith as an intellectual assent to the various propositions in the Bible, then the infant may not have that kind of “faith.” You ought to think of faith as a gift from God to all people (including infants) to believe his Promises.
For even a child believes that if he cries from hunger that a mother’s breast appears out of nowhere to feed him and satiate his hunger. The child has no understanding about what milk is, it chemical composition, its nutritional value or the physiology by which it is produced or the mechanism by which it comes out of a breast or even the psychology or morality of the woman who will feed him merely upon crying. Yet, he cries in “faith” and “belief” and he is satiated. So yes, even that child has the faith that God that requires.
Thank you.
I think you’re missing the point of my questions. Does Baptism do something or not?
You wrote: “Baptism is commanded by The Great Commission.”
Thus, we can conclude it MUST do something, right?
“It is a tangible gift by which we grasp the Promise of His Word that the water is attached to.”
Gift of what? Gift = grace does it not? Yet how can a gift of grace be given to a person without faith? No child has faith. Yet Baptism is given to children by Lutherans is it not? Also, you wrote “a tangible gift by which we grasp the Promise of His Word that the water is attached to”. That MUST mean that Baptism empowers us, enables us to do it. That too must be by grace which is a strengthening, an enabling, an empowering if you will. Thus, Baptism = grace. And grace is given even to those (children) without faith.
I wrote: “2) If it does nothing, then why would it be required?”
You wrote: “People pervert it and turn it into something they are doing for God to exhibit their obedience (mostly to themselves and others); mostly to favor merit in man’s eyes. God is not fooled by that.”
Who is perverting it really? If someone believes Baptism must be done but it doesn’t do what it does, then isn’t it that person who is perverting it? We can say Baptists (oh, the irony of that name) who don’t actually believe Baptism does much of anything unseen other than officially show someone has joined an invisible Church, miss the boat on Baptism. But what about Lutherans? Again, what does Baptism do? How does it work? What makes it work? I know WHO makes it work. But WHAT makes it work? And it is a work, just not our work.
I wrote: “3) If it does something, it must be unseen rather than just a nice ceremony, so what does it do to a soul?”
“It not only saves the soul, it also serves as a public confession as well as an anchor every day and the challenges it brings including death.”
So Baptism saves a soul even though the infant possessed no faith whatsoever? So sola fide is a complete sham? And the only what a soul can be saved is by grace. If grace is given in Baptism - where the infant has no faith whatsoever - then why is it assumed by Lutherans that grace is not given in the sacrament of matrimony? Or ordination? Or anointing of the sick? And if you’re going to say, but there are Lutherans who believe it is given in those, then why do Lutherans reject them as sacraments altogether? Why would anyone theologically reject what could be a vehicle for grace as instituted by Christ?
“You ought to think of faith as a gift from God to all people (including infants) to believe his Promises.”
But there isn’t a shred of evidence that such a gift has been given to a single infant receiving Baptism. Why “ought” I think of it in that way when it misses a basic point. Could it not be Baptism itself which - being a gift as you say - makes way for faith in the child?
Baptism was always a problem for Luther. I think we can see why it was.