Re-Baptism, Knowledge of Remission of Sins Necessary?, Etc.

[zoonance]

I have a question that I do not really know how to answer to where it satisfies everyone so I will ask it here and maybe someone can give a satisfactory answer that all can accept.

Lets say everyone agrees that Christ through his Apostles commanded everyone to be baptized. The question is how can one say that it is not a salvation issue regardless of the belief of just what it entails.
 
If Christ said that we are to if we do not is our faith where it should be? If we do not would it not be considered rebellion against Christ will?

It seems to me that regardless of what we think baptism is or for or whatever the simple fact that Christ said to do it would make it a salvation issue would it not?

Note the lack of your demanding it be for "the remission of sins" or be illegitimate.  I know too many coc who teach/believe that it must be done for this reason or it wasn't legit.  - the person is still unsaved and in need of proper baptism.

[zoonance]

And yet, DCR, if I expressed faith that somehow I would experience God's grace in some way and somehow vaguely have a notion that it's related in some way to baptism, is there an RM church that would allow me to go forward for baptism?

What if I just said, I want to be baptized?  Would that suffice?  If someone asked me why, what is necessary to demonstrate my "faith"?  In any RM church it would be knowledge.

Or, even worse, what if I said I wanted to be baptized, and my only reason was that because Jesus said to.  What if someone asked me my beliefs about baptism and I denied Acts 2:38, I denied that in baptism I received forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit?  What if I said simply, I only want to be baptized because I want to follow Jesus and Jesus said to do it.  I don't think it does anything at all except get me wet, but I trust Jesus and Jesus said do it, so I want to do it.  Would any RM church baptize me?

Some RM Christians might make a nominal distinction (in name only) between faith and knowledge, but in terms of actual operation, it's knowledge of baptism that counts.

I go with CD on this one in my experience.  There is a grand movement that is beginning to recognize and teach passionately that faith and knowledge are not the same.  But most of my traditional upbringings and passionate argumentations leave little to the imagination that many (of not most 'classicals') view faith and knowledge as siamese twins.

[zoonance]

Now an assertion of unfair generalization is something else than having no basis in fact.

Is my generalization unfair?  Well, it would be hard to prove one way or another wouldn't it?  I mean after all, we have no sociological sampling to empirically verify it one way or another.  Have I met all RM Christians?  No.  Have I met, do I know more than you or anyone else?  Who knows?

In any case this is an internet forum and it's caveat lector.

Now to your question: faith in a person does not require knowledge with regard to doctrine.

Take infants.  Does an infant trust it's mother and father to provide for its needs?  Of course it does.  If it didn't it would die within hours.  Is that trust cognitive?  Depends upon what you mean by cognitive.  It certainly isn't analytic or verbal.  But it is a trust.  There is a bond and a connection.  And it doesn't even require a genetic component.  Adopted infants exhibit the same trust to non-genetically related parents.

So, I guess the question is: is Jesus a person or is Jesus a doctrine?  Does one have faith in a person or in one's acceptance and understanding of a particular doctrine?

Yet again.  I see your point!

[lancelot]

Knowledge of Remission of Sins Necessary?

The question is often posed in the way you have posed it, but I think there is another issue, a biblical one, that comes from looking at it from the other viewpoint:

Must one be taught the truth (and therefore believe and obey the truth) in order to be saved?

The answer to that is yes.  It is the seed, the word of God, that is sown upon hearts resulting in Christians (Matt.13).  They obeyed a pattern of doctrine in Rom.6:17,18 in order to be saved.  They obeyed the truth in order to be purified (I Pet.1:22).  One must obey the gospel in order to be saved (I Thess.1:7-9).

So, if one teaches falsely that one believes and says the sinner's prayer and is saved and then is baptized later for some invented reason, one has not believed and obeyed the truth, but a tare, a perverted gospel, false teaching.

When viewed biblically, the person who is taught will have the knowledge in some form or wording that remission of sins by the blood of Christ comes through being baptized.

Lancelot

[Norton]

" Baptism is no where proposed as an expiatory rite. He that regards it as such-he who goes to the water as a Jew to the altar, and is baptized merely to obtain the remission of his sins, mistakes the whole matter."
        *****
A very good way to have put it. An "expiatory rite" is exactly how baptism was viewed by many in the Churches of Christ, in my area, of the 50's and 60's. It was commonly thought that baptism forgave only those sins committed prior to the rite. All sins committed after baptism were forgiven by the second expiatory rite of repentance and prayer, in which each individual sin had to be confessed to God or else it would not be forgiven.