quotations about baptism
Rationally considered, nothing can be more absurd than the baptism of infants under any circumstances. No statement, no matter by whom it may be said to have been uttered, can make that true which is radically false. If an innocent child, unconscious of good or evil, irresponsible to God and man, incapable of thought or action, is not already, in accordance with Christian theology, a member of Christ, then no vicarious promise or priestly ablution can make him one. For if this were so, a similar ceremony under devil worship could make him a member of Satan.
TENNESSEE CLAFLIN
Talks and Essays
In the ritual of baptism, our ancestors acted out the bizarre truth of the Christian identity: We are people who stand totally exposed before evil and death and declare them powerless against love. There's nothing normal about that.
RACHEL HELD EVANS
Searching for Sunday
BAPTISM, n. A sacred rite of such efficacy that he who finds himself in heaven without having undergone it will be unhappy forever. It is performed with water in two ways -- by immersion, or plunging, and by aspersion, or sprinkling.
AMBROSE BIERCE
The Devil's Dictionary
Our justification from sins takes place at the point of saving faith, not at the point of water baptism, which usually occurs later. But if a person is already justified and has sins forgiven eternally at the point of saving faith, then baptism is not necessary for forgiveness of sins nor for the bestowal of new spiritual life. Baptism, then, is not necessary for salvation. But it is necessary if we are to be obedient to Christ, for he commanded baptism for all who believe in him.
WAYNE A. GRUDEM
Bible Doctrine
Take me to the water
To be, to be baptized
I'm going back home, going back home
Gonna stay here no longer
I'm going back home
NINA SIMONE
"Take Me to the Water"
In effect, baptism in New Testament theology is a loyalty oath, a public avowal of who is on the Lord's side in the cosmic war between good and evil.
MICHAEL S. HEISER
The Unseen Realm
Prominent Christians in Constantine's time waited to be baptized until their deathbeds lest they commit a "major" sin that couldn't be forgiven of those already baptized.
THOMAS F. MADDEN
From Jesus to Christianity: A History of the Early Church
It is because baptism is a real insertion of human beings into the ascended manhood of Christ that the Church is Christ's own body, flesh of his flesh and bone of his bones.
E.L. MASCALL
The Mother of God
Arise, and be baptized,
And wash thy sins away;
Thy league with God be solemnized,
Thy faith avouched today.
EDWARD HENRY BICKERSTETH
"Stand, Soldier of the Cross"
What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
O precious is the flow
that makes me white as snow;
no other fount I know;
nothing but the blood of Jesus.
ROBERT LOWRY
"Nothing But the Blood of Jesus"
Speaking of church membership without baptism is like speaking of marriage without vows: such a thing does not actually exist.
BOBBY JAMIESON
Going Public: Why Baptism Is Required for Church Membership
A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the clumsy devices, coming now too late, now too early, by which Society would register the quick motions of man.
E.M. FORSTER
Howard's End
Baptism is like accepting a marriage proposal and the Eucharist is like the actual wedding.
PETER KREEFT
Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from Saint Thomas Aquinas
It is impossible to enumerate how thoroughly Catholicism today is saturated by middle-class reasonableness; one need only recall how even baptism--once the most powerful expression of the church's opposition to the state, a symbol of entry into a spiritual countercommunity, a mystical adoption, less the bearing of a name than being led by means of a name on the first steps of one's inner way--is today bound up with middle-class record-keeping.
ROBERT MUSIL
"The Religious Spirit, Modernism, and Metaphysics", Precision and Soul
[
Martin] Luther did not regard the water in baptism as common water, but as a water which had become, through the Word with its inherent divine power, a gracious water of life, a washing of regeneration. Through this divine efficacy of the Word the sacrament effects regeneration.
LOUIS BERKHOF
Systematic Theology
Many of us would pray not to die in a car crash before we were baptized, like other people pray to not get sick before their employee benefits kick in.
NADIA BOLZ-WEBER
Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint
Baptism is like the wedding ring of salvation. I put on my wedding ring at the moment I decided to publicly declare my commitment to my wife. Putting on the ring did not make me married. I am no more married when I wear my ring than when I don't. But the demonstration of my commitment to my wife that the ring represents was a crucial first step in marriage. Had I refused to do it, my wife would have had reason to question my intentions. In the same way, baptism is an outward symbol of an inward covenant we've made in response to Jesus' offer of salvation.
J.D. GREER
"Why Baptism Sunday?", Baptist Press, August 12, 2019
Just leave me to the river
Let it cleanse my face
I have no power to ward it
Like the baptism of the earth
LOW
"Weight of Water"
Thus the vocation of the baptized person is a simple thing: it is to live from day to day, whatever the day brings, in this extraordinary unity, in this reconciliation with all people and all things, in this knowledge that death has no more power, in this truth of the resurrection. It does not really matter exactly what a Christian does from day to day. What matters is that whatever one does is done in honor of one's own life, given to one by God and restored to one in Christ, and in honor of the life into which all humans and all things are called. The only thing that really matters to live in Christ instead of death.
WILLIAM STRINGFELLOW
Instead of Death
The earthly form of Christ is the form that died on the cross. The image of God is the image of Christ crucified. It is to this image that the life of the disciples must be conformed; in other words, they must be conformed to his death. The Christian life is a life of crucifixion. In baptism the form of Christ's death is impressed upon his own. They are dead to the flesh and to sin, they are dead to the world, and the world is dead to them. Anybody living in the strength of Christ's baptism lives in the strength of Christ's death.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER
The Cost of Discipleship