On An Argument Against the Necessity of Baptism
There is an argument I hear quite a bit against the necessity of baptism. It says something like: 1. If it is possible to go to heaven, or be saved, without baptism, then baptism is not necessary for salvation. 2. It is possible to go to heaven, or be saved, without baptism. 3. So baptism is not necessary for salvation. There's something funny going on with the word "necessary" here. To flesh this out, take a similar argument: 4. If it is possible to go to heaven, or be saved, without knowing Jesus, then knowing Jesus is not necessary for salvation. 5. It is possible to go to heaven, or be saved, without knowing Jesus (Romans 1 and Old Covenant Jews) 6. So knowing Jesus is not necessary for salvation. This should make the proponent of the first argument uncomfortable because they often times say that we shouldn't really make big deal out of baptism, at least not to the degree that we Catholics (or any other Protestant gr...