Hello!
Tonight is just one of those nights for me, where even sleeping pills will not help me sleep. So I've been lying awake all night, at first reminiscing of times gone, friends past, and then I got into the whole spiritual thing again. If you read my posts you can probably tell I've never really been very literate when it came to religion, I was far too rebellious as a child to care. But now, something has me wondering....
Is the whole baptism thing, or whatever it is called these days, necessary for forgiveness? Or can you attempt to attone for your past actions even though you were never baptized, even as a child? I am curious, and honestly a little bit worried.
Christian views on Baptism are diverse. So you will get different answers depending on the theological tradition one belongs to. The position of most Christians--which would include Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Lutherans, and others--is that Baptism is the normative means by which a person becomes a Christian, that it confers forgiveness of sins, it unites the individual to Jesus Christ, makes one a child of God, etc. In these traditions Baptism confers forgiveness of sins not because the act itself forgives sins but because Baptism is connected to Christ's death on the cross, and so in Baptism Christ's atoning work on the cross is applied to us.
Atonement, in Christian theology, is always about what Christ has done. Nobody atones for their own sins, that isn't a concept one will find in Christian theology. In fact the word "atonement" was coined by a 16th century Bible translator--William Tyndale--who was having a hard time trying to find a word to translate a particular concept in the original languages of the Bible. He coined atonement as a compound of at+one+ment, that is, the state of being "at one"; the idea being that in Christ God and man have been brought together and reconciled. There are different ways Christians have, through history, spoken about the atonement, these are usually known as "Atonement Theories". Without getting into it, and to put it fairly simply, these are different ways in which Christians have sought to explain or articulate what it means to say that Jesus died for our sins.
Regardless, all mainstream orthodox Christian denominations and groups state that through Christ's life, death, and resurrection God has healed the breach between us and Himself caused by the problem of sin. And that this is given to us as a gift, as mercy or grace, and so that we are, in Christ, forgiven of everything. In light of that, we believe that we are to seek to live justly in the world out of gratitude for what God has done, and out of humble obedience love others, love our neighbor as ourselves, forgiving others for having injured us, even loving our enemies and blessing those who curse us. To live rightly before both God and neighbor, not because it earns us some kind of afterlife reward or scores us brownie points with God, but simply because it's the right thing to do.
Baptism is, for most Christians, understood as the first step in the Christian life. It's the means by which we enter into the Christian life, whether that happens when one is an infant or as an old man it doesn't matter. To that end Baptism is understood by most Christians as necessary but not absolutely necessary. Necessary, because it's the normal means by which God joins us to Jesus and makes us His; not absolutely necessary because there are circumstances that render it impossible, or perhaps someone simply doesn't know. We would never say that not being baptized means a person is cut off from God or the forgiveness that is in Jesus, because we
can't say that; God is ultimately a gracious, kind, and merciful God who is stubbornly compassionate to a world of sinners and unwilling that
any perish.
Traditionally minded Christians, such as myself, would say that if one desires to become a Christian to go and speak with a member of the clergy--a pastor or priest--and many will most likely encourage taking classes, what is traditionally called "catechism". Most traditional churches tend to perform baptisms at regular times during the year, the main one being on or around Easter. The idea behind catechism is so that the person desiring to convert has an opportunity to learn the basics of the Christian religion, they can ask questions, get answers. Many churches offer classes and there is no pressure that you have to convert, the Roman Catholic Church for example has RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults). But many churches have similar programs that are there to help inform the curious as well as, if one is interested, provide a channel toward receiving baptism and formal conversion.
As mentioned in the beginning, Christians from different backgrounds and traditions will give different responses. I'd say what I've said here would be in general agreement with Lutheran, Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Methodist, and other traditions.
-CryptoLutheran
