There's a lot of talk in some circles about the alleged importance of having a more efficacious view of baptism. Supposedly, it's a problem (often treated as if it's a big problem) that some people aren't assigning more significance to baptism. Typically, that concern is out of proportion to other concerns we ought to have.
One of the factors involved, which gets far less attention than it should, is that assigning more significance to baptism often comes at the price of assigning less significance to one or more other things. Taking a higher view of baptism doesn't have to involve taking a lower view of something else, but the point I'm making here doesn't have to be applicable in all contexts in order to be applicable in some.
There are some things that can't be assigned to both prebaptismal faith and baptism. You can't become a Christian, go from being unjustified to being justified, or whatever you want to call it both at the time of prebaptismal faith and at the time of baptism. When people tell you how high a view they hold of baptism, one of the questions you should ask is how much they're arriving at that view by lowering their view of prebaptismal faith. In other words, if efficaciousness is so important, as we're told so often in discussions of the sacraments, where's their concern for the efficacy of prebaptismal faith? That faith is something scripture assigns a lot of efficaciousness to. (So do a lot of pre-Reformation extrabiblical sources, like the ones discussed here.)
And there's another angle from which we should approach this topic of gaining efficaciousness for one thing at the expense of another. As I've discussed before, the extrabiblical sources sometimes define baptism differently than modern advocates of baptismal regeneration do. A combination of two or more rituals will be referred to together as baptism, and efficaciousness will be assigned to one or more rituals other than the water rite that we typically have in mind when we refer to baptism today. Or some rite other than the water ritual will be distinguished from the water ritual, but some efficaciousness that modern advocates of baptismal regeneration assign to baptism will be assigned to that other rite instead. When the forgiveness of sins in general, the forgiveness of a particular type of sin, or the reception of the Holy Spirit, for example, is assigned to prebaptismal anointing with oil, a postbaptismal laying on of hands, foot washing, or whatever other rite other than what we today call baptism, the fact that the source in question also assigns some degree of efficaciousness to baptism doesn't change the fact that there's disagreement over the type of efficaciousness baptism involves. The extrabiblical sources who discussed some sort of baptismal efficacy widely disagreed with each other about what efficacy baptism has, and they often assigned efficacy to other rites in dubious ways as well. When we see an extrabiblical source assign efficacy to something other than baptism, we should keep in mind that there can be implications for that source's view of baptism, not just how he viewed that other thing.
So, whether we're thinking of faith, baptism, anointing with oil, the laying on of hands, or whatever else, we need to remember that there often are implications for other things we're not focused on at the time. One thing comes at the expense of another. When you hear talk about how we supposedly need to adopt a higher view of this or that sacrament, such as baptism, ask yourself if part of the price you have to pay for that is a lower view of something else.
I'm not suggesting that there's widespread ignorance of the sort of tradeoffs I'm referring to in this post. It's common knowledge, but people sometimes have it too far in the background of their thinking rather than closer to the foreground, where it should be. Or they haven't thought through all of the implications. The title of this post refers to robbing prebaptismal faith, but advocates of baptismal regeneration could accuse me of robbing baptism, robbing baptismal faith, or some such thing. The difference is that I'm right, and they're not, as I've argued in posts like the ones I've linked above. We're all involved in tradeoffs in one way or another. I want to underscore that fact and reinforce the fact that we should be more concerned about prebaptismal faith than what comes later, which is how Jesus and the apostles prioritized these matters. A low view of prebaptismal faith is more of a concern than a low view of baptism, faith in the context of baptism, anointing with oil, the laying on of hands, foot washing, giving to the poor, or whatever other later activity somebody wants to wrongly focus on to the detriment of prebaptismal faith.
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