Yah, I get it - no offense taken...
I wasn’t contending with your view of baptism. I really have no firm view one way or another as I don’t believe it matters to salvation.
Nor do I believe it matters wrt salvation. Yet we are commanded (no uncertain terms) to perform it.
In the first instance you dismissed because it was specificaaly ordained and the second supported your claim by the phrase “may well mean” so wasn’t specifically ordained either.
Accepted. But what I infer is in line with the general meaning of Baptism in the whole of the Scriptures, which was my point.
IOW, The rule (what the Bible DOES declare) of baptism, loosely defined, is: repent, be baptized, receive the Spirit.
The symbolism around baptism reinforces that: The submersion is the old man dying, and the raising up is the new man, resurrected in Christ.
It is my opinion that infant baptism raises an exception to that rule, and a fault, in that the infant cannot participate knowingly, so there is no "old man dying"... so neither can there be a new man raised up in Christ.
[roamer_1:] Nor do I believe it matters wrt salvation. Yet we are commanded (no uncertain terms) to perform it.
Please let me correct myself, or rather, to expand: I do not believe the act to be necessary to salvation, but I do believe it to be necessary: It is the act of entering into the covenant with YHWH through Yeshua. That is what it is for, even as Israel passed through the waters of the Red Sea to enter into the covenant (see 1 Cor 10).
That is why "repentance and baptism" are for the remission of sin - One enters into the covenant. It is the covenant that remits, not the act...
Now, I readily admit that the covenant can be made without these means, as it is a spiritual matter. But that should not be understood to mean that the act is not necessary. One should desire to be baptized and make it official.
I guess that's why the "Church" had to come up with another reason for it. Hence the idea of "original sin" being what is taken away with infant baptism. Of course, nowhere in Scripture is this concept ever taught (outside of the Adamic sin nature we all get), but, as we see, that doesn't seem to stop them.