ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CONFESSIONS 1 CON1-Q033 JANUARY 2005 CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY: CAPTION FIRST, INC. P.O. BOX 1924 LOMBARD, IL 60148 * * * * * This text is being provided in a rough-draft format. Communications Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. * * * * >> DAVID: Okay. I'm following what you're saying. How then are we delivered from such a situation? >> DR. KLAUS DETLEV SHULTZ: Well, David, Article 2 speaks clearly about the solution to this entire problem that we had just discussed in the previous question. It says there, clearly, that those who are not born again through baptism and the Holy Spirit will not be saved. Now, what do we mean by this? I think we need to backtrack a little further to see that when we speak about baptism, we also imply, very clearly, that baptism brings nothing else than that what Jesus Christ has achieved in his ministry. That means that there is a work having been completed 2000 years ago, our justification, our forgiveness, and that baptism serves as the means to bring to us those benefits, the gift of salvation that we need to recover from our negative state, namely, our constant proclivity to sin and of going against God. I understand baptism, therefore, as a visible means of enacting that what occurred 2000 years ago. It is the visible means of justifying us. So baptism is the sacrament through which we are drowning our old man, our Adam, and thereby resurrecting this new and righteous person. We can say that that reflects the theology of Romans 6. We as the Lutheran Church always believed strongly that this baptism is used as the marking point and starting point of our Christian being. It means the Holy Spirit is working together with baptism and delivers us the gift through it. The Holy Spirit does not work apart from baptism. Many want to part from baptism and say, well, perhaps there is another occasion in our life where we could pin our salvation. But to Lutherans, that visible act through baptism of drowning the old Adam and resurrecting a new person with Jesus Christ, that is nothing but our salvation, and we always need to return back to it. So baptism becomes a symbol of our faith, the symbol of our comfort for having not done something that we ourselves cannot achieve. The Roman Catholics say much the same as I have said now. But we also do say very clearly that baptism remains an element throughout our entire life. You might recall the fourth question in the Small Catechism that Luther answers on what does baptism signify. And he said it signifies the drowning of our old Adam, and that it resurrects our new man. This drowning and resurrection is an enactment of baptism by way of repentance that we show contrition and that we believe again. So our salvation from our evil inclination, from the curse of God extended over all humanity, that forgiveness continuously is given to us when we remind ourselves what happened at baptism and return back to it, to that boat, that safe haven through repentance. But baptism does not lose its significance. It is precisely through repentance made that very act again continuously in our life. You may recall, David, that Article 2 also speaks of us being propagated as sinful beings according to our nature. It means propagation refers to our infant being. Small children are considered sinful as well. How do we overcome that? Well, our fathers of the Augsburg confession have clearly recognized that they must thereby also affirm infant baptism. It is God's command extended to all nations that include children as well. They, too, have this trust in God, although we do not hear their faith clearly enunciated and spoken. For this reason, Article 9 on baptism clearly affirms that it is necessary, because God demands it, that we baptize infants as well because they, too, are in need of that gift of salvation to remove them from the curse of God.