The Rt. Rev’d Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham (England), on the sacrament of baptism, continued. Referring to St. Paul (in Romans 6) appealing for faith on the basis of baptism, he speaks of doing the logical sums of baptism and λογιζεσθε, the need for the baptized to reckon themselves, to figure it out—it being baptism. He says, “Of course God welcomes us as we are, but God’s welcome never leaves us as we are. God’s inclusiveness is always a transforming inclusiveness…. Baptism is about dying, and then rising again, not somehow evading the challenge and getting in without any dying and rising to be done. As C. S. Lewis was always fond of emphasizing, there is nothing in this world which cannot die and be raised into God’s new world; but there is nothing in this world which will make it into the new world if it does not die and be raised.” 

Tomorrow, Wright on infant baptism.