This quote from me was posted anonymously by a reader
...Consider the whole letter Paul wrote to the Roman believers. Everything he wrote was a testimony of life instead of legality. His arguments make it clear that salvation is solely the work of God through Christ, which is why it must be by faith so that it could be by grace. For someone to argue that a ritual of baptism was somehow "necessary" would have stirred up an argument of the same magnitude as that of circumcision in both Romans and Galatians. He would have framed it as being of the same legal insanity as any "biblical" issue that might be posed as being "necessary".-jim
Re: Simon the sorcerer
...Consider the whole letter Paul wrote to the Roman believers. Everything he wrote was a testimony of life instead of legality. His arguments make it clear that salvation is solely the work of God through Christ, which is why it must be by faith so that it could be by grace. For someone to argue that a ritual of baptism was somehow "necessary" would have stirred up an argument of the same magnitude as that of circumcision in both Romans and Galatians. He would have framed it as being of the same legal insanity as any "biblical" issue that might be posed as being "necessary".-jim