@GratefulDisciple do you hold to any form of baptismal regeneration, or any view that says baptism as an act is necessary for salvation?

@LukeHill Personally, I hold the view of baptismal regeneration (meaning the Trinitarian life is infused to me; I became "born again"), so yes, baptism is necessary for salvation and the Catholic understanding of how baptism conveys this life is natural to me.

But I'm not a hardliner; if I follow the teaching I received in the church where I was baptized and confirmed, the Election is what matters where at some point of my life I became aware of this new life and would consciously nurture it in my faith life. If I one day apostasize, then that's an evidence that my faith is not real in the first place. As I explained in my answer, this is the Reformed understanding.

My wife's church is more Methodist in understanding, where conscious faith is key to be born again, which in turn IS the key to be saved. Methodists (Arminian) believe that you CAN KNOW whether you are saved; some even believe your sanctification can be complete on the earth. So there's an objective means of evaluation.

Baptism is then LESS CONNECTED to being born again, and as the Wikipedia says, some do Baptism at birth, some do when they become adult. So they highlight more of baptism as a PUBLIC profession of faith and as visible sign of membership in the local body of Christ. Instead, Faith is the prerequisite of being born again, not baptism.

So you can see Methodism is somewhat in the middle where Catholicism is hard line infant baptism & baptismal regeneration at one extreme, and Reformed baptist is hard line credo baptism as NO baptismal regeneration (symbolic) at the other extreme. Reformed Baptist would say that regeneration is 100% by grace through faith and that baptism is 100% obeying ordinance & going public, and not strictly necessary for salvation.

@LukeHill This debate between Gavin Ortlund and Trent Horn on baptismal regeneration can be helpful to you. Reading Gavin, I think the Baptist view described above is rather crude, so I refer you to Gavin for the fine details. He explained why he changed from paedobaptism to credobaptism here.