Adult Baptism and this question.

Since faith only in Luther's era was a Catholic issue that was tied into life after baptism, and after absolution, those who practice adult baptism for the remission of sins such as Churches Of Christ have little stake in the question. Catholics do baptize adults but the emphasis here is post-baptismal justification through faith alone.Those practicing believer's baptism for the remission of sins aren't to be tied to the doctrine because they have a completely separate theology post-baptism, without infant baptism or priest absolution, those teaching adult baptism as a mere symbol such as baptists do have a stake in the theology in that they use earlier quotes to justify their theology, but they should be separated from the early discussions because they also don't practice infant baptism or priestly absolution and use faith only in all stages which is different than protestants.

Faith Only is a protestant theology rooted in Catholic doctrine of absolution.

Catholic

Lutheran

Wesleyan (Methodist, Nazarene, Wesleyan, etc)

Some Calvinist.

Baptist later as they wedded faith only to their theology.

I will be covering both Protestant and Baptist usage just to be thorough.

Basically this historically was a Catholic and Protestant issue. It does not apply to others directly until later in the 18th century. It is true some baptist-like groups taught faith only prior to the protestant reformation but it wasn't really a world-wide issue until highlighted by protestant theology and refuted by Catholics.

Early comments by Catholics, before the 9th century, should not be used as a precedent for later baptists who practice adult baptism as a symbol. They actually have a different theology and the statements were not in context in most cases..

Early Catholics in the 2nd thru 4th Centuries used faith only passages to apply after infant baptism or adult baptism, after priestly absolution, justification from early Roman Catholocism was believing in baptism and believing the priest forgave you. Similar to Luther.

Thus early Catholic quotes were in reference to different stages than Baptist arguments.

Faith only to Luther was basically belief the priest forgave before completing the penance he prescribed. Catholics on the other hand taught it was after doing what the priest prescribed as penance.

It was in simple terms faith in absolution without penance, such as paying a priest or doing a set service..