Baptism

We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.  

Nicene-Constantinople Creed

What's with acknowledge?  The rest of the creed has been believe, believe, believe. Now we have acknowledge.  The new Roman missal actually translates it as confess.   Google translate uses confess.

The Oxford English Dictionary presents some definitions for both.   It translates confess as 
-To acknowledge, own, or admit.
-To acknowledge, concede, grant or admit for oneself an assertion [as true]

To confess is to acknowledge.   The definitions for acknowledge shed a little more light.  To acknowledge is:

-To recognize something to be what it is specified to be.

-To accept the authority, validity, or legitimacy of [something].

-To accept the truth of something.

It also can be defined as a legal term with which someone signs on to accept the truth of a proposition.

All those apply.   It seems that acknowledge (or confess) implies use of the mind. Belief does not require that we understand things.  Acknowledge implies active acceptance that there is one and only one baptism.  In our time it may be practiced by many denominations, but we acknowledge it as the same baptism.  Baptism is one of the sacraments that does not require the action of an ordained priest and could therefore be handed forward from the apostles in an unbroken line from Christian to Christian.  This is in sharp contrast to priestly ordination which we believe could only be handed on from ordained bishop to priest in an unbroken line to the ordination of the apostles.

Baptism forgives sins. Of course it does.  In the early church baptism, an adult-only   sacrament, was frequently postponed, at least in part, for that reason. Constantine is only one prominent example of someone who put it off until his deathbed.  While the forgiveness of sin (and the fact that Jesus vested the right to forgive with the Church) existed from earliest times, the primitive church did not practice the Sacrament of Reconciliation as we know it. Forgiveness of sins in manner distinct from Baptism boiled up as an issue in years after persecutions in response to the question, "Can those previously baptized persons who denied the faith to save their skins be forgiven?" Those who answered no were found ultimately to be heretics.   Eventually the problem of sins after Baptism had to be resolved, but there was never any doubt that in Baptism itself there is a clean slate, the forgiveness of sin in all its forms.