What does Confirmation do that Baptism did not?

Baptism regenerates you and makes you a Christian, while Confirmation increases that grace and gives you two things baptism is never said to give: knowledge and strength, so that you can stand your ground and confess Christ boldly. The clearest New Testament witness is a passage most people read right past. In 1 John 2:20 the apostle says, "you have the unction from the Holy One and know all things," and he comes back to it in verse 27, "his unction teaches you of all things and is truth and is no lie." That word for unction is chrisma, and John is the only New Testament writer who uses it. It is related to the verb chrio, to anoint, which the New Testament uses four times of Christ and once of Christians, in 2 Corinthians 1:21. Oil is the material of an anointing, as Hebrews 1:9 indicates. Now, could that unction be an oblique reference to baptism? I do not think so, and here is why. Baptism is never called an unction in the New Testament, and baptism is nowhere said to give knowledge and strength. But that is precisely what John says the unction does. It teaches you all things. Not everything there is to know, of course. In context John means everything he has been teaching them about the Antichrist, because there was a man named Cerinus going around the churches at that time saying Jesus was not God, which is probably where the Arian heresy got started, and John's whole letter is aimed at that emergency. The unction is what keeps them from wavering under it. That purpose fits the sacrament of Confirmation and nothing else. The pattern is visible in Acts as well. In Acts 8 the Samaritans have already been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, and the text says explicitly that the Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them. Then Peter and John lay hands on them and they receive the Holy Spirit. Two distinct moments, and the second one is the laying on of hands, which throughout Acts is the standard way spiritual authority and power are conveyed from person to person. That is exactly why Simon the magician tries to buy it. Notice he shows no interest at all in Philip's miracle-working power. He wants the power he saw in Peter's hands. Pope Innocent I, writing to Decentius of Gubbio in 416, appealed to that very passage in Acts when he reserved Confirmation to bishops: presbyters are priests of the second rank, but they do not have the summit of the priesthood, and only bishops deliver the Holy Spirit by anointing the forehead with chrism. The popes and councils are consistent about what the sacrament accomplishes. Innocent III: it is called confirmation because through it the Holy Spirit is given for an increase of grace and for strength. Eugenius IV in Exsultate Deo, 1439, lays it out in sequence: through baptism we are spiritually reborn, through confirmation we increase in grace and are made strong in faith, and then being reborn and strengthened we are nourished by the divine sustenance of the Eucharist. He identifies the matter as chrism prepared from oil, and says the effect is that the Holy Spirit is given for strength, just as he was given to the apostles at Pentecost, so that the Christian might boldly confess the name of Christ. That is the whole logic of it. Eugenius also names the three sacraments that imprint an indelible character on the soul, and it matters here: baptism, confirmation, and holy orders. Trent made it a dogma in Canon 9 of the sacraments: if anyone says that in the three sacraments of baptism, confirmation and orders there is not imprinted on the soul a sign, a certain spiritual and indelible mark, on account of which they cannot be repeated, let him be anathema. So Confirmation is not a renewal ceremony and not a graduation. It is a permanent mark on your soul, a second one, distinct from the mark of baptism. You cannot get it twice, and you never lose it. I think that is part of why John can tell his readers that they know, with confidence, in the middle of a heresy crisis. There is something on their souls that was not there before. And Trent's canon on the sacraments in general, Canon 2, warns off the other error in the other direction: if anyone says that those who ascribe any power to the sacred chrism of confirmation offer an outrage to the Holy Spirit, let him be anathema. The oil is not decoration. It carries power, the same way the water of baptism carries power. So here is what Confirmation adds. Baptism made you a son. Confirmation makes you a soldier who knows what he believes and will not be talked out of it.