Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: jac@cbnmva.att.com (Jeffrey A Curran) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Baptism Message-ID: Date: 4 Aug 89 03:41:01 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Reply-To: curran@cbnews.ATT.COM (jeffrey.a.curran) Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 60 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu [This is another reply to Carlos Carrion's question about baptizing his child. It refers to Craig Walter's response, which indicated that the whole practice of infant baptism is useless. I have some questions about the appropriateness of responses of this kind. Please see my comments below. --clh] I agree with Craig completely. Since I have become a Christian, I now realize that baptism shortly after birth is really useless and is only done for tradition. There is scripture to back up the fact that baptism is something that God likes us to do because it is an outward symbol that we have made a personal decision to follow Christ. A 2-week old baby cannot make this decision. Acts 8:12 talks about new converts being baptised only after they have believed and decided to receive Christ. Acts 8:36-38 portrays a story of a eunuck (African?) being baptised by Phillip after the eunuck decided to receive Christ. Therefore, scripture says that this dilemma of the initial party is a decision for the child to make when she matures. Jeff Curran, Tim McDaniel [This is a good example of the complain that some people have made about the contentiousness of this group. Almost any practical question can become the grounds for a doctrinal objection. Almost any question about Catholic practice can elict a Protestant objection that Catholic practice is idolatrous. Almost any question about Protestant practice could elict a Catholic response that the whole issue is irrelevant since their church isn't a real one anyway. So it becomes impossible to have any discussion about Christian practice, because it is immediately drowned out by the doctrinal implications. This particular case is particularly distressing, because there are issues here that even a baptist should surely believe are more important than the ones they brought up. This family has obviously been staying away from the church because they are afraid that the wife's divorce will cause them to be rejected. Surely the most important thing to do here is to encourage them to find some way to regain Christian fellowship. This must surely be more important to their child's future than whether he is baptized, even if you think that infant baptism is not appropriate. The question which I as moderator have to consider is whether I should try to enforce any rules in this area. I have a feeling that this group would be a lot more useful for many of us if I enforced a rule that practical questions should not be answered by doctrinal objections. Surely we must have something constructive to say to each other, other than that everybody else should adopt our opinions on everything. I have no objection to doctrinal discussion. In fact I find it rather interesting. But we have to find a way to avoid turning everything into a doctrinal issue. I've even wondered whether I should create two subgroups. What do people think? --clh]