Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!seismo!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: jhpb@granjon.garage.att.com Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Validity of Baptism Message-ID: Date: 12 Nov 90 01:45:32 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: AT&T Bell Labs (Liberty Corner) Lines: 73 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Frank wrote: There are no recorded children baptisms in the Bible. If I read it correctly, baptism is unto repentence. A baby has no capacity to repent. In fact, I don't believe that babies have the capacity to sin. As far as the original sin is concerned, Jesus has atoned for that. We will not be judged by the sins of our parents, but by the sins our own self committed. Christ has atoned for those also, however, his atonement for our own sins is effective only upon the condition of repentance. This is the reason baptism should only be administered to a fully repented person. I suggest that baby baptism is a false concept. Historical evidence suggests that infants have always been baptized, from the very beginning of Christianity. A short search didn't show up anyone who denied the efficacy of infant baptism until the Reformation. Its efficacy came under attack in the Reformation because it is incompatible with Luther's doctrine of justification. In Scripture, there are several passages of interest on the subject. Here are two points: - There are several mentions of the baptism of a whole "household". I Cor. 1:16, for example. - Circumcision, according to St. Paul, has been replaced by Baptism (Col. 2). Circumcision was definitely for infants. Here are a couple examples of the historical kind: - St. Polycarp of Smyrna said, shortly before his martyrdom, "86 years have I served him [Christ]." (Martyrdom of Polycarp, 9:3). From the date of his martyrdom, it follows that he was baptised around the year 70 as a child. (St. Polycarp was a disciple of St. John the Apostle, if you're not up on your church history.) - The Apostolic Tradition, by St. Hippolytus of Rome, 215 AD or so, gives a description of the early Baptism ceremony. It includes the Baptism of infants. (This document makes for interesting reading. It is one of the two most important extra-Scriptural things written in the early Church on the liturgy and the organization of the Church.) - a Carthaginian synod under St. Cyprian, held in 251 or 253, disapproved the postponement of Baptism for children under the age of 8. (It may be 8 days, my sources are in conflict.) - The Catholic Encyclopedia attributes the following to St. Augustine on the subject of infant baptism (sermon 11): "This the Church always had, always held; this she received from the faith of our ancestors; this she perseveringly guards to the end." It sound like something he might write, but I haven't been able to check the authenticity against another source. Joe Buehler [Your reference to Luther's theory of justification suggests that Luther opposed infant baptism. He did not, and in his later life he persecuted those who did. The actual issue was not justification, but the nature of the Church. The early Reformers, both Lutheran and Reformed, still had the idea of a Church that included everyone. The radical end of the Reformation believed in the "gathered Church". They rejected the concept that an entire town could be Christian. Christians were a small (usually persecuted) minority called out of the people as a whole. The conventional Church (particularly in the Reformed tradition) was based on the OT concept of a covenant between God and a people. Children were part of this covenant from birth. Thus infant baptism. The gathered Church was an attempt to maintain the integrity of the Church by admitting only those who had made a personal commitment. It took seriously Paul's contrast between circumcision of the flesh and of the heart, and concluded that participation in the Church, and baptism, should be based on circumcision of the heart. Modern Protestant churches generally use ideas from both of these traditions. --clh]