Baptism: Different Understandings Between Christian Groups
Baptism: Research two different understandings between Christian groups of the ritual of baptism; include each one's justification of their practice. Identify grounds for possibility of each coming to respect the other's practice. (Main differences occur on proper age when the ritual should be performed and what baptism actually accomplishes.) For Roman Catholics, who are practitioners of infant baptism, to be baptized into the church is to accept the church's first sacrament, and is the first step for the entry of the believer into the Christian community: "Holy Baptism holds the first place among the sacraments, because it is the door of the spiritual life; for by it we are made members of Christ
Smyth wrote (and John Calvin was later to concur: "For baptism is not washing with water: but it is the baptism of the Spirit, the confession of the mouth, and the washing with water. Although it is not the only condition for entry into the kingdom of Christ, baptism is the first condition of entry for Roman Catholics. And since through the first man death entered into all, unless we be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, we can not enter into the kingdom of Heaven, as Truth Himself has told us," (Fanning 1907). However, baptism alone is not enough because "infants, not being able to make an act of faith, are not to be reckoned among the faithful after their baptism, and therefore when they come to the age of discretion they are to be re-baptized; or it is better to omit their baptism entirely than to baptize them as believing on the sole faith of the Church, when they themselves can not make a proper act of faith" (Fanning, 1907). In other words, faith must be a conscious act, through the acceptance of other Church sacraments. Catholic's belief in original sin, that all humans are born sinners because of the fall of Adam, and the need for the sacrament of baptism to wash this away before the believer can, of his or her own free will, accept the other sacraments, thus is not upheld by modern evangelical Protestants. Now that an infant cannot be baptized with the Spirit is plain. "John Smyth, perhaps the first Baptist, viewed that baptism of the Spirit is required for a baptism to be valid," stressing the symbolic nature of the action (Jones, 2008). infants neither have an evil conscience, nor the question of a good conscience, nor the purging of the heart, for all these are proper to actual sinners: hence it followeth that infants baptism is folly and nothing" (Stone, 2008). Adult baptism symbolizes the believer's conscious decision to enter the Church.
Common topics in this essay:
Roman Catholics,
John Calvin,
Baptism Research,
Smyth Baptist,
Holy Baptism,
Heaven Truth,
Holy Ghost,
condition entry,
conscience nor,
infant baptism,
fanning 1907,
act faith,
roman catholics,
baptism spirit,
adult baptism,
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Acceptance Essays
