Ooh, I get to start the thread. Okay,
WARNING … wall of text ahead.King Erlian wrote:
It wasn't a bathtub I was baptised in, more like a miniature swimming pool at the front of the church—sections of the floor could be removed to reveal the pool underneath.
Baptistry, yes. That’s what those pools are called. I’ve also seen churches baptizing their members outdoors in lakes, rivers, etc.
As for receiving the Holy Spirit, don't get me started on that one. I was psychologically and spiritually damaged by aggressive "get-filled-with-the-Holy-Spirit" types during the first few years after I began attending church, and now any talk about exercising the Gifts of the Spirit makes me shudder.
One of the mods,
Dr.Elwin Ransom, made some excellent posts regarding the tendency of some churches to elevate an “emotional” experience over all other forms of faith, worship, and experience. Jesus said that we should
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind” (
Luke 10:27. Unfortunately some churches say that the heart trumps all. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but this parallels the rise of “romance” as the modern reason for marriage.
Now, it is true that “there’s an eternity of distance between the head and the heart”—i.e., between mental assent/accepting reality, versus love/relationship—but love isn’t always a theatrical production. By their logic, the one who loves a spouse in deep, quiet, and thoughtful ways (as opposed to the public-displays-of-affection of newlyweds) must not “really” love the spouse at all. (“Because if you were really in love, you’d do it the same way that we do!”)
Well,
Ransom says it more eloquently and graciously than I did. Maybe someone whose google-fu is superior to mine can locate the posts and link them.
One could say that a child doesn't start off as "saved" and then become "unsaved" so much as starts off as "pure" and is "lost" when he or she sins for the first time, which has to be an act of the child's own will.
But helplessness is a factor in the expression of will. Before I had heard of the “It’s a good life” example, the “Augustinian” example I had heard—I have no idea where—is that if a newborn baby had the strength of a mighty gorilla to get what it wants, we would see it doing harmful things. Maybe even a preborn child, if it had that level of power. I don’t know if Anthony of Peaksville had his superpowers all of his life, but if a baby could kill his caregivers because he didn’t like the taste of the baby food, or because being born probably hurts, well, this one would have.
For one thing, it makes understanding Jesus' position a lot simpler: if he inherited Original Sin through his bloodline and was therefore under God's wrath for that, even though he hadn't sinned himself, then he would have needed to be saved before he could save anyone else.
As I heard it, the Catholic position is that, since the Virgin Mary believed Gabriel, she became the first believer who really knew who Jesus was. Therefore her salvation was applied retroactively by God (Who is outside of time). At which point apparently there’s a Catholic belief that Mary’s salvation took the form of making her sinless and/or sanctifying her parents so that they could give birth to a sinless Mary. Any Catholics on board, please correct if I’ve heard incorrectly.
As I’ve heard assorted Protestant positions, they seem to share a belief that it takes two biological parents to pass along sin nature to a baby, and Jesus only had one biological parent. Thus any sin nature that Mary could have carried could not be inherited. Another way to phrase it is that, in terms of her ability to reproduce creatures like herself, it would make her “sterile” in the way that all virgins are sterile; you have the equipment, but without a partner it doesn’t work.
If God somehow blocked Original Sin at the moment of Jesus' conception or birth (whichever is the correct point), then why couldn't he do that with all of us, or why couldn't he have done that with Adam and Eve's children so that Adam and Eve would have been the only ones to have died in sin?
I don’t know either. I expect that’s a question we’ll all be asking in Heaven, as well as here and now.
On the other hand, if everyone starts out "clean" and is only lost when he or she starts sinning, then Jesus remained clean, although he had the potential to sin and was tempted to do so.
Jesus had the opportunity to sin, certainly. Potential, I don’t know. As part of the triune God, would that require the Father and Spirit to have the potential as well? We do know that Jesus was tempted (
Hebrews 4:15). Therefore, being tempted isn’t a sin. But it is an affliction. (Yielding is the sin.)
I imagine the problem with this argument is that it opens up the possibility that someone else might, just through conscious effort on their own part, refrain from sin throughout their lives and thus be "saved" without any help from Jesus. But even if it were conceivable in theory, I think it's a safe bet that it simply wouldn't happen in practice. If the odds against something happening are 10-to-the-googleplex-to-1 against, at what point do we cross from saying something is improbable to saying that it's impossible?
As I understand it—any Jewish readers on board, please correct if wrong—Judaism teaches that it isn’t possible even to obey all Ten Commandments. The belief is that a really dedicated person might obey the first nine and then stumble on the tenth: “Thou shalt not covet.” This was put in the Decalogue to keep the righteous humble, and to remind them that only God is perfect. So I’m guessing we already crossed that point in the time of Moses, if not earlier.
… if people are born (or even conceived) "lost" because of Original Sin, then babies who die in the womb or just a minute or two after birth go to Hell, even though they haven't done anything …
It used to be that Catholics did believe in baby hell, but a Dante version, where the punishment fit the crime. Thus, the torments were so “mild” that the babies didn’t really feel them. Catholics later moved away from the belief in baby hell and moved toward Limbo. Then they got rid of that too. Interestingly this makes them almost Baptist/Anabaptist in that some of them seem to lean toward an age of accountability, although they won’t admit it and would be shocked if it were pointed out to them.
waggawerewolf27 wrote:
A prayer of "asking Jesus into my life" is not a quick fix that will bring an instant change, like an e-book loading onto a reader.
Not even in the more non-denominational churches, which specifically advertise their approach as such! How many readers on this board are familiar with the re-re-re-re-dedication phenomenon? (
“Please save me, Jesus! This time, I really, really mean it!”) Yet such churches would resist the suggestion that it sounds a lot like the “state of grace” churches: you are in right relationship with God today, sin tomorrow, and have to go to Confession / repent by confession to the congregation / do something because you are outside of grace until you do. Fear is a common denominator in both.
“Salvation in a moment, conversion in a lifetime” … a lot of Christians miss that point, I think.
Many of our practices and beliefs in the Christian church are tied to a time when there was quite a high infant mortality …. [snip by TOM] …. Therefore babies were christened as soon as possible, so that whether they lived a short life or a long life they had at least been admitted to God's Church and hopefully God's care.
My understanding is that parents have the authority to baptize their babies/children because of
Acts 16:33, 1 Cor. 1:16, 1 Cor. 7:14. It doesn’t challenge the baptism of adults, just opens the door for the children. They then accept or reject their baptism when they are older, which is something that adults also can do.
…
So … what do I wish I believe? I wish I believed in Universalism; that is, that all souls will be saved.
Well, maybe that’s not quite accurate. I wish God may believe in Universalism.
In comparison, what do I actually believe? Okay …
I don’t believe in the spiritual innocence of children. I wish I did, and for a while I was in churches that did, but I don’t. Anthony of Peaksville went a long way toward putting that into words for me.
Therefore I don’t quite believe in an age of accountability. Sort-of-mostly-don’t, that is. I agree heartily with
the blogger that God has no grandchildren and no one can “make” a child get saved.
But I also agree—more heartily still—with the suggestion that
“If you are on the fence, my advice would be to to err on the side of grace and allow them to be baptized.” Remember all those churches that teach the children that they can’t get baptized until they reach the “age of accountability”? In my observation, it seems that such churches teach children that they’re not old enough to go to Heaven, but they are old enough to go to Hell—because if the children did not desire to be saved, they wouldn’t be worrying about it. Let the poor kid get baptized and stop trying to impose your own timetable on them to satisfy some rule. The loving parent and loving church definitely errs on the side of grace.
Finally, there’s the “what would Jesus do” idea. I think that the best picture we have of the nature of God is Jesus. And I have a hard time picturing Jesus roasting pagan babies on a spit.
So, I don't believe in "live infant innocence." But I do believe in "dead infant salvation." That is, a dead child is "safe in the arms of Jesus," as the expression says it. Whatever an "age of accountability" is, this satisfies it. And if there's none, it satisfies what we seem to know of the portrayal of Jesus.
Live children don't get this because they are still a work in progress.
{End.}