To: kosta50
It is not that we adopt God at baptism, but God adopts us, whether we know it or not.
But if the bathing (or splashing) of infants by clergy was enough to do the trick, then we could easily save all mankind in this way. Although you will retreat to traditions of the church and writings of the Fathers, I would assert as a Baptist that scripture does not contain a clear description of infants being baptized. And when Jesus said "Suffer the little children to come to Me", He didn't tell anyone to baptize them either.
It's always what's in your heart thta matters to God the most. If the Heart of Christ beats inside your Christian soul, you have nothing to fear. :)
We'd better hope so! I have posted this same thing many times. It is how God can save mentally disabled persons or small children, I think. We must be content in the work He has wrought in us and confident that our Father shall never let us be lost, that our Shepherd, Christ, to whose care the Father has given us, is faithful to His flock.
To: George W. Bush
Although you will retreat to traditions of the church and writings of the Fathers, I would assert as a Baptist that scripture does not contain a clear description of infants being baptized Your resume does not contain everything about your life either. To get exactly who you are, one would have to dig a little beyond that. Although we can presume that your resume is absolutely correct, that it containes no lies, it is not even close to who you are.
Tradition is the life of the Church. It is its collective memory. It involves more than the Bible. It represents habits of worship practic ed by the earliest Christians. Just as your parents know some things you don't know, so do we as Christians know only what our fathers and mothers told us, but some of their habits and methods of going about things simply do not have an explanation.
Baptism was likened to the covenant with God and therefore compared to Jewish circumcision. It is easy to see that one would want to establsh a convenant with God at the earliest possible moment.
God bestows His grace on all mankind, on the pious and impious, on the righteous and the unrighteous. God does not want us to try to understand Him because His ways and thoughts are not ours (to understand).
All we do is petition the Holy Spirit to accept the soul of the infant. All we do is bring our little children to Him, as He asked.
7,072 posted on
05/23/2006 3:04:38 PM PDT by
kosta50
(Eastern Orthodoxy is pure Christianity)
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