Posted on 05/12/2014 6:52:28 PM PDT by Gamecock
Edited on 05/12/2014 6:57:47 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis on Monday declared that everyone has the right to be baptized, even aliens should they come knocking on the church's door.
Christians cannot "close the door" to all those who seek baptism even if they are "green men, with a long nose and big ears, like children draw," the pope said at his daily Mass, according to Vatican Radio.
(Excerpt) Read more at gmanetwork.com ...
No danger there. Sola scriptura is un-scriptural, logically impossible and fails in practice - most spectacularly failing to result in "one lord, one faith, one baptsim."
Perhaps these are among the reasons Christ established His Church and gave it authority.
Only if it is insubstantial and/or not true. But it is neither, And I did not say that superficial water application was not both desired, and required as taking a beginning step of obedience into one's submission to Christ and His appointed ministers. I am saying that it cannot save, which is a firm opinion regarding the application of exegesis to The Christ's ordinance.
"The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position."
Then I chimed in (actually uninvited to the exchange, merely observing as an onlooker) and corrected both of you, remarking that baptism is for believers, with the implication that baptism does not make one a believer; and wetting ones skin with water does not save. Those are not straw men distractions, they are statements directly negating both your basic assumptions and hypotheses arising from it. It was just an assessment of the silliness of your debate progress.
I also added an observation, not relative to your speculations, but touching the topic of baptizing Martians, as a teaser. Not having anything directly affecting your exchanges, had nothing to do with straw man or no straw man.
What are you trying to prove?
Nope. Paragraph one is filled with - at best - false assumptions, conclusions or assumptions. Making your statement somewhere between these and straw men or a combination of both.
And, so that we don’t substitute a straw man for your position on baptism, what exactly is your position?
Argument by assertion is one of the weakest forms of argument. Calling Catholics erring deviant murdering and immature might be an argument one would encounter in a junior high debate contest, but not among those who are interested in following the Truth, wherever it might lead.
The rules of Faith all work together towards preserving the sacred deposit of Faith, from the time of the apostles until the end of time.
As St. Francis de Sales puts is:
The Rtde of Faith. 85
Now as God revealed his Word, and spoke, or
preached, by the mouth of the Fathers and Prophets,
and at last by his own Son, then by the Apostles
and Evangelists, whose tongues were but as the pens
of scribes writing rapidly, God thus employing men
to speak to men ; so to propose, apply, and declare
this his Word, he employs his visible Spouse as his
mouthpiece and the interpreter of his intentions. It
is God then who rules over Christian belief, but with
two instruments, in a double way : (i) by his Word
as by a formal rule ; (2) by his Church as by the hand
of the measurer and rule-user. Let us put it thus :
God is the painter, our faith the picture, the colours
are the Word of God, the brush is the Church. Here
then are two ordinary and infallible rules of our
belief : the Word of God, which is the fundamental
and formal rule; the Church of God, which is the
rule of application and explanation.
I consider in this second part both the one and the
other, but to make my exposition of them more clear
and more easy to handle, I have divided these two
rules into several, as follows.
The Word of God, the formal rule of our faith, is
either in Scripture or in Tradition. I treat first of
Scripture, then of Tradition.
The Church, the rule of application, expresses her-
self either in her universal body by a general belief
of all Christians, or in her principal and nobler parts
by a consent of her pastors and doctors ; and in this
latter way it is either in her pastors assembled in one
place and at one time, as in a general council, or in
her pastors divided as to place and time, but assembled
in union and correspondence of faith ; or, in fine, this
86 The Catholic Controversy, [paet h.
same Church expresses herself and speaks by her head-
minister.’”’ And these are four explaining and apply-
ing rules of our faith ; — the Church as a whole, the
General Council, the consent of the Fathers, the Pope.
Other rules than these we are not to seek ; these
are enough to steady the most inconstant. But God,
who takes pleasure in the abundance of his favours,
wishing to come to the help of the weakness of men,
goes so far as to add sometimes to these ordinary
rules (I refer to the establishment and founding of the
Church) an extraordinary rule, most certain and of
great importance, — namely, miracles — an extraordinary
testimony of the true application of the Divine Word.
Lastly, natural reason may also be called a rule of
right-believing, but negatively and not affirmatively.
For if any one should speak thus : such a proposition
is an article of faith, therefore it is according to
natural reason : — this affirmative consequence would
be badly drawn, since almost all our faith is outside
of and above our reason. But if he were to say : this
is an article of faith, therefore it cannot be against
natural reason : — the consequence is good. For natural
reason and faith, being supported on the same prin-
ciples, and starting from one same author, cannot be
contrary to each other.
Here then are eight rules of faith : Scripture, Tradi-
tion, the Church, Councils, the Fathers, the Pope,
miracles, natural reason. The two first are only a
formal rule, the four following are only a rule of appli-
cation, the seventh is extraordinary, and the eighth
negative. Or, he who would reduce all these rules to
* CTief ministeriel. That is, ruler of the Church, but ruling as prime
minister of Christ. [Tr.]
Ah, other issues needed attention. Noew, which baptism is it that you want to know about?
Is there more than one?
From my Post 180 to your 179:
>> There are seven baptisms mentioned in the New Testament
>> (actually eight, if one counts ritual immersion in the mikvah),
>> only one of which is the form of baptizing regenerated disciples
>> on the basis of forgiven sins, and is barely emulated let alone duplicated
>> by denominations today, who might well baptize infants
>> or putative Martians, outside constraints of the Great Commission.
Perhaps you thought the above factoid was too trivial to review or take into account? In any case, FYI:
The Seven Baptisms are as follows:
. . . .I. The Baptism unto Moses
. . . II. The Baptism by John
. . .III. The Baptism of The Christ
. . .IV. The Baptism of Violent Death
. . . V. The Baptism of The Holy Spirit
. . .VI. The Disciples’ Baptism or Water Baptism
. . VII. Baptism for the Dead
Pick one that interests you, and I'll try to get back in a timely fashion.
You gave your position on other’s views of baptism, so I’m asking for your position on the baptism of Christians. Today.
Hope this is specific enough for you.
Hope this is specific enough for you.
It is. There is only one Scriptural baptism applicable to one that is a Christian. That baptism is the induction ritual, the baptism by immersion in water of a learner personally affirming his/her decision to enter the never-ending life of a disciple. In this baptism, one affirms by voice or sign that he/she has already irrevocably confessed and repented from his/her sin, and has released and committed his/her soul, body, and spirit into the eternal care of Jesus, The Anointed Lord of all, and His Father, The Mighty God; having been instructed in and agreed with the terms and basic conditions of The Faith; and claims a witness of the Holy Spirit with his/her spirit to the effect of spiritual rebirth through the entrance and work of the generative Word of God, together with acknowledging that the Blood of Jesus the Redeemer and Savior has washed his/her sins away and cleansed from all unrighteousness.
This baptism places the candidate into the local, visible formal assembly of Christ's body as a disciple-member subject to continually congregating for learning the practice of keeping watchfully secure and unchanged whatsoever The Christ commanded, of which one ordinance is that this new member is to learn to make and train disciples.
The special Disciples chosen by Jesus of Nazareth, were commissioned by Him to recruit more disciples, personally instructing them in The Faith as they had been taught by Him, to the point where these new disciples were fit and willing to be inducted into the company of the committed.
Thus the first Disciples were to bear the fruit of disciples, which is more disciples. They were also to train their disciples so that they (the disciplers) could commission their second generation of disciples likewise.
The public significance of the enrollment of spiritually reborn repentant believers is their open confession of allegiance to Jesus as Lord and Master through willingly submitting ones self to the administration of the induction ritual, which is baptism by immersion at the hand of a commissioned Servant of God, in the Name and Authority of God The Holy Father, God The Begotten Son, and God The Holy Spirit, thus showing that the baptized person then and henceforth was to be identified as a bondslave of The Christ, and as pledged to act accordingly.
Hope this is specific enough for you.
I recognize a bit of the apostolic Church there. ‘They were also to train their disciples so that they (the disciplers) could commission their second generation of disciples likewise.’ and so on. Curious as to how you hand it down into a different church. What is your denomination? Who/where were these disciplers in, say, the fifth century?
Also curious how your view is not subject to the same criticism as the one you characterized as “ a human-executed superficial ritual [that] cannot save.”
Apparently here you have completely missed the totally clear and obvious declaration that this baptism is meant only for those who are convincingly demonstrating that they have been saved prior to this human-executed superficial rite of application of water to the disciple's body.
"Superficial" as used here does not mean "trifling"; it means applying something to the surface of a physical object. The medical term would be "a topical application."
The topical application of water with the accompanying words identifying the office and commission of the administrator as well as the signification of the rite neither causes nor effects the standing of the person regarding his/her eternal destiny.
Rather, it was used by Jesus to serve as a ceremonial demonstration instituted to publicly and concretely declare that both the authorized administrator of the rite and the disciple willing to submit to the ritual were in agreement that the person being baptized had exercised a repenting and saving faith such that he/she was now irrevocably committing to accepting His yoke, entering His Company, following Him in His Way, and bearing the Cross--the Gospel of the kingdom--even to his/her own Cross-death.
That baptism of the disciple was instituted subsequent to the revelation of His Divinity by The God to John the Baptizer, which was announced by John to his Jewish audience. The baptism of Jesus was not John's "baptism-unto-repentance (εις μετανοιαν, where εις means 'on the basis of'; baptism of people who had already repented and showed it as a permanent change). Jesus may well have baptized at least some of the followers whom He chose to accompany with Him as individually supervised trainees, but He did have them baptize other followers into The Company (Jn 4:1,2; Lk. 6:17,11:27; Acts 1:21-22, 4:23).
So, the command to baptize disciple-believer-followers (the stipulation of regeneration added at Pentecost and following) into The Company was not novel to The Eleven. What was novel was His command to rccruit and train disciples from Gentile people as well as Jews; and when mutually agreed as to their spiritual fitness, to baptize them into The Company a delegated administrators of the authority of The Father, of The Son, and of The Holy Ghost.
Furthermore, they were to teach these disciples how to learn and exercise all the same imperatives He had given them, most particularly for preaching the Gospel for the purpose of making more regenerated believer-disciples.
In summary, the purpose of this baptism was not to confer or impart the gift of The God, but to put a defining border and limit as to the membership of The Company, which in each physical location an independent autonomous assembly of The Company was raised and formed.
At this point, and until the closing of canonicity of apostolic writings by Beloved John's death, there was no sense suggested of a governing catholicity external to the finite borders of the local visible assembly of baptized believers written into the Scriptural annals of the development of "churches."
========
The assembly I congregate with is a New Testament ekklesia, modeled after those formed by Philip and Paul; an independent, fundamental, immersionist company preaching salvation by faith alone on the basis of the Cross-shed Blood, physical death, resurrection, ascension, and reconciliation by The Anointed Eternal High Priest Jesus alone; and whose return as LORD of All to institute His Government over this world is imminent and prayed for. This model of churches preexisted the Platonic-revised imitation of the Romanist and Orthodoxen polity, in my very sincere and forthright Scriptural position, for which I am accountable to Christ alone.
The term "Christian" was first used by observers of people of The Company at Antioch of Syria, as manifesters as "little Christs" as a consuming profession. The term was adopted by Peter, illustrated by Paul to Agrippa who also used the term. and it has stuck to those claiming a relationship to the Savior. However, the term has become so much degraded that it is today (as you seem to me to have used it) often applied to anyone claiming some form of identification with Christianity, however unScriptural and unprovable. Certainly misapplying the Disciple's Baptism to infants or only catechized volunteers to assure salvatory powers and membership in a presumed genuine church body is a great miscarriage of the Great Commission. IMHO.
Now, I would have preferred to avoid this exposition in this thread, but you have aske insistently, and sometimes insultingly. So be it.
Commenting on he spirit of ecumenism, I reject it, by authority of 2 Cor. 6:14-7:1, for an imperative.
Where does this "Company" stuff come from?
The assembly I congregate with is..
What is this assembly - or Company. Does it have a name?
Are you a "commissioned Servant of God" ?
Where does this "Company" stuff come from?
And apparently you don't like to read and be guided by the Scriptural references given you. isn't that so? What is this assembly - or Company. Does it have a name?
Just described. Perhaps catholicity is so inseparably integrated with your ecclesiology that you cannot even conceive of an independent autonomous assembly of the original New Testament variety?
The Company a delegated administrators..
Sorry, mistyped. /here is the correction: **The Company as delegated administrators.. **
Another typo corrected:
** "baptism-unto-repentance" ( **
Regarding "The Company":
The translators of the AV and DRB stayed away from capitalization of proper nouns other than names or titles of The Deity. But it is not wrong for us to employ proper nouns, adjectives, and definite articles in our exegetical use, when they identify a special entity worthy of such treatment. Also, the translators also often left out the definite article when it should have been included.
For instance, in Romans 10:8, Paul mentions ". . . the word of faith, which we preach; . . .". Where here "faith" in the Greek is articular, it is more precise to say "the Word of The Faith, which we preach;", thus demonstrating that there is a body of Scripture commonly understood to contain all the elements of doctrine necessary to grasp for assurance that one has a saving and practicing knowledge of The Faith upon which to place his/her trust.
In a similar fashion, we know that Jesus then did not have a church built as yet, but He did have a customary group of followers who were distinct from the "seeker disciples" in the multitudes. This body of close and recognized accompaniers was noted especially by Peter before Pentecost in Acts 1:21-22, where he used the participle συνελθοντων = companying ("men which have companied with us all the time") from Jesus' baptism by John until the moment he was speaking.
Examples of the concept of "the company" are as follows:
Lk. 6:17 οχλος μαθητων αυτου | (the) company of the disciples of Him
Translated: "the company of his disciples"
Lk. 11:27 επαρασα τις γυνη φωνην εκ του οχλου | was lifting up a certain women voice out of the company
Translated: "a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice "(the company of disciples, verse 1 context)
Lk 12:13 τις αυτω εκ του οχλου | a certain him-one of the company
Translated: "one of the company" (of His disciples, verse 1 context)
Lk. 24:22 γυναικες τινες εξ ημων | certain women out of us
Translated: "certain women also of our company" (of disciples)
Acts 4:23 προς τους ιδιους | in front of (the) theirselves
Translation: "to their own company" (of fellow-disciples)
Acts 15:22 ανδρας εξ αυτων | men of their own
Translated : " men of their own company" (of the Jerusalem assembly, of which Paul and Barnabas were not members)
So, the composition of this group, up to about 120 souls, was His committed followers, chiefly those baptized by at least some of The Twelve. They were also referred to as "His company" or "our company". So it is not striking to refer to this group as The Company, which then constituted the Jerusalem church that was first formed on the day of Pentecost, which was the beginning also of the Church Age.
Thus at Pentecost, an entity titled "Church" was formed from The Company. But throughout the ages, and in various locations, a body of believers termed as a church or titled as Church, should also be composed of, and only of, a committed defined body of localized discipled, reasonabl identified as The Company (of the committed, of the brethren, to whom members may be admitted by Disciples' Baptism).
During Jesus' ministry, I suggest that The Company was composed of, and only of, the Jewish men and women whose baptism into discipleship was administered by Jesus disciples and under his direct oversight and authority.
The problem is that the employment of the believer's baptism has strayed so far from the purpose delivered unto the eleven saints, and disorted and/or misapplied as a "sacrament" or a way to insert uninstructed humans into a religion By the will of man and not of God, that the pervasive misuse of the symbolism and function has almost obliterated Christ's intention to build His Churches by recruiting, indoctrinating, and maturing regenerated souls through personal supervision, as Paul did with Timothy and others, and as Peter did with Mark, and as John illustrated in 1 Jn. 2:13-14.
Take time to think about this with a mind open to Scripture before closing it an rejecting without a clear comparison with Scripture teaching. Be a Berean.
Sure. Are you?
So using Company is this fashion is your own personal method? Nobody else? Any others in your assembly, locally, or just you?
Who commissioned you - or should I say who was your discipler? Not asking for a name here, just description.
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