I’m still waiting on your historical evidence. Surely, if the practice of the apostles was age-restrictive baptism by immserion, there should be some debate, shouldn’t there? Where is the debate? Where is the first century, second century, third century, etc. arguments concerning the heretical practical infant baptism? Where is the debate about whether baptism by sprinkling or pouring is valid? If you say that the Church as founded by the Apostles has taught this since the beginning, when did it change, and why was there no discussion of this change? Why was there no record at all of anyone ever teaching what you now teach prior to the sixteenth century?
I’m going to quote myself here, because there’s something additional I want to add.
One my fundamental problems with your theology of baptism (apart from its lack of biblical support) or with other Protestant doctrinal distinctives, such as
Sola Fide, is that fundamentally, they’re crackpot ideas.
Yes, I mean “crackpot,” but in the nicest way possible. I used to work with a man who seriously thought the moon landings were faked. He simply
couldn’t understand how it was possible that we could fly to the moon in 1969, but we couldn’t save New Orleans from Katrina in 2005. Because of this lack of understanding (among others) he decided that the whole Neil Armstrong thing was a complete and utter fabrication. One small step for a man, one giant leap for conspiracy theorists everywhere.
I feel like I’m encountering the same sort of crackpot ideas here, and in other discussions with Protestants (for instance, my dad, who believes that “elders”
must be married). When I ask for historical support for your beliefs, or for my dad’s beliefs, I never get a response. I never get a response because, I think, you
know what that response would sound like. You know you would sound just like that guy I worked with who thought that the moon landings were a cleverly-crafted propoganda hoax.
You would have to say, “There isn’t any historical evidence.” I would ask, “Why is there no historical evidence, if this is what the Apostles taught?” You would have to say, “Because the Catholic Church destroyed it all,” or perhaps, “Because the True Church went into hiding to avoid persecution by the Catholic Church,” and then you’ve descended into the realm of the lunar-lander-denying, Roswell-believing, Oliver-Stone-following conspiracy theorists of the world.
Or you might believe in Baptist successionism, in which case I’d say, “Well, who were the first baptists,” to which you’d reply, perhaps, the Paulicians, and I’d point out everything the Paulicians taught that you don’t believe, and again, you’ve got no historical support for your beliefs.
Proving Protestant doctrinal distinctives from history seem to require a person to invoke a conspiracy in order to explain the almost complete and utter lack of historical evidence for those distinctives, and that’s probably my biggest problem with your ideas: I’ve never been one for conspiracy theories.
Jeremy
