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Church_Militant
Guest
Really? I beg to differ. I generally will ignore those n-C/a-C posts where “the scattergun approach” is used like this but I’m going to take the time to prove ths one wrong just because this poster has chosen to assert his rhetoric as fact when it is verifiably NOT so.You say the Catholic Church has the sacraments and the protestant churches do not. You are right - there is nothing in the Word of God except Baptism after you are saved.
You are only partially correct here since the New Testament speaks clearly of baptisms of entire households, which would include even slaves and servants, and yes…even infants.It does not say to baptize babies because baptism is a sign that you have received Jesus Christ into your life and are born again.
Moreover, a reading of the Martyrdom of Polycarp will show that he professes himself to have been a Christian for 86 years when he was 86 years old at the time. St. Polycarp was then martyred for his faith, but the best part is that he was a friend and disciple of St. John the apostle, so he came by his beliefs from an apostolic source, and yes, was baptised as an infant.
Agreed, but as they say, even a stopped clock is right twice a day…It shows death to the old life and you are in a new life as you are brought up out of the water.
It’s alive and well and active in His church. As I have so far shown you from history and the word of God, Catholic teaching is correct.The problem with the Catholic Church is it makes it’s own doctrine - what happened to the Word of God.
If you wish to decry infant baptism I suggest you read the linked article which says in part. "In Place of Circumcision
Furthermore, Paul notes that baptism has replaced circumcision (Col. 2:11–12). In that passage, he refers to baptism as “the circumcision of Christ” and “the circumcision made without hands.” Of course, usually only infants were circumcised under the Old Law; circumcision of adults was rare, since there were few converts to Judaism. If Paul meant to exclude infants, he would not have chosen circumcision as a parallel for baptism.
This comparison between who could receive baptism and circumcision is an appropriate one. In the Old Testament, if a man wanted to become a Jew, he had to believe in the God of Israel and be circumcised. In the New Testament, if one wants to become a Christian, one must believe in God and Jesus and be baptized. In the Old Testament, those born into Jewish households could be circumcised in anticipation of the Jewish faith in which they would be raised. Thus in the New Testament, those born in Christian households can be baptized in anticipation of the Christian faith in which they will be raised. The pattern is the same: If one is an adult, one must have faith before receiving the rite of membership; if one is a child too young to have faith, one may be given the rite of membership in the knowledge that one will be raised in the faith. This is the basis of Paul’s reference to baptism as “the circumcision of Christ”—that is, the Christian equivalent of circumcision.
(Cont’d)