A PARADOX
There are Christians who insist with the unchanging cadence of a broken record that we are saved by faith, not works, "lest we should boast."
And there are Christians who say yes, that is true, but we still have to work.
And Christianity is divided over this point.
But it is the latter, not the former, who bring their infants to the laver of regeneration for baptism into the Body of Christ, though those infants have done nothing to deserve the salvation given them in that act.
And it is the former, strangely, who refuse to baptise their infants, insisting that baptism must be an act of the individual's own will.
So tell me again--which Christians trust in God alone for their salvation, and which try to earn it by good works?
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In J.R.R. Tolkien's Elvish dialect of Quenya, Arandir means Noble Wanderer. Selected in my youth as I searched for deeper religious truth, this nom de plume remains apt--for I am still a pilgrim and sojourner in this world, truly a ''stranger in a strange land.'' It remains my purpose to record here whatever seems noteworthy of my musings and experience as I travel the way of life.
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6 comments:
Exactly !
To acknowledge that baptism is a grace of God, of which we are utterly undeserving and could never "earn", is exemplified best by infant baptism.
To say that you can only be baptised when you are old enough to make a decision for Christ is an act of immense spiritual pride, IMO.
How many of us ever TRULY make a life-changing, unstinting, 100% decision for Christ to the total exclusion of the everything that might distract us from working towards Theosis ?
Those folk are called Saints :-)
I agree. And even the saints' decisions had to be made and re-made every day; they fell and got up, fell and got up. That's human life! I think the thing that prevents infant baptism is really a profound overestimation of the power of the human will, or perhaps just a lack of thought about the way it works. You can't just decide something 'at one moment' and call it good. Any serious decision (to love your spouse, say) has to be made and re-made every moment for the rest of your life. 'I loved you last Tuesday' isn't going to cut it in an emotional breakdown!
Speaking as someone who has yet to form a definitive opinion on the issue, I'm pretty sure that the problem with your statement is this: Many (though certainly not all) of the adult baptists, at least those I encounter regularly, would deny that there is any salvation found in the act of baptism per se. If pressed about it, they'd probably say that it's a good thing, but not a necessary thing, and certainly not a salvific thing. They'd say that it's a signal of one's faith to elect to be baptised, and that infants are incapable of such a decision. The infant is will be saved or damned regardless of its baptism, so baptising an infant is at best uncessecary and at worst an abomination and perversion.
In short, it must be an act of will; the other side of this coin is that as an act of will, it is incapable of saving by itself.
I don't know what to tell you about the people who say you have to be electively thrice submerged as an adult or somesuch to be saved. Then, I imagine that baptism is probably just one of many things you'd disagree on with such a person.
I go back and forth and round and round on the issue. What I find interesting in my own investigation is that scripture is completely vague on the issue; lots of things that don't say much of anything one way or the other in actually, but definitely say one or the other depending on whom you ask. So, when I'm actively thinking and reading about it, I tend to avoid the passages that are actually about baptism. At these times the one that always comes back to me is the parable about how the kingdom of heaven is like a field planted with good seed, but the weeds grew up with the grain. If being a member of the church is about actually being a follower of Christ, then that parable's an out and out lie.
Pardon the rambling. Just... something I've yet to resolve.
"And there are Christians who say yes, that is true, but we still have to work."
What do you mean by "have to"? Plenty of low-as-you-can-get Evangelicals would agree that true faith results in good works (cf, for instance, John MacArthur). In fact, Reformed Protestants have held to this nearly universally. So I think what you've said here isn't yet properly distinguishing between the sheep and the goats.
Further, I thought you guys were insulated from us crazy western folks' debates on such issues. Is that not the case?
Finally, given what you've said about baptism, faith, and works, I suppose you would subscribe to the following formula: "Grace and baptism get you onto the path of salvation, but you have to stay there by your good works." Emphasis on the but, right? If you subscribe to that sort of formulation, then I submit to you that it is you who try to earn salvation by your good works. Many Reformed Baptists will insist that baptism is the sign of the new covenent and thus only properly administed to members of the new covenant--i.e. those who are believers. So, as Will pointed out, they don't think the work of baptism is saving them--by that point they should already be washed in the Blood. And just because they wait to do this until a person makes a profession of faith does not mean they are in any sense attempting to earn salvation by works. Again, for them, they will already see themselves as saved prior to baptism. So, the Baptist isn't working for their salvation--even the raging Arminian ones. I agree with you that they err in focusing on the choice of the will in salvation (and I'm interested in how you square that criticism with your own statement of the necessity of works), but they still don't see themselves as either a) earning merit, or b) performing good works that in some other way of merit that gets a special modifier so that it's not really real merit leads God to respond by bestowing his grace.
Anyway, I think you know all this.
Will--I'm interested in where you're going with this, but I got a little lost: "At these times the one that always comes back to me is the parable about how the kingdom of heaven is like a field planted with good seed, but the weeds grew up with the grain. If being a member of the church is about actually being a follower of Christ, then that parable's an out and out lie."
I don't see how the parable is a lie. ???
Well... it's not a lie, that's the point, because in fact the church is full of people who are going to be weeded out eventually. That's the point Christ was making. To me how this applies to the situation is that it renders the point that "Baptising infants brings about participation in a Christian rite of those who may or may not be Christians" moot. Perhaps it does. But these things happen all the time. Christ said they would, and he said not to worry about it, the weeds will come up when the wheat is right and it'll all get sorted at harvest.
At the very least it takes away the option that infant baptism is a horrible damnable thing. At worst, someone who was never saved continues to not be so, and at best, our Orthodox brothers are right about its effects.
Enjoyed your blog! I have bookmarked it.
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