In the earliest mention of infant baptism in all of Church history, caution is given that little children should not be baptized and the church should wait until after they have asked for salvation.
Tertullian listed several options for where a baptism could occur. All of them show that the expectation is there is enough water for one to be immersed.
I’ve changed my travel plans home so I will be spending long hours in the saddle to get home a day earlier, so I wanted to finish up this response in case we are not able to sneak any programs on till late next week. Only about forty minutes today, but we finished up our review of Jared’s response article,
The Didache relates that a person should be immersed in living (moving) water or standing water. If that isn't possible, then pouring water thrice on the head is an acceptable alternative. For the early church, pouring was not the normative.
Just a few brief comments on Catholicism at the start, then back to Hebrews and Jared’s article. We are, at least, getting into the nitty gritty of what the real issues are, so, I hope that is helpful. Tomorrow is a travel day for me, so I won’t be able to do another program until I am headed home next
Started off with a look at the tweet introducing an article against postmillennialism before moving back to the response to Jared Longshore based upon Hebrews and the New Covenant.
Barnabas describes baptism as descending into the water and coming back up out of the water. In one of the earliest known writings of the Christian church, we see clear evidence that the practice of baptism was understood to be by immersion as the normative practice of the Church. It goes against basic exegetical practices when church traditions (such as Presbyterians) who practice sprinkling as the normative mode of baptism eisegete the Scriptures by saying that when Jesus was said to have gone down into the water that it just means he walked out a bit and was then sprinkled and then “came up out of the water”.
Alpha and Omega Ministries is a Christian apologetics organization based in Phoenix, Arizona. James White, director, is a professor, having taught Greek, Systematic Theology, and various topics in the field of apologetics for numerous schools.
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James White is the director of Alpha and Omega Ministries, a Christian apologetics organization based in Phoenix, Arizona. He is the author of more than twenty books, a professor and an accomplished debater.
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