... well, actually the words Pastor Deneff used were, "I dedicate you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit." But he sprinkled them with water each time and the admonition he gave was practically the same as what you would give to the parents of a child being baptized. The difference between what we did and an infant baptism was one word!
Pastor Judy even hinted that there was something sacramental to the action! Dedication, the eighth sacrament!
So here were some of the thoughts going through my head.
1. Did he give them the option to call it a baptism instead of a dedication, if they preferred? Shame on him if he didn't.
2. Does God view it as a baptism? I have a suspicion he did.
3. Will these children be baptized again? Probably, if they stay Wesleyan.
4. Should they be baptized again? Not sure, especially since he used the word dedicate. I personally don't think God cares much one way or another.
5. Most Wesleyans are Philistines. OK, not nice, but that was one of the thoughts that went through my head. Infant baptism has been the practice of Christianity from about the time we voted in the Trinity to Luther, Calvin, and Wesley--yes, they all baptized infants. Most Wesleyans haven't a clue where they came from or why they think the way they do.
6. Did the New Testament church baptize infants? Not sure. The baptisms in the NT aren't of people who were born into Christian families, so there is hardly any relevant data. We have talk of whole households being baptized in Acts, which I have a hunch at least meant children down to a very young age even before "accountability."
Like it or not, the ancient world was a group culture and the father's decision would more often than not have been the decision for the whole family. We are individualists; they weren't.
1 Corinthians 7 says that the children of an intact marriage in which one spouse is a believer are holy. That means they were "in" whether they were baptized or not.
7. Did Paul think unholy children would be destroyed on the Day of the Lord? Strangely, I found myself thinking that he might very well think that, even though we as Christians today rightly do not. He doesn't mention hell in any of his writings (there are only a couple allusions to the judgment of the dead, one in 2 Timothy 2), so I'm not suggesting he thought they would go to hell.
This led my mind off on a hermeneutical tangent. Paul's writings--Scripture per se--have nothing to say about hell. What, then, if Paul himself didn't have any understanding of hell? It is not Paul himself who is inspired, as if every thought he ever had was Scripture. It is presumably what made it to the biblical page that was inspired, and nothing on this subject made it to the page from him.
Yet does some of the rationale behind what Paul wrote--that didn't make it to the biblical page--have to be inspired as well? In other words, what if Paul writes something that is inspired on the page but he writes it because of uninspired reasoning in his head? Is that possible?
In fact, the point of commonality between the Christian understanding of texts and Paul's original understanding of his texts is the text itself. Is it the Christian understanding of those texts that is ultimately most inspired for us more than Paul's surrounding thoughts?
8. How necessary would Paul have seen baptism of infants for their salvation?
Not sure. I wonder if it wouldn't have been as essential to him as it is to us.
Augustine had a highly developed sense of original sin and infant baptism for him took care of the sin of Adam. I highly doubt Paul would have thought anything of the sort. It is not without reason that Augustine is sometimes called the "first modern man" for his rather individualistic focus.
I suspect sin for Paul was much more general and corporate in focus and much less individualistic. We note that words like forgiveness and repentance barely even appear in Paul's writings. Baptism for him, I think, was not about some mathematical obligation regarding atonement but primarily about incorporation into Christ and death to the power of Sin written large.
I personally prefer infant baptism because it is the strongest way of saying "This child is holy. This child belongs to the people of God." And it does. I personally would go against church tradition and let all the children of the congregation take communion, if it were up to me (and it isn't). On this one I do feel confident that I know what the New Testament church did.
There are people out there who would have gone to be with the Lord at every moment of their existence. They would have as children, and they confessed faith the very first moment they realized they needed to. They could have died at any moment of their life and been "saved."
So why symbolically locate them outside the church for their first years. They are in!
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5 comments:
You know, I grew up in the Wesleyan church and didn't know that it "endorses" infant baptism until Bud Bence gave a strong lecture on the diluted cultural North American Protestant dedication, and the robust, sacramental infant baptism.
Chalk it up to rampant revivalistic tendencies, in my book. Experience trumps tradition, and tangible sacraments.
You don't know me, by I have been reading your posts. I thought of another point from an Archaeological perspective. At Tel Avdat in Israel, there is a Byzantine baptismal that has been found. The funny thing about it is that their is one that an adult can fit in, but a small one that a baby could fit in. Let your imagination run wild with that. It is possible that their was infant AND adult baptism in the early church. You can look it up if you like.
I'm going to be baptizing an infant in our church in two weeks. I was looking in the WPH catalog for an infant baptism certificate, but they only sell baby dedication certificates. I thought to myself well maybe baptism is baptism and so there shouldn't be a different certificate, but I found that other Christian bookstores do carry special certificates for infant baptism. The Wesleyan Pastor's Manual contains a ceremony for infant baptism so why don't we carry certificates for when we actually do it? I suppose the answer is that our Wesleyan Pastors don't perform it enough to warrant keeping them in stock.
This is a big issue in central Florida with the high population of New York Catholics. ("If my baby doesn't get baptized it's going to hell") The pastor of my Wesleyan church pretty much does a dedication, all the while giving the parents the right to call it whatever they like.
Was comparing pastor handbooks for Cherry's Church Rituals class and the official Wesleyan Pastor's Handbook has a ceremony for both the infant "dedication" and the infant baptism. It goes back to our Episcopal roots of course and hasn't been voted out yet.
I think there are enough Wesleyans with you.
Although what a trajectory we are on... they don't even say the "Wesleyan" in my church anymore ... it's "First Wes" :)
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