We don't 'earn' baptism because of our faith. It is a complete gift of grace from God, whether you are a professing adult Christian or an infant. The grace in Baptism is ALL of God, by the Holy Spirit, and instituted through the waters and the prayers of the Church.
See again, more twisting. I never said it was earned.
If you were actually paying attention to what I write you would see that I said, "How exactly is an infant or small child supposed to HAVE repentance?" I never said "earned".
I also believe it comes by grace. You are countering me with things if you were paying attention instead of coming from your own preconceived ideas you would see that I also understand.
But when it's 'granted' it's still a subjective act of the believer. You still "do it". You still feel it. Gifts of grace are subjective realities not the sprinkling of fairy dust. You seem to have completely removed, like most of "Christendom", the word repentance from your Christian vocabulary.
Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ, but grace didn't "not exist" before he was born. There was no "changing of the laws", Jesus specifically said he came to fulfill not to change. He was the culmination of grace and truth there wasn't some light switch that changed baptism from repentance centric to fairy dust centric.
The Inquisition was performed by the Roman Catholic Church, not the Orthodox Church.
Well, I've read Kierkegaard. His scathing review of the Orthodox church is just as incriminating to the Orthodox church and he uses scripture. I talk about Catholic church because the average reader doesn't know what the hell the Orthodox church is. But the similarities are enough to where average people can't tell the difference.
Your comments has nothing to do with infant baptism and you are simply putting your interpretation of Christian living and worship as being 'what Christ taught'.
My comments were originally and are all about baptizing babies. I clearly link baptism to repentance, and lack of repentance to babies, and John the Baptist in the gospel saying he won't baptize people who don't show outward signs of repentance. Simple.
How hard is that to follow exactly? Why does a Christian have to be a "Church Father" slave in order to understand anything? Is God an intellectual? He seems like a pissed off pragmatist that hates intellectuals when I read His words.
Well, Christ taught His Apostles to listen to the Pharisees and 'do as they say'. What He didn't want them to do is repeat them in their hypocricy.
And here again, another RPF forum member using Christ's words NOT RELATED TO THE SUBJECT AT HAND to refute the subject at hand when there are already words Christ used to reference the subject at hand.
I got into an argument with Hells_Unicorn who said "lying is ok sometimes" and he used scripture where Jesus said "be wise as serpents".
Now TER wants to get rid of repentance which Jesus talked about in numerous places with 'do as they say' scripture which was more to support his "do not resist evil" commandment, and was OBVIOUSLY not some blanket statement telling His followers that the Pharisees edicts should override his. That you would even say it like that is ridiculous.
You should recognize these behaviors and weaseling in your mind when you're doing these things TER. That is how you know you've latched onto something wrong and incorrect.
This underscores the point.
