More On Baptism
At my first Easter vigil Mass after returning to the Church, I was deeply moved by the scripture readings chosen for that Mass. Beginning in Genesis, the Church traces the doctrine of baptismal regeneration throughout the scriptures seemlessly showing us the importance of water and the blood. kkollwits from Smaller Manhattans has a nice post here illustrating this. He also includes a portion of the writings of the early Christians from 80 AD, the Didache, teaching how to use water for baptism. From this, one would gather that the early Church believed that baptism was more than symbolic. Why else would they go on about it in a teaching manual such as the Didache?
posted by Russ Rentler, M.D. | 7:19 AM
4 Comments:
Sounds good to me!!
Ah! A woman after my own heart! :)
The Easter Vigil Mass is indeed the best! I really like meeting someone new in the parish & learn that I had been present at their Vigil Baptism.
Speaking of 'more tha symbolic'I also teach my kids that the water's not a mere symbol, but in a roundabout way:
http://platytera.blogspot.com/2008/10/wednesday-sunday-school-2.html
I read kkollwitz's post as well and commented there that I had just been reading Stephen Ray's book _Crossing the Tiber_, and he has a section filled with extensive references to baptism from the OT, NT, and patristic sources. The overwhelming evidence is that the early church saw baptism as efficacious and not merely symbolic.
Ten years ago my wife and I were part of a mainline Protestant church that was struggling with the issue of rebaptism. At that time I wrote a paper based exclusively on patristic sources and found myself even back then recognizing that the absolute consensus in the first four centuries of the early church was that baptism was efficacious for baptism.
Good posts all! Thank you, Tiber Jumper and Kkolwitz!
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