On today's program I continued my response to Matt Haney's lecture against a Lutheran approach to baptism. I dealt with Haney's exegesis of texts such as Acts 2:38 and Romans 6.
I used to think as Matt Haney does in my Southern Baptist days, and I used some of the same tortured eisogesis in explaining away the baptism passages that he does. Now that I'm an Anglican (after years of studying the early church fathers and accepting the plain meaning of these texts), I acknowlege baptism as a sacrament.
I like to say that Baptism and Communion are acts of faith in Christ rather than supposedly being separate additional objects of faith, let alone alleged meritorious works on our part. In other words, by baptism and Communion we receive Christ through faith--we aren't adding anything to the perfect work of Christ.
Was he conflating Lutheran and Roman Catholic understandings of baptism, Jordan? Because Haney made it sound in his criticism as if baptized babies no longer sin, and I've never heard a Lutheran assert that.
J. Dean, I heard Haney's comments about no difference between baptized and unbaptized babies as saying if the former were regenerate, they should show clear fruit (not necessarily be perfect, but clearly different from heathen babies). I think this is a common criticism from Reformed Baptists (the ones I know). They are very fearful of "false assurance."
Changing definition of a word to make it mean something else so to make it fit their theology is nothing new. While attending a Baptist church I discovered they do the same thing with the word (yayin) wine. Whenever the Bible spoke positively about wine then the word meant grape juice. Whenever the Bible spoke negatively about wine then it was fermented grape juice. You see them doing the same thing with Baptism whenever it connected with doing something.
4 comments:
Another good podcast.
I used to think as Matt Haney does in my Southern Baptist days, and I used some of the same tortured eisogesis in explaining away the baptism passages that he does. Now that I'm an Anglican (after years of studying the early church fathers and accepting the plain meaning of these texts), I acknowlege baptism as a sacrament.
I like to say that Baptism and Communion are acts of faith in Christ rather than supposedly being separate additional objects of faith, let alone alleged meritorious works on our part. In other words, by baptism and Communion we receive Christ through faith--we aren't adding anything to the perfect work of Christ.
Doubting Thomas
Was he conflating Lutheran and Roman Catholic understandings of baptism, Jordan? Because Haney made it sound in his criticism as if baptized babies no longer sin, and I've never heard a Lutheran assert that.
J. Dean, I heard Haney's comments about no difference between baptized and unbaptized babies as saying if the former were regenerate, they should show clear fruit (not necessarily be perfect, but clearly different from heathen babies). I think this is a common criticism from Reformed Baptists (the ones I know). They are very fearful of "false assurance."
Changing definition of a word to make it mean something else so to make it fit their theology is nothing new. While attending a Baptist church I discovered they do the same thing with the word (yayin) wine. Whenever the Bible spoke positively about wine then the word meant grape juice. Whenever the Bible spoke negatively about wine then it was fermented grape juice. You see them doing the same thing with Baptism whenever it connected with doing something.
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