Baptism
In the phase of my life I call “Early Career”, I spent some time working through some issues of the christian life that had been nagging at me, like Baptism and came up with this document. Baptism had been bothering me because I had been baptised as an infant, and the people I had been spending time with saw infant baptism as… “not useful”. I didn’t have any information supporting infant baptism, so I was disturbed, and eventually got around to some research. The resulting document, as you can see, focuses on the action of the believer. This is actually kindof a weakness of this perspective (which I will call “the baptist perspective” from here on); you can reduce it somewhat by not viewing baptism as an ABSOLUTE requirement of salvation, (thereby covering deathbed conversions and “saved by grace through faith”(not works)) but it needs to stay closely related. (”believe and be baptised”) God saves us, by Himself; He doesn’t need us to do anything. (note: but we “do” believe, right? (Yes, but he did that(created our belief) to us too))
Another weakness of the baptist perspective is “Age of reason”. When is that? What about certain mentally weak people; do they ever achieve it?
The baptist perspective says that baptism is a sign, but not God’s sign; ours. That we belong to Him. Something we do, not that saves us, but proclaims that we are allowing Him to save us. This also implies the statement: “If we are doing it, we should have to _choose_ it ourselves”. Not that this perspective isn’t provably wrong, just that it has some weaknesses, and I currently find another one to be stronger argument.
Covenental Baptism
According to “the reformed perspective”, baptism is a means of sanctifying grace and a gospel ministry to the people of God. It is a sign and seal of the Covenant of Grace illustrating what Christ has done for his people and sealing salvation to the same. Therefore covenant children of believing parents as well as unbaptized adult converts should be baptized
A more extensive essay by Dr R S Clark.
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