[Vision2020] Validity of Baptisms

Thu Dec 7 17:26:46 PST 2006

I'd like to join in as someone who was baptized when just a few months old 
in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit -- and who regards 
that as one of many experiences in my life that was far more meaningful to 
those around me than to me, that contributed nothing to my salvation, and 
that was and continues to be the provence of those who, with varying degrees 
of sincerity, have an understanding of Scripture that is at variance with 
what I understand to be the majority of historical, orthodox (lower-case 
"o"), Biblical Christianity.

On the other hand, my baptism in 1981, when I was 20, was entirely 
meaningful to me, because it was my volitional response to the teachings of 
Jesus, and offered what it I believe God intends that it offer:  a visible 
manifestation of my new birth in Christ Jesus.  Besides water, the only 
other thing each had in common was that they were non-saving; they neither 
contributed to or confirmed my salvation, by which I mean eternal life in 
Christ Jesus by grace through faith.  Even those paedobaptists of the 
Lutheran tradition don't believe that baptism itself saves, and yet it 
appears that Doug Wilson is leaning heavily in that direction, in opposition 
to the evangelical heritage he comes from.

And why should anyone care?

Because all theology has effects, negative and positive, on the adherent's 
conduct.  I agree with Nick that some element of control over women and 
children may well be present in the propagation of paedobaptism on the 
Palouse.  More troubling, however, is its necessary link to Calvinism, which 
I have argued here and elsewhere is, as defined by Calvinists, a "hard" 
Calvinism and not the so-called "soft" Calvinism that sounds commonly 
evangelical.

A primary teaching of Calvinism is that the atonement of Christ was limited 
in its effect and intention -- that Christ died only for those He wanted to, 
those He had predestined on no other basis other than the "good pleasure" of 
the Father, who delights, they say, in saving some and dangling and then 
dropping others over the pit of Hell for the sheer joy he gets in their 
destruction.  Less disturbing but equally at odds with Scripture is the 
Calvinistic assertion that no decision for Christ or against Christ is 
necessary to enter into saving fellowship with Him; indeed, the entire point 
of Calvinism is that the object of salvation or damnation is utterly unable 
to effect even the most rudimentary decision in his or her eternal destiny 
-- no volition needed, or even possible.  The argument in Christiandom isn't 
if there is or isn't "predestination;" no student of the New Testament 
seriously questions that there is.  But the question is "predestination on 
what terms?", and from the first days of New Testament Christianity, and as 
foreseen in the Old,  the understanding is that individual, volitional faith 
-- not works, not baptism, not "covenant family" membership, not anything 
else -- is what is credited to the believer as righteousness.

Why this matters to anyone other than theology geeks like myself is this:  
if no one can come to Christ because, for example, they see something in the 
behavior of Christian believers that they find appealing, and if no one can 
be prevented from coming to Christ, if that's God's desire, no matter how 
nasty and appalling the believers act, then both the Body corporate and the 
individual Christian have no real need to engage in the kind of behavior 
that would make Christ and Christianity appealing.  Why bother?  If God 
wants someone to be saved, He'll "flip the switch," so to speak, and if He 
thinks it would be neat to create them just as eternally suffering Presto 
Logs for Gehenna, then He'll make sure the switch is never flipped.  Nothing 
I do, the Calvinists say, will ever minister to anyone in a way that will 
make them consider the claims of Christ and then respond, personally and 
intentionally, to Him.  Being nice is all well and good, evidently, but it's 
not necessary to be kind and decent in order to further the Gospel.  And, 
the more Reconstructionist-oriented among the Calvinists believe, being nice 
might even be an impediment to taking dominion over the culture.  All in 
all, it seems, the conduct and character of the Christian is a means toward 
an end that doesn't add to the number of those reconciled to God in Christ, 
but certainly strengthens the Church's hold on the culture -- with all of 
its unfortunate, helpless, insignificant and expendable "unchosen."

It makes sense, as I've said before, why Princess Sushitushi, Doug Farris, 
Dale Courtney, Doug Wilson, Doug Jones, and other Recons/Calvinists often 
shower those on the other side with sheer, naked contempt, and it would 
explain, I believe, why Doug Farris continually harps on Nick Gier about his 
"failure" to hold to his infant baptism.  Rude behavior that polite secular 
society would condemn is the kind of behavior that seems to have no 
consequence to those "chosen" in our midst who certainly aren't about to 
out-care God when it comes to the lives and souls of those they deem to be 
lost.  It's more than bad theology, much more significant than just bad 
behavior, and more tragic than I have words to convey.

(I would recommend an excellent primer on Calvinism, "The Five Points of 
Calvinism:  Weighed and Found Wanting," by George Bryson.  And get this!  
Bryson's scholarship is applauded by none other than our own Doug Wilson, 
who says in a review of the book "(Bryson) is able to describe the doctrinal 
position of Calvinism without putting any extra eggs in the pudding.  His 
descriptions are fair and accurate, and he clearly knows his subject . . . " 
  Wilson indicates some concern with the second part of the book -- Bryson's 
refutation of Calvinism -- but the back cover of Bryson's book has Wilson's 
endorsement of the scholarship in its first half.)

keely

(Much of this i

From: Nick Gier <ngier at uidaho.edu>
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] Validity of Baptisms
Date: Thu, 07 Dec 2006 12:29:02 -0800

Greetings:

Someone on this list appears to be saying that a Catholic baptism that I did 
not assent to and do not currently recognize is somehow valid.  That's 
absurd, and my daughter, who was baptized as an infant by a Danish uncle 
bishop, would agree with me.

I have come to the conclusion that infant baptism, never commanded by Jesus 
and never practiced by early Christians, is a church's way to control 
families and their children.  I'm also convinced, especially since I now 
know how much Doug Wilson has been corrupted by power, that he supports 
infant baptism for this very reason.

The history of Christian baptists, first called Anabaptists, who, once they 
could read their Bible in the vernacular, insisted on adult baptism is a 
horrid story of persecution.  The sad irony is that Luther was the one who 
translated the Bible so that these good people could make up their own minds 
about their religion.  But "orthodox" Protestants and Catholics combined 
forces to hunt down every Anabaptist they could find.  Their preferred way 
of dispatching these heretics was to sew them in bags and throw them into 
rivers for a third baptism that they would not survive.  How dare they defy 
church authority!

Power hungry pastors and mad mullahs will do just about anything to enforce 
their religious views on us.

Nick Gier

"Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to human 
affairs."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Abstract truth has no value unless it incarnates in human beings who 
represent it, by proving their readiness to die for it."
  --Mohandas Gandhi

"Modern physics has taught us that the nature of any system cannot be 
discovered by dividing it into its component parts and studying each part by 
itself. . . .We must keep our attention fixed on the whole and on the 
interconnection between the parts. The same is true of our intellectual 
life. It is impossible to make a clear cut between science, religion, and 
art. The whole is never equal simply to the sum of its various parts." --Max 
Planck

Nicholas F. Gier
Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, University of Idaho
1037 Colt Rd., Moscow, ID 83843
http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/home.htm
208-882-9212/FAX 885-8950
President, Idaho Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO
http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/ift.htm

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