From an article on the Issues Etc website. By Dennis Kastens on infant baptism.
Also from this era are headstones for children who received emergency baptism with ages ranging from 11 months to 12 years. Since the patristic sources of the third century, as those earlier, give us to understand that the children of Christian parents were baptized in infancy, we must conclude that these emergency baptisms were administered to children of non-Christians. The inscriptions themselves confirm this conclusion. In the Roman catacomb of Priscilla is reference to a private emergency baptism that was administered to the one-and-three-quarter-year-old Apronianus and enabled him to die as a believer. The inscription reads:
Dedicated to the departed.
Florentius made this inscription
for his worthy son Apronianus who
lived one year and nine months and five days.
As he was truly loved by his grandmother
and she knew that his death was imminent,
she asked the church that he might depart from the world as a believer.
4 comments:
I think this does raise a question (one that I have struggled with and others as well). Is this the proper use and does it portray the proper expression of what Baptism was intended for? This way of going about baptizing does hint at a very magical, almost superstitious understanding, doesn't it?
p.s. On my blog (including a link to the original) there is a discussion of this practice (slightly different, but getting at a similar problem). If you are interested go to: http://explorationsetc.blogspot.com/2007/03/to-baptize-or-not-to-baptize-is-this.html
I understand where you are coming from but doesnt the gift character of baptism become obscured when we start messing around with talk of qualifications and rules and guidelines?
Baptism now saves you.
Your point (or Paul's point) is irrefutable at is simplest, most literal reading, Baptism saves the person who is baptized. But then follows all the rest of what Paul talks about in his letters (Live this new life; walk in the ways of the Lord; BE who you ARE). Granted, a person on their death bed doesn't have much chance of being who they are in active, 'love your neighbor', way...
But simply stated: if (and I would like to stress if) this early practice is acceptable, what are the practical ramfications for pastoral practice in regards to baptism? Does this exception say anything about the rule? Or is their a rule/s?
p.s. I might conclude that this 'baptismal practice' (as described in the original post) could lead nicely into the famous, yet erroneous, teaching 'once saved always saved'. Ie. it lends itself to a 'magical', in opposition to 'mysterious', nature of baptism (and consequently, to sacraments in general).
Mr Wandrey:
I think that the problem of viewing baptism as a magical protection not impacting one's life in this world is resolved in the words of Jesus, "Whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved; whoever does not believe shall be condemned." If one departs from faith--and a life of unrepentance would surely be such a departure--than one is not saved, for one has renounced the Baptism that saves.
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