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“This sacrament is also called ‘the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit,’ for it signifies and actually brings about the birth of water and the Spirit without which no one ‘can enter the kingdom of God.’” (CCC 1215)
The early Church Fathers consistently affirmed the Catholic (and scriptural) belief about baptism, viewing it as a sacrament for the remission of sins and the regeneration of the soul.
Rather than document each citation I make with names of primary sources, readers can find each patristic source via a link from their names to articles on my blog. The primary citations are almost always to the standard 38-volume collection of the Church Fathers edited by Protestant historian Philip Schaff (1819-1893), and available online. Using these renderings supervised by him immediately takes away the possible Protestant objection of Catholic translation bias.
I aim to offer a crystallized summary of these fathers’ teachings on baptism (much as Anglican patristic scholar J. N. D. Kelly does in his work, Early Christian Doctrines), and so I will cite key portions as briefly as I can without sacrificing essential content.
Epistle of Barnabas (bet. 70-132) taught that baptism “leads to the remission of sins” and that we “descend into the water full of sins and defilement, but come up, bearing fruit in our heart.”
Continued below.
www.ncregister.com
The early Church Fathers consistently affirmed the Catholic (and scriptural) belief about baptism, viewing it as a sacrament for the remission of sins and the regeneration of the soul.
Rather than document each citation I make with names of primary sources, readers can find each patristic source via a link from their names to articles on my blog. The primary citations are almost always to the standard 38-volume collection of the Church Fathers edited by Protestant historian Philip Schaff (1819-1893), and available online. Using these renderings supervised by him immediately takes away the possible Protestant objection of Catholic translation bias.
I aim to offer a crystallized summary of these fathers’ teachings on baptism (much as Anglican patristic scholar J. N. D. Kelly does in his work, Early Christian Doctrines), and so I will cite key portions as briefly as I can without sacrificing essential content.
Epistle of Barnabas (bet. 70-132) taught that baptism “leads to the remission of sins” and that we “descend into the water full of sins and defilement, but come up, bearing fruit in our heart.”
Continued below.
13 Church Fathers Defend the Catholic Teaching on Baptism
“This sacrament is also called ‘the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit,’ for it signifies and actually brings about the birth of water and the Spirit without which no one ‘can enter the kingdom of God.’” (CCC 1215)
