You don't believe in priests.
In the church era, probably not in the sense you do. I believe in the priesthood of all believers, and that Christ was the final priestly mediator between God and His people.
See
The Priesthood of All Believers - The Gospel Coalition
NT:
John 20:23 Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them;
and whose soever
sins ye retain, they are retained.
From another source:
"It is this context which frames Jesus' remark about forgiveness: this declaration comes
because these men are being reminded and guided by the Spirit of God. In no sense, at all, does Christ mean that forgiveness of sin is being
determined by the disciples, or that they are
choosing whether to absolve others of sin. The original Greek language uses more easily defined tenses, so it comes across more clearly, emphasizing that such sins "have already been forgiven" or "have already been retained." Guided by the truth of the Holy Spirit and in keeping with His truth, these men will be able to accurately declare whether others are abiding by those truths."
This is a continuation of the priesthood which began with Adam. Priests represent God to man and man to God. Furthermore, scripture states that we have been made priests unto God.
Revelation 1:6 And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him
be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
The priesthood is three-tiered and a continuation of the structure set up in the OT. There is the general priesthood of the covenant people - the laity. Then there is the sarcedotal priesthood in which they perform the covenant rituals such as baptism, marriage, ordination, etc. Finally, there is the Great High Priest, which is Christ. (Hebrews 7-10).
I reject this 'continuation' of the priesthood, see my link above.
You believe in "making a decision for Christ" and deny that infant children are baptized into the congregation of God.
Correct.
This again is refuted both by the testimony of the Early Fathers and their writings, as well as the covenant nature of membership in the congregation of God. The principle of covenant membership was began with Abraham in Genesis 15-17 and continues. In this manner, God told Abraham to circumcize his infant male children. By doing so, they were made members of the covenant community and set aside as special unto God. Late in life, the child would go through Bar Mitzvah where he would take the covenant vows his parents made on his behalf as being his own vows, thus accepting for himself that which was done for him.
As I've said many times on this thread, the OT covenant was based on male birth to Jewish parents, the NT New Covenant foretold in the OT is based on faith in Christ, which precludes infants. See Jer. 31:31-33.
You believe in a form of penal substitution salvation in which the fall of Adam and the corresponding separation of mankind from God is a legal and penal matter rather than one of healing the sickness of the soul.
Correct, as did the NT writers and many in the early church. Romans 5 among other passages.
Here is one of the earliest Christian apologetic texts we have,
The Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus, dated sometime in the second century:
O sweet exchange! O unsearchable operation! O benefits surpassing all expectation! that the wickedness of many should be hid in a single righteous One, and that the righteousness of One should justify many transgressors!
In his exposition of
Psalm 51, Augustine (AD 354–430) wrote,
For even the Lord was subject to death, but not on account of sin: He took upon him our punishment, and so looseth our guilt. . . . Now, as men were lying under this wrath by reason of their original sin . . . there was need for a mediator, that is for a reconciler, who by the offering of one sacrifice, of which all the sacrifices of the law and the prophets were types, should take away this wrath. . . . Now when God is said to be angry, we do not attribute to him such a disturbed feeling as exists in the mind of an angry man; but we call his just displeasure against sin by the name “anger,” a word transferred by analogy from human emotions.
This wretched doctrine began within the Latin Church
No, it began with God's word. If your church gets salvation wrong, there isn't much left.
and they were and still are the ones pushing it. Salvation is not a matter of a once-and-done "decision for Jesus" (which again, is anti-covenant in denying infants the right to become members of the covenant community) but rather an ongoing process in which we are changed into the likeness of Christ (theosis).
I certainly agree we all need to be more deeply converted, but that is a different issue than our salvation.
This takes a lifetime, and can also be lost, another thing which the "once-and-done" crowd denies.
People can choose to walk away from the faith, see Heb. 6:4-6. For everyone else, we can know we are saved, among other passages see 1 John 5:12-13, He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God,
so that you may know that you have eternal life.
You (maybe not you, but many Baptists I heard preach - Billy Graham would be an example) teach that once you make the decision for Jesus, you are declared "not guilty" in the court of heaven and are "as sure of heaven as if you were there right now."
I agree with Billy, see Romans 8:1-2. Billy was a co-worker in the vineyard of the Lord with many, many Anglicans over the decades, beginning with his crusades in the UK in the '50s which greatly influenced the C of E, he was a close collaborator with the Rev. John RW Stott, whom a former Archbishop of Canterbury called one of the greatest in the Anglican world, the head of that Church QEII loved having him preach, so that isn't just a Baptist thing.
Don't tell me otherwise. I was a Bob Jones Anabaptist for 13 years and drank deeply of that well.
Which proves what? I was an Anglican for 30 years, confirmed by a former Presiding Bishop.
You slam "ritualism" yet you haven't a clue what ritual is about.
See above.
The word "covenant" appears over 300 times between OT and NT.
You left out the "Old" and "New" parts connected with those covenant appearances.
All covenant operations are done with rituals. Marriage is an example. You don't just walk up to a woman you have been dating and say "Now you are my wife." There is an entire process of legalizing and formalizing the marital covenant. The same is true with public service. Look at the rituals of making a man a police officer or increasing him in rank.
I'm not totally anti-ritual, but there is a huge lack of expository Biblical preaching in your churches. I've never heard a good sermon in a RCC church. I said that to a priest once who sat next to me on a flight, he later emailed me a sermon by Bishop Fulton Sheen, very telling he had to go back decades to find one. The Bible says, "for
faith cometh by hearing and
hearing by the word of God". I had a friend once who was a former Catholic tell me as a child he would question his priest about the conflicts he would read between the Bible and RCC theology and his priest told him if he wouldn't read the Bible so much he wouldn't have so many questions. That is clergy malpractice.
Your problem is that you, like just about every Baptist I have ever spoken with, do not realize that we are covenant people and you don't understand the principles by which a covenant works.
Amazing how you know everything about me like that. Did you ever consider that we reject your covenant notions?
I outlined them for you in another place on this board and you didn't even have the politeness to acknowledge that I had posted them.
OK, I'll say it now, I disagree.
The Kingdom of God is a Suzerainty Covenant Kingdom, in which the Father is the Great Suzerain. If you don't "get" these terms, look them up and study them. They go all the way back to the OT and carry forward to the NT. Covenant principles do not change.
So there's no difference between the Old and New Covenants?
Since we are discussing baptism, I will close with this:
Acts 2:38 Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ
into the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.
You're making my point, note the sequence, repent, then be baptized. An infant can't repent.
