That Passage doesn't deal with baptism.... The children of Israel were too scared. They grumbled in their tents and believed that God hated them and had taken them out of Egypt and delivered them into the hand of the Amorites to destroy them. They worried about their children, but their children, or the next generation were going to be the ones, who took the land... 40 years later.
You should make that post in the thread I linked to, because I did not write it, my friend
@Ain't Zwinglian did, and it represents his perspective.
My own view as it pertains to this thread was I believe accidentally mischaracterized by d taylor, on the assumption that my approach to Baptism and sacramental theology is Augustinian. On the contrary, as an Orthodox Christian, I disagree with St. Augustine in terms of his approach to rejecting the false argument of Pelagius that we can save ourselves through works, because in suggesting that original sin spreads like a venereal disease and that unbaptized infants are damned, St. Augustine made two errors, the latter view by the way not even being Roman Catholic doctrine, and also being extremely problematic, for example, clashing with the veneration of the 40,000 Holy Innocents as saints on December 28th, which is an extremely important feast day in the Orthodox Church, and its proximity to the Nativity on December 25th and the Feast of St. Stephen the Illustrious Protomartyr on December 27th (according to our Calendar) is not an accident, for the Holy Innocents and St. Stephen were the first to die for Christ, and we believe all of them to have been saved.
Rather, in rejecting the Pelagian error that man can save himself through good works, we subscribe to the hamartiology of original sin articulated by another fifth century Latin, the great monastic St. John Cassian, whose Conferences were historically read in the West before the great schism and who was historically much more important in Western theology than St. Augustine, before the Great Schism of 1054 and the Fourth Crusade waged not even against the Islamic oppresssors of Christians in the Holy Land but rather against the Christians of the Byzantine Empire for the benefit of Venice cemented a Western tradition to what is called Scholastic Theology, which began with the likes of Anselm of Canterbury and which was epitomized by Thomas Aquinas.
The view of St. John Cassian, which is sometimes called “ancestral sin” to differentiate it from the original sin theology of St. Augustine, also has the advantage of making it so that a doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, who we of the Orthodox persuasion venerate, as unnecessary, since the marriage bed is undefiled, yet even she, though sinless, required the salvation provided by our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ, who is responsible for the salvation of those who believe in Him.
This being said, baptism is extremely important, for as it says in the Nicene Creed, which is also part of the
Statement of Faith for Christian Forums, we believe in one Baptism for the remission of sin.
Thus, Baptism is extremely important. However, one who is of an age of awareness is saved as soon as one chooses to believe in Christ. This is reflected in that when one becomes a Catechumen, from that point on they receive an Orthodox funeral, along with the Baptized, for they are preparing for Baptism. With infants there is no catechumenate; we baptize them and then confirm them and administer them Holy Communion around eight days after birth, which coincides with the Feast of the Circumcision of our Lord (note that the Orthodox do not believe in circumcision as required for salvation and in principle, it is only widely practiced among certain ethnic groups within the Orthodox Church that are largely of Jewish descent, for example, the Nasranis, or St. Thomas Christians, of India, many of whom are partially or entirely descended from the Kochin Jews of Kerala, and the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox, whose largest ethnic group are almost entirely of Jewish descent, being descended from the Beta Israel, or Ethiopian Jews, who were descended from the offspring of King Solomon and Queen Kandake, and even among these groups circumcision is obviously a cultural heritage rather than a sacrament, and also in North America, where for many decades pediatric surgeons promoted it to everyone as a means of generating revenue.
Baptism on the other hand is salvific, even though one can be saved without it; Baptism and the Eucharist are an extremely important part of the affirmation of the faith for Christians who confess Christ. We regard Baptism as regenerative and the Eucharist to be the actual body and blood of our Lord and the medicine of immortality, by which we are grafted onto the Body of Christ, as described in 1 Corinthians 10-12 and John 6.
We are of the view that when preaching the Gospel, that Gospel includes everything our Lord taught, including the Great Commission in Matthew 28:19 and the institution of the Eucharist at the last supper, the occasion of which is discussed in the three Synoptic Gospels and 1 Corinthians 11, and the meaning of which is further explored in John 6.
Thus, I am of the personal view that in teaching children to spread the Gospel among themselves, which is of benefit wherever, as is so often the case, the godparents of the child neglect their responsibility, they should be taught to spread these teachings of Christ.
Thus I believe that our Lord loves and saves innocent children, but at the same time, we should baptize and communicate them starting at infancy, for our Lord said in Matthew 19:14 “But
Jesus called them unto him, and said, Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein." This is obviously a different view than what we see in the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church; some Eastern sui juris Catholic Churches which are basically Orthodox in communion with the Pope do communicate infants, while others delay this until First Communion and then do Chrismation as part of confirmation, administered by the bishop to adolescents, whereas we Chrismate immediately.
This has numerous benefits for the children. For example, it ensures that they are not possessed, for baptism is an exorcism, and possession thus can only happen through intentional rejection of the faith of that baptism much later in life. It ensures that through Chrismation, they receive the seal of the Holy Spirit. And the participation of young children in Holy Communion is of extreme value: in the Methodist church in which I was raised I first recall partaking of the Eucharist at the age of four, and this was one of the best experiences of my life and cemented my faith.
However, d taylor was incorrect when he asserted that I was suggesting that Baptism is an absolute requirement for salvation. Rather, the remark he made which I objected to is that
“It is the same ole problem that has affected humanity for ages, they simply think they can work their way back to God. And they think it is right because they go to church, read The Bible, have been baptized, repented from their sins, etc..
But they do not see it as work/obedience because they have redefine faith to included obedience.”
I objected to this remark because I do believe that Salvation is a Free Gift from God, and that the way God tells us in the Gospels to obtain this Gift is a process which for most will include baptism and the Eucharist, and for anyone who is mature, entails repenting of sin, because the act of believing in Christ is literally an act of repentence. When we choose to believe in Christ, we are changing our mind, and the literal Greek translation of the word repentance is
metanoia, which means “to change your mind,” and hamartia, which we translate as sin, means “to miss the mark.” It is missing the mark to the most extreme extent to not believe in Christ and thus choosing to believe in Him is to repent of profound sin. Baptism is the sacrament which washes away that sin, and the Eucharist remits sin and confers immortality, for it is the Body broken for the remittance of sin and the Blood of the New Covenant, but if we die before we have the opportunity to be baptized, or if we die confessing Christ before men, for example, as so many Christian martyrs have done under the Roman Empire, Islam, Communism, and so on, such as the Good Thief on the Cross, we are saved, for our Lord promised in Matthew 10:32 “Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven.”
Asserting this is not asserting that we can save ourselves, which is the heresy of Pelagius; rather, it is to say that God has provided any who will accept it a free gift of salvation, and He has provided means of receiving His uncreated grace.
My remarks were severely misunderstood by dd taylor and subsequently by yourself, so I feel compelled to clarify this point. I do wish you had simply believed me when I stated that what you felt I believed was not actually the case, because I have been extremely ill and until this morning have not been well enough to write a detailed reply.