History of Infant Baptism

Your confusing the gifts of the Spirit (tongues, etc.) with regeneration by the Spirit.

 

What you have and what you call "educated Christians" is a partial record preserved by Rome because it suited them to keep that while destroying the records of their enemies. What you have is what I call the history of apostasy. Just as in Romans 1:22-32 error is given over to more error so the Ante-Nicene records digress into worse error of the Nicene Records and then into worse error in the Post-Nicene records as error begets worse error.

 

They also liked to pervert what others believed as well. The Paulicians are on record complaining that Rome charged them with being Manicheans when they repudiated dualism. However, that did not stop Roman writers from continuing to charge them falsely. The Waldenses complained of the same as did many others.

Montanists were all characterized by Rome by one fanatic and yet Tertullian became a Montanist. Novations and Donatists were all characterized by one person as well. All we have of the Donatists is Augustine's infallible memory of every word they said??????

There are many many historians that dive into the records preserved by Rome and see these problems.

Of course, none but Roman Historians and those who side with Rome are credible historians or so says the Romanists.

 

You are saying the Catholics destroyed most of the records of their enemies? Read 'Adversus Haereses' by St Irenaeus of Lyons -a bishop- circa 180 AD, well after the Apostles. He describes the types of heresies that the Christians had to battle with in those days. Those records were not destroyed because it served the Catholic Church, but the records of the 'bible-believing Baptists' were because they were such a threat?

 

I do not care for words like "no" and "none" (and likewise "all") because those words are seldom if ever true. There have always been dissidents and some of them left some writings -- rare, true -- but some.

Most of what we know, however, is encapsulated in the writings of the ECF. If you have other sources besides an argument from silence concerning all the documents burned "by that evil church" then by all means bring them forward!

There are several references in very early texts like the Didache, Shepherd of Hermas, First Epistle of Clement, etc., that point the way to what would later become an error of the church in this regard.

The Shepherd of Hermas (circa AD 150), for instance:

The Didache (circa AD 100):

In these early writings we can see the rudiments of a later strayed doctrine.

 

Where is the evidence? Let me quote a little from J.T. Christian's book, "A History of the Baptists."

http://www.pbministries.org/History/John T. Christian/vol1/history_02.htm


Look in the right places and you will find plenty of evidence of immersion of adults being the only practice of baptism among those churches that remained true to the Word of God. There was apostasy; there were false teachers, and there always will be. We do not listen to them.

 

What we have to consider is that "the" church drifted in its doctrines in the hundreds of years beyond the writings and guidance of the Apostles.

As that drift widened the gap between Scripture and reality, false doctrines crept in, history was often revised to cover the tracks, and eventually a reformation (or multiple reformations) were required to bring the people of God back in line with the revealed Scriptures.

Some here would revile catholicism (note small "c" indicating universal rather than large "C" indicating Roman Catholic) from its first day, failing to understand that the catholicism that they denigrate is their own history until that time when it diverged from Scripture and God moved to restore to a right doctrine and order His church. So, therefore, ANYTHING produced by those who were a part of that original "catholic" (meaning "universal") church is often (wrongly) reviled without examination just because of whom it represents.

That is wrong, both on an historical account and on a theological account, and much of what we still hold as true today, and acclaim as right doctrine, stems directly from those earliest days after the Apostles as Gods people started to sort out and figure out what He desired for them to become as a new covenant people.

Those who would also revise history to fabricate, as an argument from silence, some alternative "baptist" church from the earliest days beyond the Apostles are just as flawed in their ideology as is the Roman Catholic Church who had to revise history to derive a system of popery beginning with Peter.

The actual historical truth and movement of God is something other than either of those two groups bring to the table and it stems from an actual regenerate people who actually make up the "church" of the Lord Jesus Christ -- His Bride -- and His people, apart from whatever name gets nailed above the front doors.

 

Oh, but there was schism... But one must decide which aspects of the schism were doctrinally sound, and most of the breakaway groups were not as sound as the main body -- until around 400 AD anyway.

For a grand example of this happening in real life, in our own era we're seeing multiple strains of Christinity operate at the same time, sometimes with varying adherents attending the same service! We have the late 19th century development of Protestant Liberalism -- spoken against very elequently by G. Graham Machen in his work, "Christian Liberalism," where the very concept of God as presented in the Scriptures is questioned. We have the Finney revivalist doctrines, that ushered in an entirely new concepts in how many see the process of regeneration and conversion, they being in some sense syncronistic instead of monergistic. We have the Calvinistic doctrines, that are the oldest of all mentioned above with roots back to the very Apostles, where God is seen in His electing and effectual calling of those whom He sets apart for salvation. We have the off-shoots of Pelagianism, which finds its roots in the early heresy of Origen furthered by Pelagius and picked up by others, as often expressed in a "non-cal" sense, though to be fair the "non-cal" perspective is akin to the rainbow, with a color for everyone. And, we have some "cafeteria line" doctrines that are all over the map, taking bits and pieces from all the others above as the individual sees fit.

Each of the proponents of the above doctrinal stances argues forcibly that THEIR doctrine is the only RIGHT doctrine and that THEIR doctrine goes all the way back to Jesus. Most are incorrect, and in fact, they cannot all be true for some are just plain mutually exclusive.

Somewhere in the middle of all this is a position that honors God above all, that rightly attributes to God His sovereignty based not on what He does but on Who He Is -- Creator, King, Lord, God, Almighty, Holy, Just Judge, Merciful, Loving, Gracious, Knowing All, Seeing All, Hearing All, Being All, Wholly Other, yet Immanent as "Christ with us." That same position must take into account the moral actions of human beings, the culpability for sin that the Sovereign says is placed directly in the heart of human beings, and the atonement of Christ, who came to: regenerate, redeem, recover, rekindle, remove, repent, replace, rejoin, reassure, rejoice, react, reauthorizing, reawakening, and a host of other "re" words that we might interject.

 

So far so good!

Here is where you err. The New Testament does not ever speak of a "catholic" or universal church - never! The congregations of the New Testament are local visible bodies of baptized believers. The term "congregation" is the proper translation of the Greek term "ekklesia" and it is found in the plural and in the singular GENERIC and INSTITUTIONAL sense but the scriptures never modify it by the terms "universal" or "invisible" nor do they ever attribute to it any metaphors that teach it is by nature "universal" or "invisible."

Even in the "Apostolic Father's" the use of "catholic" does not refer to the nature of the church as every local visible body of baptized believers is called the "catholic" church. Instead the term "catholic" has its earliest usage as a term in contrast to the earliest problem noted in Acts 15 where dispute broke out over whether the membership of the church should be restricted to JEWS only and thus all Gentiles had to be circumcised and made Jews. Instead, each and every church is "catholic" or universal in regard to ethnicity.

Another error. The apostate churches, those whose history are preserved by Rome in the Ante-Nicean, Nicene and Post-Nicene accounts regularly and routinely identified a common enemy from as early as 150 AD right up to the Reformation as the "Anabaptists." That is a fact admitted by their own historians. The Justinian Codes were directed explicitly to ana-baptism.

The Bride of Christ does not include all of God's people and that is obvious from any cursory study of the Bride. In Revelation 19:6-9 there are those invited as guests to the wedding. In Revelation 21:24 there are the "saved nations" existing on the newly created earth OUTSIDE the city which is the home of the Bride. Even the tree of life is divided between two types of God's people, the overcomers who may eat of the fruit of the tree of life (Rev. 2:7) and the nations of the saved who partake only of the "leaves" of the tree of life (Rev. 22:2). Furthermore, the metaphor is applied directly to the local visible congregation (2 Cor. 11:2) and is descriptive of congregations that continue to be faithful to Christ in doctrine and practice in contrast to those who are "corrupted" (2 Cor. 11:3-4; harlots - Rev. 17-19).

 

Wasn't this good enough for you:

http://www.baptistboard.com/showpost.php?p=1788920&postcount=50

 

Basically there are two choices.
You can follow the revisionist history of the RCC, and believe what they say.

Or you can avail yourself of Baptist historians like J.T.Christian who have done an incredible amount of research and believe what they say. Their work is well documented.

Which source are you going to believe: the tainted RCC source or the reliable Baptist source. That decision is up to you? That is why, in seminary, we study both church history and Baptist History. You will also find a thread on Baptist History on this board.

 

The very document that I gave you said it was a pagan relative that demanded it. Why would you read anything else into it?

Thus your argument is illogical for it is an argument from silence. Because it is not mentioned then it must be there. No, you need the actual proof. Because it is not mentioned is the proof that it was not practiced.

He was opposed to the heresy.