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- Title
The Practice of Baptizing Infants: Instauration of the Resurrection Order and the Doctrine of the Original Sin.
- Authors
PĂTRAŞCU, Horia Vicențiu
- Abstract
One of the traditions extant in today's world -- especially in its Eastern part, but also in the mostly Catholic, traditional countries -- is the baptism of infants. This gesture is close to -- almost indistinct from -- the coming into the world of a new member of the city, and it represents a sort of consecration, a sacralization of its existence, correlative to the act of civil registration of its birth. Surprising is especially the massive presence of this tradition, which lingers on at the same time with and independently from the emancipation of the society from religiosity, the superlative valorization of the principle of free speech, expression, and choice and the ever more visible emphasis on the importance of the infant's rights. Thus, a tradition that unimpededly goes against the current and, furthermore, a tradition that lacks the appropriate amount of contemplation. Hence the aim of this work is to ponder and to reflect upon the ritual of baptizing infants -- a practice imposed by tradition and with vague dogmatic confirmation (the Third Carthage Synod) -- and to propose, beside an excursion into the history of mentalities, a phenomenological understanding of the "internal" necessity of "baptism" in the Christological scenario. The main sources analyzed in our approach are Paul's letters, and the apologetic work of Saint Justin the Philosopher. This work proposed to follow the thread of the meanings of baptism starting from the analysis of such inaugural texts as the Epistles of Saint Paul, which reveal an extremely interesting practice -- the baptism in the name of the dead -- which may be seen as a prelude of infant baptism. Two are the important, essential items of this article: the relationship between baptism and resurrection, and the importance given to the doctrine of the original sin on the background of the extension of the pedobaptism. Baptism is a simulacrum of the resurrection, and this illuminates "the necessity and the universality" of the practice of baptizing infants. Christianity is instituted as a religion only at the moment of its confirmation, when it goes from the condition of mere signaling, promising, and delivering the good news of the abolishment of death to the condition of a fait accompli. Also thanks to the permeation of the practice of pedobaptism, "Adam's sin" is rediscovered as theological justification of such practice and transformed into what would later be called the doctrine of the "original sin."
- Subjects
BAPTISM; PHENOMENOLOGICAL sociology; REDEMPTION
- Publication
Hermeneia: Journal of Hermeneutics, Art Theory & Criticism, 2018, Issue 21, p169
- ISSN
1453-9047
- Publication type
Article