Baptism,
Original Sin & Little Children
Is to conceive a sin?
Hugh Fogelman
In 418 CE,
a Catholic Church council decided that every human child is born demonic as a
result of its sexual conception, because the baby inherits the sins of their
parents―thus automatically damned unless baptized. During a Catholic
baptismal ceremony, the priest, today, still addresses the baby,
I
exorcise thee, thou unclean spirit…Hear thy doom, 0 Devil accursed, Satan
accursed.
This “exorcism” is euphemistically described
as “a means to remove impediments to
grace resulting from the effects of original sin and the power of Satan over nature…”
But the church still had a problem; some babies died before they could be
baptized. So, to explain God’s apparent cruelty in allowing infants to die
unbaptized, condemning them before they had a chance for salvation, the church
came up with this explanation:
If, as is not uncommon, God permits
children to be killed before they have been baptized, it is to prevent their
committing in later life those sins which would make their damnation more
severe. In this, God is neither cruel nor unjust, since, by the mere fact of
original sin, the children have already merited death... Women’s Encyclopedia of Myth, Barbara G. Walker, Editor
Therefore,
supposedly, for the child to be conceived, the mother and father “must perform
a sin."
Standing
in stark contrast, the
Torah, given by God to all mankind, commands us to have children. God tells us
to “procreate.” It
is a Commandment, a mitzvah, in the Torah to have children. Therefore, to conceive is not
a sin. Logically, if it is a “sin,” it certainly would not be the
basis for one of the Commandments of the Torah, the Laws which God wanted us to
live by.
In
Judaism, there is no baptism because there is no “original sin.” God tells us
in the Torah tells us that one does not suffer for the sins of their parent.
According to the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), the person who sins is the one who will
die. For example, Moses was willing to be blotted out of the book of life on
behalf of
Deuteronomy says “the father shall not be put to death for
the children and the children shall not be put to death for the father-every
person will be put for his own sin (24:16)
Ezekiel 18.4 “For every living soul belongs to me, the father as well as the
son--both alike belong to me. The soul who sins is the
one who will die.”
Ezekiel 18.20 “The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the
guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The
righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness
of the wicked will be charged against him"
Ezekiel 18.27-28 “But if a wicked man turns away from the
wickedness he has committed and does what is just and right, he will save his
life. Because he considers all the
offenses he has committed and turns away from them, he will surely live; he
will not die.”
I guess
the early church fathers didn’t like Gods version! So what else is knew?
Copyright © 2003, Hugh Fogelman. All
rights reserved.