"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
So today I got to have a lovely chat with one of the manliest men out there, the star of The Long Ride Home, Mr. Bear Woznick. Bear invited me onto his radio show for a chat about all things Catholic, during which we discussed Judo, St. Edmund Campion, Byzantine Christianity and Atheism.
Please brace yourself for the manliest of conversations…
For the past few days (Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3) we’ve been looking at the case for infant baptism. Today I would like to conclude the series.
So far in our study, we’ve looked at the implicit inclusion of infants in household baptism. We’ve examined how baptism actually affects the soul of the one being baptized. Yesterday, we also briefly looked at how baptism parallels, and is the fulfillment of, the circumcision of the Old Covenant.
Up until this point, I have tried to address the question of infant Baptism as though I were a Protestant, restricting myself to the testimony of Scripture. However, as a Catholic, I do not hold to the Bible alone, but also to Sacred Tradition, the oral teaching of the Church passed down through the generations.
Even for a Protestant, who doesn’t hold to belief in Sacred Tradition, the witness of the Early Church in the centuries following the Apostles is a significant, albeit less important, consideration. So, today I would like to ask a simple question: Did the Early Church baptize babies?