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Turbo6: I beg to differ with you about that (general)

posted by bibleprobe(R) Homepage, Mass., 10.29.2009

You wrote: the majority of the Apostles were dead 2 generations before Catholicism even gets started

I really have to beg to differ with you about that.

Catholicism traces all the way back to the Apostle Peter!

Consider these statements about "Linus", the Pope (Bishop of Rome) who directly followed Peter:

The passage by Irenaeus (Adv. haereses, III, iii, 3) reads:
"After the Holy Apostles (Peter and Paul) had founded and set the Church in order (in Rome) they gave over the exercise of the episcopal office to Linus. The same Linus is mentioned by St. Paul in his Epistle to Timothy. His successor was Anacletus."

Linus was also mentioned in II Timothy 4:21

Regarding the early church and INFANT baptism:

The Early Church (closest to and taught by the apostles)
Polycarp (69-155), a disciple of the Apostle John, was baptized as an infant. This enabled him to say at his martyrdom. "Eighty and six years have I served the Lord Christ" (Martyrdom of Polycarp 9: 3). Justin Martyr (100 - 166) of the next generation states about the year 150, "Many, both men and women, who have been Christ’s disciples since childhood, remain pure at the age of sixty or seventy years" (Apology 1: 15). Further, in his Dialog with Trypho the Jew, Justin Martyr states that Baptism is the circumcision of the New Testament.

Irenaeus (130 - 200), some 35 years later in 185, writes in Against Heresies II 22: 4 that Jesus "came to save all through means of Himself - all, I say, who through him are born again to God - infants and children, boys and youth, and old men."

Similar expressions are found in succeeding generations by Origen (185 - 254) and Cyprian (215 - 258) who reflect the consensus voiced at the Council of Carthage in 254. The 66 bishops said: "We ought not hinder any person from Baptism and the grace of God..... especially infants. . . those newly born."

Preceding this council, Origen wrote in his Commentary on Romans 5: 9: "For this also it was that the church had from the Apostles a tradition to give baptism even to infants. For they to whom the divine mysteries were committed knew that there is in all persons a natural pollution of sin which must be done away by water and the Spirit."

Elsewhere Origen wrote in his Homily on Luke 14: "Infants are to be baptized for the remission of sins. Cyprian’s reply to a country bishop, Fidus, who wrote him regarding the Baptism of infants, is even more explicit. Should we wait until the eighth day as did the Jews in circumcision? No, the child should be baptized as soon as it is born (To Fidus 1: 2).

To prevent misunderstanding by rural bishops, perhaps not as well-schooled as other or even new to the faith, the Sixteenth Council of Carthage in 418 unequivocally stated: "If any man says that newborn children need not be baptized . . . let him be anathema."

Those SDA's who always end an argument by saying, we must not follow the "traditions of men" are entirely in error. Apostolic traditions are based on sound theolical fact. Those who preach against these (such as Seventh Day Adventists do; and an offshoot of Mormonism the Community of Christ do) do so because their own contrived "doctrines" conflict with what the apostles did and taught.

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