Does baptism make you a Christian? C.S Lewis replies...

“It is only the usual trouble about words being used in more than one sense. Thus we might say a man ‘became a soldier’ the moment that he joined the army. But his instructors might say six months later ‘I think we have made a soldier of him’. Both usages are quite definable, only one wants to know which is being used in a given sentence.”

— C. S. Lewis to Genia Goelz (March 18, 1952), Collected Letters, 3:172. Quoted by Justin Taylor in C S Lewis on Theology and Worship

In other words, Scripture teaches that baptism converts the sinner (see e.g. here, here and here) while at the same time saying that conversion is a pre-requisite for baptism (see e.g. here, here and here). Nevertheless,  I think Scripture's emphasis is clearly on the former given that it speaks unambiguously and in the majority of baptism making people Christians.

Why Sunday school / Children's church should be scrapped?

I've touched on this before here, here and here. But the guys at Lutheran satire do a much better job (in 5 minutes) in the video below.

Should Christian infants receive communion?

Here is St. Augustine's answer:

“Those who say that infancy has nothing in it for Jesus to save, are denying that Christ is Jesus for all believing infants. Those, I repeat, who say that infancy has nothing in it for Jesus to save, are saying nothing else than that for believing infants, infants that is who have been baptized in Christ, Christ the Lord is not Jesus. After all, what is Jesus? Jesus means Saviour. Jesus is the Saviour. Those whom he does not save, having nothing to save in them, well for them he is not Jesus. Well now, if you can tolerate the idea that Christ is not Jesus for some persons who have been baptized, then I am not sure your faith can be recognized as according with the sound rule. Yes, they’re infants, but they are his members. They’re infants, but they receive his sacraments.They are infants, but they share in his table, in order to have life in themselves.” (From Sermon 174)

Agreed?

Christian educators doomed to fail if...

I'm currently reading on Christian education and stunned to think that how we educate our little kiplings (2 so far) will very probably be the way that they (in time, DV) will educate their own children. In other words, a key test of a distinctive Christian education is not simply whether it produces well-behaved, hard-working and faithful children but also if they pass on and train their children (our grandchildren) the very things that they have learnt and seen us do. Simply put, Christian home-schoolers/Christian schools are doomed to fail, if they do not teach their children in a way that leads to them, to educate the next generation biblically (Psalm 78:1-8)

Pope's message to Evangelicals?

Although there are numerous errors linked to the papacy, the soon to retire Pope Benedict XVI has written  wisely of the folly of trying to make worship 'fun'...

Whenever applause breaks out in the liturgy because of some human achievement, it is a sure sign that the essence of liturgy has totally disappeared and been replaced by a kind of religious entertainment. Such attraction fades quickly - it cannot compete in the market of leisure pursuits, incorporating as it increasingly does various forms of religious titillation (The Spirit of Liturgy, 198)

Interesting that the Pope thought this issue wide spread enough (in Roman Catholic circles) to write about. One could almost be mistaken for thinking he was actually addressing Evangelicals!