[@] Baptism and Fellowship (sidebar)

I was re-reading this post (because for some reason it gets a LOT of click-through attention), and I noticed some knot head (me) saying this:

If the Guys with Ties stopped by my bookstore the other day, I could have asked them whether their church still baptizes for the death – that is, can one of them be baptized for the sake of a dead person they don’t believe was baptized?

Let’s imagine for a second that they said, “well, yeah, it’s true. Now here’s why they do that: {insert LDS ravings here} I would never do that, but that’s why it is done.”

Now let me ask you: did they defend the practice, did they just let it go, or did they reject the practice? They defended the practice – even if it was half-hearted because “they would never do it”. It’s like saying – as I have heard atheist apologists say – that it’s fine for women to have as much sex as they feel like having before marriage, but don’t you dare bring up the point that this includes my little sister. My sister’s not a whore.

Well, which is it? Is a woman who has as much sex as she wants before marriage a whore, or should we not care whether she has sex outside of marriage? He can’t have it both ways.

The astute reader of this blog would, at this point, apply this argument to me in the baptism discussion and say, "cent, fruitcake, you can't have it both ways: either you're defending paedobaptism or you're not."

Well, at the risk of drawing fire, I will admit something: I am actually defending the practice of paedobaptism -- but not all paedobaptism, and not for every reason. It is an implementation of the doctrine of baptism I would not practice, but that does not mean that I think there is sufficient basis to disqualify it from orthopraxy.

You may continue your hectoring from that place.