Saturday, June 3, 2017

the rebaptism issue among some Athonites

The person doing the video in the last post is of the opinion along with some
on Mt. Athos apparently, that Roman Catholics who come home from Rome
to Orthodoxy must be rebaptized because they have no baptism because
they think baptism reactivates something dormant in the fallen human (I
don't know if that is accurate or not or a misunderstanding of something)
instead of adding something divine not original to the human, and because
of the filioque and so forth. There is no baptism, he says.

There is something and there is what someone thinks about the something.
RC can have some wrong ideas about The Holy Trinity yet still be
orienting around The Holy Trinity through Their Second Person Jesus
Christ Who died on the Cross and came back to life physically and
permanently.

One should also look at what the Orthodox Church was doing centuries
past, though there came a time when rebaptism was required it wasn't
so for most of the separation and ceased later.

In the early days of the church in dealing with persons coming from
heresies, some required rebaptism and some did not, depending on
the content of the heresy and the form of the baptism and words used.

In present times rebaptism is not required normally. It is argued that
The Holy Spirit will fill whatever is lacking once one becomes
Orthodox.

you could argue that the prior times were before papal infallibility
and Immaculate Conception of Mary but these aren't all that
Christological and don't challenge the Core Beliefs of the Creed.

There is a formula of conditional rebaptism "If you are baptized then
I do not baptize you but if you are not baptized then I baptize you in
the Name of the Father and The Son and The Holy Spirit." Or you
could just figure this is built in, especially where a rebaptism is
done just in case there was some error in the original one.