Christ, baptism

SCAIOLAE — are Spiritual Powers of the Mind, its properties and virtues, which are fourfold, according to the number of the elements, and the four wheels of fire which were part of the Chariot in which Elias was taken up to Heaven. They emanate from the soul in man. Fancy, imagination, speculative faculty, etc., are included under the term. It also embraces, in a special sense, the Articles of our Christian Faith in Jesus Christ, Baptism, partaking of the Eucharist, Charity towards our neighbour, manifesting the perfect Fruits of Faith, whereby we attain not merely prolonged but eternal life. 

For a Catholic perspective on the dogma of Christ s sacrifice Daly, Ortons of the Christian Doctrine of Sacrifice (1978), 53 IT. Also, for the history of the sacraments of sacrifice and baptism in pagan and Christian rites, specifically the mass and baptism, see E. O. James, Sacrfice and Sacrament (London Thames and Hudson, 1962), 13-27, 104-25, 213-59. 

God. It is a scene that alludes to the baptism of Christ when the Baptist cries out Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world (John 1 29). The Eucharist anticipates the nuptial banquet of the bridegroom Christ on the Last Day (Revelation 19 7-9, 21 2), when the Lamb will feed the faithful with his own being. ... 

FIGURE 27 The Baptism of Christ. Mosaic from the Cathedral of San Marco, Venice, thirteenth century. (By permission of the Procuratoria di San Marco, Venezia)... 

Despite their authors best intentions, these passages only serve to underscore the fact that both Pauline Christianity and its opponents offered their adherents the same thing freedom from astral fatahsm. Paul s opponents chose as their path certain ascetic practices (hardly foreign to Pauhne Christianity) and propitiation of angehc beings in order not to remain, to borrow Beare s words, puppets of necessity. Pauline Christianity, on the other hand, presented Christ as the only tme savior from a life of spiritual bondage, and baptism as the only tme medium of salvation. 

The canonical gospels present baptism as a ritual purification. For Paul, baptism could offer far more than mere ritual ablution. It provided a rebirth onto a new plane of spiritual existence, beyond the realm of influences that provoke sin. It transformed the physical body into a new, spiritual body. Finally, it could be an opportunity to participate bodily and spiritually in Christ. When Paul writes, we have grown into union with [Christ]... 

Despite Christ s enthronement over the heavenly rulers, however, the author of Ephesians maintained that these beings still exerted an influence over people on earth. Dissolute behavior proved that people hve dominated by the aeon of this age. The archon of the authority of the air continued to rule the sons of disobedience, forcing them to act in the lusts of their flesh (2 3). After baptism, however, humans were no longer children of wrath by nature (2 3). God made Christians ahve with Christ, that is to say, he transmuted their beings into part of the body of Christ, or into the pleroma. 

Therefore baptism is called death and an end of the old life since we leave behind the evil archons, but it is also called life according to Christ, of which he is sole Lord. Exc. Theod. 77.1)... 

Adv.Haer. 1. 21.2. According to Irenaeus, Valentinians traced the first or psychic baptism to John the Baptist, who brought a water-baptism for the remission of sins, while the second or pneumatic baptism had been initiated by Christ who baptized with the holy spirit. For a detailed analysis of Valentinian dcitoXuxpcocTi , see Nicola Denzey Lewis, Apo-lutrosis as Ritual and Sacrament Determining a Ritual Context for Death in Second-century Valentinianism, / CS 17/4 (2009) 525-561. 

After all, did they think differently themselves when they condemned the Maximianists for sacrilegious schism and ordained others in their place (as their own council proves) "" For afterwards they saw that their communities didn t abandon them, and to avoid losing everyone, they received them back into their former positions of honour. Moreover, they didn t contradict or question the baptism that had been administered outside the church by men condemned by them. So why are they amazed Why do they complain and slander us, because we accept them in a similar way, for the sake of the true peace that is Christ s Do they not remember what they themselves did for the sake of the false peace of Donatus, which is opposed to Christ If this action of theirs is held up against them, and insisted upon with intelligence, they will have no answers at all to make to it. 

The sign of the cross was traced on the forehead of initiates (catechumens) at the onset of their formal introduction to the Christian religion. At this point they were said to belong to Christ (cf lo. ev. tr. 3.2), and looked forward to a more formal preparation for baptism. Cf conf. i. 11 cat. rud. 26. 0, serm. 32.13 97A.3 301 A.8. 

Donatists held that baptism administered outside of their church was invalid. Catholic bishops, in particular, were unfit as ministers of baptism because their predecessors had been in communion with Caecilian. Consequently, Catholic converts to the Donatist church were habitually re-baptised, an action which outraged A., who argued that Christ, and not the bishop, was the actual minister of the sacrament. On rebaptism, cf. also pp. 127. ... 

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