Corey J. Mahler — Comments

Christianity is creedal.

One of the greatest evils wrought by Baptist pastors against the sheep entrusted to their care is the rampant anti-confession, anti-creed sentiment in Baptist churches.

The clergyman can no more claim Baptism as his work than the hammer and nails can claim the house as theirs.

Baptists: ‘You’re making Baptism into a work!’

Lutherans (and all others with sound doctrine): ‘Yes, God’s work — as Scripture teaches.’

We Lutherans were not wrong to build communities, institutions, schools, seminaries, et cetera, but it has certainly come at dear cost that we permitted the least literate Christians so much time to send out enthusiast circuit riders to indoctrinate uneducated populations.

When you challenge a Baptist, in his mind, he earns ‘points’ simply by refusing to actually listen to you. He views the interaction as an ‘attack’ on his faith that can be survived only by resolutely refusing to examine his beliefs, by the naked assertion of them.

Worse still, the Baptists have, essentially, made faith itself into a work, and the more obstinately they cling to (often false) beliefs, then the ‘truer’ they are to their faith.

The fundamental problem when dealing with Baptists is that, whereas they do not believe in the Sacraments, they have created their own, novel ‘sacrament’ of willful ignorance, of beliefs held in open contravention both of Scripture and of reason.

I am at least as certain of the existence of God as I am of my own.

If you do not accept the reality of Baptism as taught by Scripture, then the rest of your theology is also suspect.