Joan Weytze's List: Church and theological history

• cannot be imparted or transferred from one person to another (such as from parent to child) by sacraments such as baptism
• • An example of the difference between the Magisterial and the other Reformation.
• most churches that practice infant baptism were churches that were heavily intertwined with the state in medieval and Reformation-era Europe
• Infant baptism marked the infant as a citizen of the nation and a loyal subject of the reigning political order as much as it marked the infant as a Christian.
• apostolical tradition was for children to become catechumens and baptized only after being trained and discipled in the basics of Christian doctrine. For examples, they point to St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil of Caesarea, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Jerome, Origen and others who were each baptized at adult age (sometimes 30 years or older), despite the fact of them growing up in Christian households or families.
• Augustine, however, had no Christian father and was a strong advocate of infant baptism.
• Tertullian acknowledges that infant baptism was a common practice in his day. He opposes it not on doctrinal grounds but practical ones, suggesting that baptism be postponed until after marriage so that one can be cleansed of the fornication one commits before marriage in baptism. Tertullian also later in life became a Montanist and the strict views on post-baptismal sin which that sect took affected some of his writing.

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