Should we baptize the whole house hold

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Weston Stoler

Puritan Board Sophomore
Hypothetical situation

If you are the head of a house hold of Mormons (you yourself being a Mormon) and you hear the gospel and believe but your family rejects it, should you ask your entire house hold to be baptized since you are the head of the household?


Why or why not

Scripture to prove your point.
 
No one who rejects the gospel should be baptized. End of story.

So, what sort of scenario are you envisioning, exactly?

For what its worth, being a thoroughly convinced paedo-baptist, and believing such to be part of the NT witness in household baptisms, I still don't think anyone in those houses who rejected the gospel and the offer of baptism was baptized. There was never a more obvious disqualification for church membership than rational rejection, mockery, hostility, etc.

I also dismiss the notion that anyone who positively rejected the Abrahamic faith (OT), or who refused to be circumcised, was forcibly subjected to the ritual. Once again, the idea is repugnant to spiritual religion. Where there was an obligation to be circumcised or to perform a circumcision, and this wasn't done, the consequence was removal from the covenant people, Gen.17:14; cf. Ex.4:25; Jos.5:6-9. Besides, the obvious implication of Scripture is that some Israelite households contained some uncircumcised male servants. They're the ones who were not permitted to take part in Passover, Ex.12:44. If such persons were circumcised immediately on entering the house, as a matter of course or by rote, there would hardly be any reason to specify a rule for such persons. "No uncircumcised person shall eat of it" (v48) would suffice. So it is plain such persons were not forced under the knife, though it is otherwise apparent that such servants were expected to (eventually, voluntarily) conform to the rule of the house unto which they belonged.

In bringing biblical-expectations into the present, it is also necessary to reckon with the shifts in the nature and exercise of paterfamilias authority, the meaning of legal emancipation, the near-complete removal of any and all master-servant relationships within a modern, egalitarian culture; and such-like temporal adjustments. Of course, these same shifts took place in ancient times also, usually not so rapidly as we have seen changes come about. But there must be a time when a person transitions from a time where he is "spoken for," to "speaking for himself," cf. Jn.9:21.

But the simplest reality, respecting the given scenario in the OP, is that the family members are rejecters of the Christian faith. No one who rejects the faith should be baptized. But those who are truly meek in their submission, devoted to the head of house and willing to be taught his new faith and prepared to adopt it as their own--obviously these are not rejecting becoming disciples, but accepting. And those who do not speak for themselves in any case cannot reject what they have yet to fully apprehend (which is no different than in the days of the circumcision).
 
Thanks, I have a friend who brought this situation to my attention and I didn't really have an answer for it. This is just fine ^-^.
 
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