Baptism
Friday, August 19, 2022
10:08 AM
Baptism--a ritual form of Christian initiation using water to symbolize a person's acceptance of and into Christian Faith.  Jesus's own baptism by his cousin John called John the Baptist or John the Baptizer is attested in Mt 3, Mk 1:1-12, Luke 3:1-22, and Jn 1:31-34.  The book of Acts presents baptism as a rite performed by Christian missionary or Apostle spontaneously upon a person's conversion (cf. Acts 2:40; 8:26-39; Acts 10:46-48.  Through the early Patristic period, the church developed practices of catechism or baptismal preparation.  Lent and Advent were both developed as seasons of baptismal preparation.  Two major forms of baptism are practiced in Christian tradition:
believers baptism wherein a person first makes some confession of faith or testimony as to their conversion, and
Pedobaptism or infant baptism where a child is baptized into faith on the basis of a parent or guardians pledge to introduce faith to the child and for the baptism to be completed in an act of Confirmation.  
Bibliography, Neyrey, Jerome H., "Baptism," HarperCollins Bible Dictionary, ed. Paul J. Achtemeier, 1996. San Francisco: HarperCollins.  Johnson, Maxwell E. "Christian Initiation," The Oxford handbook of Early Christian Studies, eds. Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David G. Hunter, 2009. 