you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 70 points 1 year ago (22 children)

Baptism is such a weird thing. It's ritualized cleansing turned into one and done

You can get baptized as many times as you like, it doesn't stack

  • source
  • hideshow 22 child comments
  • [–] 62 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    Per the actual wiki, some denominations seem to think it's a sin or heresy to do someone more than once. Which seems like what the nullification in the baptize function is supposed to capture.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 26 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    Could you imagine how op you could become though if baptisms stacked

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 10 child comments
  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    Can you get more clean than clean?

    Numbers are a human thing. The universe don't care

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 9 child comments
  • [–] 22 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I imagine if baptisms stacked, you could pile on a gazillion of them like ablative armor against incoming sin.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Lol, imagine if showers stacked. You could spend a week showering and then all filth just disappears when it touches you

    But then, what happens to the filth?

    The only way I see this working is if you shower, you just continuously wash filth off yourself. But then does it all just kick in when you walk out of the shower? Or maybe, you never become clean until you've washed a lifetime of filth off yourself, then you're clean forever

    I'm imagining every baby just covered in sludge, and after years of washing they become clean. Imagine your kid just never gets cleaner, and everyone just thinks you're a terrible parent. Imagine cleaning your kid and they become clean way ahead of schedule

    There's some real existential horror here

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I think erasing one's body could make you more clean than clean

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    The LDS (Mormons) actually do repeat it, in a sense. Their weekly sacrament is a renewal of their baptismal blessings

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Probably the reason some other sects call double-dipping a sin, so as to not be like those Mormons.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    That seems likely, zealots love a good dividing line. I'm reminded of all the weird obsessing in the Mishnah about wine because the non-Jews of the period used it in sacrifices.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Well there were also times it was unsafe to use red wine because the non-Jews were looking for any excuse to claim it was the blood of Christian babies.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    This was before that - Avodah Zarah is the one I actually read through.

    Like, you can't leave a barrel of mashed grapes too long, because it's then assumed a pagan broke in, danced on it and left, turning it into pagan wine which is the same as doing idolatry yourself, somehow. And it goes on.

    There's other examples as well, of course. Puritans got worked up about Catholic-seeming practices within the Church of England, although I don't remember which ones, off the top of my head.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Although baptism probably has its roots in the Mikva, which is a ritual cleansing, that's not really the significance within Christianity. Baptism is not a washing away of sins, or impurity, but is rather a symbolic death and resurrection. The Apostle Paul, an early codifier of Christian doctrine whose letters became part of the Christian Bible wrote as follows in Romans chapter 6

    Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

    This has the same end effect- the removal of sin and purification, but the conception is totally different.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Jesus was a revolutionary. He removed all weaknesses that could be used against the Jewish people, from temples to stockpiles to using money. He made the early church suck resources from an occupying force while giving nothing back, not even disobedience that could justify a crack down

    In this process, he replaced many rituals with simpler versions that can be done without any special requirements. He reworked every ritual so that it couldn't be taken away, it couldn't be used to force compliance

    Paul was a true believer and philosopher, his job was to sell it to the people. His words were canonized alongside the gospels because they were convenient when reframing Jesus's teachings with the values of the Roman religion... Plenty less convenient writings were buried instead

    Paul was a transitional figure who found himself in between the early church and unexpected gentile converts... He had to rebrand the rituals for a wider audience while keeping the core message. Nothing against the guy... He was in an impossible position and did his best

  • source
  • parent