18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 37

[cahn]

More diaries of our favorite 18th-century Prussian diary-keeper have been unearthed and have been synopsized!

January 18th: Blessed be thou to me! Under your light, my Prince Heinrich was born!

Comments

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints stuff

[cahn]

Heh. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints are farther out there than Arians, so it's not really like Protestants vs Catholicism where they both do believe in the same creed and so on. (My church: We don't need your stinkin' creed!) And we also don't consider other religions' baptisms valid. So it does make more sense to rebaptize than it would for a lot of things.

I was told the whole indexing baptismal records that the church encourages members to do is so all these recorded people can be given a proper, i.e. LDS, baptism.

This is true!

I was told that your church was the only church that could baptize people who weren't present or even living,

This is only half true, it is specifically baptism for the dead (motivated by 1 Corinthians 15:29 KJV: Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?). It's possible they tried doing it for live people who weren't around at some point in Church history, it sounds like the sort of thing someone would try at some point, but I am not motivated enough to search for it and I think it's not all that likely since it's not even kind of Biblically motivated.

that they just have to know that the person being baptized existed,

Yes, this is true.

and that said church is on a quest to baptize as many people in the history of the world as possible.

Yes, true, because you have to be baptized to be saved, and how unfair is it that all these people died without baptism and didn't have the opportunity! (I gotta hand it to my church's theology, it really does try to deal with what Joseph Smith saw as unfairness.)

But that doesn't seem to jive with what you said just now about consent

The missing part is that, after the baptism for the dead is performed, the dead person has the choice of whether to accept the baptism or not. That's the consent part.

Of course, there's also the part where you might want to get consent from, oh, the relatives of the people you are baptizing, which historically the Church has not been great about -- for example, getting into a ton of trouble at some point because they were trying to baptize Holocaust victims *facepalm*. Anyway, they don't do that kind of thing anymore, but this is why they're so big on family history. Because if you take your great-x26-grandfather, or whatever, to the temple to get him baptized, it's rather harder to tell you you can't.

On a related note, you with your expanded access to FamilySearch owe me some Frederician (boyfriend) lookups! When would be a good time of the year for you?

Probably January!

Re: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints stuff

[mildred_of_midgard]

(My church: We don't need your stinkin' creed!)

Lol! That makes sense, re rebaptism.

Thank you for all the explanations and filling in some of the gaps in my knowledge! It's one of those topics where I've only picked up scraps by osmosis.

The missing part is that, after the baptism for the dead is performed, the dead person has the choice of whether to accept the baptism or not. That's the consent part.

Ahhh! That solution did not occur to me, thank you.

for example, getting into a ton of trouble at some point because they were trying to baptize Holocaust victims *facepalm*

Yes, see, that's why I was willing to entertain the possibility that this was all a conspiracy theory made up by people who EXTREMELY don't want this baptism!

Probably January!

Excellent! You will be hearing from me then. :D