Since the promulgation of the Gospel.
Je comprend, monsieur. However, you must at least admit that such cleansing IS possible, strictly speaking - i.e., God can obviously accomplish such - apart from the use of water, which He created out of nothing, and a certain formula that He instituted for His own purposes?
As I have asserted before (on my blog, except it was about whether or not God could have created rational aliens on other planets), I fully admit that according to His Divinity, God can accomplish all things soever.
However, God, being Perfect Justice, will never do anything contrary to justice. In fact, He so binds Himself to justice that even in His own humanity, though He needed it not for Himself, He commanded that St. John the Baptist baptize Him nevertheless.
St. Matthew 3:13-15: "Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to the Jordan, unto John, to be baptized by him. But John stayed him, saying: I ought to be baptized by thee, and comest thou to me? And Jesus answering, said to him: Suffer it to be so now. For so it becometh us to fulfill all justice. Then he suffered him."
After Vienne, we cannot lawfully assert that a person may be saved who is not baptized in real natural water.
He also oathed himself to the statement he makes in St. John 3:5, and the Catholic Church has put this verse forth in several decrees touching on the necessity of baptism in water for salvation and membership in the Church.
Florence is particularly telling in this regard.
Uh, for 4000+ years people WERE being justified (i.e. cleansed of original sin), no? :wink:
Now that you mention it - if they were being cleansed of original sin, then why did Christ come? Why were they detained in the Limbo of the Fathers?
Topic: The Absolute necessity of Water Baptism (Read 36128 times)