We have a Mormon running for
President of the United States and many people are learning more and
more the heretical doctrines of the Mormons.
- Mormons are polytheists (they believe in many gods, not one God).
- Mormons believe that the god of our galaxy (whom they identify with the Father of Scripture) has a wife-goddess
- Mormons believe that this god (whom they identify with the Father) was once a human and that he still has flesh and bones
- Mormons have an invalid baptism since they deny the doctrine of the Holy Trinity
- Mormons have a secret rites
- Mormons have baptisms for the dead
This last error, baptisms for the dead, is derived from Saint Paul's words in 1 Corinthians:
“Otherwise, what shall they do that
are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not again at all? Why are
they then baptized for them?” (1 Corinthians 15:29, D-R)
Mormons claim that this verse
proves that the original Apostles baptized living people on behalf of
dead people so that the dead might be redeemed.
How does the Catholic respond to this error?
1. This baptism is metaphorical,
the baptism of pain, afflictions, tears, and prayers, which they endure
on behalf of the dead, in order to deliver them from the baptism of
fire in purgatory. For even those Judaisers are baptized who deny the
resurrection, like Cerinthus and others, or, at any rate, their
fellow-religionists, the Jews, and this, according to the faith and
custom of the Hebrews, who are wont to pray for the dead, as appears
from 2 Macc. xii. 43, and from their modern forms of prayer. This
meaning best fits in with what follows. Baptism is in other places often
used in this sense, (as S. Mark x. 53; S. Luke xii. 50; Ps. xxxii. 6).
Throughout Scripture, waters and waves typify tribulations and
afflictions.
2. “Baptism” can also be
understood of purification before the sacrifices which were offered for
the dead. The Jews were in the habit of being purified before sacrifice,
prayer, or any Divine service. Cf. S. Mark vii. 9; Heb. vi. 12, and
ix. 10.
3. The different interpretations
of others are dealt with at length by Bellarmine (de Purgat. lib. i. c.
4) and Suarez (p. 3, qu. 56, disp. 50, sect. 1), and they all are
referred to literal baptism.
(a) S. Thomas explains it to mean baptism for washing away sins, which are dead works.
(b)
Theodoret thinks that “for the dead” is “like the dead,” when they rise
from death, viz., when they are baptized, and emerge from the waters of
baptism as from the tomb, they symbolise the resurrection of the dead.
Epiphanius
(Hære. 28) takes “for the dead” to mean when death is close at hand,
and they are looked on as already dead. For then those who had deferred
baptism wished to be baptized in hope and faith in eternal life and
resurrection. Hence those to be baptized used to recite the Creed, in
which is the Article, “I believe in the resurrection of the dead.”
(d)
Claud Guiliaud, a doctor of Paris, thinks that the phrase refers to the
martyrs, who suffer for the faith and the article of the resurrection
of the dead. This meaning agrees well with the words that follow. “Why
stand we in jeopardy every hour?”
(e)
Others refer to a custom which the followers of Marcion afterwards
observed, and suppose the meaning to be that some, in mistake and out of
superstition, received baptism for the dead who had died without
baptism. Cf. Ambrose and Irenæus (Hæres. 28), Tertullian (de Resurr. c.
24) and Chrysostom. {This would be one similar to the Mormon position.}
(f)
Chrysostom proffers and prefers another explanation, viz., that S.
Paul’s meaning is: Why do all receive baptism in hope of the
resurrection of the dead, or to benefit their state when dead, that it
may be well with them after death, if the dead do not rise? Surely,
then, in vain do they do this. But this is not credible, for the common
faith of all the faithful is that they do rise, so much so, that many of
them put off their baptism, even to the end of life, and are baptized
on their death-bed, in the hope that, being purified by baptism from all
pain and guilt, they may fly to heaven, and obtain a joyful
resurrection. Hence we get the name “clinical baptism.” Many canons are
extant ordering that such baptism be not refused to those who ask for
it.
This last meaning seems the
simplest of all, and the one most on the surface, and is taken from the
literal meaning of “baptized.” Tertullian says that “for the dead”
means, “When the sacrament of baptism is performed over the body, the
body is consecrated to immortality.”
Link (here) to read the full blog post of Taylor Marshall at his blog entitled, Canterbury Tales
