I almost forgot another relevant tidbit to add to this discussion. Someone I know once “had” to be “re-baptized” in order to join the fellowship of an otherwise somewhat sane and friendly missionary baptist church.

The problem? The person in question was originally baptized upon profession of faith in Christ in a non-baptist/non-denominational church.

Looking back, (it was quite a while ago) I wish I had known more about the issue and I would have suggested that maybe it wasn’t worth joining that church if they were going to make out like the first baptism wasn’t valid, because it most certainly was.

I’m very surprised that no one commented on the PCA/SBC Baptism post.

Apples and oranges. It would be like someone in the PCA drawing the conclusion that SBC women have a zero birth rate by looking at the ages of those baptized by the SBC. An SBCer would rightly say “Duh, that’s not how you should measure our birth rate.”

In our PCA church we have many new members who have returned to the Church by reaffirming or professing their faith. If they had been baptized already, then we don’t re-baptize. If I had to guess, I’d estimate that 20-30% of our new adult members fit this description.

If the blogger is interested in the problems of SBC “unregenerate church membership, lack of church discipline, overemphasis on meaningless numbers,” I don’t think a valid comparison of “conversion” or baptism statistics with the PCA is going to be help him feel better about these problems.

Did someone say “BAPTISM!”? Well, ain’t that timely? Joel Garver writes about the laver of regeneration anon.

Bill: See, this baptism discussion (in which I’m not getting involved) is exactly why we need to pay attention to the Federal Vision, rather than getting our panties in a wad because it sometimes contradicts our favorite interpretation of our favorite 16th-century theologians. Baptism unites us with the visible church, conferring some of the benefits of Christ’s passion and death, but bringing with it accountability, and only those who persevere are (we find out) united with Christ and part of the invisible church.

It is pub talk indeed that let’s our conversations have the movement from the meaning of baptism to the treatment of the nether regions. Y’all are giving me nostalgic thoughts of dinner conversation at college.

Kent makes a good point about Acts 15 being about table fellowship between Jews and Gentiles, except I don’t see where “avoiding sexual immorality” is primarily an issue of table fellowship. I just think we can be over the top on “requiring nothing beyond baptism”. Heck, I have a feeling that if Paul was posting at the BHT under the pseudonym “AP” and stated that he wanted all women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, that he would get blasted for being a legalist.

Kent: Actually, I’m pretty sure that many of my posts would annoy most Vineyardites as well – so I’m not sure you can blame it on my circumspect status as a Vineyardite. : ) Perhpas it has more to do with my penchant for the role of devil’s advocate. I’m drawn to poke and prod what I perceive to be the vulnerability of a point of view (including my own). If I was posting on a forum filled with a bunch of legalists, I’d probably be perceived as the second coming of Gene Scott!

Michael: I am interested in reading the story about protestants converting to EO, but the link isn’t working for me.

Kent: I share your categorical dismay. If you are submitting to the uncategorical categorization, then I will follow you into the categoriless abyss.

BUT I’M GOING DOWN IN A BLAZE OF GLORY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Re: Michael’s 4th question. This discussion doesn’t come up much in my present (meatspace) circumstances, but it has come up in the context of my dealings with “emerging” ministries, and it has been a thought in my own journey.

Having grown up as a Christmas-Easter mainliner, and coming to faith and joining the Evangelical Free church in college, my life in the faith has grown primarily in evangelicalism.

I’ve never had a problem talking about Jesus and the Christian faith with people, but I’ve always had a problem with the “used car salesman” approach to evangelism that seems to be the norm. (Even when presented with good evangelism information, much of what I hear eventually devolves to the cheesy sales metaphor.) This isn’t really a problem I deal with any more, but it was the beginning of the mental disconnect that made me start honestly thinking about what I believe and why.

I’ve never really been enticed to swim the Tiber, though I believe there are many fine Christians over there, along with some real screwballs. (Catholic readers, be not angry with me. I believe there are screwballs everywhere.) I only know a little about the EO, but what I see gives me the same reaction.

The more church history I read, and the more I study the Bible and theology, the more I become a theological mutt. To date, I can tell you that I happily serve in an evangelical church with wonderful people, that my theology fits best with the Anglicans, that I lean Lutheran in my views of communion, though I am open to discussion, and that I affirm the historic creeds (Apostles’, Nicene, etc.).

If I were to be walking any of the roads to the old country, it would be to Canterbury, but I’d have to make some stops in Ireland, and I’m a fan of the early church, as my email address will attest.

Michael, keep talking about the journey. It makes for some good discussion. (if not here, then at our theology pub nights in MN)

Hmmm, Capon as a Trinitarian Spinoza. Maybe. Spinoza is an interesting dude, not to be dismissed easily. Difficult to process that one given Capon’s commitment to extreme unsystematicity.

I find Capon to be completely subversive of most church life, and that the gathered life of the church is mostly a witness to the absurdity of God’s lack of standards when it comes to having a people.

Frustrating, isn’t it? So much that’s right about it, but so incredibly unpastoral. He leaves you with no doubt about your freedom in the grace of God. But very little help for cultivating a life together as free beings. But at least he tells you that’s what he’s doing and that for some people, the corrective is going to be a rough treatment what with all the tables getting turned over and idols getting smashed.

Now, what’s all this about wat’ry tarts lobbin’ scimitars at babies?

More »« Less

Bill, I think you have the upper hand in your disagreement with your fellow credobaptists (although to be fair, batholicity faces an enormous task to overcome the force of non-batholic tradition, so Wyman deserves lots of room and time to make his case), but somewhere we got our wires crossed.

You can argue first principles and ordo salutis and any other funky foreign phrases…

I was doing no such thing, although I regret using the jargon word ‘monergism’ as a shortcut. I meant it to be a timesaver, but alas, I miscalculated. In any case, I didn’t yell “Transactionalism!” I quietly intoned ‘transaction’ whilst claiming that it was Wyman, not I, that insisted on an “order” in salvation. I’d like to challenge that whole notion (whether voluntaristic or monergistic) as so much philosophical bookkeeping, as gospel-obscuring window tinting. Yes, the invitation I would offer is the same one you, Paul and Peter offer. The basis, surety, for that trusting commitment is God’s promise to raise the dead, and his raising of Jesus as the firstfruits for all us corpses. Grace is given to all y’all dead people. Respond accordingly. Follow Jesus if you are now alive to the reality that you are in Christ. Repent, believe, confess, trust and “enter his rest,” but the good news is that “his works were finished from the foundation of the world.”

More »« Less

After a good long pause to be certain I’m past the “cage stage” in my conversion from credo- to paedo- (I actually think I skipped right over the stage), I’m making my first actual contribution here from the other side of the debate.  Just a short one to start.

Bill: You can argue first principles and ordo salutis and any other funky foreign phrases you have in your arsenal, but when someone asks us: “What must I do to be saved”?, then we transactionalists have an answer.  The same one Peter used.  The same one Paul used.

I’m not sure a paedobaptist would have answered the jailer any differently.  The jailer also happened to be an adult.  The Acts 16 passage works just fine within both the credo and paedo camps, doesn’t it?

Michael: I expected some reaction to my post summarizing Piper’s view of election as the starting point of the Gospel. Am I alone in finding this worse than depressing?

No, you’re not alone.  I just don’t want to talk about it.  His return from England sermon and this are enough of a one-two punch to get me pretty upset.

Michael, what Joel said.

Jack, We the People; through participation in our representative form of government.

Josh, everything I call “Christianity” begins (and ends) with Jesus. Not being Baptist I’m only interested in the Baptolic machinations as a spectator. I understand and appreciate your explanation as to why baptism is central as a ‘starting point’ for you as an MS Lutheran; but would state that it is not the same to me.

I agree that theology can be described systematically; but I know that humans cannot (and/or will not) respond to Jesus in a theologically linear fashion; as Rich Mullins states:

We are frail, we are fearfully and wonderfully made,
Formed in the fire of human passion, choking on the fumes of selfish rage,
and with these our hells and our heavens so few inches apart,
We are not as strong, as we think we are…

Hi. Conrad Dobler here. I’m going to see if I can get a fight started and then duck out back while the fur flies.

Wyman, I’m sure Josh will have his inimitably eloquent response to your summary. In the meantime, may I just poke at a few things? More »« Less

Michael, it amazes me that as long as you’ve been a Christian you still can’t tell the difference between fellowshipping and being in fellowship.

Tony Esseily is Lebanese, and Monika Esseily is American. They made the trip this summer so their 9-month-old son, T.J., could be baptized in Lebanon.

 

Why on earth would I buy a MacBook and put XP on it?  I could have just walked downstairs to my PC for free.

It’s stuff like the tacit assumption that the children of parents are dead that is driving me from Baptist theology. I know there are Baptists that have better theology than that. Beasley-Murray, Malone, and Doug Wilson even says his dad’s a Baptist who has better theology of children than most Baptists.

But once I moved more towards Beasley-Murray and Malone, it wasn’t a hard step toward full-fledged paedobaptism. Kurt, it is exactly “that sort of thinking” that you mentioned that was a heavy influence in my move towards paedobaptism.

Jack, I so wish you lived closer…

On May 28, 1975 I was fourteen and while riding my bike home from a friend’s house after school I was intercepted at our next-door neighbour’s house by my quite tearful mom. She had just found my dead father in their bedroom, with much of his head blown away – a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Our pastor arrived a short time later, the man who confirmed me the year before. When I attempted to hug him and be held, he peeled me off and pushed me away. Over the ensuing few days, amid much talk about my father’s identity as ‘a suicide’ and the fact that he could not be buried in ‘consecrated ground’ I begun, at first tentatively but later stridently to lift my middle finger toward the church and god of my birth, baptism and confirmation. I soon turned 15 and formally renounced my membership in the LCMS.

The ‘second third’ of my life, 15-30 was spent in anger and denial…locust chewed on every moment, word and thought.

At the beginning of my ‘third third’ (ages 30-45) I walked with some loving men and women down a long road and found a Father with outstretched arms and a pissed-off older brother. One forgave me my angry gesture, the other I fear never will.

I eventually learned to forgive the older brother but he’s really never stopped being a total arse…I maintain a boundaried relationship with him; he’s still my brother and I love him but his ‘rightness’ and pride make me want to barf on his Nike’s about once or twice a week. At first I thought he hung out at one church and other churches were immune…but I wised up…I found him everywhere.

In a way I will remain forever that fourteen year old boy, it has taken me so long to grow up. But there are some things I know about God’s love that I fear my older brother never will…he knows virtually everything there is to know about the Gospel and nothing at all.

Thanks for the hug Raja, thanks for adjusting to my needs…but I must confess, I know nothing about baseball but for how to play it.

My answer to Phillip’s question #10 is easy…I don’t mind tongue-talk at all…I’ve witnessed and participated in it many times; and I know narcissism when I see it.

Part of the challenge of my ‘church-search’ is to locate a place wherein the guidance of the Holy Spirit is not dismissed as, as my grandmother once said, ‘being too religious’. I’ve seen and experienced deep spiritual guidance and correction…but somewhere along the line it seems that we rotten-hearted humans start treating God’s Spirit as if He were a pet in our pocket…which He’s not.

I hit my personal ‘Waterloo’ during the ‘Toronto Blessing’ when the focus switched from Jesus to the Holy Spirit and His manifestions…in effect we became Unitarian in our practice…the only thing that mattered was what we or one of our leaders thought the HS was doing. The issue of ‘Annointing’, especially as it relates to leadership also became an injurious distortion…it is part of why I’m so careful of allowing myself to be ‘under’ authority.

At some level this becomes, in my experience, one part of the Body inflicting pain and guilt on another part of the Body; simply for having different experiences and focus. Michael’s words about catholicity are crucial to understanding how an inordinate focus upon the HS can cause so much division…and what a warped thing, that He who indwells us and causes us to love one another could be used as a means to elevate one of us over another. This stuff can get really, really weird…and when you are on the ‘inside’ you want nothing more than to stay on the ‘inside’ and be perceived as an ‘insider’. When you start to feel like there are ‘insiders’ and ‘non-insiders’ you are well on your way to being part of a cult.

I believe that every Fellow at BHT is filled and guided by the Holy Spirit of God and daily manifest His good gifts in their daily interactions with the others in their lives as part of the (Romans 7) struggle with carnality…with sin. There are no shortcuts to holiness, only lifelong struggle.

Bill, the part you missed was that ‘we aren’t all stinky-nosed butt kissers’, but then again I’m ‘potty-mouthed’ omnibaptist.

Jason, if you put one of those fish thingies on your wife’s car they’ll not plant a tract under her wiper. Which is a good thing about living up here in ludder-land…it’s a tract free zone…the only thing under my wiper is bug guts.

Which reminds me of a joke:

Question: What’s the last thing that went through the bug’s mind when he hit the windshield?

Answer: His butt.

...intensive study of Scripture is a huge part of this for me.  In fact, the most frustrating part about the books I’ve read has been the long, overly-complicated arguments.  Wilson’s essay was the most helpful, because it pointed me to OT covenant promises about the New Covenant (in other words, Scripture that bears directly on the question I’m asking).  Same with Pratt’s essay.  “Can the New Covenant be broken?”  That’s a big question for me on this issue.  “Yes,” is my answer now, because of studying Hebrews 10 and Jeremiah 31 in its historical context.

I think one of the reasons the texts don’t get brought up perhaps as much as they should is because we’ve all stared at the exact same texts and come to different conclusions.  I mean, do we need another go-round for “unto you, and to you children, and to those who are far off”? 

Yeah, don’t give me up for lost just yet.  The debate is not over in my mind.

What some of you may not get is how serious this is to some credos.

Is someone sending you nastygrams? I don’t think I’m the only immersed patron in the bar that changed on this issue. Seems like there’s at least a half-dozen or so of us former credos. Moreover, I grew up steeped in the baptist tradition (with a strong calvinistic direction). So I get how serious this is to you and other committed baptists. I don’t consider myself a big guilt-tripping evangelist for infant baptism because I do respect my rootstock. I think my change in views on baptism was only one component in a wholesale conversion to excommunicated catholicism (h/t to Josh), the general contours of which were expressed very well by Alex a couple of posts ago. Changing to paedo is never merely a matter of changing one’s mind about baptism. It’s a whole different outlook and direction, a whole different personal identity. I think it’s probably as difficult for a baptist to convert to paedo as it is for a Roman Catholic to convert to protestantism. And, of course, converts are prone to experience cage phase. That’s when “wrong” looks indistinguishable from “evil.”

Your denial of the validity of infant baptism makes as much sense to me as Josh’s and Eric’s refusal to permit me to partake in Holy Communion. I understand both issues and respect those who hold to them. It’s only consistent given your views of what baptism is, what it means, and what it’s for. We Reformed and Anglican get the advantage of being more inclusive on both sacramental issues. :-)

BTW, our little garden is doing nicely. We’ve done a little bit of guerilla planting in other non-designated garden areas and so far, everything is coming up. Swiss chard is the experiment this year. We’ll see how it does. Tomatoes already have blooms. One pepper plant is no more. Beans from the kids’ school projects, squash, radishes, cucumbers, herbs. We had a nice period of warmth in mid- to late-April, so everything got a head start before this current cool weather decided to park over the Ohio Valley for a week. But the showers are making everything very green and lush. One of the things I have come to cherish about Kentucky (or at least our bluegrass region) is the virtual absence of bugs. Sometimes mosquitos, but nothing like we used to have in Georgia.

wouldn’t you say those promises you listed fall more in line with the Lutheran view of baptism, rather than presbyterian?

Yes, Bill, which is why Calvin would be defrocked in presbyterian churches today. The more interesting comparison is between the lutheran and the reformed. I happen to think if we (reformed) make the “logic” of grace/divine love/gift the governing category, then the differences between luthern and reformed are greatly mitigated. I think this is also a helpful (and truthful) way to frame what we mean by “covenant,” too, which in our theology tends to get exaggerated out of scriptural proportion.

It is my understanding that Presbyterians don’t hold baptism to be salvific, but I don’t know what remission of sins, putting on Christ, and entering the kingdom are if not salvific.

Excellent. It is this theological nut that cannot be cracked if we approach it with the categories of ordinary rational thought.

“Baptism now saves you.” What is our context when we read this? Cause and effect. Stuff pushing-pulling against stuff. For every action an equal and opposite reaction. We interpret the spiritual in terms of the physical. We physicalize a spiritual reality. In my previous post, I mentioned two ways we do that. One way is to believe that the physical act of baptism saves you, just like the text seems to say. Going through with a ceremony, being doused one way or another with water, and having particular words said over you while all that is going on. A black box. You go into the rite unsaved. You come out of it saved. Process. Action-reaction. Simple mechanics. And wrong.

“If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” The other way is to believe that the psychological act of believing/confessing saves you, just like the text seems to say. The prayer of confession, surrender, or whatever is now the black box. Just prior to uttering the words with your mouth you are unsaved. You complete the prayer and you come out the other side saved. Process. Action-reaction. Simple mechanics. And wrong. Transactionalism is just a common way that this process is even further caricatured.

Baptism saves you. Confessing “I believe!” saves you. Which is it? Which action is the occasion for the “magic” of regeneration? That’s what we’re worried about. We’re worried about solving this problem, this mystery. What is the proper means for me to achieve the desired end? Causal thinking cannot conceive of salvation, either the confession of faith or the baptism, either inward or outward. We are trying to make a gift into a law when we do that (I mean a law as in a law of logic or nature). We are trying to put divine love at our disposal.

turns to Michael, too So I want to come back to your challenge. More »« Less

At least us paedo’s are waaaay more charitable than the credo’s.  We accept your baptisms as valid, why won’t you accept ours?  (jn)

Where is this “pale” everyone keeps talking about?

Michael - I think your argument is a fair one, I wasn’t trying to make it just about you. I guess I was indirectly asking how you would handle it pastorally in an SBC context, since you would know what the church would expect. I appreciate your convictions, but I’m becoming convinced that no matter where I live I probably couldn’t be in an SBC church while my children are still living with us.  I guess Piper is our ultimate example.
Joel - well put.

I think the PCA is in an awkward position on this. The WCF has strong language about baptism, but I think the vast majority of people (myself included) appreciated that both sides can be members in good standing.

Maybe we should dead horse this one now, it never ends well.

OK, I’m not trying to resurrect the whole discussion.

Riiiiight. You’re grumpy because the Reds were teh suck tonight.

Infant Baptism only makes sense if it saves.

Correction. Baptism only makes sense if it saves. Or so says Peter.

What are the “covenant promises�? which infants enjoy upon being baptized?

In no particular order and with Scriptural references left to the reader as an exercise:

1. Remission of sin
2. Receive the gift of the Holy Spirit
3. Buried with Christ in his death; raised to walk in newness of life
4. Put on Christ
5. Entrance into the kingdom of God

As members of a community, of Israel, the Body of Christ, there are also additional promises; I’ve only listed ones that apply to individuals qua individuals.

When it becomes available, I’ll post a link to John Sartelle’s May 7th sermon. I was stunned (in a thrilled, giddy kind of way). It was from Luke 3 and dealt with this very topic.

We can’t escape interpretation in any of this. We can’t reduce the faith and practice of baptism to an algorithm to be solved or a puzzle piece to find. Baptism is not a problem. It is not an activity or an event that must be solved to be understood. I think it’s fair to say that all Christians agree that baptism is connected—in some way—to faith. So what we think of faith will have a lot of bearing on what we think of baptism, what it means and how we should take it in.

The reason I have moved decisively away from credobaptism (and my understanding of baptism I would have to characterize as still mostly a negative one; i.e., I’m surer of what it isn’t that what it is) is because I have moved decisively away from an understanding of faith which reduces it to subjective affirmation. God remains independent of my act of faith; for faith to remain truly faith then it must be possible for it to be refused or denied. For saving faith to be real, there must be annexed to it divine love. This is only another way of saying that grace envelops and accompanies faith. I cannot conceive of credobaptism (Edit: to the exclusion of infant baptism) without forcing faith to stand alone as a human act of affirmation—abstracted from grace (which is the very condition of the possibility of faith)—except in the fuzziest of terms. (Edit: IOW, I cannot conceive of credobaptism’s exclusive claim on the meaning and practice of baptism without also divorcing baptism from God’s enveloping grace/love, except in some nebulous sense.) This, by the way, may very well express a personal shortcoming of my own and not some keen insight into the mystery of baptism. On the positive side, I believe, as best I can following the scriptures, that baptism is a washing, an initiation, an anointing and a circumcision. It is concentrated story.

It is so easy to think of faith and grace as the solutions to a problem, as the necessary links in the mechanism of a human-to-divine chain. (I would say this mode of thinking is why the “logic” of baptism appears for everyone, Michael.) But making the dead alive is much more than a problem. It is an impossibility. New life is not a mechanism. We misunderstand grace completely if we think of it in terms of causality, as if any human act of faith imposes some necessity upon grace. It is as much a mistake to think that the physical act of baptism saves as it is to think that the psychological act of confessing one’s sin and “accepting Jesus into one’s heart” saves. That’s causal, objective knowledge thinking, not grace thinking. (Actually, the gap between grace and objective knowledge is precisely that grace is literally unthinkable; paradoxically, we can only think grace as that which is unthinkable.) Theological speculation must, to some extent, accommodate itself to this mode of discourse, so it speaks of baptism instrumentally, operatively, (or not), etc. Note that the “magic” view of baptism is equally victim of this means-ends calculus. The grace of salvation is secured by the promises of God and the Holy Spirit seals us for the day of redemption. The Spirit is given without measure.

What happens in our baptism—the Scriptures are clear here—is unthinkable through the categories of rational thought. This is because our baptism is not reducible to a space-time event. It occurs in space-time, but space-time does not constrain or contain it. We do know that as one of Jesus’s commandments to us, his seal upon us as his disciples, it is a gift. If the child asks for a fish will the father give her a snake?

I cannot confer baptism upon myself. Grace must come to my aid if I am to be worthy of its gift. God gives it freely; it is not mine to freely take. Faith is part of that gift. If we are baptized into Christ, then baptism is one of the events in which the human and the Divine intersect, to the benefits of life and salvation to the human and to the glory of the Divine.

Michael - I’d also like to know if you would rebaptize someone who wanted to be a member at your (hypothetical SBC) church. I would lose my mind if someone told my kids they had to be rebaptized.
Ellen - The PCA is a mixed bag. Our church is very sacramental and liturgical. Others you couldn’t tell much difference between them and an SBC church apart from baby sprinkling. Ours is focused more on the community aspects of worship, others are just preaching halls. I think that Joel’s church is somewhat similar to ours.

Bill - I’m borderline Lutheran when it comes to the sacraments. I agree that if the baptism is totally ineffectual it doesn’t make as much sense. Can I answer your question with “it’s a mystery” or is that the same as saying that baptism saves except when it doesn’t?

Oh, and my garden is sucking, but I have a nice compost pile going.  My grass is beautiful and 100% organically cared for.

One time a good friend (likely a Baptist) said of another friend: “One thing I really like about Mark is that everything you don’t like about him you learn in the first forty minutes”.

I feel the same way about Baptists—and more than likely I (sorta) am one.

I just can’t get Robert Capon out of my mind…does this make me an Episcapist?

First, for those who complain about the BHT being “upside down,” you can read from top to bottom with a little manual tweaking of our URL to add ?order=ASC. For example, to read today’s posts top to bottom, use this link. I’m not sure how to construct an URL that will tell WordPress to display “today’s posts” or “the last 50 posts,” but someone else might.

You’re welcome.

Secondly, a friend and lurker sent me a nice summation of the Federal Vision brouhaha that I like because it reminds me so very much of my own summations. Not in quality—his is much better, more detailed, and so on—but in tone. In short: these guys have primarily pastoral concerns and are within the bounds of orthdoxy. Whether they’re correct or not is another question, as the author is at pains to point out.

A third thing: I have to say thanks to Christopher. I’m delighted that you were able to read back through the BHT discussion and change your mind on the resurrection. I feared that I’d been ungracious to the point of obscuring what I was trying to say. I’m impressed that you looked beyond that and revised your view.

That’s the BHT: enforcing orthodoxy one person at a time!

For many centuries there lived in the distant land of Allegoria the �Ringist� society. This society obtained its name because of an ancient custom which dominated its culture for many centuries. Among the �Ringists� there was an ancient law, �The Law of the Ring,� which decreed that no one could wear a ring on his or her finger unless that person was married. It also decreed that one must wear such a ring if married and that it must be placed on the left hand during the marriage rite. There were different variations of the marriage rite but every one of them involved the placing of a ring on the left hand of the man and woman being married. This custom existed for many centuries and was so influential that becoming married was often referred to as �putting on the ring.�

After a time the legality of �The Law of the Ring� was challenged, and as a result the national court of Allegoria declared this Law invalid. The wearing of a ring could no longer be limited to those who were married. Consequently there arose in the �Ringist� society an immediate economic boom among ringmakers, and soon various practices arose. A group arose who called themselves the �Pre-Ringists.� They placed rings on their children at a very early age. When asked why they did so, they responded that they did so in the hope that one day their children would become married and this would encourage the child�s future nuptials. There also arose a �Post-Ringists� group who did not wear rings until at least two years after marriage. They argued that a marriage should first be proven as successful and stable before they dared to wear rings and present themselves as examples of what marriage is to be like. Needless to say, they would never dream of putting a ring on the hands of their children. Of course, there were �Traditional-Ringists� who sought to maintain the old Ringist cultural practice, but this group became divided over whether the ring should be worn on the second or third finger of the left hand. One of these groups experienced an additional split centered around whether the ring could be made of material other than gold. Both of these splits further weakened the traditional viewpoint.

As time progressed the �Traditional-Ringists� died out, and there arose considerable debate between the �Pre-� and �Post-Ringists� as to which of their practices was superior. Psychological studies were made as to the influence of ring-wearing on children. Sociological analyses were conducted as to the value of ring-wearing for children raised in the �Pre-Ringest� and �Post-Ringest� denominations.

An ancient manuscript was one day discovered stemming from the earliest �Ringest� society. This manuscript was many centuries older than any �Ringist� manuscript in existence. As scholars began to study it, they came across an expression that caused great confusion. That expression was �putting on the ring.� At the present time there is animated debate camong the �Pre-� and �Post-Ringists� as to what this expression means.

HT: