It's all Greek to me

So, yet again, I find I have comments to make on baptism. It turns out I'm not very interested in other 'sacraments', even the eucharist. But I am fascinated by baptism, because for me the theology of belonging is critical to my sense of what it means to be a church. As an aside, this is my framework for opposing the Romish practice of first communion for children at the age of seven that my church has now instituted, but I digress.

 

This morning, Today had an item on changing the baptism rite to make it 'less archaic.' That's possible I suppose, but the objection made to the baptismal liturgy was that it was hard to understand because it used the phrase 'Kingdom of heaven.' This raises two possibilities:

1. The woman in question is a moron. This is not a complicated phrase to understand. While we do not have a functioning monarchy in most western countries due to democratic government, we do not elect God. That is a fairly simple and understandable concept. Kingdom isn't an odd word.
2. The woman in question is a heretic (or possibly a heathen). Of all the Christians who have spoken of the Kingdom of God, Jesus did it most and did it first. Actually the biblical phrase is basileia tou theou, and the word there could be translated as dominion, but is really Kingdom (or Empire), though that wouldn't really help matters. Saying it feels wrong is a sign you don't know your Greek, haven't read a single commentary and have unfortunately lapsed into heresy. You certainly shouldn't then appear on the radio to talk about it.

So, anathema. Change the liturgy if you must (but it will usually end badly), but not that bit, and not for that reason. People may not be getting their children baptised, but saying citizen of heaven or some other nonsense isn't going to change that.