Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

CONFIRMATION

The practice of the early Church, well established only by the 3rd century, to anoint with oil and lay hands upon those emerging from baptismal waters for the impartation of the Holy Spirit. Scriptural justification for this dual act was found in Mark 1:10, where the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus as he came up from the Jordan; in Acts 10:38, where Jesus is said to have been “anointed” with the Holy Spirit; and in Acts 8, , where the Holy Spirit was withheld awaiting the imposition of apostolic hands. This latter link between the apostolic ministry and the giving of the Holy Spirit led to the insistence that the bishop alone perform the act, and the need to postpone it until the bishop made his rounds eventually led, in the West, to its being treated as a separate sacramental action, called from the 5th century onward confirmatio. In the later Middle Ages it came to be regarded as renewing the sacrament of baptism and associated with a course of instruction in basic Christian beliefs or a prescribed confessional catechism.

Ronald V. Huggins

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

CONFIRMATION

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)