Baptism can biblically be regarded from two perspectives: “Subjectively, the baptism by the Holy Spirit brings the believer into positive relationship to God; symbolically, water baptism is the objective manifestation of the believer's acquiescence in that relationship...It is regarded as the means of participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus.”1 The baptism of the Holy Spirit is quite another matter, and the focus shall remain hereafter on water baptism and its symbolism. The baptism (water baptism) should “be related to, and on the basis of, personal faith, as a public commitment to the person of Christ.”2 The Gospel of Mark sets the picture for baptism in the New Testament, and a reading of Mark 1:4-5 shows the parallels between baptism and the repentance of sin in anticipation of the coming Messiah: “John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.” (ESV)
This concept of water baptism was not entirely new to the people living in this area during the time of John the Baptist. Levitical law called for the ceremonial washing of unclean persons, specifically in Leviticus 14, where a person pronounced free from leprosy was to go and bathe in water and be clean. This idea of “ceremonial washing, or cleansing, appears repeatedly in the Mosaic laws of purification.”3 The fact that it was not entirely necessary for the Gospel writers to explain more in-depth the necessity for baptism is also evidence that the practice was understood by most of the intended original audience. John the Baptist had taken this concept and had “infused the ritual act of initiation and purification an ethical quality that baptism had not seen before. His was a moral community of penitent souls seeking personal righteousness, and he associated the act of baptism the imperative necessity for a thorough change in the condition of the soul, manifested in a remission of sins through repentance.”4
Baptism, in the New Testament, had become a symbol that the believer now shared in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, and the “subsequent infusion of the merits of that death and resurrection into the life of the believer, by which he may live as one dead to sin but alive to God.”5 Baptism itself is not the vehicle of salvation, however, and should never deter from the belief that the death Jesus Christ is the only acceptable atonement for the forgiveness of sin. Acts 2:38 has confused some into believing that baptism alone is enough, but in reality it follows the same pattern that is exhibited in the rest of the New Testament: “Repentance leads to baptism, the forgiveness of sins, and the gift of the Spirit.”6
This is where the similarities between proponents of various forms of baptism, including the age of baptism begin to disagree. Before approaching these disagreements, one final note on the subject of baptism regarding the reasons for the act itself. Baptism has always been associated with the recognition of the forgiveness of sin. While our “disagreements may be of secondary importance, our unreconciled diversity of practice likewise (especially when it comes down to the mode of baptism – sprinkling, immersion, affusion)...it would be a severe affront to New Testament teaching to reckon baptism itself as anything less than fundamental to the church of Jesus Christ.”7
After having establishing the practice of baptism, it is now necessary to look at who is to be baptized. This falls generally into two camps: believers baptism and infant baptism. How a person “sees the place, proper time, mode, importance and meaning of baptism will at least indirectly influence the rest of one’s theology.”8 Those those who practice adult baptism believe that it “is an outward public testimony of God's inward work.”9 The baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:37 gives shows a clear link between belief and baptism, where Luke writes: The Ethiopian eunuch asked Philip what prevented him from being baptized, where Philip replies: “'If you believe with all your heart, you may.' And he answered and said, 'I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.'” (NASB) Many other verses in Acts paint a portrait of entire households being baptized after repenting for their sins as an outward sign of their new faith in Jesus Christ. While household baptism is also an argument for infant baptism, the root cause for the baptism is the same, which is the forgiveness of sin. Many new Christians find that it was “the testimonies of ordinary believers in a baptismal service that are often far more powerful proclamations of the gospel than anything the professional preacher is going to deliver, or that the act of immersion in water, dramatic though that is, is itself going to communicate.”10 While proponents of infant baptism focus on the continuity between Israel and the church, which will be discussed later, the “he case for believers’ baptism has typically been based on the New Testament alone – which is, after all, the only part of the Bible where we encounter Christian baptism.”11
There are as many reasons given for infant baptism as there are denominations of Christianity. In Catholic theology, infant baptism is done to wash away the original sin. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, baptism is understood as the rite by which a baby or adult is joined with the church, which is the mystical body of Christ. Some forms of protestantism practice infant baptism as well, aligning more closely with the Catholic understanding of the act. Presbyterian churches reject this teaching, and believe instead that baptism is the means by which children join in the covenant that God made with his people, similar to circumcision in the Old Testament.12 Those who hold to infant baptism offer the defense that Scripture supports this practice under three motif’s: “children and the covenant, household baptisms, and baptism as New Testament circumcision.”13 They believe that children have always been a part of the covenants that God makes with his people, going all the way back to Genesis 17 where God establishes His covenant with Abraham and his children.14 They use the New Testament example of Mark 10:14-16, when “Jesus' disciples tried to restrict his ministry to adults, Jesus was 'indignant', and said to them: 'Let the little children come to me.'”15 They also point to the baptism of entire households, such as exhibited throughout the book of Acts, arguing that even infants and small children would have been baptized with their parents. Finally, proponents of infant baptism argue that baptism is the sign of the new covenant with God, such as circumcision was the sign of the old covenant given to Abraham in Genesis 17.
The practice of infant baptism has a long standing place in church history. The first explicit reference to infant baptism comes not from the writings of the early church fathers, but from Tertullian, a leader in the church of North Africa, ca AD 200.16Tertullian argued against the practice, “insisting that children should come for baptism when they are grown up so they would understand what they were doing.”17 Another early reference to the concept of infant baptism comes from the writings of Cyprian, who, like Tertullian, came from North Africa. In about 251, he “asked the delegates at a church council whether they felt that the baptism of an infant should wait until the eighth day. He records that the council, composed of sixty-six bishops, said that baptism should not be delayed 'lest in doing so we expose the soul of the child to the risk of eternal perdition.'”18 Augustine, also being a witness from North Africa who advocated infant baptism, had a great impact on the thinking of the Christian Church. He taught that infant baptism went back to apostolic times, though he does not cite by name anyone who taught it earlier than Cyprian. He also taught that there was apostolic authority to the practice of infant communion.19 Infant baptism became firmly planted into culture with the rise of Constantine to power. Under his rule, “Christianity was no longer a sect withing the empire but was to become synonymous with the empire. One would now be a Christian simply by being born into the empire, not necessarily by having a personal faith in Christ. Infant baptism became the link by which the church and state were united.”20 A discussion on infant baptism would be incomplete without discussing the opinion of the reformers, such as Zwingli from Zurich. Initially opposed to the practice, Zwingli would change his mind when the Anabaptist movement began to spread throughout Europe during the Reformation. The word Anabaptist “applies to those who had been baptized as infants but who were rebaptized when they personally came to a faith in Christ.”21 Believing that a “baptism that embraced everyone simply because of an accident at birth could be valid,”22 this group found itself at odds with the power that existed within the church-state. Many who held to this belief were killed simply because “they held to believer's baptism.”23 This is a hard concept for present day Christians to comprehend, due to the fact that the emphasis is now placed on this believer's baptism in most Protestant denominations, as opposed to the reliance on baptism from infancy as an expression of faith. Luther would “waffle on the matter, saying: 'There is not sufficient evidence from Scripture that one might justify the introduction of infant baptism at the time of the early Christians after the apostolic period...but so much is evident that no one may venture with good conscience to reject or abandon infant baptism, which for so long time has been practice.'”24 Luther would also approve of the extermination of those who held Anabaptist beliefs.
It is an interesting fact to note that while the early Reformers may have disagreed with the merits of infant baptism, that does not mean that they outright opposed the practice. Even theologians as late as the 20th century and beyond have found themselves hesitant to stand against the baptizing of infants. John Wesley would find himself continuing on the tradition of infant baptism, more as a recognition of the longstanding tradition than as a vehicle for salvation. Wesley would argue for the necessity of baptism “as the responsibility of the Church while also maintaining the overarching sovereignty of God. God’s sovereignty must be maintained, even in the use of the divinely given sacraments. Christian believers, for Wesley, cannot limit God’s operation to the normal channels of his inbreaking to humanity.”25 Wesley recognized this importance of “taking account of divine freedom and sovereignty, but he saw the sacraments as the conventional means for which God conveys grace, and the Church is required to observe these means.”26 In his writings, Wesley would take on the “quietist notion of spontaneous assurance of conversion and baptism of the Spirit as superseding all outward observances, including baptism and the Lord’s Supper.”27
There are several issues, however, in using the baptism of infants as an act in whereby the babies sins are forgiven. When parents “have been made to answer for their children who are not yet old enough to speak for themselves, it has required them to engage in a ‘form of ventriloquism.'”28 The confession of the sins, even the original sin, for the infant by proxy of the parent is not enough to satisfy God's righteous nature. Salvation is found in Christ alone, and the act of baptism itself should not be considered an adequate substitute for His death. Infants “have no claim in themselves, to salvation, but are, as in the case of saved adults, the subjects of the sovereign election of grace, and the purchase of the redeeming blood of Christ.”29 Furthermore, “infant baptism is too often in danger of becoming a sentimental family event rather than a church event.”30 The problem can also be underscored where the church cannot “accept as valid a rite where a baby was brought to church by unbelieving parents and then was neither nurtured in the Christian faith nor had consciously and personally confessed their own faith at confirmation.”31 This goes against the argument made by some proponents of infant baptism concerning the baptism of whole households in the New Testament, as in the book of Acts. What one does, in “the absence of any explicit New Testament direction, to recognize the place of children of believers in the church, something akin to the Old Testament rite of circumcision, seems to be handled quite adequately by a form of infant presentation and dedication.”32 The main problem with infant baptism is best summed up by one of the Anabaptists of the Reformation, Franklin Littell: “The moral life of the community blended with that of the world...The corruption of the church was precisely this: that she took in masses of people who had no understanding of what the Gospel meant.”33
While the debate over infant baptism will continue for the foreseeable future, another debate exists concerning baptism. This issue concerns the mode in which the baptism is performed. There are three main methods of baptism that have been practiced in the course of Christianity, and the champions of each mode have sparked fervent disputes among believers in both practices. The three types are immersion, sprinkling, and pouring, all of which are done with water. There are two opinions regarding the proper manner of administering baptism that can be discovered by examining the practitioners of each method: That either only immersion is lawful and that the mode is a matter of indifference.34 Those in favor of immersion utilize three main arguments in the defense of their position: 1) It is argued that the word baptizein means 'to immerse,' and therefore the command to baptize is itself a command to immerse. 2) Because baptism signifies union with Christ in his burial and resurrection, immersionists contend that only sinking under and coming up out of the water adequately express the symbolism of the sacrament. 3) Immersionists lay claim to the testimony of the early church, for which immersion was the primary mode.35 With the rise of infant baptism, however, another method was obviously required, as an infant cannot be properly immersed in water. This position, “in most cases, is less a case for any particular mode than a rebuttal of the immersionist arguments. It denies that baptism is rightly administered only by immersion; instead, it contends that in the NT baptism, in its external form, is simply a washing, a cleansing which can as well be effected by pouring (effusion) or sprinkling (aspersion) as by immersion.”36 Each view point offers up its own sources for verification. Those in favor of immersion point to this practice being widely the main form of baptism used in the New Testament. Those who have chosen pouring point to early church leaders such as Cyprian, and that “some of the influences contributing to the popularity of immersion well may not have been healthy.”37 And finally, those who abdicate the use of sprinkling point to the fact that it was well established in Ezekiel 36:25 and Hebrews 9:10, 13-14; 10:22.38
Concerning a so called “correct” form of baptizing, the Bible does not specifically state if one mode is given a distinct preference over another. The example given to us by the New Testament authors, and Jesus Himself, leans toward immersion as the preferable method. However, it should be noted that immersion is not always a possibility, nor is baptism even a necessity for salvation. The thief handing on the crucifix near Jesus in Luke 23:43 was certainly unable to be baptized, and in a modern sense, a person on life support in a hospital is in no position to be fully immersed in water. Wesley summarizes it best: “With regard to the mode of baptizing, I would only add, Christ no where, as far as I can find, requires dipping, but only baptizing: which word, many most eminent for learning and piety have declared, signifies to pour on, or sprinkle, as well as to dip. As our Lord has graciously given us a work of such extensive meaning, doubtless the parent, or the person to be baptized, if he be adult, ought to choose which way he best approves. What God has left indifferent, it becomes no man to make necessary.”39
It is hard to imagine that a common ground will ever be found before Jesus' return on the issues of baptism, especially regarding who should be baptized, when they should be baptized, and how they should be baptized. The important issue, regardless of the differences listed above, is the issue of why people are baptized. Those who have found the saving grace of Christ Jesus are instructed to follow His example and be purified through baptism. Baptism “brings the regenerated person into a redemptive relationship through his participation in and identification with the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ and the subsequent infusion of the merits of that death and resurrection into the life of the believer, by which he may live as one dead to sin but alive to God.”40 It is for this relationship that we publicly commit ourselves as followers of Christ, and continue to live in this world, as Jesus said in Matthew 28:19, going forth making: “disciples of all nations, and baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” (ESV)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brewer, Brian C., "Evangelical Anglicanism: John Wesley's dialectical theology of baptism." Evangelical Quarterly 83, no. 2, 2011.
Boyd, Gregory A. and Paul R. Eddy, Across the Spectrum: Understanding Issues in Evangelical Theology. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2009.
Collins, G.N.M., “Infant Salvation”, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, [ed Walter A. Elwell], Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001.
Ferguson, Everett, "Baptism and The Moral Life." Christian Studies Journal, no. 24, 2010.
Lutzer, Erwin W. The Doctrines That Divide: A Fresh Look at the Historic Doctrines That Separate Christians. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1998.
Polhill, John B., The New American Commentary. Vol. 26, Acts. Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1992.
Rayburn, R.S, “Baptism, Modes of.”, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, [ed Walter A. Elwell], Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001.
Tidball, Derek, "A Baptist perspective on David Wright, What has Infant Baptism done to Baptism? An Enquiry at the end of Christendom." Evangelical Quarterly 78, no. 2, 2006.
Wright, David F., "Christian baptism: where do we go from here?." Evangelical Quarterly 78, no. 2, 2006.
Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary. [rev. ed.] Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2011.
1 Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary, [rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2011), 164.
2 Ibid., 165.
3I bid., 163.
4 Ibid., 163.
5 Ibid., 165.
6 John B. Polhill, The New American Commentary, vol. 26, Acts (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1992), 117.
7 David F. Wright, "Christian baptism: where do we go from here?." Evangelical Quarterly 78, no. 2 (2006) 166.
8 Brian C. Brewer, "Evangelical Anglicanism: John Wesley's dialectical theology of baptism." Evangelical Quarterly 83, no. 2 (2011) 108.
9 Gregory A. Boyd and Paul R. Eddy, Across the Spectrum: Understanding Issues in Evangelical Theology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2009), 215.
10 Tidball, Derek, "A Baptist perspective on David Wright, What has Infant Baptism done to Baptism? An Enquiry at the end of Christendom." Evangelical Quarterly 78, no. 2 (2006) 160.
11 David F. Wright, "Christian baptism: where do we go from here?." Evangelical Quarterly 78, no. 2 (2006) 168.
12 Gregory A. Boyd and Paul R. Eddy, Across the Spectrum: Understanding Issues in Evangelical Theology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2009), 215.
13 Ibid., 220.
14 Ibid., 220.
15 Ibid., 221.
16 Erwin W. Lutzer, The Doctrines That Divide: A Fresh Look at the Historic Doctrines That Separate Christians (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1998) 118.
17 Ibid., 118.
18 Ibid., 120.
19 Ibid., 120.
20 Ibid., 122.
21 Ibid., 124.
22 Ibid., 124.
23 Ibid., 124.
24 Ibid., 126.
25 Brian C. Brewer, "Evangelical Anglicanism: John Wesley's dialectical theology of baptism." Evangelical Quarterly 83, no. 2 (2011) 116.
26 Ibid., 117.
27 Ibid., 115.
28 Tidball, Derek, "A Baptist perspective on David Wright, What has Infant Baptism done to Baptism? An Enquiry at the end of Christendom." Evangelical Quarterly 78, no. 2 (2006) 157.
29 G.N.M. Collins, “Infant Salvation”, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, [ed Walter A. Elwell], (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001), 607.
30 Tidball, Derek, "A Baptist perspective on David Wright, What has Infant Baptism done to Baptism? An Enquiry at the end of Christendom." Evangelical Quarterly 78, no. 2 (2006) 158.
31 Ibid., 159
32 Ibid., 159.
33 Everett Ferguson, "Baptism and The Moral Life." Christian Studies Journal, no. 24 (2010) 34.
34 R.S. Rayburn, “Baptism, Modes of.”, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, [ed Walter A. Elwell], (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001), 134.
35 Ibid., 134.
36 Ibid., 134.
37 Ibid., 135.
38 Ibid., 135.
39 Brian C. Brewer, "Evangelical Anglicanism: John Wesley's dialectical theology of baptism." Evangelical Quarterly 83, no. 2 (2011) 113.
40 Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary, [rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2011), 165.
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