Someone in a Facebook group asked this question:
"If infant baptism is proper practice, then why wasn't Jesus sprinkled? The bible only speaks to His full immersion baptism..."
Here is my answer:
1. Because Jesus was circumcised as the sign of the covenant, not baptized. He underwent the ceremonial cleansing of John's baptism. In many ways John's baptism was disanalogous to Christian baptism as the covenant sign and seal.
2. What passage is unequivocal that he was immersed? Like most passages, down to the water / up from the water does not necessarily mean immersion and can refer to him literally going down the bank to stand in the water and then walking back up the bank out of the water. So you must beg the question that Jesus was immersed anyway. (I'm not saying he for sure wasnt, just that you cannot build an argument from that assumption without begging the question).
3. The root word Bapto seems to typically mean "dip/immerse" but Baptizo does not. It seems to almost universally mean to wash/cleanse, without reference to means.
4. Jews baptizo'd their hands when they washed and we know this was done by pouring over their hands into a basin.
5. The author of Hebrews in 9 talks about the baptizo's of the OT (sprinkling of the blood of bulls and goats) which were not done by immersion, but it spells out the various baptizo'd os sprinkling of the blood as the chapter progresses.
6. If you claim that baptizo MUST mean immersion then you actually make Jesus a liar. In Acts 1:5 we read, "For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit."" So Jesus is say that what is going to happen at Pentecost is a baptizo (on your view, a "full immersion") in the Spirit.
Yet when Peter says what happened as seen by the tongues of fire, he conveys it via Joel 2 where the Spirit is poured out. In 2:17-18, Peter cites Joel saying,
"I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.
18 Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
and they will prophesy."
So Jesus calls it a baptizo and Peter says that it was expressly a pouring. So if Baptizo ONLY means immersion, then either Jesus is wrong or Peter/Joel is wrong.
7. Even when I was a Credo-baptist I didnt find the case convincing that it was only "immersion." So my denominational affiliation has nothing to do with it. For example, in Acts 8 (where Philip baptizes the Ethiopian Eunuch, the term "eis" is used for "to/toward/into" and is present ELEVEN times in the chapter. With the exception of v38 (which is the verse in question about them going to or into the water), all the other instances clearly are directional - to/toward. They are never "into." The term "ek" is also far more often the directional term "from" rather than a "from out of." So it is a very normal reading that they went down the bank to the river and came back from the river. In fact, the last location marker was the chariot itself which acts as a focal point - they went down FROM the chariot (v38) TO the river and then when they come FROM the water it is implied that they are going back TO the chariot. It is there where Stephen vanishes.
8. We can also see that in Acts 9 Paul was baptized in the house of a commoner in Damascas. People did not have bath tubs back then. They would have wash basins over which they would pour water over their heads or use some kind of rag to basically give themselves sponge baths. It's wildly unlikely that they would have had anything like a modern baptismal to do full immersion baptisms.
9. Josephus records that the Jordan River, at that location was about ankle deep and would maybe be waist deep at flood levels. Unless it was flood levels, fully immersing someone in a couple of inches of water... not probable.
------
The simple fact is, outside of simply bald assertion that it only means immersion, unless you beg the question that it means immersion, there are almost no texts where baptizo is clearly something being fully immersed. Now, this does not prove Paedobaptism nor disprove Credo-Only Baptism. What it does is simply make the lexical case that Baptizo simply DID NOT only or even mostly mean full immersion.
"If infant baptism is proper practice, then why wasn't Jesus sprinkled? The bible only speaks to His full immersion baptism..."
Here is my answer:
1. Because Jesus was circumcised as the sign of the covenant, not baptized. He underwent the ceremonial cleansing of John's baptism. In many ways John's baptism was disanalogous to Christian baptism as the covenant sign and seal.
2. What passage is unequivocal that he was immersed? Like most passages, down to the water / up from the water does not necessarily mean immersion and can refer to him literally going down the bank to stand in the water and then walking back up the bank out of the water. So you must beg the question that Jesus was immersed anyway. (I'm not saying he for sure wasnt, just that you cannot build an argument from that assumption without begging the question).
3. The root word Bapto seems to typically mean "dip/immerse" but Baptizo does not. It seems to almost universally mean to wash/cleanse, without reference to means.
4. Jews baptizo'd their hands when they washed and we know this was done by pouring over their hands into a basin.
5. The author of Hebrews in 9 talks about the baptizo's of the OT (sprinkling of the blood of bulls and goats) which were not done by immersion, but it spells out the various baptizo'd os sprinkling of the blood as the chapter progresses.
6. If you claim that baptizo MUST mean immersion then you actually make Jesus a liar. In Acts 1:5 we read, "For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit."" So Jesus is say that what is going to happen at Pentecost is a baptizo (on your view, a "full immersion") in the Spirit.
Yet when Peter says what happened as seen by the tongues of fire, he conveys it via Joel 2 where the Spirit is poured out. In 2:17-18, Peter cites Joel saying,
"I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.
18 Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
and they will prophesy."
So Jesus calls it a baptizo and Peter says that it was expressly a pouring. So if Baptizo ONLY means immersion, then either Jesus is wrong or Peter/Joel is wrong.
7. Even when I was a Credo-baptist I didnt find the case convincing that it was only "immersion." So my denominational affiliation has nothing to do with it. For example, in Acts 8 (where Philip baptizes the Ethiopian Eunuch, the term "eis" is used for "to/toward/into" and is present ELEVEN times in the chapter. With the exception of v38 (which is the verse in question about them going to or into the water), all the other instances clearly are directional - to/toward. They are never "into." The term "ek" is also far more often the directional term "from" rather than a "from out of." So it is a very normal reading that they went down the bank to the river and came back from the river. In fact, the last location marker was the chariot itself which acts as a focal point - they went down FROM the chariot (v38) TO the river and then when they come FROM the water it is implied that they are going back TO the chariot. It is there where Stephen vanishes.
8. We can also see that in Acts 9 Paul was baptized in the house of a commoner in Damascas. People did not have bath tubs back then. They would have wash basins over which they would pour water over their heads or use some kind of rag to basically give themselves sponge baths. It's wildly unlikely that they would have had anything like a modern baptismal to do full immersion baptisms.
9. Josephus records that the Jordan River, at that location was about ankle deep and would maybe be waist deep at flood levels. Unless it was flood levels, fully immersing someone in a couple of inches of water... not probable.
------
The simple fact is, outside of simply bald assertion that it only means immersion, unless you beg the question that it means immersion, there are almost no texts where baptizo is clearly something being fully immersed. Now, this does not prove Paedobaptism nor disprove Credo-Only Baptism. What it does is simply make the lexical case that Baptizo simply DID NOT only or even mostly mean full immersion.
No comments:
Post a Comment