Some More Thoughts on Christian Baptism

Bap­tism is an expres­sion of sal­va­tion, and not a means of sal­va­tion as held by cer­tain church­es. Bap­tism is of vital impor­tance in the life of the believ­er and is more than an archa­ic rit­u­al, yet it is not ulti­mate­ly salvif­ic.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve had a chance to respond to all the things that Nota Bene and Integri­ty Blog have said in ref­er­ence to bap­tism.

Mea culpa–I’ve been run­ning around like a chick­en with my head cut off. Which I under­stand is quite a sight, although I’ve nev­er per­son­al­ly wit­nessed it. Which puts me in mind of Mike the Head­less Chick­en.

But I digress…

We’re dis­cussing what it means to fol­low Jesus, and how bap­tism relates to that. The Catholic posi­tion is that bap­tism is the way one nor­mal­ly becomes a Chris­t­ian. So far I’ve lim­it­ed myself to dis­cussing one spe­cif­ic pas­sage that Sean first men­tioned. They’ve made a LOT of obser­va­tions since I’ve post­ed, so I encour­age you to read their blogs to see what they’ve been say­ing. There’s no way I could respond to it all with­out this being my full-time job, so I’ll just do what I can. Hey guys: if I mis­un­der­stand, mis­rep­re­sent, or fail to address what you con­sid­er to be your strongest argu­ments please let me know: I am being selec­tive, but I’m try­ing to be selec­tive with integri­ty.

In this post I’ll try to pro­vide a broad­er under­stand­ing of bap­tism. It may be long, so buck­le your seat­belts! My basic the­sis will be that bap­tism is an expres­sion of sal­va­tion, and not a means of sal­va­tion as held by cer­tain church­es. Bap­tism is of vital impor­tance in the life of the believ­er and is more than an archa­ic rit­u­al, yet it is not ulti­mate­ly salvif­ic.

Jack and Sean’s obser­va­tions fall into two cat­e­gories: scrip­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal.

I’d like to begin by offer­ing my own scrip­tur­al obser­va­tions.
The Bible is clear that sal­va­tion issues from plac­ing one’s faith [belief plus trust] in Jesus. There are sev­er­al rel­e­vant pas­sages of Scrip­ture, ref­er­enc­ing a few should suf­fice: John 3.16–18, Acts 16.31, Romans 3.23–24, Gala­tians 3.26–27, Eph­esians 2.8–9, 1 John 5.1.

These pas­sages are clear: God adopts us into His fam­i­ly when we place our faith in Jesus. I don’t see such a clar­i­ty in the pas­sages Jack ref­er­ences or in the ones that Sean ref­er­ences. I do see an empha­sis on the impor­tance of bap­tism, but I don’t see a demon­stra­tion of bap­tism as a means of sal­va­tion.

The only texts Jack raised which might even seem to teach salvif­ic bap­tism are towards the end of his post, The Church would also point to the words of Peter and Paul on how bap­tism incor­po­rates us into the Body of Christ: Romans 6:3–4; Col 2:12 … 1 Cor 6:11. [note: I edit­ed slight­ly for length]. In each of these vers­es, Paul is speak­ing descrip­tive­ly: all the believ­ers had been bap­tized, so he can speak of bap­tism as a syn­onym for being a believ­er.

Now I’d like to make a few his­tor­i­cal com­ments:
First, I’d like to acknowl­edge that the ear­ly church clear­ly thought that bap­tism was salvif­ic.

I’d also like to say that it’s an unper­sua­sive point. The­ol­o­gy evolves. Over time the church grad­u­al­ly comes to a deep­er under­stand­ing of the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of the Bible’s teach­ing and incor­po­rates it into our the­ol­o­gy. The most well-known exam­ple is the doc­trine of the Trin­i­ty. All the clues were in the Bible, it just took the Church a few cen­turies to put them togeth­er in a con­sis­tent way.

The ear­ly church fathers were wrong about bap­tism. They clear­ly did not under­stand the Scrip­tures at this point. In fact, I’m will­ing to bet that there were diver­gent views among the ear­ly church the­olo­gians about bap­tism (I just don’t have the his­tor­i­cal exper­tise to know them off the top of my head or the time to fer­ret them out).

I’d like to close by explain­ing what bap­tism does.
Jack asked me what exact­ly I think bap­tism does:
1) Bap­tism forces peo­ple to pub­licly pro­fess their faith in Jesus Christ as Lord.
2) Bap­tism requires a pub­lic dis­play of sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Church.
3) Bap­tism is a test of obe­di­ence. Some­one unwill­ing to fol­low Christ in such a small thing can­not be prop­er­ly called a fol­low­er of Christ.
4) Bap­tism is an object les­son in faith, and pro­vides excel­lent sym­bol­ism that can be used to help peo­ple under­stand the gospel.

Bap­tism does all these things, and prob­a­bly a good deal more. It does not, how­ev­er, save any­one.

11 thoughts on “Some More Thoughts on Christian Baptism”

  1. well said, glen.

    i think the scrip­tures you includ­ed form a strong foun­da­tion for the more mod­ern evan­gel­i­cal view on bap­tism as the cor­rect one. i would also include romans 10: 9, 13 but as you point­ed out there are lots of great pas­sages sup­port­ing this posi­tion.

    as far as the church father’s go, JACK over at integri­ty isn’t sat­is­fied with your treat­ment of the top­ic. he seems to want to know how the church father’s could have been mis­tak­en over some­thing like this, but real­ly the “how” of it is irrelavent: they are either right or wrong on this issue, and if their views are unten­able in the light of scrip­ture then that’s that. to me, the real prob­lem is that if we accept the views of the ear­ly fathers on bap­tism, we force the Bible to con­tra­dict itself and ren­der it fal­li­ble. i’ll expand a bit over at my blog if you care to drop by. oth­er­wise, keep up the good work!

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  2. I trea­sure my bap­tism “of water and of the Spirit”(John 3).
    Being then a “born from above” Catholic Chris­t­ian am I to believe Jesus, St. Peter,
    the oth­er Apos­tles, the Church Fathers and Doc­tors,
    and the Popes (Matt.28:16–20) or just any­one’s per­son­al inter­pre­ta­tion
    of what Jesus said about Bap­tism and Sal­va­tion?
    Jesus, being Divine, was no dunce with words.
    He said what He meant and meant what He said. Since there is no deceit in Him , He said “water” and He meant water, wet water and He said “Spir­it” and He meant Spir­it, with a cap­i­tal S, the Holy Spir­it. If Spir­it is lit­er­al then so is water. Should we ques­tion the mean­ing of Spir­it also?
    I’m a sim­ple friend­ly man and mean no offense.
    I’m writ­ing this com­ment in the spir­it of chris­t­ian fel­low­ship.
    The argu­ments and per­son­al inter­pre­ta­tions about Bap­tism have been inter­est­ing but, I will con­tin­ue to believe in Jesus,
    His Sacred Scrip­ture and His Church over all per­son­al inter­pre­ta­tions.

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  4. Glen,

    While the phras­ing that Joe used may be his own, the essence of the inter­pre­ta­tion that he gives is not only “per­son­al­ly” his own, it also that of the Catholic Church. The Church (that is, the body of believ­ers now and over the course of his­to­ry) pro­posed it to him, and he accept­ed it.

    Sean

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  5. Glen, sor­ry I dont do per­son­al inter­pre­ta­tions.
    The Sacra­ment of Bap­tism and the Apos­tles author­i­ty to teach and per­form Bap­tism comes from Jesus.(Matt.28:16–20)(John 3)
    You are wel­come to mis­un­der­stand my words from my pre­vi­ous com­ment as inter­pre­ta­tion, but I in no way wish to inter­pret
    Jesus, St. Peter, the oth­er Apos­tles, the Church Fathers
    and Doc­tors, the Popes, and the Sacred Scrip­tures from which
    Bap­tism has been passed down to the Catholic Church (includ­ing me)
    through the ages. You are 1900+ years too late to cred­it me with
    the Sacra­ment of Bap­tism.

    Try the 20,000+ and ever increas­ing chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tions, that most­ly began this last cen­tu­ry, they can pro­vide you with many more
    inter­est­ing per­son­al inter­pre­ta­tions on bap­tism.:-)

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  6. Actu­al­ly, every­one does per­son­al inter­pre­ta­tion. There’s no way around it.

    The key dif­fer­ence is this: I am focus­ing my inter­pre­ta­tive efforts on the Bible and you are focus­ing yours on the his­tor­i­cal faith of the church.

    In this case, you inter­pret the teach­ings of the church to include the con­cept of bap­tism as an impar­ta­tion of grace. You have to read (or hear) the teach­ings, under­stand them, and then express them in your own words. That’s inter­pre­ta­tion. And since most of the church teach­ing on bap­tism was not writ­ten in Eng­lish: you’re inter­pret­ing a trans­la­tion, and trans­la­tion neces­si­tates inter­pre­ta­tion. There­fore, you have an inter­pre­ta­tion of an inter­pre­ta­tion.

    Inci­den­tal­ly, I think your inter­pre­ta­tion of the Roman Catholic Church’s doc­trine is accu­rate. Inter­pre­ta­tion is not equiv­a­lent to error.

    One final exam­ple: when you say “He said ‘water’ and He meant water, wet water” you are engag­ing in inter­pre­ta­tion. Your inter­pre­ta­tion is that Jesus was speak­ing with jour­nal­is­tic lit­er­al­ness.

    In fact, the Gospels fre­quent­ly show Jesus speak­ing in metaphor–and this is clear­ly one instance. The phrase “born of water” must be a metaphor–we do not emerge new­born from a pud­dle.

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  7. Glen,

    Yes, you are cor­rect. There is no way around “per­son­al inter­pre­ta­tions.” Such inter­pre­ta­tions come, ulti­mate­ly, from one’s con­science.

    Con­sciences, how­ev­er, can be formed in dif­fer­ent ways. Although I may be wrong (after all, no one can enter anoth­er’s heart), it would appear that Joe, with the aid of God’s grace, has attempt­ed to form his con­science regard­ing bap­tism accord­ing to the his­tor­i­cal­ly con­sis­tent inter­pre­ta­tion of scrip­ture by the Catholic Church.

    How would you describe the way that you have tried to form your own con­science?

    And what do you mean by the “his­tor­i­cal faith” of the Catholic Church? Do you see it as being some­thing whol­ly sep­a­rate from scrip­ture? If you do, I think that this is inac­cu­rate. In speak­ing about bap­tism, the Catholic Church clear­ly bases its teach­ings on its inter­pre­ta­tion of scrip­ture.

    Sean

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  8. I have tried to form my con­science through under­stand­ing the Scrip­tures, learn­ing from the com­mu­ni­ty of faith, reflect­ing on my expe­ri­ences, and respond­ing to the min­istry of the Holy Spir­it in my life.

    As far as the his­tor­i­cal faith of the RCC, I did­n’t mean that as a per­jo­ra­tive state­ment. I was try­ing to draw atten­tion to the fact that he and I were both inter­pret­ing, but that our inter­pre­ta­tions had a dif­fer­ent focus. His­tor­i­cal faith seemed to cap­ture the nuance that I was striv­ing for. Per­haps I was wrong. But Joe and I clear­ly have a dif­fer­ent method­ol­o­gy for inter­pre­ta­tion: mine is to exam­ine the text of Scrip­ture, his is to exam­ine the text of Scrip­ture as under­stood through­out the his­to­ry of the Church. Those are dif­fer­ent, and I’m not sure how to express that dif­fer­ence.

    As to your last ques­tion, I agree that the RCC attempts to root its doc­trine of bap­tism in the Bible, but I con­sid­er them to have made a sig­nif­i­cant inter­pre­tive error.

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  9. Well, it sounds like one issue at the heart of our dia­logue is that of author­i­ty in inter­pre­ta­tion and assur­ance of the truth of any one inter­pre­ta­tion.

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  10. Now there is an inter­pre­ta­tion of an inter­pre­ta­tion of an inter­pre­ta­tion of my com­ments.
    This is fun­ny, and is an exam­ple of the prob­lem with per­son­al inter­pre­ta­tions, no offense Glen and Sean:-).I don’t think I need to restate my posi­tion.
    Bap­tism in a pud­dle of water, it cer­tain­ly is pos­si­ble.
    A Bap­tismal Font is bet­ter, but being Bap­tized in liv­ing, mov­ing water like the Jor­dan riv­er when St. John the Bap­tist bap­tized Jesus(Matt.3:13–17), thats spe­cial.:-)

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  11. St. Peter Fol­lowed just what Jesus said in Matthew 28:19 and John 3:5 . Peter preached (acts238)“Repent and be bap­tized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remis­sion of sins and you shall receive the gift of the
    holy ghost. Peter knew who Jesus was. He knew the name(singular) of the father ‚son , holy ghost in Mat. 28:19. Peter knew that Jesus was just what the angel told mary (emmanuel: GOD WITH US) Not sec­ond per­son of trin­ty. But God the father man­i­fest­ed in flesh
    (1Tim 3:16)

    Reply

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