A Bible History of Baptism
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It does not fall in with the purposes of the present discussion to enter into the prophetic question, as to the time and manner of the future developments and glory of the Redeemer’s kingdom. Respecting it, one thing is certain. The past has been a time of the hiding of his power; but the light of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will yet cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. The Branch of Jesse “shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek; and his rest shall be glorious.” – Isa. xi, 10.
2. Every soul to whom the grace of God has come, from the day of Pentecost to this hour, has received it from the immediate hand of Jesus, baptizing him with the Holy Ghost. And so it will be to the end. Thus, each one so redeemed is a new proof and pledge that Jesus fills the throne, – that Satan and all the powers of darkness are under his feet; and that the hearts of men are in his hands, to give eternal life to as many as the Father hath given him.
3. When the end shall come, and the mystery of God shall be finished, it will appear that in every aspect of the issues joined with Satan, triumph and glory crown the head of the Son of man. Nor will it be the mere force of physical omnipotence crushing the feebler powers of Satan. But the glory of perfect righteousness, of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and might, of knowledge and fear of the Lord, in the Head and leader of the salvation, – a perfection, not merely of moral excellence but of all gifts and endowments, tried and proved, first, in the form of a servant under the law, in obedience and sufferings, amid the temptations of the world and the flesh, the wiles of the devil, and the inflictions of God, – a perfection then shown upon the throne of glory, in administering with perfect wisdom and perfect skill the vast and various affairs of God’s boundless empire, thwarting and turning to confusion the plots and policies of Satan and his angels, rectifying the disorders wrought by the enemy, and vindicating God’s glory impeached through man.
It will be a moral triumph revealed in each one of the redeemed, once a prostrate slave of Satan and sin, baptized and quickened, and aroused to struggle for liberty, and made more than conqueror, in the conflict, through the grace and Spirit of Christ, over Satan and all his powers without, and indwelling sin and corruption, – each one scarred with the wounds of battle, but all – the crushed serpent writhing beneath their feet, – wearing the white robes of triumph and waving the palms of victory; – all clothed in the righteousness of One, and each grown to the stature of Christ, in the perfection of holiness and beauty, after the image of God.
It will be the moral triumph of the whole ransomed host, by one Spirit baptized into one body, her garments of wrought gold and needle-work, received and revealed, spotless and complete in all divine perfections, – the bride of the Lamb, the glory of her husband, as he is the image and glory of God. (1 Cor. xi, 7.) In them shall the principalities and powers in the heavenly places behold and study and admire the reflected likeness of the unapproachable glory of the infinite Invisible.
It will be the triumph involved in all this revelation of glory and blessedness in contrast with the spectacle of Satan and his followers and work, exposed before all intelligences, in shame and everlasting contempt; – his achievements seen in discord and darkness, in sin and suffering and sorrow, in lamentation and woe, in the loss to him and to his of all the divine perfections in which they were created, and in distortion, deformity and discord, possessing and pervading them all; his confident wisdom and power turned to imbecile folly, and his conspiracies and wiles made the occasions and means of fulfilling God’s plan which he opposed, and crowning the Son of man with glory.
The true dignity and significance of the rite of baptism can only then be adequately realized when we appreciate this comprehensive extent and grandeur of the baptizing office of Christ, signified by it. In the fulfillment of that office he now orders all things; and its exercise must be continuous to the end. The Great Baptizer must breathe the Spirit of life into all that mighty multitude, out of every generation and race, whom the Father has given Him. He must send fire upon the earth, and divide between his people and his enemies, and vindicate the Father’s sovereignty and grace in all his dealings with the wicked. He must, at last, by the quickening virtue of the baptism of His Spirit, raise up his saints, – their bodies glorious as his own glorious body, and their souls perfect in holiness, – and place them on the throne of judgment with himself; judge and cast the wicked out of his kingdom; confirm the holy angels in rectitude and blessedness, and cast Satan, – thwarted, defeated and bound in chains of darkness, – into the gulf of fire, – him and his angels and followers. He must purge the earth and heavens with fire, from the defilement which Satan and sin have wrought, and out of them create and adorn the new heavens and the new earth, the abode of righteousness, the home of the holy and the blessed, – where the many sons shall dwell with God and the Lamb. He must make all things new.
Then may the triumphant Son of man proclaim his work accomplished, and his office ended. Then may he, – not now from the cross, but from the throne, – cry, “It is finished!” “The former things are passed away, and behold I have made all things new.” Sin and the curse are abolished; – tears, and death, and sorrow, and crying, and pain are no more; and in life and immortality the earth-born sons of God possess the glory.
“It is done!” The floor is purged; the garner filled; and the chaff burned. The baptism is accomplished. Then shall the Son, his commission fulfilled, deliver up the kingdom to God even the Father, and shall himself also be subject to Him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all. (1 Cor. xv, 24, 28.)
Section LXXIV. —Argument from the Real to Ritual Baptism
Thus is Jesus revealed in characters of unspeakable grandeur, as the true and only Baptizer, – his the real baptism, of which all others are mere shadows. His baptizing office is the very end of his exaltation, the peculiar and distinguishing characteristic of his throne and scepter. As the cross of Christ is the symbol of the whole doctrine of his humiliation, sorrow and death, so his baptizing scepter represents the whole doctrine of his exaltation his kingdom and glory. And, as the sacrament of the supper shows forth his abasement and atonement for sin; so, that of baptism proclaims the glory and power of his exaltation, and the riches of salvation and grace which he sheds on his people from on high. The ritual ordinance therefore if true to its office, must be true to the similitude of the real baptism, – must represent and proclaim those very things which are realized in the office and work of the great Baptizer. But what has the real baptism to do with the humiliation of Christ, in any of its aspects? And, especially, what has it to do with the burial of his dead body? With the throne of his power, the prerogatives of his scepter, the grace, the grandeur and the glory of his achievements to the end, its relations are intimate and from them inseparable. But with humiliation and shame, with death and the grave, it holds no relations but those of boundless distance and infinite contrast.
Here then, at the culminating point in the history of baptism and the plan of God’s grace, as identified with it, the divergence of the immersion theory from the statements, conceptions and principles of the Scriptures on the subject interposes between them a widening and deepening gulf, broad, profound and impassable. Whilst the Scriptural rite points exultingly upward to Christ’s high throne, and calls us to lift up our heads and admire and adore the height of his majesty and the grace and grandeur of his baptizing work, – the immersion theory constrains its votaries, with bowed heads and stooping forms, to grope among the graves, in the vain endeavor to trace some fanciful resemblance between the rite which they espouse and the form and manner of the burial of the dead, – a burial, too, which, as thus imagined, the crucified One never received!
The doctrine of the real baptism is thus utterly incongruous to that of immersion. Equally irreconcilable with that form are all the phenomena and expressions used in connection with the administering of Christ’s baptism. The sound from heaven as of an outbreathed mighty breath poured down, and filling all the place, was the only phenomenon of Pentecost indicative of form or mode. And its mode was affusion, or outpouring, and descent from above. The language in which the transaction is everywhere described and referred to is equally specific and invariable. It was a shedding down – a pouring down – a falling upon – a filling of the disciples; – a style of expression used, not on the occasion, only, but in every subsequent allusion to the subject. So, the prophecy cited by Peter is an express definition of this as the mode. “I will pour out of my Spirit.” But, more than this, it identifies the outpouring of Pentecost with all those Old Testament prophecies, in which the gift of the Spirit is spoken of in terms of pouring and sprinkling. All these, again, as we have formerly seen, are intimately associated with the baptisms of the Levitical system. Those baptisms represented in ritual form the things which the prophets set forth in analogous figures. If Christian baptism departs from the Old Testament mode, it to the same degree departs from the form in which the grace of Pentecost is uniformly predicted, represented, described, and referred to.
The attempt is made to evade the force of these facts by the assertion that the “sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind,” “filled all the place where they were sitting;” and that the disciples were immersed in it. But (1.) the immersion thus imagined is, an inversion of the Baptist theory. The result of an admitted affusion, it is an application of the element to the person, and by a sustained analogy, on Baptist principles, would require that the grave should have been brought and put about the body of Jesus, and that, in water baptism, the element should be poured over the subject, until he is covered, although drowning would be the inevitable result. (2.) There is, in fact, no analogy, except in the jingle of words, between an immersion in water, which is immediately and inevitably fatal to life, and an immersion in the vital air, which is the very breath of life, the withdrawal of which is fatal. (3.) If Christian baptism sustains any real relation at all to the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which Christ administers – as it assuredly does – it is that of type to antitype – of a similitude to the reality. Both the form and the meaning of the rite must be derived from the nature of the reality, of which it is the symbol. If then the immersion of the disciples in the wind or breath of Pentecost is the antitype symbolized in the outward form of baptism, the ordinance means, not the burial of Christ’s dead body, but the imparting of his Spirit of life to his people. Thus the Baptist theory of the form and meaning of the ordinance is exploded, since the two ideas can not stand together. They are mutually destructive and the incongruity is fatal to the whole scheme, which can not stand without an immersion on Pentecost; and can not endure the crucial test of the only immersion which they can pretend to discover there.
The alternative is inexorable. If that which Christ dispenses is the normal, the antitype, baptism, then by it the ritual baptisms of both economies are to be interpreted; and their signification is to be found, not in the sepulchre, but on the throne – in the Spirit thence poured out, and the life and salvation thence dispensed; – and the form of the ordinance must needs correspond to its meaning. If, on the other hand, immersion in water is the normal baptism, and the burial of the body of Jesus, its meaning, then the baptism of Pentecost with all its phenomena and doctrine is to be struck from the record, as no baptism at all. If that which Christ dispenses is baptism, immersion is not.
Part XII.
THE BAPTIST ARGUMENT
Section LXXV. —Baptizo and the Resurrection
The argument in proof that the disciples of John and of Christ were immersed comprehends four essential propositions. (1) That baptizo means, to dip, to plunge, to immerse, to submerge, – one or other of these, and nothing else; (2) That the prepositions, eis, en, ek, and apo, as used in the New Testament, in connection with baptizo, require and enforce that meaning; (3) That the resort of John to the Jordan, and to Enon, “because there was much water there,” is conclusive to the same effect; (4) That Paul, in saying that we are “buried with Christ in baptism,” refers to the form of immersion; (5) It is, moreover, held that the account of the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch shows it to have been by immersion. The last point will be considered further on.
As to baptizo, enough has already appeared to render it certain that the definition heretofore insisted on by Baptists is untenable, and that the word, in itself, determines nothing as to form. It was formerly maintained as unquestionable, that bapto and baptizo are strictly equivalent; and that the meaning is, “to dip, and nothing but dip.” This assumption may now be considered obsolete. It is definitely abandoned by the ablest representatives of immersion. Dr. Conant having been appointed thereto by the American (Baptist) Bible Union entered into an elaborate investigation of “The Meaning and Use of Baptizo.” In a treatise published under that title, he thus states the result. “The word, immerse, as well as its synonyms, immerge, etc., expresses the full import of the Greek word, baptizein. The idea of emersion is not included in it. It means simply to put into or under water; without determining whether the object immersed sinks to the bottom, or floats in the liquid, or is immediately taken out. This is determined, not by the word, itself, but by the design of the act, in each particular case. A living being, put under water without intending to drown him, is of course to be immediately withdrawn from it; and this is to be understood, whenever the word is used with reference to such a case. But the Greek word is also used where a living being is put under the water for the purpose of drowning, and of course is left to perish in the immersing element.”102 It is of the primary meaning of the word that Dr. Conant here speaks. As we have already seen, he also recognizes a secondary meaning, the importance of which he entirely ignores. As to the former, the admission here transcribed is conclusive, although obscured by ambiguous and impertinent explanations. No verb can “determine” any thing subsequent to the completion of its own proper action. The healed paralytic, “departed to his own house.” “Paul arose and was baptized.” “John came baptizing.” He that should explain that “departed” does not of necessity imply that he never returned, that Paul may have sat down again; and that for all the meaning of “came” John may afterward have gone away, would be held guilty of puerile trifling. Of course, baptizo determines nothing but its own action. The explanation of Dr. C. that the word does not determine whether the object sinks to the bottom or is immediately taken out, is not trifling, because open to a more serious charge. It is a diligent, although undoubtedly unconscious obscuring of the subject, induced by the instinctive recoil of the author’s own mind from the picture drawn by his definition. He is therefore impelled to retire it into the background and veil its nakedness in the drapery of explanations, by which he is as much confounded as are his readers, – explanations wholly impertinent to the question in hand, which is the meaning of baptizo. That word, in its primary classic sense, as here defined, expresses a definite and completed act. When by one continuous process a person or thing is put into the water and withdrawn, it is not a baptizing, in the classic meaning, but a bapting, a dipping. It is true the word does not determine “whether the object immersed sinks to the bottom or floats in the liquid, or is immediately taken out,” provided that by “immediately,” is not to be understood, instantaneously, – provided that by the baptism, the object is deposited in the water and left there. The emersion, if it take place at all, must be a distinct and subsequent act, and can not be performed as a part of the baptizing. This, Dr. Kendrick, professor of Greek in the Rochester University, and a member of the American Committee of Revision on the New Testament, in his review of Dr. Dale, most emphatically concedes, with italics and emphasis none the less significant because of the intense irritation which breathes in his article. “Granting that bapto, always engages to take its subject from the water (which we do not believe), and that baptizo never does (which we readily admit), we have Mr. Dale’s reluctant concession that it interposes no obstacle to his coming out.” Baptizo “lays its subject under the water; it does not hold him there a single moment. Its whole function is fulfilled with the act of submersion. It offers no shadow of an obstacle to his instant emergence from his watery entombment. We have the utmost confidence in the kindly purpose of baptizo, and of Him who has made its liquid grave the external portal to his kingdom. Neither it nor He intends to drown us. We let baptizo take us into the water, and can trust to men’s instinctive love of life, their common sense, their power of volition and normal muscular action, to bring them safely out.” “The law of God in revelation sends the Baptist down into the waters of immersion; when it is accomplished, the equally imperative law of God in nature brings him safely out.” “As between the two [baptizo and bapto], baptizo is the appropriate word, partly from its greater length, weight and dignity of form, and still more from its distinctive import. It is not a dipping that our Lord instituted, but an immersion. He did not command to put people into the water and take them out again; but to put them under the water, to submerge them, to bury them, symbolically, in the grave of their buried Redeemer; like him indeed, not to remain there, but with him to arise to newness of life. This arising, though essential to the completeness of the transaction, could not be included in the designation of the rite, any more than the rising of the Redeemer could be included in the words denoting his crucifixion and burial.” “We repeat with emphasis, for the consideration of our Baptist brethren; Christian baptism is no mere literal and senseless ‘dipping,’ assuring the frightened candidate of a safe exit from the water; it is a symbolical immersion, in which the believer goes, in a sublime and solemn trust, into a figurative burial, dying to sin for a life with Christ; and just as far as Mr. Dale’s distinction holds good (which even thus far he has not established), baptizo, and not bapto is the only suitable designation of the baptismal ordinance. The early Israelites were baptized to Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They emerged indeed, and were intended to emerge at last. But it was in their wondrous march, through that long and fearful night, with the double wall of water rolled up on each side, and the column of fiery cloud stretching its enshrouding folds above them, – it was in this, and not in the closing emersion that they were baptized into their allegiance to their great Lawgiver and Leader.”103
Of the baptism of Israel, we shall take notice hereafter. In these passages, it is evident that the distinguished professor 1869, pp. 142, 143. is as much disturbed at the apparition of his own raising as is Dr. Conant. At first he seems determined to face it squarely, and calls upon his Baptist brethren to look and see that it is nothing dangerous. But suddenly, he crosses himself, and starts back in a hurried talk of the resurrection of Christ and the rising of his people to newness of life; all of which is very true and precious, but, has no more to do with the question in hand, himself being witness, than has the doctrine of original sin. The question is, the meaning of baptizo, and the professor admits that it has no part in the resurrection. The very perplexing position in which he found himself, is some apology for the confusion of ideas and the incongruities which appear in his statements. He is discussing the relative merits of the two words bapto and baptizo. The former, in its primary and ordinary meaning, he can but acknowledge, engages both to put its subject into the water and take him out again; while baptizo only puts him in. The latter, says the professor, was chosen because of this its distinctive import, because the command was, not “to put the people into the water and take them out again; but to put them under the water, – to submerge them.” But before he is done, we are told that the coming out, “though essential to the completeness of the transaction could not be included in the designation of the rite.” Does “the transaction,” here mean the life saving operation which he confides to the “instinctive love of life, common sense,” etc? Or, are we correct in supposing it to mean that baptismal rite which he is discussing? And if the latter be the design, how is the statement to be reconciled with the reason just before given for the employment of baptizo, because it does not take the subject out of the water, while bapto does? Waiving this difficulty, the question occurs, – Why the rising “could not be included in the designation of the rite,” seeing bapto was ready to add that very idea to the meaning of baptizo? The question is anticipated by the professor, and the answer given. It is because the latter word has “greater length, weight, and dignity of form!” The meaning of the words was a secondary consideration! Bapto has but two syllables, while baptizo has three. It has the advantage, therefore, in a greater length, and a buzzing zeta, to add to its “weight and dignity of form!” Or, perhaps, the superior “weight” of the one word over the other consists in the fact that while bapto accurately expresses the hasty resurrection which the instinct of life and other influences specified so happily, though not invariably, connect with the administration of the rite, baptizo maintains a dignified silence on that part of the subject. But the professor drifts back again to his first position. He insists that the baptism of Israel into Moses was received in their “wondrous march” enclosed between the walls of water, and enshrouded in the cloud, “and not in the closing emersion.” And yet, even here, his protest that bapto itself would not have given absolute assurance of exit, looks like a disposition to weaken the force of “the distinctive import” of baptizo.
However these “dark sayings of the wise” are to be interpreted, the facts remain, that, confessedly, the word chosen by the Savior to designate the rite of baptism does not include in it the idea of emersion, typical of resurrection, – that it was chosen in preference to a kindred word which does distinctly express that idea, – and that the best reasons suggested by Baptist scholarship for this remarkable fact are, that burial and not resurrection was the doctrine symbolized; and that baptizo sounds best! Such are the results of the elaborate researches of the scholarly Conant, confirmed by the eminent learning of Kendrick, divines than whom the Baptist churches have had none more zealous or more competent. Essentially the same is the definition reached through the exhaustive studies of our own departed Dale.
Thus, according to the Baptist rendering of the gospel commission, we are to go into all the world and submerge every creature, – a command which neither contains nor implies authority in any one to neutralize it by a systematic rescue of its subjects from the “liquid grave.” A result of the most serious import to our Baptist brethren follows from these facts. The definition, to dip, for the sake of which they have so long separated themselves, in translating the Scriptures into the languages of the heathen, is demonstrably and confessedly false, and the result is a corrupting of the word of God.