Dunk, Dunk, Sploosh
One of the great things about blogs is the
opportunity it gives to throw out a question and have some of my favorite
brothers converse about it and offer thoughts, answers, and
clarifications. So Jonathan, Mike, Thabiti,
Matt, Michael—I have a question I’d much appreciate your thoughts on,
especially given that we’re a bunch of committed Baptists here.
There’s a strong theme in the Old Testament
of the new covenant being marked by the coming of the Holy Spirit—a theme (or
promise) fulfilled of course in Jesus Christ sending his Spirit to indwell his
people. In the OT, the imagery that is
used constantly to talk about the coming of the Spirit is that he will be poured out on God’s people. So:
Isaiah 32:14-15 The fortress will be abandoned . . . until the Spirit is poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field, and the fruitful field is deemed a forest.
Isaiah 44:3 For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit upon your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants.
Ezekiel 39:29 And I will not hide my face anymore from them, when I pour out my Spirit upon the house of Israel, declares the Lord GOD."
Joel 2:28 "And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. 29 Even on the male and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit.
Zechariah 12:10 "And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.
Even in the NT, that vivid imagery of the Holy Spirit being poured out is picked up, especially in Acts:
Acts 2:17 (quoting Joel 2, of course) "And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams . . .
Acts 2:33 Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.
Acts 10:45 And the believers from among the circumcised who had come with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles.
With that in mind, there’s also a strong connection in the New Testament between that promise of the Spirit and the act of baptism, perhaps the strongest being John the Baptist’s declaration that he baptizes with water, but Jesus will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. So:
Matthew 3:11 (Also Mark 1:8, Luke 3:16, John 1:33, and Acts 2:38) "I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
Then there’s the coming of the Spirit on Jesus immediately after he comes up from the water:
Matthew 3:16 And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him;
Peter connects the two in Acts 2:38:
Acts 2:38 And Peter said to them, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
And then all of it (baptism, coming of the Holy Spirit, and the fact that the Holy Spirit is poured out) is brought together in Acts 10:
Acts 10:45-47 And the believers from among the circumcised who had come with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles. . . . "Can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people, who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?"
So . . . given that we Baptists typically immerse, what do we say about this imagery of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, which is so tightly connected to baptism in the NT?
Now obviously we have Paul’s striking imagery of baptism as an image of death and resurrection with Christ in Romans 6, so I’m not suggesting that we should start baptizing by pouring instead of immersion. My question is more this: We have at least two strong theological images connected to baptism in the NT—it’s a sign of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit and it’s a sign of the believer’s death and resurrection in Christ (and you could probably make a similar case about sprinkling and cleansing from sin, too.) Given that, are we just stuck with the necessity of short-changing one (or two) of those images in favor of the other?
Of course, everyone has this problem, no matter how you normally practice baptism. I’m not trying to pick a fight here about which mode is best (or even whether there’s such a thing as a “mode” of baptizing.) We’ve all been round and round on that. The fact is, any mode of baptism is going to emphasize one of those images to the neglect of the others. We immersionists, for example, hit the death and resurrection image hard, but do we do justice to the pouring out of the Spirit? If you pour, you’re obviously hitting strongly the imagery of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, but aren’t you kind of short-changing the death and resurrection part? Same question for those who sprinkle.
Again, I’m not trying to pick a fight about mode. I just think it’s useful for everyone—however you baptize—to think about how, or even whether, we can do justice to all the images that the Bible connects to baptism and all the significance it places on it. Make sense?
Well I'll take the first plunge (pun intended). As a PCA elder and former Baptist pastor, I've done it both ways, actually all three ways--immerse, pour and sprinkle. I can greatly appreciate the imagery of the immersionists practice. And of course as you all know, we Presbyterians will accept any of the methods mentioned, provided they are done in the name of the Triune God with water by a duly ordained minister.
That all said, I do think you have hit on one of the reasons we like the sprinkling or pouring mode--the imagery. There is a beautiful picture of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the person in that mode. Not to mention dunking the little ones could be problematic.
But among brothers, these discussions can be very helpful in understanding each other. Thanks for the post.
Posted by: Les Prouty | May 20, 2008 3:29:00 PM
Oh wait. I re-read the post.
"So Jonathan, Mike, Thabiti, Matt, Michael—I have a question I’d much appreciate your thoughts on, especially given that we’re a bunch of committed Baptists here."
Did I jump in on a post where I wasn't invited? Sorry about that if it was only intended for you guys.
Posted by: Les Prouty | May 20, 2008 4:30:15 PM
No, Les. Of course you're invited! Thanks for your thoughts.
Posted by: Greg | May 20, 2008 6:20:17 PM
Thanks for the post.
I do believe that it is much more fruitful to consider the many words and images that have theological and conceptual ties to baptism than just the single term baptizo, as significant as that term is.
Even more challenging to me, as one who practices baptism by immersion and values the death & resurrection imagery, is to deal with the complexity and richness of that one metaphor, since Paul uses it in Romans 6:3-4 to describe not only Christ's death and resurrection, but also our own death to sin and new life in Christ.
Thus, in this one image of death & resurrection, we communicate
- the objective, historical, redemptive work of Christ for us, AND
- the objective/subjective result (by which I mean it is God's work, yet cannot stand apart from my experience) of regeneration in us, AND
- the subjective response of forsaking sin and following Christ by us.
As one who affirms believer's baptism, this is what I believe baptism is: a depiction of what Christ has done for me and in me by grace through faith, and my profession of faith in and identification with Christ, with the consequent submission to his lordship over all (with his lordship over my own life to be expressed as discipleship).
This is why it saddens me that so many who practice believer's baptism have nothing more to say than that baptism is following our Lord's command. It is far richer than that.
Posted by: Bruce McKanna | May 20, 2008 10:05:29 PM
So, I guess my short answer to the original post would be that we as pastors just have to do more teaching on what baptism means, which should involve more biblical theology and not a mere defense of our chosen mode.
Posted by: Bruce McKanna | May 20, 2008 10:08:45 PM
I have had two occasions to see Baptists practice pouring and emphasize the imagery of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit.
The first was a baptism service where the church being used for the baptism (we don't have our own baptistry) had forgotten to fill the baptistry for us. We had a large number of relatives and friends who had come in from out of town and from large distances, so after talking with the candidates for baptism, we held a pouring instead. One of our elders read a passage from the Didache on what to do when you're in the desert and you don't have enough water to baptize, and we read passages on the pouring out of the Holy Spirit.
Speaking of the desert, the other occasion was a baptism service in the Rift Valley of Kenya, where there was not enough water to immerse.
On both occasions, in order to be as "baptist" as possible, the one rule of thumb was - get them as wet as possible."
Posted by: Matt Foreman | May 20, 2008 10:20:49 PM
One more...
How about another post and comments thread where we discuss how to bring various realities and results (Dever might use the term "implications") of the cross into our evangelism?
I ask as one committed to the centrality of penal substitutionary atonement, by the way, and not just to stir the pot. Okay, maybe I want to stir it a little, but I sincerely want to think/learn/grow/interact-- not antagonize our contributors and readers here.
I just figure that if baptism is this complex and rich in what it expresses, I should be able to evangelize in a way that communicates the objective work of Christ as well as the promise (i.e., expectation of personal experience) of the Holy Spirit, and new life (understood not only as regeneration, but a new calling to follow). And, do this all in a way that somebody could respond, "Is there any reason why I can't be baptized right now?" a la the Ethiopian.
Let me repeat for the sake of other commenters, I'd love to see this in a future post, please. I don't want to distract from any valuable discussion that may take place on the baptism topic.
Posted by: Bruce McKanna | May 20, 2008 10:23:56 PM
Matt,
Did you go to the church with a copy of the Didache just in case something like that happened? You're my hero!
m
Posted by: Mike McKinley | May 21, 2008 6:50:42 AM
It's encouraging to see Baptists discussing this issue. As a Methdoist pastor I have sprinkled and immersed. I even encourage immersion sometimes because of the vivid and memorable imagery of death and resurrection. Like the Presbyterians, Methodists see all three modes of baptism as a faithful expression of biblical new covenant imagery. Again, I am encouraged to see this discussion come up.
Posted by: Matt O. | May 21, 2008 9:14:50 AM
I'm certainly glad to see this being discussed.
However I think you fella's are getting worried about doing injustice to the sybolism, when you should rather consider the purpose of baptism.
Remission of sins:
Acts 2:38 NASB
Peter said to them, "Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit
Acts 22:16 NASB
'Now why do you delay? Get up and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on His name.'
Union with Christ:
Rom. 6:3-5 NASB
Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?
Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised R252 from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection,
See also Gal. 3:26-27, Col 2:12.
The Holy Spirit Baptism is linked to water baptism(John 3:5) but is experianced separately.
Acts 8:14-17
14 Now when the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent them Peter and John, 15 who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit. 16 For He had not yet fallen upon any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 17 Then they began laying their hands on them, and they were receiving the Holy Spirit.
Posted by: Bradley | May 21, 2008 10:15:00 AM
Interesting discussion. I am glad that at least we (mostly) agree on the proper recipients of baptism. As long as we have baptism right (i.e. believer's baptism), I am not as dogmatic about the sprinkling versus immersion issue.
Posted by: Arthur Sido | May 24, 2008 9:27:52 PM