THE HISTORICAL PERVERSION[1] OF BAPTISM

A person only needs to read the New Testament in order to see that as the church originally practiced water baptism, it was only believers who were being baptized. Those who claim to use Scripture alone as a guide to faith and doctrine and yet argue that the N.T. evidence is such that it also allows infants as being proper recipients of baptism try to prove their arguments by using uncertain Scriptural proofs combined with theological “justifications” that are not in accord with the Scriptural meaning or purpose of baptism. Lasting unity will never be achieved on this issue unless we are willing to put aside everything but the words of God to determine truth and cease to teach as doctrines the commandments of men. The practice of infant baptism cannot be established on the authority of Scripture alone, and as demonstrated in the footnote below, the case commonly made by appealing to the “household” texts (Acts 11:14; 16:15, 33; 18:8; 1 Cor 1:16; 2 Tim 1:16; 4:19) does not stand up to an examination of the texts themselves[2] and neither does it stand up to the test of reason.[3]

But as we seek to discern baptism’s original purpose, when we examine both the N.T. and a few quotations from the 2^nd century Christians dealing with baptism’s purpose, we see that both sources agree that originally, people were being baptized in order to have their sins washed away (Acts 22:16), to get into Christ (Rom 6:3), to put on Christ (Gal 3:27), to be added to the church (Acts 2:41) or to be placed into the one body (1 Cor 12:13), to receive initial salvation (Mark 16:16, 1 Pet 3:21, Tit 3:5), to be buried with Christ and raised with Him (Rom 6:3-4; Col 2:12), to obtain initial forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38[4]), and it was closely linked with receiving the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38, John 3:5, Tit 3:5, etc.) as well as initial justification and initial sanctification (1 Cor 6:11)—and that is just to mention a few of baptism’s more obvious Scriptural purposes. Paul did not minimize baptism[5] and neither did any of the other early Christians who were considered to be orthodox. In fact, the earliest Christians believed that, in the normal course of things, the salvation process was not complete without water baptism. And they often used very strong language in refuting those (like the Gnostics) who said differently—even going so far as to speak of them as being heretics, apostates, and unbelievers. Here are a couple examples taken from The Ante-Nicene Fathers collection[6]: