I had a discussion recently with a Baptist pastor. He asked about my background. I told him that I was a reformed Presbyterian and have been a member of a reformed Presbyterian church for over 20 years. All my children were baptized when very young or infants.
I asked him: is it possible for my family to become members of your church? Or associate members or something? He said that he would just call us regular attendees. I took that as a polite no.
He then took the opportunity to explain why he believed in full immersion. He was a nice guy and he did a good job explaining his position. It was all the usual arguments but he gave a slant that I hadn’t heard before.
He said this: The word baptize is just an un-translated (I think he meant a transliterated) Greek word, a Greek word that means "fully immersed." The early church chose to leave the word un-translated. The reason it was left un-translated is because even though the early church knew that it meant "fully immersed", they practiced sprinkling or pouring. So they left the word un-translated to avoid letting others know the “real” meaning of "baptizo” and being forced to changing their mode of baptism.
I thought I had heard all the arguments for the full submersion mode of baptism, but this was a new one to me. I was shocked by this argument.
I was shocked that he would accuse church pastors and theologians of being deceitful for over 1500 years by saying that they hid the true meaning of baptizo by transliterating it. I can imagine a member in his church being convinced by this line of reasoning and not ever reading anything written by those "lying, sprinkling" theologians who lived before the Baptist confession of 1689.
So the Church of Jesus Christ, guided by the Holy Spirit got this wrong and deceived everyone for over 1500 years until the Ana-Baptists showed up to get it right? Wow.
Mode of Baptism
His argument also depends on the first century definition of baptizo as used by the common Greek man on the street. Probably something like definition number 5 says that the word can mean to immerse. The problem with this is that we don’t use a classical Greek dictionary to determine the meaning of New Testament Greek words.
We must take the Bible’s own use of a word to determine the meaning of that word in the New Testament.
Greek words like theos (god), agape (love), sarx (flesh), and logos (word) are all New Testament words that have their meaning derived from their use. We don’t use the classical Greek dictionary to determine their meaning because that would not “fit” with the Bible’s use of those words.
Also, the context of the New Testament writings is the Old Testament Hebrew. Not Plato or Socrates. In fact, New Testament Greek is Hebraized Greek. There is no other document from the ancient world that uses the Greek language like the New Testament.
This is the main point: Baptists insist that “baptizo” means what it meant in Greek civilization, but the NT is written in Hebraized Greek, and this word, and all others as well, must be taken in terms of their meaning in the Hebrew scriptures and their subsequent use in the New Testament.
Leave a comment