Jul 08 2007
Witherington’s Waters or Ben’s Baptism
Ben Witherington posts on his new book about baptism which he says
is meant not merely to further stir up the always boiling pot of baptismal discussion, but to see if we can’t get beyond the usual Baptist vs. Paedobaptist deadlock when it comes to discussing this issue especially in Evangelical and more general Protestant discussion.
This is something very desirable and I hope to lay my hands on a copy of the book at some point.
I welcome:
- his acknowledgement that the NT doesn’t settle the matter
- his point that the verb baptidzo does not necessarily imply immersion
- his noting of a range of initiation patterns in the Acts of the Apostles
- his insistence that baptism is neither a dedication ritual nor a coming-of-age one
- his distinguishing between baptism and Eucharist (which I take to mean that we shouldn’t start from a definition of sacrament and then shoe-horn whichever rituals we call sacraments into fitting that definition)
- that baptism can only be done once for a person, and there should be no “rebaptisms”
But I note a number of areas of potential disagreement:
- In referring to the lack of a prescribed baptismal practice in the NT he also refers to the Didache as a later document. But if, as many think, it is earlier than some parts of the NT, then it does have implications for the early evolving of set routines in some places, and against a simple view that because the NT shows diverse practices, we can happily continue diverse practices.
- Then he makes what I regard to be a mistaken distinction between “water baptism” and Spirit baptism.” Despite the variety of patterns of initiation shown in Acts, every theological statement about baptism in the NT makes no distinction between the two, but uses baptism as a shorthand for the whole thing, including reception of the Spirit. However far apart the two elements may occur in practice, they are a theological unity, properly referred to as baptism.
- I therefore also disagree with him when he says “there are many places where the language of water baptism and its rich symbolism are used to describe a spiritual experience, NOT what happens in or by means of the rite of water baptism itself.” There is nothing in the text to justify this, and one can only read it into the text if one has already made the above distinction. So, contra Witherington, when Paul says to the Corinthians “for in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body” (1 Cor 12:13 ) he means exactly that. If they had not all equally gone through a visible, physical actual rite called baptism, then the point would lose its force among the squabbling over spiritual superiority. By linking the Spirit not to gifts but to the shared initiation ritual, Paul insists on the equality of different spiritual gifts in one body.
So it looks as though there’s much to think about in this book. I hope it achieves what Witherington sets out to do, but I fear that by driving a wedge between the rite and what it symbolizes, it may create as many problems as it solves.