It may be that no Bible subject has caused more confusion among people than the subject of baptism. What is baptism? What is its purpose? Who should be baptized? Why? I would like to look at all of these questions, but for the present, for the purpose of this article, I will confine myself to the question, what is baptism?
Most people assume that the words found in our New Testaments are English words translated from the original Greek. You may be surprised to learn that the word "baptize" and its derivatives are not English words at all, not at first. They are Greek words that were transliterated.
What does that mean? Dictionary.com online defines transliterate as follows: “to change (letters, words, etc.) into corresponding characters of another alphabet or language.” Thus, those men who translated our New Testaments from the Greek into English decided not to translate the Greek word "baptize" at all. They just made it a new English word. Forget translating it, forget translating the Greek word. To translate is to give the meaning of the Greek word in English. That they refused to do.
Why would they do that? That is a good question. It is a question with an easy answer. The Greek word means to immerse completely. My hardback copy of Vine's, An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, says of baptism, "consisting of the processes of immersion, submersion and emergence." If the reader will do a little of their own research they will quickly see that most all Greek scholars readily admit that in the first century the word was used of immersion only, that is what the Greek word meant to those people.
The Bible confirms this to be the case for Paul says, "Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death." (Rom. 6:4 NKJV) Baptism is a burial, a burial in water when used in a religious context. Paul says again in Col. 2:11-12 (NKJV), "In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead." One is not and cannot be buried by pouring or sprinkling.
The truth of the matter as to why the Greek work was transliterated and never translated is to be found in the fact that by the time the Bible came to be translated into English man had decided on his own initiative that sprinkling would do just as well as immersion. If you translate the Greek and are honest in your scholarship you will have to use the word immerse, or dip, or submerge. If you do that, what will that do to your doctrine of sprinkling? It will destroy it. That cannot be allowed to happen. What is the solution? Don't translate the Greek, transliterate it, producing a new English word that because it is new you can make it mean what you want it to mean.
The first time after the establishment of the church in Acts 2 that anyone was sprinkled or had water poured on them rather than be immersed was approximately 250 years later. In about 250 AD, a man named Novation became ill and fearing for his life wanted to be baptized. Too ill for immersion his friends poured water on him. By that point in time there was not an inspired man alive to cause problems over this substitution. Inspiration had ended. The apostles were dead.
One had to go outside the pages of the New Testament to get pouring (affusion) or sprinkling, showing little respect for what was written. What was written was not sufficient for a man (or his friends) who felt he was at the point of death, and knowing he had not been obedient to the command to be baptized (immersed), was desperate. What he needed was a change in the ordinance. He needed pouring as a substitution and if he or his friends had to add a new law or change an old one to get it in then so be it. Evidently, they had never read the passage, “There is one Lawgiver.” (James 4:12 NKJV) Either that or they were just going to ignore it.
Thus, we see the kind of attitude that brought sprinkling and pouring into what the world calls "Christianity." One ought to be able to see the evil of that kind of attitude toward God's word; if I can't find what I want in the word I will do whatever.
In 1311, the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Revenna officially adopted pouring (affusion) and sprinkling (aspersion) of water as valid baptism. The Greek Catholic Church would not accept this but the Roman Catholic Church did and it exercised dominance in the West where the English-speaking people resided and where English Bibles were to be produced. This was more than 100 years before the printing press was invented making mass production of Bibles possible. Tyndale’s New Testament of 1526 was one of the first to use the word baptism or baptize consistently in an English Bible.
The long and short of it was that the doctrine of sprinkling was, by subterfuge, brought into the Bible by a deliberate failure to translate a Greek word and giving the transliterated word any meaning you wanted since it was a new word to the English language. That is why if you look up the word "baptize" or "baptism" in a modern-day dictionary it will give you meanings related to the way the word is used today, thus giving you options--sprinkling, pouring, or immersion.
Even so I was surprised to see that my Webster's New World Dictionary Third College Edition, the last copyright listed being 1988, while listing 3 common meanings of the word "baptize" as used today, gives before those listings the Greek meanings and I quote here from it--"to immerse," "to dip." Honesty in scholarship is a great thing.
Most all scholars will agree on the meaning of the original Greek word baptize, immerse or dip, but you will probably never see again a major translation that will translate the Greek word baptize that way. Why? With the vast multitude of people who have now come to wholeheartedly embrace sprinkling how many Bibles do you think they would sell? You can still learn the truth on this topic through your own study but you will get no help from most Bible translations. One exception is the Literal Standard Version translation but how many people do you know who have this translation? It is not a major one.
What is sad is that some will read what I have written here, they will then go and do their own research, find out that what I have said is the truth, and yet it will not make a bit of difference in their view of the subject if they have by tradition had pouring and sprinkling handed down to them in their particular faith.
Pouring and sprinkling for baptism came to us from man, not God. It has now become a tradition of men. Jesus once said to the scribes and Pharisees, "Why do you also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition?" (Matt. 15:3 NKJV) God's commandment to us is to be immersed. Everyone agrees that was the original commandment and historically was done exclusively for a couple of hundred years after the church was established. When I substitute pouring or sprinkling for immersion how can I say anything other than I have done the very same thing these scribes and Pharisees did?
I have transgressed the commandment of God because of my tradition preferring to keep my tradition (pouring and/or sprinkling) over his word (immersion). I have made the commandment of God of no effect by my tradition handed down to me by those who came before which I have accepted wholeheartedly.
Then Jesus also does a comparison and contrast in talking to the scribes and Pharisees. He says God says (Matt. 15:4), then says "but you say." (Matt. 15:5). Again, it is hard to not see a parallel. I, God, have said immersion, but you say sprinkling.
Then we also have to ask, since pouring and sprinkling came from man being 200 to 1300 years after the writing of the New Testament, depending on whether you want to start your count with Novation or the Council of Ravenna, how it can be said that God had anything to do with bringing affusion or asperion into the faith? How can it be anything other than "teaching as doctrines the commandments of men"? (Matt. 15:9 NKJV)
The only way one can get around the difficulties associated with accepting pouring and sprinkling is to say the New Testament is insufficient as a guide for man today. It must be amended. This smacks of the utmost arrogance. It is to say God was not able, not capable, of producing a guide that could stand the test of time and stand on its own two legs. It is to say that we men of dust need to help God stay updated. It is to say we still have inspired men able to amend the teachings of the New Testament.
The Catholic Church accepts both—its inspiration through the Magisterium and the Pope and the need for God's word, the New Testament, to be amended and added to from time to time. If you believe that, then it is not hard to abandon the written word or replace it with your own, your teaching and tradition. Just combine it all and claim the totality to be “God’s word.”
But the truth is this is the approach the vast majority of those who call themselves Christians take whether they are Catholics or Protestants. They are putting their trust in men rather than in what is written. The idea seems to prevail that their tradition (or practice if you will) regarding baptism, whether begun in 250 AD or in the Middle Ages, or even more recently somehow trumps the New Testament and amends it. And, yet, they think it is of God.
I don't know whether you ever thought about it this way or not. What we are saying when we add to God's word is that it alone is insufficient to save men. We now need more. Yes, there was a time when immersion alone was sufficient but not so today. Men need options God did not give. It is too hard to have to do what he said way back then. Getting all wet is too big an inconvenience. What was once sufficient is no longer so. Who said so? We did. Who could fairly question us who have made ourselves the authority?
Hear the words of Jesus, "He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him--the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day." John 12:48 (NKJV) The word of Jesus in the New Testament is be immersed.
Today we need to make a choice. Will we believe and practice those things that came into our midst religiously hundreds of years after the establishment of the church and which, as a result, came obviously from man, not God, or will we return to the New Testament as our sole guide in our faith and practice? We need to choose. We ought to say as for me and my house I will follow the words of the Lord as recorded in the New Testament and leave the ideas, opinions, and innovations of man to those for whom the New Testament is not good enough.
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