Saturday, October 30, 2004
1 Corinthians 10:1-2
"For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. "
Don't take this post seriously but A.A Hodge's comment on these verses made me smile wryly...
Don't take this post seriously but A.A Hodge's comment on these verses made me smile wryly...
"the Egyptians who were immersed were not baptised and the Israelites who were baptised were not immersed"
Comments:
I read your comment on the Red Sea and baptism. I have a completely different line of thinking regarding baptism and the OT that I have been working on for several years now. perhaps I'll run it by the bloggers.
I'm a Baptist. But I find baptistic arguments for their position to be highly spurious because they are NT only arguments. The paedobaptist argument from the totality of Scripture is much more appealing to me and I believe more biblical. However, it seems to me that a circumcision/baptism connection is not valid for this simple reason: the reason of 1 Cor 10:1-2 and other NT places.
Baptism is not a NT only phenomenon. It is quite literally everywhere in the OT. It precedes circumcision, stands along historically with it as a different sacrament, and extends beyond the closing of the circumcision era with the death of Christ.
Put simply, the Red Sea, Noah's flood, the priestly baptisms (see Heb 9:10), the Jordan crossings and washings of the OT, and the river of life in the garden of Eden all point to one thing. Baptism does not come from circumcision but from baptism. We ought not, therefore, let what took place in a completely different sacrament determine how we now practice NT baptism upon Christians because this is irrelevant.
Instead, we should look to the OT practices of baptism and as we do with the OT type of communion (namely the Passover), we should let the proper OT corresponding sacrament which I believe to be the washing of the priest in Exodus 29:4 inform our practice and mode of NT baptism.
So, for example, while the Red Sea crossing was a baptism in which no one got wet (the same is probably true with the flood), they did get wet in the Levitical initiation ceremony into the priesthood. In fact, they washed their whole bodies. This type serves as the example of why we see no explicit reference to sprinkling in the NT and why we see no explicit reference to the baptism of infants in the NT. The priest was not to receive his initiation baptism until he was older (in that case age 30).
To summarize. Baptism comes from... baptism, not circumcision. Baptism is informed by... baptism, not circumcision. Our argument not only need to be consistent with the entirety of Scripture, but by the same typified sacrament of identical substance. This is why I am a Baptist.
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I'm a Baptist. But I find baptistic arguments for their position to be highly spurious because they are NT only arguments. The paedobaptist argument from the totality of Scripture is much more appealing to me and I believe more biblical. However, it seems to me that a circumcision/baptism connection is not valid for this simple reason: the reason of 1 Cor 10:1-2 and other NT places.
Baptism is not a NT only phenomenon. It is quite literally everywhere in the OT. It precedes circumcision, stands along historically with it as a different sacrament, and extends beyond the closing of the circumcision era with the death of Christ.
Put simply, the Red Sea, Noah's flood, the priestly baptisms (see Heb 9:10), the Jordan crossings and washings of the OT, and the river of life in the garden of Eden all point to one thing. Baptism does not come from circumcision but from baptism. We ought not, therefore, let what took place in a completely different sacrament determine how we now practice NT baptism upon Christians because this is irrelevant.
Instead, we should look to the OT practices of baptism and as we do with the OT type of communion (namely the Passover), we should let the proper OT corresponding sacrament which I believe to be the washing of the priest in Exodus 29:4 inform our practice and mode of NT baptism.
So, for example, while the Red Sea crossing was a baptism in which no one got wet (the same is probably true with the flood), they did get wet in the Levitical initiation ceremony into the priesthood. In fact, they washed their whole bodies. This type serves as the example of why we see no explicit reference to sprinkling in the NT and why we see no explicit reference to the baptism of infants in the NT. The priest was not to receive his initiation baptism until he was older (in that case age 30).
To summarize. Baptism comes from... baptism, not circumcision. Baptism is informed by... baptism, not circumcision. Our argument not only need to be consistent with the entirety of Scripture, but by the same typified sacrament of identical substance. This is why I am a Baptist.
# posted by 
: 24 November 2004 at 19:25
: 24 November 2004 at 19:25