Not really sure what the point of your comment was…(sorry). Are you agreeing with me? It seems that way…

sorry it’s taken me so long to get back; busy week

anyways, on Acts 8:36-38, the last verse reads “And he ordered the chariot to stop; and they both went down into the water, Philip as well as the eunuch, and he baptised him.” (ebaptisen, aorist of baptidzo). Thus, the act of being baptised was in addition to the going down into the water. From there the argument returns to the intended meaning/definition of baptidzo, but I’ll cross to the other post to muse on that one . . . .

Thanks for your comment.

The section you address is labelled Protests, which means I am briefly addressing arguments against sprinkling or pouring. I am not trying to prove that baptism is pouring/sprinkling, but rather that the evidence used for immersion does not prove immersion. However, these words of mine:

Neither require them to have been immersed, but rather to have walked into the water where the person baptising would sprinkle or pour water over them. This is confirmed in Acts 8 when both Ethiopian and Philip went down and came up from the water.

admittedly reads as though sprinkling/pouring is proven. It should read:

Neither require them to have been immersed. Rather, it is evident that they walked into the water (Acts 8:38) where the baptism was performed and then walked out (v39; Matt 3:16 Note especially the wording: “when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water” ie. was baptised and then “went up from the water”).

Why walk into the water if it involved sprinkling or pouring? In Matthew 3, John the baptiser was baptising many, many people. Which is easier: to continuously fill up containers and pour water over people on land or invite people into the water and pour water over them there? The latter.

In Acts 8, the Ethiopian’s baptism seems to be initiated by him seeing a body of water and asking why he shouldn’t be baptised. What is more natural than Philip dispensing with the use of a container to baptise him on land and instead following the normal course and inviting the eunuch into the water to baptise him?

My point is that the protest does not prove immersion, pouring or sprinkling, but nor does it disprove pouring. In fact, it presents no problem for the position that pouring is the biblical mode of baptism.

When it comes to burial and entombment, I’ll have to take your word for it about their interchangability, but the one burial we are talking about - that of Jesus - was in a tomb. It is possible to make immersion a symbol of a person being “engulfed” by the tomb, but the imagery is far less clear - certainly not clear enough to prove the point.

As for shadows and reality, I agree with you that the OT provided the former and the NT the latter. Yet, as I understand you to say, it usually doesn’t take on a completely new form (paedo-baptists would disagree). My point is that everywhere something called baptism is described in the Bible (OT or NT) there is never a description of immersion. Therefore, those coming to Christianity from an OT background would not understand Christian baptism, as the culmination of all OT baptisms, to be immersion. Left with Biblical evidence alone (and bereft of modern concepts of bathing), no one would come away with the idea that baptism is immersion. Why? Because it is never described that way.

So, while there is room for reading immersion into Christian baptism, the biblical evidence I have presented does, in my mind, present strong evidence that Christian baptism is pouring. It is only when the Old Testament is ignored, modern ideas of washing and extra-biblical considerations are considered that the case for immersion gains any real strength. That being the case, to insist on immersion as the only valid mode, especially without any biblical injunction suggesting the mode is important, is totally unjustifiable.

“Jesus and the Ethiopian went down into and came up out of the water”. The same language is used of Jesus’ baptism and of the Ethiopian’s baptism. Neither require them to have been immersed, but rather to have walked into the water where the person baptising would sprinkle or pour water over them. This is confirmed in Acts 8 when both Ethiopian and Philip went down and came up from the water.

I don’t think your verses are confirming sprinkling or denying immersion. If anything you showed a verse where they would go to a place with water supporting that A) they needed water and possibly B) they liked a fair amount of it. If rather they went to a well to be baptised then you could say it leans toward sprinkling but this still doesn’t come up as strong evidence but more likelyhood.

Also buriel and entombment are used interchangeably in the Scriptures and in some cases it seems to mean laid in a plot of ground and in other cases (Acts 2 re: David) it means being entombed. The concept could be that the grave is consuming the person. So the picture in Romans can still stand for immersion.

Lastly, Hebrews is supporting how the past shadows were superceded by the currently revealed Reality. The baptisms of the OT were spoken of as elementary things so the fact that these things were an imperfect shadow of a current reality does not support or deny immersion or sprinkling: it simply shows that these things were a shadow of a reality then makes commentary on what that is (still not a New form).

Two cents worth.