It’s always a pleasure discussing something with Aaron from his corner of the internet - he is a gracious conversation partner and willing to consider the other side. In a recent post of his I thought he had proved me wrong when I made an over-confident statement in the comment section of his post on baptism. However, while my statement was over-confident, I’m not sure Aaron’s answer proves everything he says it does. Continue Reading »

In these posts I am responding to a long post on baptism written by Aaron.  As I said, I am glad to discuss things with Aaron (though whether he has the time to continue is another story - I invite other input).  I must confess, though, a little exasperation with the immersionist position (the position - not Aaron) that states Christian baptism can only be valid if performed as immersion.  The evidence for that position is just not there.

In my previous post, I addressed Aaron’s reference to 2 Kings 5:14 as an example of something called baptism that is described as immersion - a claim that I acknowledged could be true contrary to my own statement in the comment section of the first of his baptism posts.  He then goes on to assert that there are various clues in the New Testament accounts of baptism that amount to a description of these events being carried out as immersion.

I do not agree.  Continue Reading »

This is the third ‘Answering Aaron’ post.  The “figuratively and literally” in the title does not refer to my answering Aaron, but rather his discussion of the meaning of baptizo (and the noun baptismos).

Literally…

We have already seen that baptizo was understood to mean “ceremonial washing” in the Septuagint (LXX) and later NT writings. Aaron agrees that baptizo was understood to include “non-immersion washings”, but sees no warrant for applying that wider meaning (wider than “immersions only”) to John the Baptiser’s and Christian water baptisms.

That confuses me.  Continue Reading »

I’ve enjoyed writing this series.  When I first saw Aaron’s second post on baptism by immersion, I didn’t expect to make any response other than to leave a comment that we would have to agree to disagree.  But something about Aaron’s post spurred me on to reply - these four posts being that reply.

There are, of course, many other pieces of evidence that could be considered - my previous posts on baptism cover just some of these - but I’m not sure it is beneficial to go over them all.  In this last post, I will quickly address the hypothetical situation I put to Aaron and then conclude.

Continue Reading »