Baptism Membership Question

[Ed Pettibone]

[Shawn Koester]

My practice and tradition is immersion and yet I respect the soul liberty of my brother sister Christians who opt for infant baptism even though I don't feel there is any Biblical support for it. If someone, in any congregation that I serve, wants to come forward to join the church and they have been previously baptized, I will respect their prior baptism. But if someone was baptized as an infant and wants to be baptized by immersion, I will support them.

[Tim Bonney]

[Haruo]

[Sandy]

I think the questions regarding baptism go to how it got mentioned in the New Testament in association with Christian faith in the first place. It also depends on whether you tend to accept and emphasize the influence of church tradition, which incorporates a sacramental view of baptism, or see it as more symbolic, without the filter of church tradition on top of scripture.

It has its roots in Jewish ceremonial cleansing rituals. Remember the large water pots that Jesus turned into wine? Those pots were used for worshippers entering the synagogue to cleanse themselves ceremonially as they entered, by dipping their hands up to their shoulders in the water, then holding them up to let them drain and dry, because they couldn't touch anything afterward without being considered "unclean." That is, btw, where the practice of lifting hands in worship actually came from. And that's what John the Baptist was doing out in the wilderness when Jesus came along to be baptized. It wasn't an administration of grace, it was a symbolic act of cleansing, and it involved completely dipping the person under the water, as the term "baptism" itself suggests through translation.

It has, because of what it symbolizes, as well as because of the influence of church tradition in teaching that it has sacramental values, become a means of gauging a person's spiritual temperature in order to determine their value to the membership of a church. But then, church tradition and practice has also formalized what we call "church membership" well beyond any definition of it in the Bible, either, to the point where I think it is more of a tertiary issue than one relevant to the essentials of the faith.

[Haruo]

Type and symbol are very similar on the surface but very different deeper down, and hard to employ in a single discourse.

[Tim Bonney]

Has anyone ever thought about why Baptists put such a strong emphasis on the proper use of water in baptism but seem to not be at all concerned about doing communion the way Jesus did it? You'd think Baptists would be dissatisfied with the little cups and tiny little unleavened pieces that are used in many churches in the same way Baptists are dissatisfied with the amount water used if someone isn't immersed.

I don't have an answer for it. But it seems odd to me to be very concerned with how the physical element of baptism is used without an equal concern for communion. Ideas? (Rebuttal?)

[Haruo]

[Ed Pettibone]

[Haruo]

As an alcoholic Baptist it has occurred to me to worry just a bit about how the Methodists do communion.

[Tim Bonney]

[Haruo]

Yes, and I wouldn't want to repeat my experience of what, 20 or 25 years ago at Finnish Lutheran!

[Tim Bonney]

[Sandy]