Why do Presbyterian's and Baptists differ on the Mode of Baptism as well?

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Polanus1561

Polanus1561

Puritan Board Senior
First of all, to make it clear this is not about Baptism of Infants, it is about the mode.

So, I was curious why both sides differ in the modes, is it related to the underlying theology behind their beliefs on infant/believersonly baptism? For example, Presbyterians see alot of old testament imagery of baptism and apply it to NT baptism, Priests sprinkling etc. While Baptists only see Baptism in light of NT and conclude that baptisms at rivers / Philip and Eunuch would rationally conclude immersion etc.

I just offered my thoughts on the above on why Baptists and Presbyterians differ also on the mode of Baptism, any historical resources would be appreciated.
 
The Greek word pictures full immersion or dipping/bathing/washing in the water. And the symbolism is of being buried and raised with Christ (Romans 6:4).
 
According to Calvin:

"Whether the person baptised is to be wholly immersed, and that whether once or thrice, or whether he is only to be sprinkled with water, is not of the least consequence: churches should be at liberty to adopt either, according to the diversity of climates, although it is evident that the term baptise means to immerse, and that this was the form used by the primitive Church."
 
Pergamum said:
The Greek word pictures full immersion or dipping/bathing/washing in the water. And the symbolism is of being buried and raised with Christ (Romans 6:4).
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That is what I am talking about, why would Baptists and Presbyterians see a word differently in just its meaning?
 
Probably because sprinkling already had wide acceptance and the ones pushing for immersion-only were often somewhat unhinged and cultish.
 
John Yap said:
this is not about Baptism of Infants, it is about the mode.
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Here's a decent article the OPC has posted

Is Immersion Necessary for Baptism?
By: William Shishko
http://www.opc.org/new_horizons/NH00/0007b.html

Below are the first two paragraphs of the article:

You have finally gotten your Baptist friends to join you for worship. “Now they will hear a good Reformed sermon and experience real biblical worship conformed to the regulative principle!” you say to yourself.

The hoped-for Sunday arrives. You and your Baptist friends are seated and ready for worship. Then you notice in the bulletin that there is to be a baptism that day. Gulp! What will your friends say?
 
Show me one place where rantizo is ever used of water in the NT.

Shisko needs to reread Romans 6:4. We are plainly told there what baptism symbolizes.

To say bapto means to dip or immerse or bathe but the imagery is really of being cleansed through the sprinkling of blood is a logical leap the Apostle Paul did not make when he plainly said it symbolizes being dead/buried and raised to new life in Christ. Christ was totally inside a tomb, immersed in the earth, not just dirt sprinkled on him.
 
Pergamum said:
And the symbolism is of being buried and raised with Christ (Romans 6:4).
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Brother, Romans 6 teaches us that baptism symbolizes union with Christ, which includes (but isn't limited to) union with him in his death, burial, and resurrection. Further, no part of baptism by immersion looks like death on a cross or burial in an above-ground sepulchre.
 
It's hard to dunk babies, for one. Jokes aside, yes, we usually adopt sprinkling or pouring, but not because of rote tradition (common Pergy!! Give us a little more credit than that). Check out the connection between John's baptism with how Scripture relates it to OT purification rituals in John 3:22-25; those OT ritual cleansings took place via sprinkling. As to pouring, we go to Acts 1:5, where Jesus tells the disciples that they will be *baptized* with the Spirit not many days from then. What did that *baptism* look like? We read of Peters own description/account of it in Acts 2, where he quotes Joel: "And it shall be in the last days, God says, that I will POUR FORTH of My Spirit. . .Even on My bondslaves, both men and women, I will in those days POUR FORTH of My Spirit." (vv17-18). Jesus said they would be baptized by the Spirit, but they weren't immersed; it was poured forth upon them. At the end of the day though, this isn't an issue I want to be a martyr for. I'd much rather give my life standing for justification than the mode of baptism :)
 
There are paedo-baptists who immerse, at least some times. For example, many (most?) Eastern Orthodox immerse when convenient, especially infants. I don't know of Presbyterians who immerse though, to your question more specifically (well, I've seen some more evangelical/less confessional churches in denominations like EPC and ECO who give a choice of mode).

There are credo-baptists who sprinkle. There are Methodists who teach credo-baptism to the exclusion of paedo-baptism but have retained sprinkling as the form. Martyn Lloyd-Jones is an example of a Methodist who was credo-baptist, yet he wrote in favor of sprinkling as the mode. I've met some Methodists that do the same here in the South. I've heard there were early Baptists who did this likewise, but I don't have a citation handy.
 
We have different hermeneutics.

We allow scripture to interpret scripture particularly in cases of religious words like baptism.
The only place were Baptist practice a hermeneutic that allows secular Greek to determine the meaning of a religious word is concerning the word for baptism, you never see them claiming the Greek word for God actually means Apollo or Zeus you also never see them agreeing with N T Wright that the reformers were wrong about the word justification because after all secular Greek gives us a different understanding of justification.

As Tyler pointed out immersion and crucifixion hardly go together.

There are plenty of scholars that agree that baptism does not always mean immersion but sometimes can.
 
If you take Romans 6 to be a description of baptism, you must take it to mean that baptism regenerates. Understanding it as a text about our union with Christ far better fits its context in the theological stream if Romans and the overall teaching of scripture.
 
jwithnell said:
If you take Romans 6 to be a description of baptism, you must take it to mean that baptism regenerates. Understanding it as a text about our union with Christ far better fits its context in the theological stream if Romans and the overall teaching of scripture.
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This... thread is not to debate which view is right, it is asking why Baptists and Presbyterians believe in different modes..
 
One group looks at Roman six and concludes that it is talking about salvation and our Union with Christ.

One group looks at Romans chapter 6 and concludes that crucifixion entombment not underground and a three day period in the grave somehow indicates the mode of immersion.
 
John Y.

Your question is why do P and B differ on the modes of baptism. This is not quite accurate as a question.

Presbyterians are not confessionally committed to a mode. This is seen in WCF 28.3. No Presbyterian would regard immersion as an invalid mode of baptism. He may prefer another mode (for a variety of reasons), but he does not regard immersion as invalid. You may note this above in both the Calvin quote and my good friend Bill Shishko's article.

The more accurate question respecting mode would be: Why do some insist that immersion is the only proper mode? I have no problem accepting as valid immersion, pouring, or sprinkling. However, I have dear brothers who believe that immersion is the only valid mode and that one baptized otherwise is not truly baptized.

It is not Presbyterians who are hung up about the mode. Your question is really to immersionists who insist on immersion (there may be those who favor immersion, just as others do sprinkling, yet who accept other modes; this does not apply to them).

Peace,
Alan
 
Alan D. Strange said:
John Y.

Your question is why do P and B differ on the modes of baptism. This is not quite accurate as a question.

Presbyterians are not confessionally committed to a mode. This is seen in WCF 28.3. No Presbyterian would regard immersion as an invalid mode of baptism. He may prefer another mode (for a variety of reasons), but he does not regard immersion as invalid. You may note this above in both the Calvin quote and my good friend Bill Shishko's article.

The more accurate question respecting mode would be: Why do some insist that immersion is the only proper mode? I have no problem accepting as valid immersion, pouring, or sprinkling. However, I have dear brothers who believe that immersion is the only valid mode and that one baptized otherwise is not truly baptized.

It is not Presbyterians who are hung up about the mode. Your question is really to immersionists who insist on immersion (there may be those who favor immersion, just as others do sprinkling, yet who accept other modes; this does not apply to them).

Peace,
Alan
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Thanks for your input, I have no idea on how Presbyterian denominations in the USA would handle churches who insist on a mode or perhaps handle a person who wants to be immersed as a baptised believer. And I will take your word for it that immersionists are more prone to only view immersion as the proper mode, that was something I suspected.

Pardon me folks, I am quite alien to this topic!
 
John Yap said:
And I will take your word for it that immersionists are more prone to only view immersion as the proper mode, that was something I suspected.
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Here's the Westminster Confession on the Subject:
Dipping of the person into the water is not necessary; but Baptism is rightly administered by pouring, or sprinkling water upon the person. --XXVIII.iii.
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BG said:
One group looks at Roman six and concludes that it is talking about salvation and our Union with Christ.

One group looks at Romans chapter 6 and concludes that crucifixion entombment not underground and a three day period in the grave somehow indicates the mode of immersion.
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I do not find this genuine at all. I believe both Presbyterians and RBs interpret Rom. 6 as referring to union with Christ. Baptism is the symbol of our union.

The 2LBC 29:1 says, "Baptism is an ordinance of the New Testament, ordained by Jesus Christ, to be unto the party baptized, a sign of his fellowship with him, in his death and resurrection; of his being engrafted into him; of remission of sins; and of giving up into God, through Jesus Christ, to live and walk in newness of life."

I recently baptized 2 adults (1 a former Presbyterian, sorry guys), and in my sermon, I made this very point. And I also made the point that only baptism by immersion can adequately communicate the idea of death and resurrection. The form doesn't have to walk on all 4s to envision crucifixion and entombment in a cave. Sprinkling doesn't do that either. I argued that immersion simply pictures union w/ Christ (as the water conforms to the person in the water making a perfect union or bond), that death and burial are best pictured in going under the water (since death could ensue if one stays too long under), and coming out of the water is a beautiful picture of resurrection from the death and entombment.

 
Timotheos said:
I do not find this genuine at all. I believe both Presbyterians and RBs interpret Rom. 6 as referring to union with Christ. Baptism is the symbol of our union.

The 2LBC 29:1 says, "Baptism is an ordinance of the New Testament, ordained by Jesus Christ, to be unto the party baptized, a sign of his fellowship with him, in his death and resurrection; of his being engrafted into him; of remission of sins; and of giving up into God, through Jesus Christ, to live and walk in newness of life."

I recently baptized 2 adults (1 a former Presbyterian, sorry guys), and in my sermon, I made this very point. And I also made the point that only baptism by immersion can adequately communicate the idea of death and resurrection. The form doesn't have to walk on all 4s to envision crucifixion and entombment in a cave. Sprinkling doesn't do that either. I argued that immersion simply pictures union w/ Christ (as the water conforms to the person in the water making a perfect union or bond), that death and burial are best pictured in going under the water (since death could ensue if one stays too long under), and coming out of the water is a beautiful picture of resurrection from the death and entombment.

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You're right I could've been clearer. I was simply trying to point out that Presbyterians do not see mode in the passage and Baptist do.
 
BG said:
You're right I could've been clearer. I was simply trying to point out that Presbyterians do not see mode in the passage and Baptist do.
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That is fair.

The argument, as I frame it, is not that Rom. 6 says immersion is the mode. Rather, it is that the function of the mode (if the form is important, which by the level of disagreement here, it seems so) is best expressed based on the picture of union that baptism symbolizes (please don't read into this that I only believe baptism as a symbol). This is why Paul refers to baptism in Rom. 6 to make use of the picture of immersion as a demonstration of our union with Christ. So to cherry pick from the WCF, immersion is taught from Rom. 6 as a good and necessary consequence.
 
John Yap said:
Thanks for your input, I have no idea on how Presbyterian denominations in the USA would handle churches who insist on a mode or perhaps handle a person who wants to be immersed as a baptised believer. And I will take your word for it that immersionists are more prone to only view immersion as the proper mode, that was something I suspected.

Pardon me folks, I am quite alien to this topic!
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John- You are not an alien! This is not to say there aren't aliens.....there are. Most of them reside in Washington D.C. with high concentrations in New York, Chicago and California :)
 
Perg, I would recommend a short article by Pastor J.J.Lim of Singapore Covenant Church. It's under Study Resources, click on Weekly articles, and the one for August 6th,on, Ten reasons why they as Presbyterian baptise. It would contradict your contribution biblically.
 
If you've ever watched one of those videos of the Orthodox immersing infants, you can probably imagine why sprinkling is preferred among many. As a Baptist, I believe that immersion is best, but I would agree with others that mode is not really the crux of our disagreement. While I believe that the picture of death and resurrection that immersion paints is very beautiful and powerful, a case could also be made for the powerful imagery associated with sprinkling. At the end of the day, i would agree with Calvin that the subject of baptism is of much greater importance than the mode, although I obviously disagree with Calvin on who those subjects should properly be.
 
It's probably unwise to immerse an infant. Wouldn't be surprised if that's one of the reasons Presbyterians reject immersion only. :2cents:
 
Both Hodge and Ursinus teach that the mode is irrelevant. Personally, though I think the image of sprinkling is appropriate, the mode does not concern me too much.
 
From what I understand the word for Baptism in the New Testament was also used in the Septuagint when houses, walls, or other Priestly cleansings were required. Can anyone tell me it that is true?
 
Tyrese said:
It's probably unwise to immerse an infant. Wouldn't be surprised if that's one of the reasons Presbyterians reject immersion only. :2cents:
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It was previously mentioned that the Eastern Orthodox practice infant baptism by immersion. Watch this.
It is my understanding that infants reflexively hold their breath when put underwater.
 
I strongly believe affusion (or aspersion, I haven't done much research into that yet) to be the biblical, apostolic, and regular mode of baptism. I recommend the articles on the Covenant Protestant Reformed Church's website.

I plan to read W. A. MacKay's book Immersion Proved to be Not a Scriptural Mode of Baptism some time.

Edit: I certainly recognize baptism by immersion to be valid, but highly irregular. I was immersed myself!
 
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TylerRay said:
Brother, Romans 6 teaches us that baptism symbolizes union with Christ, which includes (but isn't limited to) union with him in his death, burial, and resurrection. Further, no part of baptism by immersion looks like death on a cross or burial in an above-ground sepulchre.
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Romans 6:
3 Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his DEATH?
4 Therefore we are BURIED WITH HIM BY BAPTISM into death: that like as Christ was RAISED UP FROM THE DEAD by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
5 For if we have been PLANTED TOGETHER in the likeness of his DEATH, we shall be also in the likeness of his RESURRECTION:"


Looks pretty plain to me. We are united with Christ, yes, but how...by being buried with him in baptism and raised with him to new life, of which water baptism by immersion is a fit picture.
 
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