Baptists and Baptism

by C. Philip Slate

At a more than superficial level, churches of Christ seem to share more theological beliefs with Baptists than with most other groups. We certainly share views on the issues of the subjects (who are to be baptized?) and action (how the act is performed) of baptism. Long we have differed with them on the design (what are its purposes?) of the ordinance. Our debates with them are legion.

Interestingly, on both sides of the Atlantic in recent years, several Baptists have reexamined in an exegetical manner the functions of baptism. George Beasley-Murray stated the case well in his Baptism Today and Tomorrow 1 when he pointed out that (1) Baptists are a separatist group significantly because of their views on baptism. (2) When outsiders read their literature and speak with them, however, Baptists seem to be staunch about the who and how questions while waffling on the why issue. In short, they seem to attach no great theological significance to it as an act. (3) But since we live in an ecumenical age a church can hardly afford to be separatist except on good theological grounds. Thus, Beasley-Murray argues, (4) Baptists need either to begin joining up with others who also attach little significance to baptism, or to justify their separatism by shoring up their theology of baptism. Good points.

Already in 1962 Beasley-Murray’s volume, Baptism in the New Testament gave his exegetical views on baptism (a volume I first saw in the public library in England in 1964.). It is hard to disagree with most of Beasley-Murray’s exegesis of the critical texts on the purposes of baptism. Years later he was asked in Searcy, Arkansas whether he had had occasion to change his mind about what he had written some thirty years earlier. He responded, “No. I did not write a Baptist book or a church of Christ book. This is what the world of New Testament scholarship has concluded about baptism.” 2 For several years Beasley-Murray taught at Southern Baptism Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. There he found the younger men very open to his exegesis, but that the older preachers and scholars resisted it or stood aloof. He accounted for that in part by pointing out Baptist reactions in the 19th century when Alexander Campbell succeeded in winning to his views the largest Baptist church in Louisville, Kentucky!

Robert H. Stein, professor at the Southern Baptism Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, wrote in 1998 “Baptism and Becoming a Christian in the New Testament.” (Pull it up on the Internet). He sees faith, repentance, confession and baptism as part of one process. His exegesis of the baptism texts is good. However, one will find some of his views on the Holy Spirit and the thief on the cross disappointing. Nevertheless, this article is another evidence that some Baptists are reexamining and re-thinking their more or less traditional stance on the functions of baptism.

More recently, Anthony R. Cross of Regent’s Park College, Oxford, has written “The Evangelical Sacrament: baptisma simper reformadum” (Evangelical Quarterly. 80.3 [July 2008]: 195-217). 3 His bibliography is large and reflects the current rethinking on the subject. He reaches conclusions similar to those of Stein and Beasley-Murray. Interestingly, Cross refers to the fear of having any external action connected with salvation as “Protestant Gnosticism.” Not incidentally, that is a term used in the title of an interesting book by a Canadian Presbyterian. 4

One wonders whether Beasley-Murray’s work was a goad to his Baptist brotherhood’s rethinking the baptism issues. By reading at least Beasley-Murray’s Baptism Today and Tomorrow (a brief work) and Cross’s substantive article, one will be in a better position to talk at a more informed level with our friends in the Baptist church, though this subject is not currently as prominent an issue as is Calvinism. 5

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1 Beasley-Murray, Baptism Today and Tomorrow (London: Macmillan; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1966).

2 I have an audio tape of the interview.

3 This fine article can be found on the Internet as well.

4 Philip J. Lee, Against the Protestant Gnostics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).

5 A slightly different version of this article appeared in the British Christian Worker in 2012.