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Water baptism: Difference between revisions
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These were unique events in salvation history, not the normal pattern of salvation known to Luke.<ref>David G. Peterson, The Acts of the Apostles, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Nottingham, England: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009), 286–287.</ref> | These were unique events in salvation history, not the normal pattern of salvation known to Luke.<ref>David G. Peterson, The Acts of the Apostles, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Nottingham, England: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009), 286–287.</ref> | ||
=Should people who have left the message be rebaptized?= | |||
Martin Luther argued against rebaptism if a person was baptized correctly but perhaps did not believe correctly: | |||
:''For it is not enough to claim they were baptized without faith, therefore they should be rebaptized. Some reason is needed. You say it is not proper baptism. What does it matter, if it is still a baptism? It was a correct baptism in itself, regardless of whether it was received rightly. For the words were spoken and everything that pertains to baptism was done as fully as when faith is present. If a thing is in itself correct you do not have to repeat it even though it was not correctly received. You correct what was wrong and do not have to do the entire thing over. Abuse does not change the nature of a substance, indeed it proves the substance. There can be no abuse unless the substance exists. | |||
:''When ten years after baptism faith appears, what then is the need of a second baptism, if baptism was correctly administered in all respects? For now he believes, as baptism requires. For faith doesn’t exist for the sake of baptism, but baptism for the sake of faith. When faith comes, baptism is complete. A second baptism is not necessary. | |||
:''It is as if a girl married a man reluctantly and altogether without a wife’s affection for the man. She is before God hardly to be considered his true wife. But after two years she gains affection for him. Would then a second engagement be required, a second wedding be celebrated, as if she had not previously been a wife, so that the earlier betrothal and wedding were in vain? Of course, you would be considered a fool, if you believed that, especially since everything is in order now because she has come into her right and properly keeps to the man she had not properly accepted. So also if an adult falsely allows himself to be baptized but after a year comes to faith, do you mean, dear sir, that he should be rebaptized? He received the correct baptism incorrectly, I hear you say. His impropriety makes baptism improper. Should then human error and wickedness be stronger than God’s good and invincible order? God made a covenant with the people of Israel on Mt. Sinai. Some did not receive that covenant rightly and in faith. If now these later came to faith, should the covenant, dear sir, therefore be considered invalid, and must God come again to each one on Mt. Sinai in order to renew the covenant?<ref>Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 40: Church and Ministry II, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann, vol. 40 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1999), 246–247.</ref> | |||
A similar view is that baptism is a sacrament which should not be repeated because, just as in the natural life a person is born but one time, so also in the spiritual life a man can be reborn one time only: “So, then, as our Lord died once and for all, we also must be baptized once and for all.” This view would suggest that those from a heterodox background should be rebaptized as rarely as possible.<ref>John Karmiris, “Concerning the Sacraments,” in Eastern Orthodox Theology: A Contemporary Reader, ed. Daniel B. Clendenin, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 25.</ref> | |||
Others contend that baptism administered by a heretical minister should be rebaptized since baptism administered by heretics and schismatics was not true baptism.<ref>Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, ed. James T. Dennison Jr., trans. George Musgrave Giger, vol. 3 (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1992–1997), 396.</ref> | |||
In the end, because baptism in itself does not save a person, it does not appear that anyone should be rebaptized unless the purpose of the original baptism was not focused on Christ, but rather on a person entering the message or believing in William Branham as a prophet. | |||
=Is baptism required for salvation?= | =Is baptism required for salvation?= | ||