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Modes
I also used the theif on the cross argument and he replied that the rule of baptism didn't come to fruition until after Christ's resurrection.
The pastor is Church of Christ. I really would like to start studying theology again because I've lost my ability to debate the fundamentalists! :)
Geej

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Debating fundamentalists is like bangin' yer head on a lonely concrete wall that's left over from a torn down building. You're better off just going around it and stating your project somewhere else.

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Paul was inspired to write Ephesians. In it he wrote, 3There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism2 (Eph. 4:4,5). One baptism? If there is only one baptism, which one is it? Is it water or Holy Spirit? It is Holy Spirit! Why? Because God has suspended the use of water baptism. It has been done away with because God is through with Israel for the time being. Now there is only one program. It has to do with spiritual things, not carnal. So, today there is one baptism. We, who have trusted in Christ, are baptized into the body of Christ. The Holy Spirit baptizes us into Christ1s body. That baptism identifies us with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection (Rom. 6:3-8). Water baptism has been set aside because God has set aside Israel.

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That was a very good article and I've never looked at it that way before. Very interesting.

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Glad you liked it . The significance that water baptism had for Israel's future ministry is often overlooked by many and I think that once that is understood the issue of water baptism for the Body of Christ is resolved.

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Humans are a unity of body, soul and spirit. (Dualism should set off bells.) If this guy perporta ONLY a Spirit baptism THAT undermines God's will as witnessed in His CREATION. Why shouldn'g baptism involve ALL of us. if only our spirit was involved Jesus wouldn't have had to really be born, etc, etc,...

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This is a new line of reasoning to me. Do you believe that this spirit/creation is something that God does throughout history? Like before God ever required any baptisms (such as in Num 8:6-7 and Num 19) did God have similar baptisms or ceremonies that He required of those who would be saved? What do you think of Enoch and Job and Noah?

I believe that there were multiple baptisms that the circumcision believers needed to undergo as testified in well known passages such as Mark 16:16; John 3:5; Acts 2:38 and 1 Per 3:18-22 as well as lesser known passages such as Luke 3:3 and Heb 6:2. This contrasts to the one baptism of Eph 4:5 (Cf. 1 Cor 1:17; 12:13) that alone is necessary for the Body of Christ. With the "revelation of the mystery" (Rom 16:25; Eph 3:4-9; Col 1:26) the water baptisms became unnecessary due to their nationalistic significance (priestly baptism Num 8:6-7; Ex 19:5-6; Is 61:6;) which is not upheld in the Body (Rom 10:12; Gal 3:28; Col 3:11).

Looking forward to your response.

Doc said

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* Most of the thinking of baptismal regenerationists (viz. baptism saves you) is based on the phrase "for the remission of sins" applied (they think) to baptism in Acts 2:38 and a few other verses. The phrase need not refer to baptism in these passages, but to the repentance that baptism expresses. "Repent and (of course) be baptized for the remission of your sins."

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Acts 2:38 is a good text that shows the necessity of water baptism for the remission of sins at one time, but Mark 16:16 is even better. I quote from the excellent article I posted a link to earlier.

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Mark 16:16 says, “He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.” Both “believes” and “is baptized” are translated from aorist participles. According to Greek syntax, the action of these participles must precede the action of the main verb, “will be saved.” Therefore, a person had to believe and be baptized before he would be saved. When viewed in its setting of the circumcision covenant, this is consistent with the purification rituals which were imposed on Israel.

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Also, I think that Hill does an excellent job of showing that eis should be translated the way it is the great majority of the time throughout the New Testament as opposed to what seems to be a very questionable translation that you are giving it. I'd like to see what you think of his exegetical reasoning given in the article if you have time to respond to it .

chance

A God who has fixed every detail beforehand may retire or die --Markus Barth

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(a typed portion from J. Zizioulas' "Being as Communion", pp.177-183)
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...the nature of the Church as an integration of both historical and eschatological


....the point that in the very beginnings of the Church's consciousness of continuity with the apostles--and this applies both to the Eastern and to the Western Churches--there are hidden the seeds of two approaches to this continuity, of an "historical" and an "eschatological" approach.

..... It is the anticipation of the end, the final nature of the Church that reveals her apostolic character. This anticipation should not be misunderstood as psychological; it is not a feeling of expectation and hope that is offered through it, buy a real presence of the eschata here and now. "Now is the judgment of the world," (Jn 12:31) and now, this simple moment of the Johannine "vuv"(?), all of history is consummated. The finality or ultimacy of things is what the eschatological approach to apostolicity brings forth. It is the Risen Christ that is related to apostolicity, i.e., the final and ultimate destiny of all that exists.*

.....*(footnote)* On the importance of the Resurrection for the
.....eschatology approach to apostolicity see W. Pannenberg,
.....op. cit., p. 158f. It must be noted that in the Johannine
.....concept of "now" (vuv) the finality of the risen Christ
.....does not evolve from a historical process but some to
.....us as a visit and a tabernacle from outside (cf. John 1:14).


All this affects the notion of continuity in a deeper way: it affects especially Christological and Pneumatology in their relation to the apostolic origins of the Church.

In the historical approach, Christology is inevitably the primary thing that provides the structure of continuity. The Holy Spirit is the one that is transmitted and He is transmitted and He is transmitted by Christ. He is the divine power which enables the apostles in their mission. He is also the one who creates the response to this mission. He is the animator of a basically pre conceived structure. In such an approach Pneumatology indicates an agency; the Spirit is the agent of Christ and is dependent on Him. Here Christology indicates a self-defined event and so does the notion of the postulate. In this historical approach to continuity, the Holy Spirit vivifies preexisting and self-defined events and relates them to different times and circumstances.

In the eschatological approach, however, things are again different. Here the Spirit is the one who brings the eschata into history. He confronts the process of history with its consummation, with its transformation and transfiguration. By bringing the eschata into history, the Spirit does not vivify a pre-existing structure; He creates one; He changes linear historicity into a presence. It is no longer possible to understand history simply as "past," i.e., to apply to it the psychological and experiential notion of anamnesis in the sense of the retrospective faculty of the human soul. When the eschata visit us, the Church's anamnesis acquires the eucharistic paradox which no historical consciousness can ever comprehend, i.e., the memory of the future, as we find it in the anaphora of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom: "Remembering the cross, the resurrection, the ascension and the second coming, Tine own for Thine own we offer Thee." Unless the Church lets Pneumatology so condition Chrystology that the sequence of "yesterday today-tomorrow" is transcended, she will not do full justice to Pneumatology; she will enslave the Spirit in a linear Heilsgeschichte. Yet the Spirit is "the Lord" who transcends linear history and turns historical continuity into a presence.

....if the Church is to be truly apostolic she must be both historical and eschatologically oriented; she must both transmit history and judge history and judge history by placing it in the light of the eschata.

II. Towards a Synthesis of the "Historical" and the Eschatological" Approach

......The event of Christ must be regarded as constituted pneumatologically. . . .Christ is not Christ unless he is an existence in the Spirit, which means an eschatological existence.

Our continuity, therefore, with the Christ event is not determined by sequence or response based on distance; it is rather a continuity in terms of inclusiveness we are in Christ, and this is what makes Him be before us, or "first-born brother" in the Pauline sense.** This is paradoxical but fundamental for understanding the new existence created in Christ. Christ's priority over us is not a priority like the one created by our individualized existence and characterized by temporal sequence; it is a priority of inclusiveness: the including one being prior to the included. This is so precisely because the included is already in the including. God as the Spirit, i.e., as communion, is precisely the all-embracing existence, which is participated without participating. In the same Spirit of God, Christ contains us in Himself, by His very constitution as Christ in the Spirit. He thus in the Spirit contains by definition the eschata, our final destiny, ourselves as we shall be; He is the eschatological Man--yet, let me repeat, not as an individual but as Church, i.e., because of our being included in Him.

historical existence becomes in Christ and in the Spirit a continuity which comes to us from the future and not through the channels of a divided time sequence like the one we experience in our fallen state of existence. Thus when the eschata entered into history in the Spirit, time is redeemed from fragmentation, and history acquires a different sense.

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While I have been waiting, I was asked a good question: “Why did Paul baptize Crispus and Gaius if it was not necessary after the dispensation of grace began?”

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