Baptism in the English Bible - Glenn Conjurske

Baptism in the English Bible

by Glenn Conjurske

There are always a few Baptists around who contend that “baptize” ought not to appear in the English Bible at all, that it is a wrong translation of the Greek v , or rather, not a translation at all, and that the word ought to be rendered “immerse.” In this we judge them to be unwise, and perhaps insincere. If they are determined that “baptize” and “baptism” should not appear in the Bible, why do they use the words continually themselves, to speak of the same thing to which the word “baptize” refers in the Bible? They call themselves Baptists, not Immersionists. Look in any phone book in the country, and you will find the First Baptist Church, the Tabernacle Baptist Church, or the Landmark Baptist Temple, but you will find no First Immersionist Church, nor any Landmark Immersionist Temple. Why would they wish to thrust a word into the Bible which they will not use themselves outside of the Bible? Likewise they tell us that they baptized so many souls in a year, or on a particular Sunday, and I never heard of them reporting this as so many souls immersed. They baptize them in a baptistry, and I never heard of an immersionary. They tell us often that their church has received so many members “by baptism,” and I never heard of a church receiving members by immersion. They still write their books and articles on baptism, and on “baptism by immersion.” And I, by the way, believe without question in baptism by immersion, but I insist that all who use such a phrase as “baptism by immersion” do thereby grant that baptism and immersion are not strictly the same thing. There are many immersions which are not baptism at all. My wife immerses the dishes when she rinses them, but by no stretch of language or imagination does she baptize them. We might call this baptism if we were speaking Greek, but no way in English. If I speak of “reading by moonlight,” I thereby prove that reading and moonlight are two different things. So if I speak of “election by ballot.” The latter is the means of the former. And so exactly in “baptism by immersion.”

The case, then, is plain. If such folks wish us to believe them quite sincere in their contentions that “baptize” is no proper translation of v , and that it ought to be replaced by “immerse,” let us first see them so replace it. Let us hear no more of “the Baptist bride.” Let them tell us of the Immersionist bride. No more of Baptist churches. Let us hear of Immersionist churches. No more of baptisms. Let them talk of immersions. The fact is, none of them who contend that “baptize” ought to be replaced by “immerse” in the Bible have ever made an honest attempt to so replace it in their own common or theological language.

But there is more. If they were to make such an attempt, it would prove a complete and dismal failure. It is not possible to thrust “baptism” out of the English language, and replace it by “immersion.” It is not possible for these folks to thrust the word “baptize” out of their own hearts and minds. The word will live in their own hearts, their own minds, their own conversation, and their own writings, though they try never so hard to replace it. They may succeed in partially replacing it, when their speech is guarded and deliberate, but they will never succeed entirely, any more than the Plymouth Brethren have succeeded in replacing “the church” with “the assembly.” Still they will speak of the Baptist Bible Fellowship, and the Primitive Baptists. Still they will baptize their converts. Still the bigoted among them will quibble about “alien baptisms.” Still they will speak of John the Baptist, not John the Immersionist. Let them try to call him John the Immersionist, and they will find that the name will not stick—-no more than it would if they called him John the Dipper, or John the Dunker, or John the Plunger. Whatever v may mean, John the Baptist will be John the Baptist till the end of time.

But supposing it were possible to replace “baptism” with “immersion,” were it desirable? The answer to that question is, Absolutely not. At this time of the day, “baptism” is an ancient landmark, and it would be something worse than folly to remove it. Some folks may suppose that it had been better to translate v “immerse” from the beginning, so that “baptize” would never have become an old landmark, which looms up everywhere in the writings of the church for twenty centuries, and which stands always in its place in the thoughts and the speech of the whole English church of God everywhere, but it is vain to wish we had locked the gate after the horse is out, or to cry over spilled milk. What is done is done, and cannot be recalled. “Baptism” will remain the old landmark. “Baptism” will remain the word which has all of the heart associations of the people of God, and “immersion” will remain a cold and alien term, without any of those heart associations.

But while some may wish that we had never come to such a pass, and that v had been translated “immerse” from the beginning, we doubt the wisdom even of that. It is quite true that v means “immerse,” but that is not all it means. Liddell and Scott (whose lexicon of classical Greek has been the standard for over a century) inform us that the word is used in various senses, from being drenched or soaked, to being sunk, as of a ship. The latter is immersion with a witness, but surely not the pattern for baptism. The word also has various figurative usages, such as being overcome with sleep, or overwhelmed with questions, or soaked with wine. Moreover, the word is never once used in the New Testament in the mere sense of immerse, or submerge. Some Baptists insist upon the connection of v with v , and further insist that the latter means to dip. To this we need only reply that, though related, v and v are two different words, and they certainly do not mean the same thing. Neither does v always mean to immerse, but what it does mean is foreign to the question.

But a fact of deeper significance yet remains. There are many words which have received in the New Testament a theological sense which they never did have or could have had in secular Greek. v is certainly one of those words. It means “immerse,” to be sure, but it means much more. My wife immerses the dishes when she washes and rinses them, but she is not so sacrilegious as to dream of baptizing them. To baptize does not mean merely to immerse, as the word meant in secular Greek. It means to immerse in the name of the Lord. It is the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. It means death to sin, and rising again to walk in newness of life. The word “immerse” does not mean any of this. When John the Baptist, or Christ, or his apostles came preaching “repent and be baptized,” or if you please, “repent and be immersed,” no one understood by this to take a bath or go for a swim. They understood (and quite rightly), “Submit yourselves to a divine ordinance, at the hands of a servant of God, as a solemn declaration of your repentance from sin, and a solemn engagement with God to walk in newness of life.” “Baptize” means all of this, but “immerse” means none of it.

Already in the Septuagint, some hundreds of years before the advent of John the Baptist, v was used of ritual washing—-“appears to have been at that time,” says Cremer’s Biblico-Theological Lexicon, “the technical term for these washings.” (And these washings, it should be observed, were not necessarily by immersion.) In the Apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus we read (as translated in the King James Version), “He that washeth himself after the touching of a dead body, if he touch it again, what availeth his washing?” (Ecclus. 34:25). Though it is certainly true that “immerse” is the root meaning of v , and though I fully believe that baptism is by immersion, it is simply incorrect to insist that “immerse” is the only true rendering of the word, for besides various derived and figurative meanings, v has a theological meaning which is certainly not identical to its literal meaning in classical Greek. Cremer’s Lexicon is completely justified in saying, “The peculiar N. T. and Christian use of the word to denote immersion, submersion for a religious purpose = to baptize.” It denotes to immerse “for a religious purpose,” and for a recognized and well understood religious purpose, all of which is exactly expressed by “baptize,” but is not expressed at all by “immerse.”

And since this theological sense of v in the Greek New Testament is plain and undeniable, why should that theological sense be ignored or denied in translating the word into another language, and the word made to mean nothing more than it means in secular Greek? This is not wisdom. We have an English word which has exactly the same theological sense in English as v has in Greek. There is only one such word in the English language. That word is “baptize.”

Some Baptists have slighted the word “baptize” on the ground that it is not a translation at all, but a transliteration. They overlook the fact that a word may be both. The English “angel” is also a transliteration of the Greek [ , but I never heard of anyone objecting to it on that account. It is a translation every bit as much as it is a transliteration. The English “blasphemy” is a transliteration of the Greek v , but I never heard of anyone wishing to cast it out of the Bible on that account. “Christ” is a transliteration of the Greek v , and “prophet” of the Greek v . Must we part with those also?

With still less of reason, some Baptists slight the word “baptize” on the ground that it came from the “Roman Catholic Latin Vulgate.” This is darkening counsel by words without knowledge. It is quite clear that the Latin Vulgate commonly renders the Greek v by the Latin baptizo, but it is not so clear that the Vulgate is “Roman Catholic.” And if that could be proved, it would yet prove nothing. This is a species of argumentation which is absolutely unworthy of those whose object is the truth. By the very same argument they must repudiate the word “angel” also, which comes to us from angelus in the “Roman Catholic Latin Vulgate.” They must likewise cast engel out of the German, Dutch, Swedish, and Danish Bibles, ange out of the French, angel out of the Spanish, and angelo out of the Italian. By the same argument they must cast “blasphemy” out of the English Bible, since it comes to us through the Vulgate’s blasphemia. “Christ” must go also, and “prophet” too, the Vulgate’s Christus and propheta being responsible for those. There is no sense or reason in such argumentation, and we must add, it is difficult to find any sincerity or honesty in it, unless those who use it are very ignorant—-and if so, why do they undertake to teach others? By the same sort of argument almost every rendering in the English Bible, of almost every word in the Greek New Testament, could be discredited, or rendered suspect. The plain fact is, the renderings of the English version and the renderings of the Latin Vulgate are almost always equivalent to each other, as is a matter of simple necessity with any two versions which are both faithfully translated from the same original.

But how do these men prove that the Latin Vulgate is a “Roman Catholic” translation? Is it Roman Catholic because the Roman Catholic Church uses it? Then by the same argument the King James Version is a Baptist translation, and therefore (note well) “baptize” is the true Baptist rendering. But this argument will also prove that the King James Version is a Presbyterian translation, a Quaker Translation, a Seventh-Day Adventist translation. The argument is absolutely worthless.

But they will contend that the Latin Vulgate is a Roman Catholic translation because the Roman Catholic Church made it. This will be harder to prove. The Vulgate was the work of a single individual. The version was made by Jerome about the end of the fourth century, and was certainly not received or used by the whole church after it was made. True, Jerome made it at the request of a “pope,” but that pope did not authoritatively adopt or impose the version, for the popes of that day were not the same creatures as those of later days. They had no absolute authority in the church, nor was the Roman Church then the same thing that she afterwards became.

But even if it were a matter beyond dispute that the Catholic Church made the Latin Vulgate, it would yet prove nothing, for it was not the Latin Vulgate which introduced baptizo as the rendering of the Greek v , but the Old Latin version, which was made in the second century, long before anything resembling the Roman Catholic Church existed. Jerome’s Vulgate was not a new version, but a revision of the Old Latin. The responsibility for baptizo—-along with the responsibility for baptismum and iohannes baptista—-does not lie with the Vulgate at all, but entirely with the venerable Old Latin version. Be it right or be it wrong, therefore, there is nothing Roman Catholic about it.

But we do not believe it wrong. The Latin baptizo certainly meant “baptize by immersion” when it first came into use, for no other kind of baptism had yet been dreamed of then. And the English “baptize,” properly understood, means the same. If the English Bible had always employed “immerse” instead of “baptize,” then “immerse” would have acquired the theological sense which now belongs to “baptize,” precisely as the Greek v acquired that theological sense in the usage of the New Testament. But we cannot rewrite the history of the last six hundred years, however we might wish it had been written differently. “Baptize” is the English word which possesses the theological sense which is exactly equivalent to the Greek v , and “baptize” is extremely unlikely ever to yield its place to any other word—-not even among those Baptists who contend that it ought to.

But I must pursue this line of thought a bit further. I do not contend that the Greek v gained its theological sense merely by virtue of its usage in the written New Testament. The rudiments of that sense were visible already in the Septuagint. The word had no doubt been in use by the apostles and the early church in their preaching long before any of the New Testament was written. It was no doubt in that preaching that the word acquired its theological sense, so that when the apostles wrote v , they did not mean merely “immerse,” as of a woman rinsing a dish, or a farmer scalding a butchered hog, but “BAPTIZE,” in its proper theological sense. What they meant when they wrote in Greek, we ought to retain when we translate into English, and it is “baptize,” not “immerse,” which expresses that meaning. Of course in using the word v , the apostles meant baptism by immersion—-for there is no other kind of baptism—-but they meant “baptize,” and not merely “immerse.”

“Baptism” is an ancient landmark, and a good one. I call upon the church of God to stand by it—-not belligerently, but intelligently.

Glenn Conjurske