[John]
Murray and [Duane] Spencer deny that Romans 6:3-4 has any reference to
immersion as the symbol for being baptized into Christ or raised up with Him.
They do this by trying to make each detail of the figure incompatible with
dipping or immersion. Their emphasis upon Jesus’ burial in a tomb instead of
in the ground enables them to overstate the importance of tomb burial and
thereby reject the figure of immersion as a burial and resurrection.
For
example, Spencer claims that Romans 6:3-4 could not refer to immersion because,
he claims, burial in the Bible always occurred in tombs, never in the ground.
In fact, Spencer ridicules Baptists for being ignorant of this supposed fact:
Ignorance
of meaning of key words and oriental customs common to people of the Bible
lands during the period during which the Scriptures were written, is the
breeding ground of much heresy . . . lowering the body into the ground was
totally foreign to Paul’s thinking. (Duane Spencer, Holy Baptism: Word Keys
Which Unlock the Covenant [Tyler, TX: Geneva Ministries, 1984], 149) (Fred
A. Malone, The Baptism of Disciples Alone: A Covenantal Argument for
Credobaptism Versus Paedobaptism [rev ed.; Cape Coral, Fla.: Founders Press, 2008], 237-38, emphasis in
bold added; comments in square brackets added for clarification)