Friday, April 8, 2022

Stanley K. Fowler (Baptist): The “baptism” in Romans 6 is water baptism; it is not symbolic

  

But is union with Christ really achieved by baptism? That says far more than the average Baptist preacher is prepared to say, and although Baptists are happy to use this text as a support for immersion as the mode of baptism, it seems to say far too much about the efficacy of baptism. There is one escape, though, and that is to argue that the baptism in view here is actually the baptism of the Spirit, not baptism in water, and some interpreters take this route of escape. However attractive that option might seem to be, it does not appear to be on target. The language of this text looks like the language of water-baptism, not Spirit-baptism, in the wider NT usage.

 

The linguistic link between water and Spirit goes back to the words of John the Baptist: “I baptize you in water for repentance, but he will baptize you in the Spirit” (with slight variations in the Gospel accounts). But notice that in the comparison, Christ is to Spirit-baptism what John is to water-baptism, i.e., the baptizer. In Romans 6, Christ is not the baptizer, but instead he is the goal of the baptism, the one to whom believers are connected by this baptism. That is not the language of Spirit-baptism. Furthermore, the Romans language of baptism “into Christ” (eis Christon) recalls the Matthew 28 language of baptism “into the name” (eis to onoma), and that text is clearly talking about water-baptism. The only reason why one might argue that Romans 6 is not talking about the efficacy of baptism would be foreign to Paul, but according to Acts 22:16, Paul was very comfortable with such language. (Stanley K. Flower, Rethinking Baptism: Some Baptist Reflections [Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf and Stock, 2015], 23)