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Showing posts from January, 2016

On The Word "Baptism"

There is a popular argument in the Church of Christ against a certain instance of baptism found in the Catholic Church. The CoC believes that baptism should only be in the form of a full and complete immersion. The Catholic Church believes that while a full and complete immersion is a valid baptism (barring that they didn't already have previous valid baptism), there are other ways to have a valid baptism, such as a pouring on the head and maybe some sprinkling. So, the argument is a denotative one. Basically, they say that the word "baptism" literally means to dip or immerse, and so that must be the only way to practice baptism.  So, grant for the sake of argument that the word does mean to fully immerse or dip. Would it follow that this is the only mode of baptism? I'm not sure on what grounds that would be. If we want to insist that we should only use words and understand them because of their etymological roots, then this is a poor principle. There are many w