Does the word “baptize” mean to dip? Baptists hold that it does. The following extract from Baptism: Its Mode and Meaning at the Time of Our Lord (published in 1896), by the Rev. W. A. MacKay, D.D., of Woodstock, Ontario, and which appeared in The Contender (February, 1952) proves the contrary.
“In their practice all Baptists agree with Dr. Carson that ‘baptizo’ (English ‘baptise’) is a word of specific mode, always meaning ‘dip and nothing but dip through all Greek literature.’ The ‘command to baptise’ we are told is the ‘command to dip.’ Baptising is dipping, and dipping is baptising. ‘To dip’ is to take up, and put into and under the element, and then immediately withdraw. Thus I dip the point of my pen in the ink. This is the precise action of the Baptist when he baptises. And this and nothing else, he claims, is Baptism, so that all undipped persons, are unbaptised and unworthy to come to the Lord’s Table.”
After quoting and examining every known and undoubted use of the word ‘baptizo’ in the Greek language up to the time of Christ (twenty-seven in all), Dr. MacKay says: “We have made our reference directly to the original passages in which the word occurs, in both sacred and profane literature. The usus loquendi (usage of speaking) of a word is the supreme court of appeal by which any proposed meaning must ultimately stand or fall. A lexicon definition, or a learned man’s opinion is absolutely worthless unless it is sustained by the occurrence of the term. The instances we have examined show a great variety of meanings, but all expressing a changed state or condition never once a mode of action, such as ‘dip,’ ‘plunge,’ or ‘immerse.’ Where the context is given, or the surrounding circumstances, a little examination shews that the baptising element is moved and brought upon the person or thing baptised. In the pure classics the youth in a condition of mental perplexity is a baptised youth; the man in a condition of drunkenness is a baptised man; the coast in a condition of being overflowed is a baptised coast.
“In the Septuagint we, for the first time, find the word used to express the condition of religious purity. The person in a condition of purification from leprosy is a baptised person; the person in a condition of purification from the touch of a dead body is a baptised person; and the person in condition of purification from association with heathen Gentiles is a baptised person. And here, as in the older Classics, the baptising element uniformly comes upon the subject.
“In later Greek, the man in the condition of being overcome by sleep is a baptised man; the ship in the condition of being attacked by enemies or lashed by the wild waves, is a baptised ship; the soldiers exposed to the rushing waters are baptised; the people overwhelmed with taxes are baptised; the vegetables made into pickles are baptised. And, in each case, the baptising element comes upon the subject. The sleep comes upon man; the waves and the assaults come upon the ships; the waters come upon the soldiers; the taxes are imposed upon the people, and the brine is poured upon the vegetables.
“There is no dipping in the Greek, secular or sacred, prior to the Christian era. Classic Greek says it is not in me; Hellenistic Greek says it is not in me; and later Greek says it is not in me. If any Baptist denies this, we demand in support of his denial not scraps of ‘opinions’ or ignorant concessions, or mutilated quotations, but the actual instance of the word. We remind him also that his position demands not one instance merely, but every instance, without one exception, to be an instance of dipping. It is impossible, however, to find one. Baptists make ‘baptizo’ express a definite act; the Greeks made it express a definite condition; Baptists put the subject into the water, the Greeks uniformly brought the water upon the subject.
“Our argument is inductive, and our conclusion is co-extensive with our premises. We examine carefully each instance of the occurrence of the word, and we predicate of the whole that we have proved true of each case; and our conclusion is that there is no sentence in Greek literature, prior to the time of Christ, where any kind of baptism is effected by the person or thing baptised being applied to the baptising element. The baptising element is uniformly represented as being applied to the person or thing baptised. There is, therefore, no ‘dipping’ for baptism up to this time. Baptism, in the Classics, is always a word of power, indicating a changed state or condition; and never do we find that changed state or condition brought about after the manner of modern Baptists.
“When we come to the New Testament we find ‘baptizo’ recurring about eighty times, ‘baptisma’ some twenty times, and ‘baptismos’ four times. But in the words of Dr. Charles Hodge, America’s greatest theologian, ‘so far as the New Testament is concerned, there is not a single case where baptism necessarily implies immersion’ (Systematic Theology, Vol. iii, p. 536). Not one instance or command or metaphor, or even an allusion do we find that can be logically construed into a sanction of ‘dipping.’
“… Let us open our Bibles and hear what the Lord saith as to the mode of Baptism. The apostles were baptized with the Holy Ghost (Acts i. 5), and the Spirit was ‘poured out’ on them (Acts ii. 16, 17-33); they were baptised with fire (Matt. iii. 7), and a tongue of fire came down and ‘sat upon each of them.’ Three thousand receive water baptism during the few closing hours of a single day, and in a city where there was no place that opposing and dominant Jews would permit to be used for immersion, Paul was baptised in his own room (Acts ix. 17, 18), when he could not have been immersed. The inspired record says ‘anastas ebaptisthe,’ having stood up he was baptised. The jailor of Philippi was converted in the jail, at the midnight hour, and we are told that there ‘he was baptised, he and all his straight-way’ (Acts xvi. 33). No immersion here. Cornelius and his household having had the Spirit poured out upon them as an emblem of the spiritual baptism (Acts x. 47, 48). … Noah and his family were baptised with the flood, and they rode safe and dry over its waves (I. Peter iii. 20, 21). Paul tells us (I. Cor. x. 2) that the children of Israel were baptised when passing ‘on dry ground’ (Ex. xiv. 16-22) through the sea. They could not have been dipped or immersed ‘on dry ground.’ The Saviour was baptised with His sufferings (Luke xii. 50) when His sufferings were ‘laid upon Him’ (Isa. liii. 6). The Great Baptiser is Christ Himself, and He baptises His people with the Holy Ghost when He ‘sheds’ or ‘pours out’ the Spirit upon them (Titus iii. 5, 6).
“From all this it will be seen that the word ‘baptizo’ in the Scriptures, as in all preceding literature, has no specific reference to mode, but expresses state or condition brought about, as the context shews, by the baptising element, whether fire, suffering, water, or the spirit coming upon the subject. The word does not mean ‘to dip’ or ‘to immerse,’ neither does it mean ‘to sprinkle’ or ‘to pour.’ Immerse, sink, dip, often occur in the Old and New Testament and the Apocrypha, and are always rendered by the Greek words, enduo, pontizo, buthizo, dupto, katapontizo, kata duo, or bapto (Psalms lxxix. 2, 15; exxiv. 4; Ex. xv. 4, 5, 10; II. Mac. xii. 4; I. Tim. vi. 9; Matthew xviii. 6; Luke v. 7; Mark xiv. 20; John xiii. 26; Rev. xix. 13). When the sacred writers would express the idea of dip, etc. they always use one or other of the above words, and never use baptizo; and when they refer to the religious rite they always use baptizo, but never any of the above terms. There is no exception to their rule. Could anything more clearly prove that there is something in Baptism that cannot be expressed by any of these words? If ‘dipping’ is baptizing and baptising is ‘dipping,’ it is inconceivable that ‘baptizo‘ should never once be used interchangeably with words expressing dip, etc. Baptists challenge us to substitute ‘pour’ or ‘sprinkle’ for baptizo. Our reply is that we have never made the word baptizo equivalent of ‘pour’ or ‘sprinkle,’ or any other word of mere action. This would be to fall into the same blunder as immersionists, who see in the word ‘mode and nothing but mode.’ Christian baptism is first a powerful change in the soul produced by God’s Spirit (I. Cor. xii. 13), and then water is used as a symbol to make manifest this virtual change. But in every case without exception whether in real or symbol baptism, the baptising element comes upon the person baptised; the person baptised is never spoken of as dipped or plunged into the element. ‘If anything out of mathematics,’ says Dr. Dale, Christian Baptism, p. 2, ‘was ever proved, it has been proved that the word baptizo does not mean to dip; that it never did, that it can never so mean without there being first an utter metamorphosis (transformation) as to its essential character.’ The mode of the Spirit’s baptism is always ‘pouring,’ ‘shedding forth,’ ‘sprinkling,’ ‘coming down like rain,’ or ‘like showers falling down.’
Dr. John Owen on Infant Baptism
Dr. John Owen in his Treatise on Infant Baptism (Owen’s Works, Vol. xvi.) states that those who oppose infant baptism “can produce no testimony of Scripture” to support their view. He brings forward seven arguments in which he proves to the hilt that infant baptism is Scriptural.
In demolishing the Baptist view that baptism symbolises the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, he writes, “There is not one word nor one expression that mentions any resemblance between dipping under water and the death and burial of Christ, nor one word that mentions a resemblance between our rising out of the water and the resurrection of Christ. Our being ‘buried with Him by baptism unto death’ (Romans vi. 4) is our being ‘planted together in the likeness of His death’ (v. 5). Our being ‘planted together in the likeness of His death’ is not our being dipped under water, but ‘the crucifying of the old man’ (v. 6). Our being ‘raised up with Christ from the dead’ is not rising from under the water, but ‘our walking in newness of life’ (v. 4), by virtue of the resurrection of Christ, I Peter iii. 21. That baptism is not a sign of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, is clear from hence, because an instituted sign is a sign of gospel grace participated, or to be participated. If dipping be a sign of the burial of Christ, it is not a sign of a gospel grace participated; for it may be where there is none, nor any exhibited.
“For the major: If all gospel ordinances are signs and expressions of the communications of the grace of Christ, then baptism is so; but this is the end of all gospel ordinances, or else they have some other end, or are vain and empty shows. The same individual sign cannot be instituted to signify things of diverse natures; but the outward burial of Christ, and a participation of the virtue of Christ’s death and burial, are things of a diverse nature, and therefore not signified by one sign. That interpretation which would enervate the Apostle’s argument and design, our comfort and duty, is not to be admitted; but this interpretation, that baptism is mentioned here as the sign of Christ’s burial, would enervate the Apostle’s argument and design, our comfort and duty; and therefore is not to be admitted.
The minor is thus proved: The argument and design of the Apostle, as was before declared, is to exhort and encourage unto mortification of sin and new obedience, by virtue of power received from the death and life of Christ, whereof a pledge is given us in our baptism. But this is taken away by this interpretation; for we may be so buried with Christ and planted into the death of Christ by dipping, and yet have no power derived from Christ for the crucifying of sin and for the quickening of us to obedience.”
The Testimony of Antiquity
In conclusion we have the testimony of ANTIQUITY in defence of infant baptism. “Nothing admits,” writes Dr. M’Crie in Lectures on Christian Baptism, “of being more clearly demonstrated than that the baptism of children was practised from the very earliest ages of the Church. Thus Irenaeus, who was born before the death of the Evangelist John, and who flourished in the generation immediately succeeding him, when it was not possible for the Church to be ignorant of what was done as to the baptising of children in the times of the Apostles, writes, ‘That Christ Jesus came to save all persons to Himself—all, I mean, who by Him are regenerated unto God—infants and little ones, and children, and youths, and older persons.’ Now, by ‘regenerated unto God’ it can be shown that he means baptised unto God; for he calls the commission to baptise all nations, the commission to regenerate all nations; using the word regeneration for its sign and symbol. Again, Origen, a very early writer, tells us that ‘The Church received it as delivered by the Apostles that baptism should be granted even to children.’ And Augustine declares that this is ‘a doctrine held by the Church universally and that not as instituted by councils, but as delivered by the authority of the Apostles alone.’ The Papists, therefore, are quite mistaken when they allege that paedobaptism rests not on Scripture precept or example, but solely on the decrees of the Church.
“We shall only mention the interesting fact, that the primitive ‘Church in the Catacombs’ at Rome, and the Waldenses, have been proved to have practised the baptism of children. Nor shall we dwell on the fact, that at the period of the Reformation, when the whole system of anti-Christian error and superstition was subverted, and when every dogma and practice of the Church was subjected to a thorough revision and inspiring reform, according to the Word of God, it was never proposed by ANY OF THE REFORMED CHURCHES or by ANY OF THE REFORMED DIVINES to repudiate the baptism of children. The doctrine was, indeed, placed on its right and Scriptural basis, and divested of all superstitious additions. But with the exception of a small sect, which sprang up in Germany, called Anabaptists, not a voice was raised against the practice. Of that sect I shall not here say a single word, as it was so discreditable that our brethren the Baptists do not choose to be identified with it. But this I will say, that, differing as our reformers did on many points of ecclesiastical practice from each other, on the right of children to baptism, there was a perfect harmony among them; and what is more (or we may afterwards have occasion to show), between Luther, who perhaps went the shortest distance from Rome to all the reformers, and John Knox, who went the farthest, cutting off right and left whatever savoured of superstition, there was an entire agreement, not only as to the subjects and the mode, but on the nature, design and effects of Christian baptism.”