Baptism and arguments that just don't work.

Introduction

Infants or believers only? Should we immerse, pour, or sprinkle? These are often the debates at hand when this subject is brought up. Both sides have a long list of arguments that for them prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are right on the matter. However, the goal here is not to answer these questions, but rather to point out types of argument that both sides use, which by themselves do not achieve anything.

If you have ever studied the issue before, you will certainly have heard a Baptist say: "The word βαπτίζω means immersion, in the Greek, so clearly were must immerse people at baptism." You may have also heard a paedobaptist (those who baptize infants) use the phrase "they baptized households, and households include infants, so infants should clearly be baptized."

In the sometimes frightening world of theology debates, online or in person, I've seen these phrases again, again, and again. The problem is, neither of these arguments work, by themselves. Each of them commits a fallacy when one tries to move from the evidence in the argument to a conclusive, deductive, beyond question conclusion.

Baptizo and the 'root fallacy'

Let's look at the first argument, the one from Baptists. This one hits home for me personally, because I have been a Baptist for my entire life. The claim is that because 'baptizo' is a verb that means 'to immerse', then we must immerse people when we baptize them. This is something called a 'root fallacy'. Just because a word has a certain meaning does not mean that this particular meaning is in use in every circumstance. D.A. Carson gives us a great explanation of this fallacy in his book Exegetical Fallacies:

“One of the most enduring fallacies, the root fallacy presupposes that every word actually has a meaning bound up with its shape or its components. In this view, meaning is determined by etymology; that is by the roots of a word.  How many times have we been told that because the verbal cognate of apostolos (apostle) is apostello (I send), the root meaning of 'apostle' is 'one who is sent.'?  In the preface of the New King James Bible, we are told that the literal meaning of monogenes is 'only begotten.'  Is that true?  How often do preachers refer to the verb agapao (to love), contrast it with phileo (to love) and deduce that the text is saying something about a special kind of loving, for no other reason than that agapao is used?

All of this is linguistic nonsense.  We might have guessed as much if we were more acquainted with the etymology of English words. Anthony C. Thistleton offers by way of example our word ‘nice’, which comes from the Latin nescius, meaning 'ignorant.'  Our 'good-by' is a contraction for Anglo-Saxon 'God be with you.' It is certainly easy to imagine how 'God be with you' came to be 'good-by.'  But I know of no one today who in saying that such and such a person is 'nice'  believes that he or she has in some measure labeled that person ignorant because the 'root meaning' or 'hidden meaning' or 'literal meaning' of “nice” is ‘ignorant’...

The meaning of a word may reflect its etymology; and it must be admitted that this is more common in synthetic languages like Greek or German, with their relatively high percentages of transparent words (words that have some kind of natural relation to their meaning) than in a language like English, where words are opaque (i.e., without any natural relation to their meaning)) Even so, my point is that we cannot responsibly assume that etymology is related to meaning. We can only test the point by discovering the meaning of a word inductively."

Notice the last paragraph. The Baptist is not necessarily wrong about the meaning of the word, but the argument he has presented here is simply not conclusive. If this argument is the only evidence he has presented, their case is simply not persuasive. Given a broader context in a Scriptural passage, or surrounded by other evidence for the practice of immersion in baptism, the meaning of the word 'baptizo' may be relevant, or useful, but on its own it proves nothing.

Households and moving from 'some' to 'all'

Now let's consider a paedobaptist argument. The way this usually goes is that someone will point to a number of cases in the New Testament where it is said that someone's entire household was baptized. A household, they claim, is as a term all inclusive and means everyone in a given family and retinue. So, by a household being baptized, all members of the family, including infants, would have been baptized, therefore we have a Biblical example of infants being baptized.

First, let's notice that just like the Baptist, above, it's entirely possible that their conclusion may be right. There are certainly instances where by household we mean everyone from mother and father to children and infants to servants. Second, let's notice that there are possible exceptions to this:

1. Not all households contain all possible members. Some households contain servants, most, do not. Some households have no daughters, some have no sons, some have no children at all. Of the ones that have children they may all be well older than infants.

2. Saying that an entire family likes something does not necessarily have to intend the inclusion of all the members. If a father of three of children ages seven, eight, and one tells me that their whole family loves roller coasters, I am going to assume that the one year old has not been consulted. Am I going to assume that the father is lying? Of course not, in the context of the conversation he was using family to refer to the relevant persons to the question at hand.

The stronger ground of these two is by far the first one. Let's consider a simple logical argument that can use this idea to show the fallacy at work in moving from 'households were baptized' to 'infants should be baptized.'

1. In Acts 16, all of the Philippian Jailer's household were baptized.

2. Some households include infants

3. Therefore, because the Philippian Jailer had his entire household baptized, infants should be baptized.

The flaw here is as obvious as it is fatal. The fact that some households includes infants does nothing, whatsoever, to establish that there were infants in the Philippian Jailer's household, which is critical to establishing infant baptism as absolute fact based on Acts 16.

The notion that this household included or very likely included infants is easy to accept for a person who is already convinced of paedobaptism. This concept fits very cleanly into their Biblical interpretation based on the presupposition of paedobaptism that they are already bringing to the text. However, this does nothing to establish the idea of paedobaptism as fact for someone who does not already hold it.

Conclusion

Both arguments presented here fail because they are presented as conclusive, deductive arguments without having enough evidence and information to actually reach that standard. Both of them are useful within the context of a cumulative case for their respective positions. For example, in the context of a 'sign of the covenant analogous to circumcision' argument for paedobaptism, it is helpful to point out that passages like Acts 16 fit cleanly with the model. What this means is that both the concept of household baptism and definition of baptizo can in fact be part of larger inductive or abductive cases, which try to show that the conclusion is likely or the best answer available instead of establishing them as absolute fact. Using these arguments in this way is much more useful than trying to use them as stand alone proofs.