It is time for Presbyterian ministers, along with elders, to affirm their ordination vows by using the right and biblical administration of baptism. As for me I am done with dunking, and I will boldly proclaim that “baptism is rightly administered with pouring, or sprinkling water upon the person.”

The dipping of the person into the water is not necessary; but baptism is rightly administered by pouring, or sprinkling water upon the person.
—Westminster Confession of Faith, Ch. 28:3

I’m done with dunking. I will never again perform an immersion baptism for a Christian, but will henceforth be true to the biblical and confessional standards of my Presbyterian faith. To say this is the final step on my long sacramental journey from being a credo-baptist to being fully Reformed. I myself experienced an immersion baptism in a charismatic Methodist church a year after my conversion and spent the first decade of my Christian life in churches that only did immersion baptism.

As a Presbyterian minister, I once borrowed the baptismal facilities of a Baptist church in order to immerse a family of teenagers who attended my church. In my last Presbyterian parish in the country, I was willing to accommodate the preferences of Baptists in my church and go down to the local lake to immerse their believing children. I’m done with that now.

The Baptist belief is that immersion (the total submerging of the person underwater) and emersion (the coming up out of the water) is necessary in order to have a true baptism. Presbyterians hold an immersion baptism is valid before God when it meets the essential criteria of water applied by a minister in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but that it is unnecessary. The correct administration of baptism actually is “by pouring, or sprinkling water upon the person.” For me, to practice immersion baptism is to replace a superior mode with an inferior one and to endorse error.

The Baptist contention that the only valid mode of baptism is by immersion rests upon three flawed lines of argumentation: the meaning of the word “baptism” itself, New Testament accounts of baptisms, and the imagery of death, burial, and resurrection.

First, Baptists hold that the Greek word baptizo, “to baptise,” exclusively means “to dip” or “to immerse,” thus all baptisms must be by immersion. As with most words, baptizo has a range of senses, one of which is “to dip.” Baptists argue that “to dip” is the core meaning of the word which controls every use. I will spare you an exhaustive exposition on semantic theory, etymology, and every example of baptizo in the Bible and ancient literature and simply state, in contradiction, that baptizo primarily conveys the senses of wash, cleanse, or unite which can take place through dipping, pouring, sprinkling, or wiping.

The main point is to apply water to something or someone to cleanse it. The Baptist might say then that only bathing or immersion truly conveys the cleansing of a person, and that sprinkling or pouring water over the head does not cleanse the body. Really? In that case, we should get rid of all our bathroom showers and commit to taking baths every day. Using showers, faucets, basins and towels, as well as bathing in rivers and lakes, has been used to wash bodies for millennia. Jesus seemed quite satisfied with a few wet teardrops and some long hair when his feet were cleansed (Luke 7:44).

Secondly, the supposed New Testament accounts of immersion baptism in the Gospels and Acts are examples of the use of sloppy eisegesis. When Jesus came “up from the water” (Matt. 3:16) or “up out of the water” (Mark 1:10) he was not necessarily emerging from beneath the water but walking out of the water or up from the river bed. The same action is enacted with Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch who saw water and stop the chariot. The text says “they both went down into the water” and then “they came out of the water.” (Acts 8:38-39). Did Philip perform a tandem baptism by both going beneath the water?  Obviously not, they both walked down into the pool of water and then both walked out.

In both the cases of Jesus and the eunuch they could have stood or kneeled in the water while water was poured over them. It is supposed that John the Baptist chose the desert of Aenon near Salim because the “much water” or “plentiful water” provided deep water for immersion (John 3:23). A better reading is that these many springs of waters were where people gathered to retrieve water—and were usually quite shallow—but the springs also served John’s purpose for baptizing.

Other baptisms in the book of Acts were more likely accomplished by applying water than by immersing people. The three thousand at the feast of Pentecost could have been baptised using the lavers of water used in Old Testament ceremonial cleaning. Paul and Cornelius and his Gentile guests were baptised inside houses where it was uncommon to have a deep bathtub.

Within the house of Cornelius the question, “Can anyone withhold water for baptising these people?” (Acts 10:47) implies that water would be brought to the new converts. Lydia’s baptism does allow for an immersion baptism in a river (Acts 16:13-15), but the Philippian jailor was present in his house, not the river when he and all his household heard the word of God and were baptised (Acts 16:32-33). The New Testament Christian baptisms simply do not prove a case for exclusive, immersion-only baptism, but instead, demonstrate the probability of a pouring or sprinkling mode.

Thirdly, and most importantly within the Baptist perspective, the act of baptism supposedly depicts the imagery of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. The go-to verse for Baptists to prove that baptism is essentially an immersion and emersion act is Romans 6:3, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” When the convert goes down into the water his old man dies with the crucified Christ, but then he rises up out of the water as a new man with the resurrected Christ.

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