What About Baptism?

Kevin Harris: Hey, it’s Kevin Harris. We’ve put together a brand new resource called The Daily Defender. It’s a 31-day reader based on Dr. Craig’s Defenders class. Each day provides a scripture, walks you through a short reading about who God is—his attributes, his greatness, his love—and it ends with a short prayer for reflection. I don’t know about you, but personally I have found that resources like this really keep me on track in the spiritual disciplines and my personal walk with God. There are so many distractions in our lives. That’s why prayer apps and things like that have become very popular. We’re really excited about the Daily Defender because you not only get that extra boost in your daily prayer and study, but you get the benefits of Dr. Craig’s lifelong work and ministry. It will strengthen your faith and your understanding of God one day at a time. Download the Daily Defender for free at ReasonableFaith.org/dailydefender and follow along with thousands of others throughout this month and even beyond. It’s our way of saying thank you and giving back to the community during our fall matching grant campaign, which is going on now and is fast coming to an end. Dr. Craig has more on that at the end of the podcast. We hope you’ll join us in reading the Daily Defender this month. Download it from the website. Now, let’s go to the studio with Dr. Craig.

=====

Kevin Harris: If you want to start a good fight among a lot of Christians, bring up the topic of baptism. We don’t want to start any fights here on the Reasonable Faith podcast, but we do want to explore the topic as fairly and accurately as possible. Bill, you’ve been working on baptism for volume five of your Systematic Philosophical Theology. Not only do people disagree about methods of baptism, whether one is fully immersed or merely sprinkled, but whether water baptism is necessary for salvation. I think that’s the big one. Does one have to literally be baptized in order to receive the forgiveness of sins, receive the Holy Spirit, and become a born-again believer in Jesus? Add infant baptism to the mix, and we’ve really got a potential whirlwind of passionate opinions. I’m sure you’ve witnessed this conflict over baptism throughout your own life and ministry, Bill.

Dr. Craig: As you know, in Reasonable Faith we try to emphasize mere Christianity, that is to say, those central cardinal doctrines that are characteristic of all of the great confessions of Christendom, whether Coptic or Catholic or Orthodox or Protestant. And so I haven’t really spoken to or addressed the topic of baptism previously, but the irony of writing this Systematic Philosophical Theology is that I am now being forced to take a stand on issues like baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and so forth, which I had previously avoided. So I am getting into the controversies now.

Kevin Harris: CBS News recently had a report on what seems to be a baptism movement among adults, Gen Z men in particular. This is really a good report. Check out this clip.

Speaker: Time now for our series, The State of Spirituality with Lisa Ling, exploring Americans on their different, unique paths of faith and spirituality. In the wake of the pandemic, there’s been a worldwide increase in adults choosing to be baptized into the Christian faith. This morning, at a time when some people are still trickling away from organized religion, Lisa shows us how one group in particular is leaning into their Christianity.

Speaker: Baptizing in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Speaker: On a warm Sunday afternoon in Southern California, a spiritual rebirth is underway.

Speaker: Thousands of people have converged here on Pirate’s Cove to catch some sun and get baptized in the Holy Spirit.

Speaker: What is the significance of water baptism?

Speaker: Water baptism is identifying in the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Getting in the ocean to do something so transcendent in a transcendent place like the ocean, it’s just a really special way to connect with God.

Speaker: Mark Francey is the pastor of Oceans Church, a non-denominational Christian church in Orange County.

Speaker: I believe that we are witnessing today a historic interdenominational mass baptism.

Speaker: He founded the event Baptize California in 2023 and added the nationwide event Baptize America this year. It’s considered to be the world’s largest synchronized water baptism.

Speaker: What is the idea behind Baptize America?

Speaker: We want to see America experience the goodness and kindness of Jesus and respond to the Great Commission in Matthew 28, which is to go into all the world to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them.

Speaker: More than 650 churches nationwide participated in Baptize America, and around 30,000 were baptized. In recent years, there has been a worldwide surge in adults becoming baptized into the Christian faith.

Would you say that we are in the midst of a spiritual revolution right now?

Speaker: I do. I think that we’re in a very comparable season that we were even in the 70s.

Speaker: It appears that this spiritual revolution is being led by an unlikely group, Gen Z men. New research shows a belief in Jesus among young people is rising after reaching an all-time low immediately following the pandemic.

Speaker: Does this baptism signify anything for you at this point in your life?

Speaker: For me, it signifies that I’m changed forever in the best way possible.

Speaker: For the first time in history, Gen Z men are more likely to attend church than their female counterparts.

How does baptism change people’s lives?

Speaker: I think the Holy Spirit changes people’s lives. I think it honors God, and when we honor him, a lot of times we experience him honoring us.

Kevin Harris: One thing is for sure: baptism is a very outward, visible testimony of one’s commitment to Christ. What else strikes you in this clip?

Dr. Craig: One of the other things that struck me was the connection drawn with the baptism in the Holy Spirit. In a clip like this, you can’t expect the pastor to go into things with great theological depth, but it is clear, I think, that he conceives of baptism to be more than just a water rite. In some way, there is this phenomenon of being baptized in the Holy Spirit. The relationship between Spirit baptism and water baptism is, I think, one of the central questions about baptism.

Kevin Harris: Even the reporter said all these Gen Z people are gathering to be baptized in the Holy Spirit.

Dr. Craig: Yes.

Kevin Harris: What are some things that you’ve discovered about baptism in your research for this particular section of your Systematic Philosophical Theology?

Dr. Craig: I have tried to understand different models of baptism, and it seems to me that there are two broad views of baptism that I call a figuralist view versus a realist view.

On a figuralist view, baptism is a purely symbolic rite. We are, figuratively speaking, buried with Christ in baptism. Baptism is a potent symbol of our union with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection. It’s also a symbol of our pardon by God for our sins. Baptism symbolizes our being cleansed from sin, which is itself a metaphor for divine pardon. On a figuralist view, baptism is understood to be purely symbolic or figurative in nature.

By contrast, on a realist view, the symbolic nature of baptism is also recognized, but it is held that the reality that is symbolized is present in baptism itself. Here I think one can distinguish three different realist views of baptism that increase in strength as we go through them.

The weakest view would be what I call occasionalism. On this view, water baptism is simply the occasion on which God baptizes you in the Holy Spirit. You are born again, your sins are remitted, and you receive eternal life. The water of baptism doesn’t have any causal effect in bringing about these spiritual realities. These are directly produced by God, and baptism is simply the occasion on which these benefits are conferred.

An analogy for occasionalism would be to imagine that someone who is being immersed in the water just happens coincidentally to suffer a heart attack at that moment. The baptism did not bring about his heart attack. They are just coincident events. The heart attack occurred on the occasion of baptism but wasn’t in any way caused by the baptism. That would be an occasionalist view of baptism.

A somewhat stronger view would be what I would call the instrumental causation view of water baptism. On this view, the water is the instrument that God uses to confer those spiritual benefits like regeneration, remission of sins, and eternal life. It is through the water that God brings about these things.

A useful analogy of the instrumental causal view would be to imagine somebody being baptized in a lake, and as he’s being baptized, a lightning strikes the lake and the electrical current is conducted through the water so that the person being baptized is shocked. The water has no inherent ability to electrocute or shock someone, but it does conduct the electricity of the lightning strike so that it is an instrumental cause of his electrocution. That would be an illustration or analogy for an instrumental realist view of baptism.

Finally, the strongest view would be what I would call the proximate causal view of baptism. This holds that God gives to the water an inherent capacity to confer remission of sins, spiritual regeneration, eternal life, and so forth. The causal power is in the water itself as a proximate cause of these benefits. It’s not merely an instrumental cause. The water has the inherent capacity to do these things.

An analogy to this would be the causal capacity of water to make you wet. The water has the inherent causal capacity to make the baptizand wet when he’s immersed. It’s not simply an instrument. It actually has that power. That would be the strongest view, the proximate causal view of baptism.

This is a taxonomy that I developed for the figuralist view and then these three realist views: occasionalism, instrumental causation, and proximate causation of baptism. My project will be to assess the plausibility and biblical consonance of these competing views.

Kevin Harris: As a way to illustrate this, Bill, let’s take the Baptist denomination, which is kind of ironic that the Baptists are called Baptists, but they don’t have as strong a view. They don’t believe that baptism is necessary for salvation. The Baptist denomination, Southern Baptists in particular, would they be figuralist, realist? Break it down for them. What would they hold?

Dr. Craig: By far and away, most Baptists would be figuralists. They believe that baptism is a symbolic rite symbolizing our union with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection and the cleansing of sin. There are a few Baptists who take a more realist view. For example, G. R. Beasley-Murray is a Baptist who wrote a very prominent book called Baptism in the New Testament. Beasley-Murray is an occasionalist, but by far most Baptists would be figuralists.

Kevin Harris: When we say that baptism is sacramental, or it’s held that it’s sacramental, what do we mean that baptism would be sacramental?

Dr. Craig: To say that baptism is a sacrament, or is sacramental, means that it is a special means of grace conferring remission of sins, regeneration, the Holy Spirit, and so forth. A sacramental view of baptism is what I called a realist view. One could contrast nonsacramental views with sacramental views. It’s the same distinction I’m making between figuralist views and realist views.

On a sacramental view, baptism is a means of grace in a special way. In a very weak sense, there are many activities that are means of grace: prayer, meaningful worship, singing hymns, fellowship. All of these can be means of grace from God to us in that general sense, but they aren’t sacraments. To be a sacrament, the activity or rite needs to convey this special saving grace that it is claimed baptism and the Lord’s Supper confer to us.

Kevin Harris: In your newsletter, it was fascinating that you pointed out it’s pretty undeniable that baptism was held as sacramental in the early church, but that view has been difficult to maintain consistently because of problematic scenarios and conflicts that result from it. What are some of those? Comment on that.

Dr. Craig: That’s exactly right. You opened this podcast by asking, “Is baptism necessary for salvation?” Despite the fact that the church fathers and Thomas Aquinas give lip service to the necessity of water baptism, they all compromise on that view and cave in and recognize that some people can be saved without submitting to water baptism.

The thief on the cross is the paradigmatic example of someone who was not baptized, but Jesus said, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” And so the question arises for the church fathers: suppose an initiate is preparing for baptism by being taught, he’s going to classes, and he’s approaching the date of his baptism. This was very realistic in the early church. Then he is suddenly caught in a Roman dragnet of persecution of the early church, thrown into prison, and perhaps executed, and so never baptized. Is he going to be lost forever? Is he going to go to hell because he wasn’t water-baptized?

The church fathers couldn’t countenance such a conclusion, so they invented what they called the baptism of blood, whereby those who were martyred for their faith before they could be water-baptized were, in effect, baptized in their own blood and therefore had the benefits of baptism, including remission of sins and eternal life.

This is clearly, I think, just a manufactured excuse to get around this intolerable conclusion that these people could be damned forever because they weren’t water-baptized. The baptism of blood doesn’t really solve the problem, because what about someone who’s just accidentally killed before he can be baptized? Suppose on the way to my baptismal service I’m involved in an automobile accident and killed. Am I going to be lost forever despite my faith in Christ because I was killed before I could be water-baptized?

Again, that conclusion was intolerable even for these sacramental theologians. So Thomas Aquinas, for example, said that there is also, in addition to the baptism of blood, what he called the baptism of desire. That you want to be baptized, and that is enough for you to have the benefits of baptism – you have a baptism of desire. Moreover, Thomas said this desire could be either explicit or implicit. If you even had an implicit desire for baptism, whatever that means, then that’s sufficient for your salvation.

Although many people have said that baptism is necessary for salvation, in the end virtually all of them give away the store by creating these escape clauses to deal with persons who have sincere Christian faith, saving faith, even though they do not have water baptism.

Kevin Harris: Let’s go ahead and enter the fray over infant baptism. Bill, you recently told Trent Horn, when he asked, that infant baptism is one of the teachings the Catholic Church should give up, in your opinion. Talk about your views on that.

Dr. Craig: I wanted to suggest something to Trent, who is a Catholic himself, that wouldn’t be too devastating to his theology, something that he could actually agree with that I think would have a profound impact on the Catholic Church if this were done. That is to give up the practice of infant baptism and wait until children are young adults or are able to understand what it means to repent of their sins, to place their faith in Christ, and to receive him as their Savior.

The rationale for that is that in the New Testament, faith is always a necessary prerequisite for baptism. The pattern is believe and be baptized. Infants, of course, are capable neither of repenting of their sins nor of believing in Christ for salvation. Therefore, it is really ineffective to baptize little infants without the prerequisite of saving faith.

I think the unfortunate result of this, for the Catholic Church in particular, is that you have a church which is filled with unregenerate people falsely trusting in their baptism as infants for their salvation, thinking that they are genuine Christians just because they went through the rite of water baptism as infants. That whole problem would be completely avoided if the Roman Catholic Church were simply to delay baptism until a later age, when the candidate can give a confession of faith himself before being water-baptized.

On this view, you can retain your sacramental view of baptism. I’m not saying you have to give that up. You can hold to a realist view of baptism. But what it will do is ensure that we are baptizing people who have made a genuine commitment to Christ.

Kevin Harris: One of the things that makes this difficult is that there are Scriptures that seem to support the necessity of baptism for salvation, and there are verses that seem to say it’s not necessary for salvation. When I was in high school, I had knock-down, drag-outs with my Church of Christ friends who believe that baptism is necessary for salvation. We went round and round looking at these verses, which was a good exercise. We all agree that baptism is important. Let’s crank this down a little bit further. Your thoughts on the importance of baptism.

Dr. Craig: In the New Testament, many wonderful spiritual benefits are ascribed to water baptism, but all of these same benefits are ascribed to faith as well. So it is really faith that is fundamental. It is faith that saves us, that receives God’s grace, that receives the Holy Spirit and remission of sins. All of these wonderful benefits are ultimately ascribed to faith.

So baptism is an expression of one’s faith. It is, in a sense, the culmination of one’s conversion initiation to the Christian faith. It is the expression of one’s saving faith in Christ that one now wants to identify with Christ in this way. So it is an extremely important rite that every believing Christian should submit to because it is the culmination and expression of saving faith.

Kevin Harris: As I was thinking about this podcast, I was most convinced that salvation can occur before water baptism by the account in Acts 10 with Peter and Cornelius. Cornelius is filled with the Holy Spirit prior to baptism. He’s baptized after salvation, when he received the Holy Spirit; he was filled with the Holy Spirit. Is that a fair exegesis of that passage?

Dr. Craig: Yes, I think that’s quite accurate. The point you’re making is one of the reasons I give for rejecting a realist or sacramental view of baptism. Namely, in the book of Acts, water baptism and Spirit baptism never coincide. It’s not just that in some cases they are non-simultaneous. In every case they are non-simultaneous. Water baptism and Spirit baptism are never coincident in the book of Acts or in the Gospels, for that matter. That provides a very powerful reason to think that water baptism is a symbolic rite that is not even the occasion, much less the instrumental or the proximate cause, of these spiritual benefits.

Kevin Harris: You’ve had no problem jumping into the hot seat on this. As you said, you’ve been forced into it if you’re going to write your Systematic Philosophical Theology. Maybe you can give some pastoral advice, scholarly and pastoral advice, when it comes to disagreements over baptism. You’ve pointed out it doesn’t seem to be one of the essentials of the faith, but it’s not something we need to divide over. As important as it is, there’s room for disagreement.

Dr. Craig: Pastorally, I want to say that there should be no unbaptized Christians. Anyone who has placed his faith in Christ for salvation is obliged to express that faith through water baptism, by which he identifies with the church. It is his public declaration of identification with Christ and his church. Every one of us who has experienced spiritual rebirth and given his life to Christ needs to follow the Lord in obedience and be water-baptized.

Secondly, I think each of us as we grow older and marry and have children will confront the issue of baptism with respect to our own children. Here I would reiterate what I said a moment ago that a prerequisite for water baptism is saving faith. While you might want to take your children to church for a child dedication ceremony where you would dedicate them to the Lord and the church would agree to pray for them, nevertheless you would reserve water baptism until they are old enough to make a commitment to Christ and want to follow that up with water baptism.

This is obviously a matter of conscience for each one of us. Each one of us needs to ask the question of his own water baptism and that of his children. I think we need to exhibit charity toward those who disagree with us. I do think there are true and false opinions about this, but this is not a cardinal doctrine that need divide us.

I have no idea, for example, what my fellow staff members at Reasonable Faith think about water baptism. We don’t make that a litmus test for their participation in this ministry. This is a secondary issue, not a cardinal issue.

=====

Dr. Craig: Hello! This is William Lane Craig. Credible sociological surveys have revealed an unexpected resurgence of openness and interest among students in the existence of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. More than any other Christian ministry, I believe that Reasonable Faith is strategically positioned to supply the evangelistic and discipleship tools to help further this young generation.

During the last year, we’ve continued to produce our animated videos. We have a wonderful series of videos on the existence of God and the evidence for Jesus. And now we’re producing an ongoing series on the attributes of God—just releasing the video on divine omniscience, and the next one to come out will be on divine omnipotence.

We’ve also got a new Equip course on the atonement and have developed an app so that you can download these courses and access them easily using your mobile device. We have now over 255 local Reasonable Faith chapters all around the world—from Europe to Nepal to Australia to Muslim countries. And these chapter directors who lead these studies are vetted, qualified people—extraordinarily talented, committed to the task of worldwide evangelism and discipleship.

All of this is undergirded by my years of scholarly research which is bearing fruit now in my five-volume Systematic Philosophical Theology. I am currently working on the final volume. It is this sort of depth that undergirds our popular-level material for student and lay audiences that helps to make Reasonable Faith so effective and so strategic in reaching this younger generation.

This fall, we’re having our annual matching grant campaign. A group of donors is donating $250,000 to match your donation to Reasonable Faith given between now and the end of the year. Dollar for dollar, every gift will be matched up to $250,000, and this will put us in a good position for beginning the new year.

So, I hope you’ll give prayerful consideration to including Reasonable Faith among the Christian ministries and charities that you support. Thank you so much for your interest and for your support in this strategic ministry.^[1]