Apologetics

Is baptism just a symbol?

Responding to the claim that baptism is merely symbolic, he argues that splitting the physical from the spiritual is Neoplatonism, not Christianity — the church fathers held a deeply incarnational theology in which spiritual realities happen through physical events. He cites the Word becoming flesh, Christ breathing the Holy Spirit on the apostles, and the apostles laying hands on the baptized in Acts, and says 'baptism for the remission of sins' is the earliest Christian understanding. He calls the reduction of the faith to belief alone 'Protestant reductionism' that turns Christianity into a borderline gnostic religion divorced from anything physical.

John 1:14 · John 6:56 · Acts 8:14-17