I have been discussing baptism on another blog, and one of the anonymous the adversaries engaging me on that site is now citing Josh Dryer as an authority on the interpretation of Matthew 28:19. I will only note in passing that Mr. Dryer's credentials at the time he wrote this paper were in the field of aeronautics and the source he cites for his understanding of the Greek in the Matthew text is... Strong's Concordance. Um, yeah... I rest my case.
This is how a shepherd, who reads and understands the Greek language, opens that text to the English-speaking world.
2 comments:
Just finished reading through your comments on Rhology's blog. Fascinating stuff. this link might be of interest to you :
The Church Fathers on Baptismal Regeneration
lemme know what you think
That is a marvelous compendium of early Church thinking on this subject. What is especially remarkable (I think) is the way these excerpts unmask the errors in biblical interpretation that we so often hear today. Those who deny baptismal regeneration will look you straight in the eye and tell you without betraying any lack of assurance that verses like John 3:3, Titus 3:5, Ephesians 5:26, among others, have nothing to do with Baptism at all. But the church fathers from the very beginning were using these texts as if they were speaking of Baptism -- because THEY ARE.
There were two things in the article I would take issue with. From the beginning of the Reformation the Roman Catholic Church has been all too eager to lump all Protestants into a single group or fellowship -- as though, in spite of whatever differences there might be among them on the subject of Baptism, we are all approaching it in the same asacramental sort of way. (Watch the "Testing video..." post below for more information on why Lutherans reject that sort of identification with the rest of the Protestant Reformation.) We see this in the Augsburg Confession and the Apology to the Augsburg Confession. When the Lutherans presented their confession concerning Baptism to Emperor Charles V, and the Roman Catholics accepted it without reservation, the Lutherans nonetheless were very careful to explicitly distinguish themselves from the Anabaptists (Calvin having not yet come onto the scene). They were accustomed to being lumped together by their Catholic adversaries with other Protestant groups, and they wanted it to be abundantly clear that their teaching on this subject had absolutely NOTHING in common with those other groups.
The other point of disagreement with this article would be where the it talks about how Baptism washes away our past sins only, but not present or future ones. This is said to be where confession and penance come in -- to complete (so to speak) the work of Baptism. What we would say, as Lutherans, is that confession and absolution represents a return to Baptism. Although we are not literally washed again in the water, we daily drown the old Adam in the water of Baptism as we remember the promises of forgiveness, life and salvation that God has made there. So it is not as though sanctification is our work, but it is God's work which He accomplishes in and through this daily remembrance of His grace that we first received in the washing of regeneration. (That may seem to be a bit trifling, and maybe I've done a poor job of explaining it, but that is one point where Lutheran theologians are going to disagree with Roman doctrine.)
But overall, I really appreciated that article. Thanks for sharing it.
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