Should Women Be Baptized?

[Ron Lambert]

Some have told me that they think God should provide a positive statement if He meant for us to give the laying on of hands ceremony to women. But I would then ask, Where is the positive Bible statement that we should baptize women? Shouldn't there be a positive statement only if the Lord did NOT want us to follow this practice?

 

Acts 8:12 mentions that women were baptized, after the preaching of Phillip. But that is only one verse, and it was not a command. Paul said that Phoebe was a deacon (diakonon in the original Greek in Romans 16:1). You may say that was only one verse, and not a command. But why accept Acts 8:12 at face value, if you are not willing to accept Romans 16:1 at face value?

 

John 3:26 says in the KJV: "And they came unto John, and said unto him, Rabbi, he that was with thee beyond Jordan, to whom thou barest witness, behold, the same baptizeth, and all men come to him." This implies that only men were coming to be baptized. Of course, other translations leave out the "men," and say that "everyone comes to him." Unfortunately, the same people who are superficial readers also tend to prefer the KJV.

 

Using the same kind of "reasoning" and poor scholarship the anti-WO faction employs, I could see them making an equally reasonable case for denying baptism to women. After all, Paul said of baptism: "Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him...." (Rom. 6:6) So would it be appropriate for a woman to be baptized?

 

Do women have an "old man" nature?--Of course they do, but superficial readers might be hard to persuade.

[Gregory Matthews]

I am exercising some restraint in not posting a response to this comment.  

 

[B/W Photodude]

2 hours ago, Ron Lambert said:

Using the same kind of "reasoning" and poor scholarship the anti-WO faction employs, I could see them making an equally reasonable case for denying baptism to women. After all, Paul said of baptism: "Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him...." (Rom. 6:6) So would it be appropriate for a woman to be baptized?

 

Sorry, but I think that is kind of ridiculous. Jews had a form of baptism that went way back before even the Christian era. In fact, a similar procedure is done for Jewish women every month. So, it happens for new converts and other situations. It was also part of the ritual cleansing that comes after becoming unclean. It is called the mikveh.  There is a huge difference in being baptized into a faith and being the leaders (priests). 

Re-interpreting Bible verses and changing the sex of individuals in the New Testament is also a bit of poor scholarship.

[Ron Lambert]

Of course the reasoning is ridiculous to suppose there could be any question whether women should be baptized. But that is my point exactly. It is just as ridiculous to suppose that there could be any question whether women should receive the laying on on hands ceremony. There is no Biblical command in either case forbidding these things; common sense would indicate that of course the church would wish to pray for God's blessings on any woman who is manifestly called and equipped to labor in the gospel ministry. The burden of proof is on anyone who would wish to oppose this. Why on earth would anyone want to deny that God has the right to ordain women? All the Bible texts they have ever cited to justify this notion have been clearly answered by better scholarship. So what is the real reason for anyone to oppose WO? Dysfunctional and sinful human tradition. That is all, absolutely ALL, that it is.

There is no more reason than there would be for anyone to deny that women should be baptized. The situations are quite the same. No express command. It is just commonly assumed that men and women should be baptized. No Bible text explicitly says women should be baptized. But more importantly, no Bible text explicitly says that they should not be.

I bet when Satan was laying his plans to bring division to the church and lead it to be insubordinate to God's authority, he considered using the denial of baptism to women. But the matter of restricting the laying on of hands ceremony only to men apparently presented itself as a little easier to sell, and there would be less opposition to it because it does not affect everyone in the church, while baptism does.

[B/W Photodude]

7 hours ago, Ron Lambert said:

But more importantly, no Bible text explicitly says that they should not be.

But the matter of restricting the laying on of hands ceremony only to men apparently presented itself as a little easier to sell, ...

Paul does have a verse, but WO supporters really don't like it much. Don't forget that there were numerous places in the Old Testament where only men were called for religious leadership. Then Jesus had 12 men as apostles and at another time had seventy men, that was a lot of opportunity to end this argument right there. And even when Judas left the group and the apostles were meeting and praying with a group of over one hundred believers including women, they could have filled Judas's post with a woman and again did not. There is one sermon the was linked to here at Adventistan in a prior discussion regarding men and leadership, where the speaker listed many reasons why leadership of men existed even before sin entered the world. It seems reasonable to conclude that this leadership was not an artifact of sin entering the world. If you read carefully in Patriarchs and Prophets, there are multiple levels of angels and some were leaders. Not sure why God would allow inequality right there in heaven.

Unfortunately the argument goes on and on, and no one really listens to anyone else. Reminds me of the beer commercial once where one side would claim "it's less filling" and the other side would claim "it tastes great!" Never really got resolved. But the continued argument does keep us from what we should really be busy with and unfortunately, it may cost some in the end.

[Ron Lambert]

There were reasons why the Levitical priesthood was limited only to men. (1) They were a type of Christ, who was a man. (2) They were part of a patriarchal society, produced by the consequences of sin, that the strong would dominate the weak.

Christian ministers are not types, they are messengers. And as Christians, we have received the positive and explicit command to regard each other as equals: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galations 3:28; NKJV) In other words, the Patriarchal system with all its dysfunctional traditions is now obsolete.