Sunday, July 13, 2025
More Pre-Reformation Disagreements Over Baptism And John 3:5
I've written a lot over the years about how diversely John 3:5 was interpreted prior to the Reformation, contrary to the popular suggestion that there was more agreement about the passage. For example, it's sometimes claimed, falsely, that everybody or almost everybody thought the passage teaches baptismal regeneration. I've discussed many examples of Christians who rejected baptismal regeneration before the Reformation, like here. Those who assigned some kind of high efficaciousness to baptism widely disagreed with each other about the sort of efficaciousness involved. Go here for a discussion of some examples. People often lowered their view of baptism in order to heighten their view of something else (prebaptismal faith, prebaptismal anointing with oil, postbaptismal anointing with oil, the laying on of hands, etc.). Such tradeoffs would inevitably affect the sort of efficaciousness assigned to baptism in an interpretation of John 3:5. Some people held a highly efficacious view of both prebaptismal faith and baptism. To the extent that they were consistent in maintaining those views, there would have to be a tradeoff. Heightening your view of prebaptismal faith lowers your view of baptism in some contexts, as I've discussed elsewhere. And there were many other issues that influenced how people understood John 3. As I've discussed elsewhere, there was widespread disagreement before the Reformation about types of baptism other than water baptism, such as baptism of desire. And there were disagreements over whether Jesus' comments in John 3:5 were in effect at the time when he spoke the words in that passage or wouldn't go into effect until later. Those who thought John 3:5 wouldn't be applicable until later disagreed over which later point in time that was.
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