{"id":165,"date":"2007-08-13T09:56:52","date_gmt":"2007-08-13T13:56:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/godandculture.wordpress.com\/2007\/08\/13\/the-baptism-debate-between-piper-and-grudem\/"},"modified":"2007-08-13T09:56:52","modified_gmt":"2007-08-13T13:56:52","slug":"the-baptism-debate-between-piper-and-grudem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/the-baptism-debate-between-piper-and-grudem","title":{"rendered":"The baptism debate between Piper and Grudem"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Piper wants to accept into local church membership persons who were baptized as infants and for conscience sake do not want to be re-baptized as believers. He argues that by doing so he is not accepting their interpretation of what Scripture teaches about baptism. His point is that the mode and timing of baptism should not keep a genuine believer outside the local body of believers. Wayne Grudem seemed to originally agree with that position, but now in an update of his popular Systematic Theology<\/em>, he has changed his mind.<\/p>\n

John Piper writes,<\/p>\n

When I weigh the kind of imperfection involved in tolerating an invalid baptism because some of our members are deeply persuaded that it is<\/em> biblically valid, over against the kind of imperfection involved in saying to a son or daughter of the living God, \u201cYou are excluded from the local church,\u201d my biblical sense is that the latter is more unthinkable than the former. The local church is a visible expression of the invisible, universal, body of Christ. To exclude from it is virtually the same as excommunication. And no serious church takes excommunication as an invitation to attend the church down the street.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Piper arugues that when he accepts into church membership believers who were baptized as infants and never baptized as believers, he is not giving any ground at all on his position that baptism is for believers:<\/p>\n

I will spend the rest of my ministry trying to persuade you that you and your children should follow through on the full obedience to Jesus and be baptized. In admitting you, I do not<\/em> give up on my view of baptism. That is the whole point. We are finding a way to work on this disagreement from inside the body of Christ in its local expression.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read Piper’s position here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Justin Taylor presents Grudem’s position here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Piper wants to accept into local church membership persons who were baptized as infants and for conscience sake do not want to be re-baptized as believers. He argues that by doing so he is not accepting their interpretation of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}