The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum Baptism Question

Yes, in the article McIntyre deals with the subject of "mode" and shows that immersion could not have been the practice for practical reasons. As you pointed out above and which I should have included in my reply to you, no Jew and most non-Roman Gentiles would ever have stripped naked before anyone outside of their marriage partner; not even their own children. Such practice is in total violation of OT teaching. Thus, changing booths, for example, would have been constructed where those to be baptized would have put on clothing other than their clothes being warn since immersion would have left them completely soaked. And, as he pointed out, the time element certainly wouldn't have been possible either. Thus, McIntyre concluded that either effusion or aspersion must have been used to accommodate the thousands of people that had been converted in one day. So, the point to be made is that the biblical narrative must stand and the example for all time regarding baptism which most assuredly did not include participates stripping all their clothing off before others in order to be baptized. And, as already mentioned, there is no mention whatsoever in the biblical narratives where baptism was done that the "Eucharist" was administered immediately afterward. On those two elements alone, I totally reject the implication that nude baptisms with the celebration of the Eucharist was a normal and/or widespread practice among the Churches. Sects and all kinds of aberrant practices surely existed in the early days of the visible church period. For, even in the Epistles we read of false teachers, false prophets, and gross practices being done of which the Apostles strongly rejected and demanded that those involved should be discipled and even excommunicated from the assemblies.