Acts 2:38 Then Peter said unto them, "Repent, and be baptized every
one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and
ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost."
A discussion on another thread led to an advocacy for baptismal
regeneration. Of course the primary arrow slung at me for disputing
this doctrine was "Calvinist." So I thought I would take some time
over the holiday season to actually look at the primary passages that
are often referred to by the BR advocates. Acts 2:38, though only one
among a handful of verses used, is certainly a key verse. Others like
Acts 3:19; 16:30-31; 22:16, and if we stick with Luke, there is also
24:47 in his gospel, could, may even will, be looked at but for now
I'm only going to address 2:38.
I think the first thing to note is that the English translation grants
the reader something which the Greek does not. The English reader too
often unknowingly applies English rules of syntax on to, in the case
of the NT, (LXX in the Jewish T), Greek translation. But it is quite
evident in this verse, that to do so leads to an error in
translation. Because of word proximity, it is wrongly concluded that
baptism refers to "remission of your sins" or even both "baptism" and
"repent" refers to "remission of your sins."
Now the reader will note that the above quote does not use the
personal pronoun, "your." The NASB reads:
Acts 2:38 And Peter said to them, "Repent, and let each of you be
baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins;
and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
For brevity, I will not go into a discussion only to note that the use
of the pronoun has strong sup****t though it does not appear in all the
manuscripts. Another time, perhaps, we could look into it. But for
now I'm going to proceed that it is the correct translation.
So our primary consideration deals with the question as to whether or
not "be baptized" does refer to "remission of sins," or does Greek
syntax, throughout the NT, sup****t that only "repent" has consistent
occurrence with "remission of sins?"
Of course, I maintain that the syntax sup****ts that baptism is not in
reference to "remission of sins." The reason for this involves a
concordance between verb and pronoun. A.T. Robertson in "A Grammar of
the Greek NT in the Light of Historical Research" , Moulton and
Turner in "A Grammar of NT Greek," William MacDonald, "Greek
Enchiridion" all sup****t the proposition that followed properly, Greek
rules of syntax will not allow connection with "baptism." Robertson
states, "The freedom of the Greek from artifical rules and its
response to the play of the mind is never seen better than in the
order of words in the sentence." [p.417] Turner comments,
"Interruption of the normal order to give oratorical effect may result
in ambiguity." The point being is that in Greek oratory, the efect of
unnatural word order may be even more pronounced.
Repent [second person plural]
be baptized [third person singular]
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