by Harold N. Orndorff Jr.
The Restoration Herald - Feb 2025
One of the sensitive points we sometimes come up against when talking about the Christian faith is something we could call the Aunt Sally objection. It is not necessarily an objection made by Aunt Sally. It is an objection made, based on Aunt Sally, to the claim that Christians must be water-baptized into Christ.
It can come in many variations, but it usually has a pattern. Someone presents the biblical teaching on being baptized into Christ. Hearing this, a listener objects: that can’t be correct. My Aunt Sally was a wonderful Christian lady who was never baptized in any way like what you are talking about. So, you must be wrong somewhere.
With that, what the Bible says about baptism is politely dismissed. Or, at least, what was just presented as being from the Bible is seen as some kind of misreading of the Bible. It must be, of course, because of Aunt Sally. This is the Aunt Sally objection to baptism.
Now let’s add one more element to this. Let’s say Aunt Sally had also heard what the Bible says about baptism and had always rejected it. Aunt Sally was a sincere follower of some denominational teaching on the Christian faith that rejects the biblical place of baptism. Her minister assured her that baptism was not important regarding salvation. Aunt Sally believed this, and that was the end of the matter for her. Are there any sections of the Bible that speak to this kind of Aunt Sally objection? There is a section of the book of Acts that is somewhat parallel to this. From it we can draw some conclusions about the matter. We find it in Acts 18:24-19:7. The situation there can help us deal with disciples of John the Baptist after the death and resurrection of Jesus, and after the first announcement of the gospel on Pentecost. The details of what happened in these situations are both interesting and revealing.
Apollos is introduced in Acts 18:24 as a faithful messianic Jew, we could say. He had heard and responded positively to the teaching of John the Baptist concerning Jesus. He was even fervently evangelistic about Jesus as taught by John the Baptist. He knew what “the Scriptures” (our Old Testament) said about Messiah quite thoroughly, and he knew from John that Jesus was that Messiah. He was roaming around, somewhat on his own, proclaiming what he had heard from John. He was clearly a sincere believer, given the extent of what he knew to believe.
Apollos arrived in Ephesus at some point and was not reluctant to announce what he knew of Jesus the Messiah in the synagogue. Here he met a Jewish couple, Priscilla and Aquila. We can only guess when and how this couple became Christians, but the narrative makes it very clear that they had been baptized into Christ. When this couple met Apollos, they discovered that he only knew the baptism of John. He did not even know about Christian baptism—which implies that he did not know the important matters connected to that baptism: the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Trinitarian nature of God, and the gospel as presented on Pentecost by Peter, including the salvation gift of the Holy Spirit.
We are not given the details of what happened regarding baptism after Priscilla and Aquila “explained the way of God more adequately” to Apollos. But that is strongly implied in the immediately following context.
In Acts 19, we find what is certainly presented as a continuation of the topic brought up with the Apollos matter. At about the same time Priscilla and Aquila met Apollos, Paul met some unnamed people at Ephesus who are parallel to Apollos. They are called “disciples” but we learn that their discipleship extended only to John’s teaching and John’s baptism. They are presented as being in a position very much like that of Apollos. Paul clearly considers this inadequate, especially because they were not aware of the gift of the Holy Spirit. Paul reviews John’s baptism with them, and then baptizes them “into the Lord Jesus.”
What should we make of this? There are two definitive statements about baptism that come before this that can help us. The first is in Matthew 28:19-20, often called the “Great Commission.” Jesus there makes it clear that Christian baptism is what we could rightly call Trinitarian baptism, into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We must assume that any baptism into Christ found in the book of Acts is this kind of baptism.
Also, the opening and controlling statement about Christian baptism in the Book of Acts is Acts 2:38. This baptism is “into the name of Jesus Christ” and is accompanied by the gift of the Holy Spirit. So this mentions two members of the Trinity with God the Father implied, or even stated in Acts 2:39 as “the Lord our God” who calls. With these definitive statements in mind, there are some conclusions we should draw about the events of Acts 18:24-19:7.
First, while this is not stated in Acts 18, Apollos was clearly baptized into Christ after hearing from Priscilla and Aquila. John’s baptism was not Trinitarian baptism, and thus not Christian baptism. John’s baptism was not Christian baptism as described by Peter in Acts 2:38. So it is incomprehensible to think that the baptism of Apollos into Christ is not implied in Acts 18. It is much more likely that it does not need to be directly stated there because of how Luke continues in chapter 19 with an account that makes this very clear.
Some—like the commentator Lenski—claim that Apollos had received “sufficient” baptism from John, while the men in Acts 19 had not received John’s real baptism, because they had not received the Holy Spirit when they believed. But there is not even a hint that John’s baptism included “the gift of the Holy Spirit” that Peter announced on Pentecost. That gift was never received until the church’s birthday on that Pentecost. That was a key item that made Christian baptism new and different from anything that came before, including John’s baptism “for repentance and the remission of sins.”
Also, given Acts 2:38 as the definitive opening statement on baptism in the Book of Acts, it is unlikely that the Holy Spirit coming on the disciples in Acts 19:5 was the gift of the Holy Spirit as described in Acts 2:38. The salvation gift of the Holy Spirit there is not accompanied by tongue-speaking and prophesy, and it did not require the laying on of Apostolic hands. So this is clearly the service-gift of the Holy Spirit that is found even in the Old Testament, and not directly connected to salvation. Therefore, the most likely picture presented in Acts 19 is that Paul baptized these dozen or so followers of John the Baptist into Christ, completely in line with what Peter announced in Acts 2:38. Then, to equip them for special service in the then fledgling church, Paul laid his hands on them to give them the special service abilities provided by the Holy Spirit.
Now we are ready, finally, to talk some more about Aunt Sally and her kin. First, we note some differences between Aunt Sally and the events of Acts 18-19. Apollos, and the followers of John in Ephesus, can rightly be labeled “disciples.” They knew, and announced, what John had said about Jesus. The teaching of John was not wrong. But, in a time when God’s revelation was still unfolding and progressing, John’s teaching had become outdated, we might say. It was incomplete and had been superseded by the Apostolic teaching. What Aunt Sally believes is not quite in this category. We are well past the time when the faith has been delivered once and for all. What Aunt Sally believes is actually false teaching, even if sincere.
However, there are parallels with Aunt Sally and the disciples of John that might help us here. When Apollos and the followers of John in Ephesus received the updated revelation of Jesus, it is clear they did not resist. On the contrary, they seem to welcome the news and act upon it immediately.
The Aunt Sally in our scenario does resist. Perhaps politely but firmly, she says a definite “no” to the Apostolic teaching. Now we come to the part where we must consider the “what ifs” of this matter. What if Apollos had listened to Priscilla and Aquila and then politely said, “Thank you, but no. I have been a follower of John the Baptist for a long time now, and I am not about to change. But remember, we both believe in Jesus. It’s just that I don’t agree with these new things you are telling me.”
What if the followers of John in Ephesus had said something similar to Paul—a polite but hard “no”? Can we reasonably (or even close to reasonably) picture Paul saying, “Well, God bless you, brothers. I hope you will consider what I said, but we all believe in Jesus and that’s what really matters”? Just typing that imagined response from Paul makes my fingers tingle a little and not in a good way. So where does all this leave Aunt Sally? Can we rightly think of her as a believer in Jesus? In some sense, certainly. Is Aunt Sally a Christian? It is difficult to come to that conclusion. Do we know Aunt Sally’s salvation status? We don’t, and we don’t have to know that. God knows.
What we do know is that the usual ecumenical spirit does not fit with the book of Acts and the Apostolic teaching. That doesn’t mean we can’t be polite with Aunt Sally’s nephew who makes the Aunt Sally objection. But it does mean that we can know he is wrong.
~RH
(Endnotes)
* Kent B. True is the alter ego of Harold N. Orndorff, Jr., a retired campus minister who has taught college and seminary courses in the fields of apologetics, philosophy, ethics, and logic. Lately he enjoys studying his grandchildren, who are very interesting one and all.
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