This page states a view. It does not survey both sides. The evidence is in the dossiers it links to, mainly Dossier 21.
Infants, children, adults. Immersion, pouring, sprinkling. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Rebaptism. Baptising again someone already baptised in the name of the Trinity.
“One Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Ephesians 4:5). “We acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins” (the Nicene Creed).
The Church settled against rebaptism long ago and has held to it for about seventeen centuries: Stephen (c. 256), Arles (314), Augustine, Luther, Trent, the Reformed confessions.
Rebaptism says God’s name, spoken over you with water at Christ’s command, did nothing.
The prodigal was not re-adopted. Peter was not rebaptised. Return to the baptism God already gave you.
The one who says it can be thrown away and done again.
What was said
“At that age, sometimes people may think, well, I’m all set. I was raised in a traditional Methodist family or etc. I don’t need to get any more immersion baptized. Isn’t it? People come to a conclusion and then parents are behind it. Oh no, you have been already baptized, you know. But I think they were very open to the Holy Spirit’s plan.”
From a baptism service at which adults baptised as infants were baptised again, as transcribed. The same service taught that “water does not cleanse anybody from any sin.” No preacher, church or candidate is named. The candidates acted in good faith; the criticism here is of the teaching.
The question. Is it fair to call someone “against baptism” who accepts the baptism of infants, children and adults, by any mode, in the name of the Trinity? And may someone already baptised in that name be baptised again?
What the other side believes
Christians who practise believer’s baptism do not think they are rebaptising anyone. To them the infant rite was not baptism at all, so the adult one is the first. They are sincere, and the Spider says so. Their best text is Acts 19, where Paul baptised disciples who had received John’s baptism.
The Spider’s answer, briefly. Those disciples had never received Christian baptism; they had “not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost” (Acts 19:2). The Church has always baptised people whose first rite was not in the triune name; the Council of Nicaea did exactly that in 325. That is the line. Infant baptisms in the triune name are not non-Trinitarian. What the other side really says is that the person’s age or faith cancels it, which puts the validity of baptism in the person rather than in God. And if infant baptism “was never a baptism,” then Luther, Calvin, John Wesley and most Christians who ever lived died unbaptised.
Heresy: what the Church has said
Hairesis means “choice”: choosing your own teaching over the faith the Church received. Each time the Church was asked about rebaptism, it answered no. Tap an entry to read what was said.
The honest exceptions
Cyprian and the African councils rebaptised in the third century, and lost the argument. Parts of the Orthodox East have at times baptised converts from the West, on the ground that their first baptism was not a true one. Even they never taught that a true baptism could be done again.
Blasphemy: what rebaptism says about God
Baptism is God’s act, done in God’s name (Matthew 28:19). “To be baptized in the name of God is to be baptized not by men, but by God Himself” (Luther, Large Catechism IV.10). And God does not break his word: “If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself” (2 Timothy 2:13).
So rebaptism says that the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit was spoken over a person at Christ’s command, and nothing happened. That treats God’s name as taken in vain and his promise as void.
Rebaptism says God’s name, spoken over you with water at Christ’s command, did nothing.
Luther used the word first: rebaptising someone because faith was lacking “would mean to blaspheme and profane the Sacrament in the worst manner” (Large Catechism IV.55).Come home, don’t start over
If you were baptised as a child and drifted, the answer is repentance and faith that lays hold of the baptism already given. The prodigal son came home to the same father; he was not re-adopted (Luke 15). Peter denied Christ three times and was restored by three questions, not a second baptism (John 21). Luther called the Christian life “a daily baptism, once begun and ever to be continued.”
“Your baptism was real. God meant it. Believe it now.”
See Dossier 54, Even God Has Prodigals.What the Spider is not saying
- Not that believer’s-baptism Christians are not Christians.
- Not a word against anyone baptised again in good faith. The responsibility lies with the teacher (James 3:1).
- No approval of how rebaptisers were treated. In 1529 the Diet of Speyer decreed death for every Anabaptist, and Felix Manz was drowned in Zurich in 1527. That was a grave sin. The answer to wrong teaching is an argument, never a punishment (Dossier 68).
Who is really against baptism?
Which position is “against baptism”?
The one who says it can be thrown away and done again.
One position holds baptism so high that it refuses to repeat it. The other holds it so low that it can be thrown away and done again. Who honours baptism more? And who, in the end, is against it?
Check it yourself
- Read Ephesians 4:1–6 and Acts 19:1–7.
- Read Luther’s Large Catechism, Part IV, “Of Baptism.” Twenty minutes, and the best single source on this question.
- For the full evidence, read Dossier 21, One Lord, One Faith, How Many Baptisms?
- If you are told to be baptised again, ask kindly: “In whose name was I baptised the first time?”
Want the evidence?
The full dossier quotes every ruling in the timeline, gives the corrections made to the brief, and publishes the prompt.
Read the full dossier → Simple English →