Dr. Craig Keener wrote a massive 4,000 page commentary on the book of Acts. Four volumes of 1,000 pages each. I recently finished reading the first volume. Imagine my pleasant surprise when I read, relative to his comments on Acts 2:21: “Peter concludes by exhorting them to call on the Lord’s name by baptism in Jesus’s name (2:38)” (pg 921).
Doesn’t that sound like Dr. Keener believes the gospel? But, alas, you got your hopes up too quickly. You see, we have another example of deception through nuance.
When he gets to Acts 2:38, you will see if he actually lets the Holy Spirit teach the truth or if he has to obfuscate the text… Notice on page 975, he writes:
“The “forgiveness of sins” is explicitly associated especially with repentance in Acts (e.g., 3:19; 5:31; 11:18).”
Here is what Keener believes the Scriptures teach:
“Repent for the forgiveness of sins and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and immediately be baptized.”
He goes on to write: “Scholars debate to what extent the forgiveness of sins is also associated with baptism, and the grammatical debate can become quite involved [Actually, as we have seen, it absolutely is not “involved,” unless you’ve got denominational theology you’re trying to defend that is not grounded in the Scriptures; ph]. Given the various texts surveyed above, it seems that “for forgiveness” is linked more often with repentance (though the grammar alone could not decide this), which is never missing when baptism and forgiveness are both mentioned (Luke 3:3; Acts 2:38) or even when forgiveness is mentioned without baptism.
“…For Luke, however, baptism is not dissociated from repentance but constitutes an act of repentance; under normal circumstances, one does not separate the two (Luke 3:3; Acts 13:24; 19:4). John’s mission was to bring Israel to forgiveness (Luke 1:77); he preaches a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (3:3) when he preaches repentance (3:8). Thus preaching repentance in Jesus’s name (ênti tw ovóuati, 24:47) is concretely expressed by summoning the repentant to baptism in Jesus’s name (êni T@ ovóuati, Acts 2:38), and baptism figuratively [?, ph] “washes away sins” (22:16). As in contemporary Judaism (below), a baptism of repentance was an act of conversion, though early Christians invited Jews as well as Gentiles to submit to it” (all emphasis is mine, ph).
A few pages later, Dr. Keener writes (pg. 976): “Water baptism was meant to symbolize [?] and (ideally) accompany the gift of the Spirit, however, not to replace it, as if the act were sufficient without the experience (see 10:47; 19:5-6; esp. 8:12-17). … Baptism appears as the accepted initiatory rite in our earliest Christian sources (e.g., Rom 6:3-4; 1 Cor 1:13-17; 10:2; Gal 3:27) and was used by John the Baptist as a moral purificatory rite before the Christians adopted it (Mark 1:4; Jos. Ant. 18.117, Bantiou®). …What is most striking is not the activity of baptism but its use for initiation specifically into the community of Jesus’s followers, identifying them as a distinguishable sect within Judaism…”
Again, what we see is the nuance that baptism “initiates” one into the church, but it is not connected with the salvation from sins. Dr. Keener has desiccated the gospel.
If you found this erudite scholar to be confusing, so did I. So, you know what I did? I wrote him. He teaches as Asbury Theological Seminar in Lexington, KY and I asked him: “In simple terms, can you tell me what must I do to be saved?”
Here is his response: “Trust/depend on what God did to make you right with him: he had Jesus die for your sins and raised him from the dead to inaugurate new life. When we depend on what God has done in Christ, he welcomes us to his side so we can follow Jesus as our new Lord instead of going our own way.” That’s 60 words. Again, Peter’s response is half that. Jesus’ response in Mark 16:16 is only 9 words.
Does that sound like the gospel? Does that sound like the type of response an inspired apostle gave? It is, my friends, deception through nuance. In these men’s view, whom we have critiqued, aptism is an “initiation rite” into the church, but it’s not a condition to being forgiven by the blood of Christ.
CONCLUSIONS TO A SEVEN-PART DEVOTIONAL:
1.) Satan’s MO is deceit. We need to be very discerning when we listen to or read what other people say about the gospel of Christ. Satan is adept at using biblical terms but stripping them of biblical definitions.
2.) The biblical teaching on the purpose of baptism is extremely clear.
3.) Satan is deceiving thousands of people through “smooth and flattering speech” of so-called Bible scholars all across the country. When these preachers put pen to paper or open their mouths – specifically but not only on the subject of baptism – Satan is speaking through their lips.
Let us be careful that we do not allow our love and respect for other people cause us to weaken our understanding or our dedication to the gospel of Christ as He has given it to us.
Paul Holland
