Mark 16, I’m a little different. I agree with Maurice Robinson’s Byzantine Priority hypothesis that the Byzantine family is more reliable and represents a more ancient witness (Gasp! Hack! Delete from blogroll!! ) – You can read more at http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/v06/Robinson2001.html and at http://www.galaxie.com/article/8112 . That means I think the longer ending of Mark is genuine.

Mark 16:16 doesn’t support baptismal regeneration anyway.

Like this:

If Sally goes to the circus and sits with Joe she is happy.
If Sally goes to the circus and sits with Fred she is happy.
If Sally goes to the circus and sits by herself, she is happy.
If Sally stays at home, she is unhappy. What makes Sally happy? What goes before ‘and’.

“Sally goes to the circus”= ‘believes’
“and sits with”= “and is baptized/ confirmed/-add-your meritorious-work-here”

Coordinating/subordinating conjunction does not make end result dependent upon subordinate/coordinate verb.

That’s the key and those questions have been bothering me for a while. I think the answer’s been unlocked for me.

I like the summation of valid subjects, valid mode, valid meaning and valid administrators. I think that my four ‘Believer’s Baptism’ paragraphs are an attempt to cover each (although the final paragraph is a bit muddy).

Interestingly the final paragraph sums up the first three points and ignores the last. Was there method in that madness? I need to refine my thinking regarding the adminstrator and administration.

Thanks for the reply.

Just for starters, we need to distinguish between irregular baptism and invalid baptism. Someone being baptised at some youth camp is irregular (since I think only the local church should baptise), but it is not necessarily invalid. If someone has been baptised this way, I wold not re-baptise them, because that would break the image of Christ dying and rising for us once.

So onto the hard practical stuff.

In the first case, I would probably lean towards a re-baptism. It might be difficult and thorny, because the person may simply have trusted the pastor in question to do his job. However, I think with some patient explanation, the person could possibly see that dipping three times destroys the image, and that single immersion is true baptism. Depending on their teachability, they may or may not submit to that.

In the second case, I would investigate their understanding of the Trinity. I don’t think it is wrong to be baptised simply in the name of Jesus. (One rather strong dispensationalist I knew believed that Trinitarian baptism was Jewish baptism, and Christian baptism is alone into the name of Jesus. Suffice it to say, I don’t agree.) If the person was baptised by a Oneness Pentecostal, or some other form of Sabellianism, then I would see it as invalid baptism.
Given that the name of Jesus brings us to the Father and results in the indwelling of the Spirit, it need not be a problem. If Trinitarian orthodoxy is present, I would see it as a little irregular, but not invalid. Given a choice, we should always ourselves use the Trinitarian formula of the Great Commission.

In the third case, I would definitely re-baptise. Baptists have seen true baptism as valid subjects, valid mode, and valid meaning (Landmarkers add valid administrators). In baptism from one of the Campbellite groups, mode and subject might be correct, but the meaning certainly isn’t. For them, baptism is one of a series of acts by which an individual is saved. Regardless of how the saved individual saw it, the group they were under meant it as a means of justification. This would make it invalid baptism.