ment holds to be true. The traditions of the early church followed all five of the above mentioned requirements with none of the apostles adding to or subtracting from them. In G. R. Beasley-Murray's book Baptism in the New Testament(1963) he brings out what scholars believe Paul's view of baptism was. In consideration to the amount of scripture that Paul did write and the amount of teaching he did in the early Church, many people have stated that he has an unclear viewpoint on baptism. In the reading that I have done by Beasley-Murray and the Bible, Paul's view point is very clear. Baptism is an initiation into life in Christ and the Church (Beasley-Murray 1963),symbolically joining with Christ in his crucifixion and his subsequent resurrection (Romans 6:3-4 NIV). As for the specifics in baptism we find Paul true to the teaching of Immersion. The Greek word used in the sixth chapter of Romans is _ or baptizo meaning "to make fully wet; used only in the New Testament of the ceremonial or ordinance of baptism(Strong 1996)." This fulfil's the second of the five requirements. As for the first requirement Paul in Acts 22:16 (NIV) Paul up holds it stating that they should "Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away calling on his name." not only does he say to wash your sins away, but he up holds the fifth requirement. In order for anyone to have been baptized by Paul they would have had to come to where he was in order for it to take place. Therefore we know because Paul did in fact baptize people (I Corinthians 1:13-17 RSV) that they where adults and that they came to him. As for the last requirement, being a believer in Christ, I do not think that there is any doubt that Paul was a believer. It is also interesting to note that by Paul's time the practice of believer baptism was not even questioned. According to H. Wheeler Robinson in his book Christian Doctrine of Man,(1911) "Paul was never confronted with the anomaly of an unbaptized be...
