Note on Trine Immersion by William A. Spicer

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 17, 1913

Note on Trine Immersion

By William A. Spicer

It is perhaps a fact not often recalled in these Western lands, that trine immersion, three baptisms, is the form of immersion followed by the great majority who accept immersion as baptism.

It is the practise of the millions of the Greek Catholic and Armenian Catholic Churches. Roman Catholic authorities say that it was the Roman Catholic practise through the earlier centuries, before sprinkling was generally adopted in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

It evidently supplanted the simple apostolic practise in the early period of the growth of Catholic ceremonialism. The number three, from the names of the Trinity, became a mystic sign or charm, and was wrought into ceremonial forms.

Certain it is that no trace of trine immersion is found in the Bible. It is three baptisms, three immersions, while the Scriptures invariably describe only one. The record says that Jesus "was baptized of John in Jordan." If he had been baptized three times of John, the record must surely have so stated.

To baptize means simply to immerse, to plunge; and if three times plunging or trine immersing were the form, it could be expressed truthfully only by saying that Jesus was baptized three times of John in Jordan.

The apostle Paul says that in baptism "we have been planted together in the likeness of his death." Rom. 6:5. The burial in the watery grave is "in the likeness" of Christ's burial in the tomb, even as the lifting up of the candidate is in the likeness of the resurrection from the grave.

But Christ was buried but once. It destroys the likeness, divinely intended, to immerse the candidate three times in the watery grave, with three resurrections. "Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more." Rom. 6:9. It was once for all that he went into the tomb for us, and rose again. That is the great fact, in the likeness of which the ordinance of baptism was instituted in the Christian church.

It is sometimes urged that three baptisms are to be inferred from the great commission instructing the disciples to "teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." Matt. 28:19. But it is one name into which the believer is to be baptized. There is no suggestion of three baptisms; and three burials in the water, let it be emphasized, must inevitably destroy the likeness of Christ's burial, and so mar the meaning and symbolism of the divine ordinance.

Trine immersion is the popular Eastern Catholic form, but it has no foundation in the Word of God. W. A. S.