On Baptist ordination
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Article: Historian: Origins of ordination among Baptists tangled
Excerpts:
Pragmatism and tradition have stood alongside biblical and theological principles in shaping Baptist ordination practices, church historian Karen Bullock said at the recent B.H. Carroll Theological Institute colloquy. “The concept of ordination as practiced by Baptists today is a complex — even problematic — notion resting tenuously upon biblical, theological and even traditional pillars,” Bullock said. The practices of “setting apart” and “laying on hands” for those called to some special service role in the church clearly have biblical roots, she noted — but later understandings of ordination also were influenced by the Roman Catholic tradition of “holy orders” and “solemn appointment.” “In the earliest years of the Baptist story, Baptists were — like their immediate Anabaptist, Puritan and Separatist predecessors — very concerned about the biblical warrant for their practices,” Bullock said. …. “Human ordination then, if juxtaposed to his holy sense of God’s gracious ministry in and through the life of his bride, the church, might rightly be, in [19th-century British Baptist leader Charles: Spurgeon’s oft-repeated — but otherwise intended — words, simply ‘laying idle hands on empty heads.” For it is the Christ, our risen Lord, whose ministry to us fills and empowers both the hands and the heads of every believer for his work.
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Did Spurgeon really say that?
[Dan Miller] Did Spurgeon really say that?page 626 of http://books.google.com/books?id=uH0PAAAAIAAJ&q=presbytery+%22but+empty…] The Metropolitan Tabernacle pulpit: sermons (1873) and http://www.saltlakebible.com/Spurgeon_3.htm here :
He speaks of the gift that was conferred by the laying on of the hands, and in the former epistle he connects that with the hands of the presbytery. Now, it was no doubt the custom to lay on hands at the ordination of Christian ministers by the apostles, and there was an excellent reason for it, for gifts were thereby conveyed to the ordained, and when we can find anybody who can thereby confer some spiritual gift upon us, we shall be glad to have their hands laid on our heads; but empty hands we care not for. Rites cease when their meaning ceases. If practiced any longer they gender to superstition, and are fit instruments of priestcraft. The upholding of the hands of the eldership, when they give their vote to elect a man to the pastorate, is a sensible proceeding, and is, I suspect, all the apostle means when he speaks of the presbytery; but empty hands it seems to me are fitly laid on empty heads, and to submit to an empty ceremony is the idlest of all idle waste of time.so it seems that bullock is not correct that spurgeon intended some other meaning than a criticism of modern ordination practices as a superstitious waste of time, and the quote should be empty hands and not idle hands.
[ChrisC] page 626 of http://books.google.com/books?id=uH0PAAAAIAAJ&q=presbytery+%22but+empty…] The Metropolitan Tabernacle pulpit: sermons (1873) …apparently google thinks it’s important to not fully show this book globally. if i access google books from a us proxy, i can read and even download the whole book. otherwise, i only get snippet view. so here’s a link to the http://books.google.com/books?id=uH0PAAAAIAAJ&pg=RA2-PA626&vq=%22empty+…] full view of page 626 for those who can access it.
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