Total Immersion
Baptism: A Guide to Life from Death by Peter J. Leithart
What happens at baptism? Ask any five Christians from different traditions and you're likely to get five different answers. This discouraging fact puts a substantial cloud over one of God's great gifts to the church. St. Paul's confession of "one Lord, one faith, one baptism" seems only a distant dream. This lamentable situation lies at least in part behind Peter Leithart's recent book, Baptism: A Guide to Life from Death. As Leithart puts it, "the church has one baptism . . . yet God's sign of unity is a spring of division." This monograph is Leithart's "small contribution to the effort to reunite a church divided by baptism" (1–2).
As part of Lexham Press's Christian Essentials series, the book utilizes thoughtful styling, attractive art, and a reader-friendly layout to match the rest of the series, and it makes for an engaging read. For those familiar with Reformed and Presbyterian intramural debates involving Leithart, his writing a book encouraging Christian unity around baptism may seem a bit ironic, but perhaps those experiences actually make Leithart the ideal author for such a book.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Joshua Pauling taught high-school history for thirteen years and is now a classical educator. He is head elder at All Saints Lutheran Church (LCMS) in North Carolina, has studied at Messiah College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Winthrop University, and has written for Areo, FORMA, Front Porch Republic, Mere Orthodoxy, Modern Reformation, Public Discourse, Salvo, Quillette, and The Imaginative Conservative.
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on Christianity from the online archives
8.4—Fall 1995
The Demise of Biblical Preaching
Distortions of the Gospel and its Recovery by Donald G. Bloesch
30.3—May/June 2017
Insider Attempts to Disorient the Orthodox by Alexander F. C. Webster
27.5—Sept/Oct 2014
on Growing Vegetables as a Primer in Moral Philosophy by Rachel Lu
more from the online archives
24.1—January/February 2011
Ruminations on the Monstrous Envy of the Soul-Devouring State by Anthony Esolen
33.1—January/February 2020
Do You Know Your Child’s Doctor?
The Politicization of Pediatrics in America by Alexander F. C. Webster
30.6—Nov/Dec 2017
on C. S. Lewis, Brideshead Revisited & the Middle Things by Ben Reinhard
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
