Against the Wind: Eberhard Arnold and the Bruderhof - Plough

Against the Wind
shakes my position – almost takes it by storm…It is all still unclear and perhaps
quite wrong.”
June 25: Emmy records the stage she has reached in her considerations: “I still
haven’t come to any really clear conclusion about baptism. I know only one thing:
I, personally, received nothing at all from my baptism as an infant. I came to God
through my conversion, not through baptism.”
June 29: Eberhard warns Emmy that to receive believer’s baptism “without an
inviolably firm, deeply grounded conviction would be a sin, a sin with serious
consequences! Rom. 14:23!”
On the same day a letter from Emmy to him reports about the first baptism
service in the fellowship. Some of the candidates were “rather excited,” she felt. “If
one day we come to baptism, let’s ask esecially for a holy quietness, a holy peace
beforehand.”
June 30: Eberhard drafts what amounts to a list of personal principles:
Under all circumstances I shall do the clearly recognized will of God. I shall do
nothing except that of which I am convinced after examining it from all sides.
I shall embark on nothing that I cannot clearly verify as biblical.
As far as my present experiences go, I will search through the New Tesament
and history quite objectively in connection with the question of baptism. If I find
confirmation for my present impression that only believer’s baptism is biblical, I will
have myself baptized as soon as I know for sure that it accords with the Bible and
history…But as a pracical conclusion, I cannot be baptized yet without committing
a sin.
In the same letter he worries over how his parents would view such a step.
July 2: Eberhard writes, “Baptism with water is neither baptism by the Spirit nor
death and resurrection. This causes disappointments or disillusionment.”
July 30: Emmy says there is danger of a split among believers within the revival
movement in Halle over this very issue: “The baptism issue is pushed to center
stage instead of the cross, and people’s consciences are disquieted.” Emmy cannot
approve unreservedly of everything the supporters of believer’s baptism are doing:
“Not everything was true – there was so much secrecy – I can’t go along with it.”
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