David Padfield and Dr. Don Phillips

Debate On The Purpose Of Water Baptism

On November 8 and 9, 1990 Dr. Don Phillips (American Baptist) and David Padfield (Christian) engaged in a public discussion on the purpose of water baptism. The debate was held in Terre Haute, Indiana. The following links will take you to articles, debate charts and audio files related to this debate.

Reviews Of The Debate

Padfield's Debate Charts

for remission of sinsDownload Charts from the Padfield-Phillips Debate. Over 120 overhead charts used by Padfield in this debate (PDF file size: 251k).

"For The Remission Of Sins." David Padfield wrote to several prominent Greek scholars and posed this question: "Is it grammatically possible that the phrase 'eis aphesin hamartion,' 'for the remission of sins,' as used in Acts 2:38, expresses the force of both verbs, 'repent ye and be baptized each one of you,' even though these verbs differ in both person and number?" These letters were quoted in the debate several times. This booklet contains photocopies of their responses and explains the phrase "for the remission of sins" in a very detailed manner (PDF file size: 640k).

Audio Files Of The Debate mp3 audio files

According the the rules for this debate, each speacker was given three 20-minute speeches per evening. These audio files are saved as MP3 files—you can click on the links to listen to them now, or right-click with your mouse and "Save to disk" to listen to them later. Each file is approximately 10MB in size.

  1. Opening Remarks by John Welch (Nov. 8, 1990)
  2. Padfield's First Affirmative (Nov. 8, 1990)
  3. Phillips's First Negative (Nov. 8, 1990)
  4. Padfield's Second Affirmative (Nov. 8, 1990)
  5. Phillips's Second Negative (Nov. 8, 1990)
  6. Padfield's Third Affirmative (Nov. 8, 1990)
  7. Phillips's Third Negative (Nov. 8, 1990)
  8. Phillips's First Affirmative (Nov. 9, 1990)
  9. Padfield's First Negative (Nov. 9, 1990)
  10. Phillips's Second Affirmative (Nov. 9, 1990)
  11. Padfield's Second Negative (Nov. 9, 1990)
  12. Phillips's Third Affirmative (Nov. 9, 1990)
  13. Padfield's Third Negative (Nov. 9, 1990)