Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

BAPTISM

Ritual cleansings of the body were well established in Torah (e.g., Exod. 29:4; 30:17-21; 40:30-33; Lev. 17:15-16; Deut. 21:6), as throughout the ancient Near East. Naaman was told to wash seven times in the Jordan to be healed (2 Kgs. 5:10). Later, lustration played a central role at Qumran. Footwashing was used by Jesus as an example of his humility and of the need for submission and servanthood by his followers (John 13:2-20).

Prior to the NT period, a ritual cleansing was instituted for the purification of gentile converts to Judaism. If this was the antecedent to NT baptism, John the Baptizer assumed an altered meaning by which this earlier practice became a sign of repentance for Jews themselves. There are indications that later the Church found another crucial alteration in meaning for its own use of baptism. Had Christian baptism and John’s baptism been viewed as identical, the report in Acts 19:3-5 would be inexplicable. Nor is this distinction peculiar to Luke’s theology. According to Matthew, John was puzzled that Jesus should come to him for baptism, since repentance seemed to have no applicability to Jesus (Matt. 3:13-17). Within that narrative may lie the key to the distinction; Jesus requests baptism apparently not simply in order to identify himself with sinners but primarily “to fulfill all righteousness.”

“To fulfill” can be translated “to bring to completion or perfection.” Jesus’ own baptism is thus an identifying sign about Jesus himself. He is the one who completes the intention of God, who brings to perfection all that God has envisioned since creation. Christian baptism is thus less a negation (in token of renunciation) than an affirmation of being incorporated into Christ, who is the perfection of all God wills, and thus of being granted new life as a gift.

This motif of bringing to completion all that God intends makes sense of otherwise obscure allusions in the narratives of Jesus’ baptism. The Synoptics (Matt. 3:13-17; Mark 1:9-11; Luke 3:21-22) mention water and a voice, together with the descent of the Spirit — all reminiscent of God’s spirit hovering over the waters and speaking creation into existence in Gen. 1:1-5. Thus Jesus at his baptism is identified as the one who fulfills the old creation by instituting the new creation. Jesus, by going into the wilderness for 40 days, is portrayed as the new Moses and the new Elijah (Exod. 24:18; 1 Kgs. 19:8). Similarly the figure of the dove further identifies him as the new Noah (Gen. 8:8-12), thus intensifying the motif of the new creation. To be baptized as a Christian is to receive and to be received into the whole sacred story in its fulfillment — a profound gift of the Holy Spirit, whose activity in baptism is so frequently asserted throughout the NT.

The precise sequence of water baptism, reception of the Spirit, and the associated laying on of hands is not clear, however. In Acts these come in a variety of orders (water, hands, Spirit: in 19:5-6 the use of hands is immediate; in 8:14-17 the laying on of hands is deferred and done by others; hands, Spirit, water: 9:17-19; Spirit, water, without mention of hands: 10:44–11:18). What is asserted overall by Luke, however, is that through baptism the presence and work of the Risen Lord (which is what the Spirit makes real to Christians) is shared within community (thus the importance of the laying on of hands). This gift is seen by Luke not as static transmission but as dynamic interaction — a perspective shared by Johannine teaching (John 3:1-8; 1 John 5:6-8). The importance of baptism to the ancient Church is attested by the evangelical status accorded the rite in Matt. 28:19.

Paul’s alleged indifference to baptism in 1 Cor. 1:14-17 refers only to the person of the administrator: Whether one is baptized by Paul, Peter, or Apollos means nothing; one is to be centered on Christ into whom he or she is baptized. This sometimes distorted passage must be interpreted in light of Paul’s clear affirmation of baptism as incorporation into the death and resurrection of Christ (Rom. 6:1-11) and as the putting on of Christ like a garment, thereby receiving a new identity beside which all of the usual distinctions dissolve (Gal. 3:27-29). Paul’s more puzzling comment about Israel being “baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea” (1 Cor. 10:2) actually is quite illuminating once one resists the temptation to suppose the apostle is referring to some literal rite. Paul is suggesting that as a fragmented band of refugees found a new identity in the Exodus and its aftermath in the covenant at Sinai, so those who are baptized into Christ thereby find a new identity through their covenant with God.

So also with Peter’s comparison of baptism to salvation on the ark: both events bespeak a newness given by the grace of God by which humanity is rescued from destruction. In Heb. 6:2-4; 10:32 “enlightenment” alludes to baptism; and the ancient Church when instructing catechumens liberally used John 9, , Jesus’ healing of the man blind from birth.

The matter of the mode of baptism in the NT is much less clear than usually supposed. The baptism of 3000 in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:41), a city without a river, casts doubt on the usual assumption that all NT baptisms were by immersion. Indeed, it can be questioned whether the NT proves immersion was used at all (though almost certainly it was). Ancient iconography persistently shows Jesus standing in water to his waist (hence the going down and the coming up of the Synoptics and of the story of the eunuch in Acts 8:36-38, as well as the need for abundant water in John 3:23), with the Baptizer pouring water over Jesus’ head. When churches began to build baptisteries, some were deep enough to stand in but not broad enough to lie down in — a strange fact if immersion was the invariable mode handed down from the apostles. Rom. 6:4 may refer to mode as well as meaning; but that is not certain; it could also refer to timing, if baptism in Rome during Paul’s time was administered primarily at Easter, as certainly it was there in subsequent centuries..

The argument that Gk. baptízō means immersion assumes that a given word can have only one meaning — as if use of the term “the Lord’s Supper” today must necessarily mean an ample meal served only in the evening. If the word for baptism can mean nothing except immersion, the references from Peter and Paul make no sense, since neither in the great Deluge nor in the escape through the sea were people covered with water. Certainly the use of the word in Luke 11:38 does not imply a full bath.

Similarly, neither can the baptism of infants in the apostolic period be proved or disproved by Scripture. That there must have been infants included in the household baptisms (Acts 16:31; 18:8; 1 Cor. 1:16) is pure conjecture; the assertion that no infants could possibly have been so involved is equally the result of speculation, particularly in light of the traditional incorporation of infant males into the covenant through circumcision.

Both the mode of baptism and the age at which it may be administered must be resolved through systematic and ecclesiological theology, not by an appeal to the mandate of Scripture. Although churches differ on these matters, all agree that baptism is incorporation into Christ’s community of the new creation by the grace of the Spirit. While not all churches recognize the baptism of every other church, this agreement as to essential meaning at least points toward the emphasis on unity in relation to baptism expounded in Eph. 4:5.

Bibliography. G. R. Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament (Grand Rapids, 1962); J. Daniélou, The Bible and the Liturgy (Notre Dame, 1956); W. F. Flemington, The New Testament Doctrine of Baptism (London, 1948); K. McDonnell, The Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan (Collegeville, 1996); L. H. Stookey, Baptism (Nashville, 1983).

Laurence Hull Stookey

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

BAPTISM

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)