Baptism

I cannot seem to get away from this topic, so I'm going to embrace it and write a bit on it, here. This is my attempt to seriously begin blogging again. Why not make it about something I'm passionate about?

I was reading a blog post by a friend who blogs and whose blog I've gotten a little involved in. I guess I hope that as iron sharpens iron, maybe a rock could sharpen iron, too. Who knows.

Anyways, HERE is his post on Baptism.
Also - HERE is a defense of Infant Baptism by an old professor of mine, Dr. Mark Quanstrom.
And - HERE is a defense of Infant Dedication over against Baptism from another professor of mine - Dr. Carl Leth.

I've not held back, in many places, about defending both Infant Baptism as well as Baptism as the "normative means of God's saving and regenerating Grace." So, I thought maybe I should give an argument for it, and provide you, the reader, with the resources for understanding why the Church has practiced the way it has for nearly 2,000 years.

A symbolic view of baptism really is hard to find in Scripture (I haven't found it) and is extremely, extremely new in Christian Tradition. It has always been understood as a means of grace - a medium through which God imparts Grace to the believer.

We tend to talk about Salvation in terms of "belief" and "believing." The identification of one who is "in Christ" as one who "believes" is true. But what does it mean to "believe"? For the Fourth Evangelist, eating Christ's body and blood as well as being baptized (John 4 begins with the idea of making disciples by baptizing them, then moves directly into Jesus' telling the woman at the well that if she asked him for living water she'd never thirst again) are inseparable pieces of the "how" one attains life. So it seems clear that these are a part of what it means to "believe upon him" (John 3:16).

My area of concentration of research and study is Paul, so I cannot help being formed mostly by Paul. However, Paul is often the one I hear most evoked to show that one need not do anything to be saved, they need only to believe. Well, often times people will quote Romans 10:9-17 as evidence that all one needs to do is to believe and confess in order to be saved. However, this is a difficult passage to actually make sense of, especially within the larger Pauline corpus. For Paul, as evidenced in Galatians 3:2, the Spirit breaks through, into human existence, as "faith" is "heard." This "Faith" is Jesus' faithfulness. As Jesus' faithful death and resurrection are proclaimed and therefore "heard" the spirit breaks in. So Paul is working out a justification for going to preach to those who have not "heard" in Romans 10:17. Because this whole process is initiated in the people "hearing faith(fulness)" (Galatians 3). We also forget when reading this passage that in the history of the Church, one would "confess with their lips that Jesus Christ is Lord and... that God raised him from the dead" in the context of Baptism.

This "Faith(fulness)" Paul speaks of is Christ's faithfulness throughout Romans/Galatians and it is the means by which righteousness and life are attained (Romans 1:17b). We're made truly righteous through Jesus' faithful death and resurrection, and our being joined with this/participating in it.

The problem laid out in Romans 5-8 is the problem of the entire book of Romans - sin (a personified force) seizes upon Adam and brings trespass. Because of this, the realm of "death" exercised dominion until it could be overcome. Sin and Death are essentially personified foes who keep humanity in slavery. This Sin and death reign from Adam until Moses, when the law is given. But even the law cannot free humanity from these foes. This is where Romans 7 comes in. The law is given as a means (according to Jews) to set them free from sin. Through both the ethical advantage gained by circumcision as well as instruction in the law, the individual is capable of living a righteous life before God and, therefore, receiving eschatological life. But all the Law ever accomplished was imparting the knowledge of coveting and thus giving sin something to seize onto! Sin took advantage of the Law and made sin and death increase! Thus, the best the Law can ever do is to make us want to do the good, but it is powerless to help us do it (Romans 7:14-23).

This is the problem of 5 and 7. Humanity are sinners because they have been trapped in slavery by sin and death and only by sin and death being defeated can humanity be set free from this slavery. "Who will release me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!"(7:24-5) Romans 8 works out very concretely the idea that Jesus has actually condemned "Sin" and put it to death in his taking it on and dying. He was raised into new life freed from this "Sin" as it had been defeated. Thus, now those who are "in Christ" have this victory and are able to fulfill the "righteousness of the law" which could not be fulfilled in their prior state of slavery, and which the law was unable to free them for.

This freedom comes through Christ's victory and our being "in Christ" or our being united to him. This looks directly back to Romans 6 where our "union with Christ" is explained. It comes through our being Baptised, and Baptised into Christ's death. Thus, the death that Christ died he died to sin, putting it to death, so too does this happen for/to us when we are united with that death through Baptism.

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:3-11)

The righteousness that comes "through (Christ's) Faith(fulness)" is activated in us through our Baptism. This is the means by which the body of sin is put to death and we raise in "newness of life." It is not separated as a symbol of a work that the Spirit does. It is one and the same. The Spirit does this work for us in our Baptism. We are set free from bondage to sin and death by our dying to sin and "condemning it in the flesh" with Christ by union with his death! As such, the Roman Christians were not to submit to the Law as a way of attaining righteousness any longer because to do so would be to offer ourselves back to sin as slaves! For the law was powerless to set us free.

Thus, Baptism and Law (works of) are set apart as opposites in 5-8! "Works" refers specifically to Torah. Baptism cannot be a work, but is a part of "believing." For "the righteousness of God through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for all who trust in it." Baptism is a central part in how we trust in Christ's faithfulness - by being united with it!

Very illustrative of this point is Paul's language in 1 Corinthians 15:17, which cannot be understood well outside of this context:

If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.

What does Paul mean to say by telling the Corinthians that if Christ is not raised that they are still in their sins? Well this begins to make sense in the context set out above, which likewise only makes sense in light of Paul's Baptism language in Romans 6. In Christ we are united with Christ in his death - dying to sin - and then united with his resurrection, raised to a new life free from sin. If Christ has not been raised, then this has not happened, we have not been set free from sin in our baptism! This has very, very powerful ramifications for how we understand Baptism.

I think it's also significant that in the Gospel narratives, the Spirit descends upon Jesus at his baptism (Mark 1:11 and parallels) and his ministry only begins after this point. Likewise, to baptise someone in the Gospels is the means by which they're made a disciple (Matthew 28). Disciple happens to be the dominant language of the synoptic tradition for the Christian community.

So here we have Jesus, Paul, John, and the Synoptics all in agreement that baptism is more than a sign, but is the effectual means whereby God regenerates Christians. It is the act of faith and belief itself.

A couple more observations are in order that will tie up a few loose ends...

1 Peter 3:18-22 says:

For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight people, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience,through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.

For Peter, it is Baptism which actually saves us. Now, we know that Peter means God saves us through Baptism, and that Grace is primary (evinced by the line "to bring you to God"). But this seems significant not only in light of all of the observations which have come before but also in light of how Peter's ministry is preserved in Luke's narrative.

In Acts 2:38 Peter tells the people to "repent and be baptised... so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the Holy Spirit." Thus, the lines are all brought together in this passage - sins are forgiven in baptism, the Holy Spirit is given in Baptism, repentance is offered by baptism.

The last bit of evidence to connect to all of this is the story of Phillip and the Ethiopian in Acts 8:26-40. The narrative quite clearly presents the Ethiopian's baptism as the moment of conversion.

So, hopefully I've been able to draw together all of the relevant data from the New Testament in order to support that Baptism is God's normative means of saving grace which regenerates sinners.

Lastly, the line from the Nicene Creed should hammer the point home:

We acknowledge one baptism, for the forgiveness of sins