Some critics of baptismal regeneration sometimes appeal to Acts 8:14ff
and 10:44ff as “proof-texts”
to support a symbolic understanding of water baptism, and that it does not affect
salvation. Firstly, such ignores the evidence from Acts 2:38 and other
like-texts that explicitly teach that, through the instrumentality of water
baptism, one receives a remission of one’s past sins (see, for e.g.,
Commenting
on this rather naïve reading of such texts, Ernst Käsemann wrote against those
who would try to drive a wedge between the water baptism (and thus its salvific
efficacy) and the receipt of the Holy Spirit:
Frequent attempt have been made to combat the
idea of a necessary connexion between baptism and the Spirit by appealing to
these passages, but this is a quite unjustifiable procedure. True, it is easy
to be misled by the picture painted in 8.16f. and particularly by the μονον
βεβαπτισμενοι in 8.16
which is so strikingly reminiscent of
the expression ‘knowing only the baptism of John’ in 18.25 and which seems even
more unlikely. For, quite apart from the significance of baptism for primitive Christianity,
the sub-apostolic era and the rise of early Catholicism saw an increase rather
than a decrease in the value placed upon the sacrament of baptism. If then, in
spite of this, a write can venture to use phraseology such as that of 8.16, he
must have overwhelming reason for doing so. These reasons are
not far to seek. Philip has begun upon the evangelization of Samaria on his own
initiative and without express authorization, and has been highly successful.
The result of his efforts has been the emergence of a church almost entirely
independent of Jerusalem. In the eyes of later Christendom this is an
intolerable state of affairs, threatening to disrupt the unity of the Church.
Solidarity must be shown with the claims to primacy which have certainly put
forward in Jerusalem by this time. Peter and John must therefore be portrayed
as going to Samaria to visit the community which has come into existence there
and to receive it into the fellowship of the apostolic Church. Only so can the
Samaritans, and, father ton in the book, the Ephesians, receive the Spirit, who
is accessible solely within the boundaries of the apostolic fellowship. The
turn of phrase ‘only baptized’ thus
becomes intelligible. The Church of a later day could not admit the existence
in the sacred past of primitive Christian free-lances and communities resting
on any other than apostolic authority: because otherwise it would have granted
letters to patient to the Gnostics and other heretics by whom it was being
menanced. Generally speaking, Acts is silent on the subject of this threat,
although we know from the Pauline epistles how early it made itself felt
throughout Hellenistic Christendom. It is one of the basic convictions of Luke’s
day that schisms and heresy had been unknown in the very earliest days of Christianity.
The whole plan of Acts is conditioned by
this view. Only in one passage, which certainly receives unusual emphasis, does
Luke fail to uphold this otherwise strictly observed convention. In Paul’s
farewell speech delivered, according to Acts 20.17ff., in Miletus, the Apostle
can be reported as referring to the dangers and difficulties of his own time
and contrasting with them the ideal of the Una
sancta, the integrity of which is guaranteed by the teaching office of the
Church resting upon the apostolic succession. For all practical purposes Luke’s
general picture is shaped by this presupposition, which can be illustrated by
the narratives of the Hellenists, of the conversion of Paul and Cornelius, of
the emergence of Barnabas in Antioch and of the apostolic Council. These narratives
are the pillars of Luke’s historical edifice. 8.14ff. must also be placed in
this context. The password ‘Una sancta’
remained ineffectual unless it could be deduced from the history, or rather,
read back into it. There could only be a place in the reconstructed past for
free-lance evangelists like Philip or free-lance apostles like Paul if they had
at least retrospectively received the apostolic blessing and had been
legitimatized by Jerusalem. Luke was faced with the necessity either of
admitting Philip’s administration of baptism to be fully valid and thus
acknowledging the existence of an independent ecclesiastical structure in
Samaria or of maintain at all costs the unity of the apostolic fellowship by stigmatizing
Philip’s baptism as defective; he chose the latter course. The Samaritans are
therefore described as ‘only baptized’ and their real incorporation into the
Church is ascribed to the apostolic laying-on of hands. Thus the shape of
8.14ff, is determined by a dogmatic theory
10.14ff. presents us
with a similar case. Cornelius and his circle receive the Spirit prior to their
baptism and this serves naturally to emphasize the ruling theme of their
narrative, namely that it is not man but God who has initiated the Gentile mission
with continual signs and leadings and even in the face of apostolic reluctance.
He maintains the initiative by sending the Spirit before baptism and thus
giving his sanction to the action of the Church which for her part immediately
opens her doors to the Gentile world and, by apostolic command, baptizes the
representative of this world. Once again, therefore, what we have before us is
not the report of an historical happening designed to prove the possibility of separating
baptism and the bestowal of the Spirit, or at least of deriving a wedge between
them. The passage is orientated in the direction of the whole Lucan interest
and goes back to Luke the writer or, even more, to Luke the theologian who is
concerned by this means to hammer yet again into the heads of his hearers: ‘This
is the will of God.’ (Ernst Käsemann, “The Disciples of John the Baptist in Ephesus” in
Essays on New Testament Themes [trans.
W.J. Montague; London: SCM Press, 1964], 136-48, here, pp. 144-46)