Commenting
on Paul’s theology of water baptism, Catholic theologian François Cuttaz wrote
the following which is very insightful, showing Paul did affirm baptismal
regeneration, notwithstanding some attempts to claim 1 Cor 1:17 teaches
otherwise (for an exegesis of this text, see Refuting Douglas Wilson on Water Baptism and Salvation):
Beyond all others, Saint Paul has sounded the
depths of meaning in the baptismal rite to discover its riches and to explain
its effects. According to this Apostle, Baptism is a “putting on” of Christ, a “planting
together” with Christ, an incorporation in Christ.
A “putting
on” of Christ: “For as many of you as have been baptized in Christ have put
on Christ” (Gal. III, 27). (“In Christum,” reads the Greek text,
using the accusative of motion, signifying that we become but one with Christ). You have “put on”
Christ; you have been enveloped by Christ, as a piece of iron dipped in gold is
gilded; or, more exactly, as a piece of bread soaked in a delicious wine takes
on its savour; or as a piece of poor material becomes valuable through having
been coloured by a precious dye.
A grafting,
a “planting together” with Christ: “We have been planted together with him”—Complantati facti sumus (Rom., VI, 5); planted together with Him,
grafted upon Him, living by the same life, fed with the same sap, co-operating
to bring forth the same fruits. This comparison is essentially the same as that
of the vine and its branches—the comparison used by Christ Himself (John, XV). We are grafted upon Him,
fixed adhering to Him, sustained and nourished by Him, as the branch by the
trunk which bears it.
But the comparison most patently dear to St.
Paul, the one to which he most frequently returns and whose implications he
most searchingly probes, is that of incorporation.
Through Baptism, we enter into the Mystical Body of Christ, we become His members,
we form but one sole organism with Him. Hence the expression: “In Christ”—or “In
Christ Jesus”, or “In the Lord”—“In
Christo”, which is St. Paul’s special phrase, characteristic of his
teaching, the foundation and summary of his whole dogmatic and moral doctrine.
Explicitly or equivalently, it occurs as many as 164 times in his Epistles,
most frequently in those of his captivity where he deals especially with the
spiritual union of Christians with Christ. It would not be an exaggeration to
say that all his writings are but a commentary on this profound and rich
formula. Far from leaving it in general terms, he is careful to specify its precise
meaning and import; to indicate in what precisely this union between us and
Christ, created by Baptism consists.
This Sacrament does not make us one with
Christ at whatever stage of His life we like to envisage: it makes us one with
the dead and buried Chris, and with the Christ of the Resurrection: “Know you
not”, says St. Paul to the Romans, “that all we who are baptized in Christ
Jesus are baptized in his death? For we are buried together with Him by Baptism
into death; that, as Christ is risen from the dead by the glory of the Father,
so we also may walk in newness of life . . . Now, if we be dead with Christ, we
believe that we shall live also together with Christ . . .” (Rom. VI).
The Apostle is able to take for granted that
this doctrine is well known to his correspondents: “Know you not?” he repeats.
It was emphasised in the sermons of those early years. How many Christians
there are today, we may remark in passing, who are totally unaware of the very
existence of this doctrine!
According to the sacred writer, the rite of
Baptism comprises two moments and two acts: immersion
and emersion. This duality
signifies and produces two groups of effects, whose study is the object of this
present book.
Immersion was total or partial. The water
in the baptismal font is the symbolic equivalent of the Saviour’s sepulchre. By
entering the water, the catechumen symbolically buries himself with Christ in
His tomb; he disappears with Christ from the eyes of the world, and—since only
the dead are buried—he dies with Christ; he is united with, identified with,
incorporated in Christ in His death and His burial, incorporated in the Christ
of the Cross and the Christ of the Tomb. The catechumen makes his own the
Sacrifice of Christ and its effects; he enters personally into the sentiments
with which Christ thus immolated Himself, and into the merits which derived
from that immolation; he makes his own the holocaust of Christ and its
supernatural fruit.
But the emersion
follows immediately, the symbol of resurrection and of “newness of life”.
Just as Our Lord emerged alive from the tomb,
conqueror of death and of his enemies, so too the baptized person leaves the
tomb of his sins, supernaturally regenerated. As for what is past, he has been
delivered from spiritual death; and as for what is to come, he has been raised
up to the lie of grace merited for him by Christ, and given Divine assistance
to lead a new life in conformity with that of the Lord.
Thus, Baptism immerses him, places him in the
Saviour’s death and resurrection, causing him to participate in both; it
integrates, incorporates, assimilates him with the dying Christ and the
triumphant Christ, with the Christ of Good Friday and the Christ of Easter
Sunday. It causes him to die and to be buried with Christ, and then with Christ
to rise again to life. Through baptism, the Death and Resurrection of Christ
become our death and our resurrection, as though, with Him
and in Him, we had been nailed to the cross and placed in the tomb. For the
effect of this Sacrament is that Christ is dead and risen from the dead, not
merely for us, but also with us; and we are dead and risen with Him and in Him. Across the two thousand years which separate us from the
drama of Calvary, we can re-live the principal scenes and, in a sense, play an
active role in them in union with the Divine victim. There is a sense in which,
through Baptism, we “complete” Christ, for we constitute with Him “the Whole
Christ”; “the fullness of His Body”. A proof of our incorporation with Christ
by Baptism—and a rich indication of the nature of this Sacrament—can be found
in the explicit affirmations, both by Our Lord Himself and Saint Paul, of the identification of the baptized with
Christ. (François Cuttaz, Divine Birth:
The Precious Effect of Baptism [trans. Malachy Gerard Carroll; Middle
Green, U.K.: St Paul Publications, 1962], 7-11, italics in original)
It appears, then, that as soon as Paul had
baptized his early converts, he handed over the baptizing to those he had first
baptized, reserving for himself what Christ called him to do—to preach and to
found assemblies of “the called,” the ekklēsia,
the church. As the church expanded, there was need for catechists to prepare
candidates for baptism, and the rite became more extensive. Paul shows the
wisdom of an administrator by delegating responsibilities to others and thus
raising up new leaders. (George T. Montague, First Corinthians [Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture; Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2011], 41)
Such fits with what the Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible has to say on this passage:
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. (Laurence Hull Stookey, "Baptism" in David Noel Freedman, ed. Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000], emphasis added)
