Prayers and
suffrages for those who have died is also at the heart of 1 Corinthians 15:29,
where Paul speaks of “those people . . . who receive baptism on behalf of the
dead” (οἱ βαπτιζόμενοι ὑπὲρ τῶν νεκρῶν). This practice, which appears nowhere
else in the New Testament, probably “indicates a general concern for the dead
among the Corinthian population . . . and likely took place only in first
century Corinth, where religious syncretism was a fact of life.” Throughout the
centuries scholars have developed several theories as to what this practice was
and why it occurred, although Fitzmyer contended that “the majority of
interpreters today . . . accept that it refers to living Christians [who]
underwent vicarious or proxy baptism, i.e., water baptism in the Christian rite
on behalf of persons (e.g., relatives) who had died without being baptized, so
that those persons might be saved or gain access to the Kingdom of God.” Paul,
it seems, neither approves of, nor criticizes, the practice, but only uses it
“to score a point” about belief in the resurrection. And while later
generations would associate baptism on behalf of the dead with certain
heretical sects, the idea that the actions/prayers of the living could somehow
affect the deceased remained an important part of orthodox Christian belief. (A.
Edward Siecienski, Beards, Azymes, and Purgatory: The Other Issues that
Divided East and West [Oxford Studies in Historical Theology; Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2022], 199-200, emphasis in bold added)
