The following discussion is of Macarius Magnes’ Monogenes or Answer-book to the Greeks: An Account of the disputed questions and solutions in the New Testament, ca. 5th century. It is interesting as it shows that even pagan critics of Christianity and the New Testament understood (1) Christians and (2) the New Testament to be affirming baptismal regeneration:
What is the meaning of: But you were washed, but you were sanctified?
Christian baptism as interpreted by Paul (1 Cor 6:11) was a shocking doctrine to the Hellene. He introduces his question with laughter by referring to the unstable sentiment (ανιδρυτον . . . γνωμην) of Hector and quotes Il. 3.83. He opposes Hector’s instability to the educated courage of the Greeks who keep silence while Hector speaks. His comparison is between Hector and the Christian:
Even so we now all sit in quietness here; for the interpreter of the Christian doctrines promised us and surely affirms that he will unravel the dark passages of the Scriptures. Tell therefore, friend, to us who are following what you have to say, what the Apostle means when he says, “But such were some of you” (plainly something base), “but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God.” For we are surprised and truly perplexed (απορουμεθα) in mind at such things, if a person when once he is washed from so many defilements and pollutions (μολυσμων . . . μιασμων), shows himself to be a pure (καθαρος); if by wiping off the stains of so much stupidity (βλακειας) in his life, fornication, adultery, drunkenness, theft, sodomy, poisoning, and countless base and disgusting things, and simply by being baptized and calling on the name of Christ, he is quite easily (ραον) freed from them, and puts off the whole of his guilt just as a snake puts off his old skin. Who is there who would not, on the strength of these, venture on evil deeds, some mentionable and others not, and do such things as are neither to be uttered in speech nor endured in deeds, in the knowledge that he will receive remission from so many criminal actions only by believing and being baptized, and in the hope that he will after this receive pardon from Him who is about to judge the living and the dead? These things incline (προτρεπεται) the person who hears them to commit sin, and in each particular they teach the practice of what is unlawful. These things have the power to set aside the training of the law, and cause righteousness itself to be of no avail against the unrighteous. They introduce into the world a form of society which is without law (αθεσμον . . . πολιτειαν) , and teach people to have no fear of ungodliness; when a person sets aside (αποτιθεται) a pile of countless wrongdoings simply by being baptized. Such then is the boastful fiction (πλασμα) of the saying. (Apocr. [Macarius Magnes’ Monogenes or Answer-book to the Greeks: An Account of the disputed questions and solutions in the New Testament] 4.19)
The doctrine that baptism could purify a defiled person is simply incredible. The consequences are absurd—such a doctrine will encourage people to commit all kinds of evils and then to believe and be baptized so that God will forgive them. This argument from consequence was a tool in the rhetorician’s arsenal. Paul’s teaching thus encourages the hearer (προτρεπεται) to commit sin. The philosopher’s word for “encourage” is technical term of deliberative rhetoric used to express the rhetor’s desire to persuade the audience to adopt a particular course of action. His appeal to the concept of “ease” to ironically describe being freed from sins uses one of the rhetorician’s final categories. Those categories served to provide the deliberative rhetorician with arguments for recommending (or discouraging) a particular course of actions. The repetition of words for defilement and guilt amplifies the philosopher’s shock that Paul could believe that calling on Christ’s name will free a person from so many stains. Some of the philosopher’s language for defilement and putting away stains appears in a text in Porphyry in which he relates pollution to human sexuality and diet. The ultimate result of the doctrine of baptism would be a lawless society that does not fear ungodliness (ασεβειαν). The philosopher would seem to agree with Plotinus’ principle that “It is not lawful for those who have become wicked to demand others to be their saviors (σωτηρας) and to sacrifice themselves in answer to their context of encomium or of building an argument based on the characteristics of a person. Not only is the absence of logic in Paul an issue for the Hellene, but his unappealing character (ignoring in this case) is a focus of his critique.
Macarius explains that the law revealed human sin. Sin was a goad of death and for the soul which the law wielded (as any goad needs a wielder). The law is a custodian (παιδαγωγον), and Paul does not destroy the law any more than one who takes a student from a custodian to a teacher nullifies the work of a custodian—rather Paul leads people to Christ through whom a person destroys sin. The law is like the moon (and the prophets like the stars) when Christ shines as the sun with his crown of the twelve apostles. The law then becomes silent. (John Granger Cook, The Interpretation of the New Testament in Greco-Roman Paganism [Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2002], 218-20)
