Forgiveness and
the Spirit
A further and most important argument
against the Gospels’ form of the saying about the two baptisms, and in favor of
John’s association of his own baptism with the Spirit, has to do with the
Gospel linkage between John’s baptism and forgiveness of sins (Mark 1:4//Luke
3:3)—a linkage that seem intrinsically plausible, given the strong Old
Testament connection between water rites and imagery, on the one hand, and the
theme of forgiveness of sins, on the other (see, for example, Num. 8:7; Isa.
1:15–18, 4:4; Ps. 51:1–2; Ezek. 36:25–33; Zech. 13:1). This connection
continues in Second Temple Jewish texts in general43 and the Qumran literature
in particular (see, for example, 1QS 3:1–9; 4:20–22). In the Old Testament,
however, forgiveness of sins is also strongly associated with the action of
God’s Spirit (for example, Ps. 51:1–2, 10–12; Ezek. 11:18–20, 18:30–31,
36:25–31; cf. Jer. 31:31–34), an association that, again, continues at Qumran
(see, for example, 1QS 3:6–7, 4:20–23, 9:3–5; 1QHa 17[9]:32–34, frag. 2 1:13;
4Q506 frags. 131–132 11–14). In view of these deep Old Testament linkages and
John’s own rootedness in Qumran, it may be asked whether he would have
proclaimed a baptism that brought forgiveness of sins without associating it
with the eschatological action of the Spirit. The answer is probably no.
To be sure, some scholars, such as
James Dunn, have attempted to preempt this argument by denying that John
thought his baptism imparted forgiveness. Dunn interprets the formula from Mark
1:4, εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν (“unto forgiveness of sins”), as a reference to a
future act of divine forgiveness, not one occurring concurrently with John’s
baptism, which was preparatory rather than initiatory. For Dunn, “the very idea
of a rite which effected forgiveness was wholly foreign to the prophetic genius
of the OT”—an assertion that Dunn backs up, not with citations from the Hebrew
Bible itself, but with a reference to 1QS 3:3–9. The latter shows, for Dunn,
that the Qumran sect “certainly rejected any idea that sprinkled water could be
efficacious to cleanse from sins and restricted the cleansing effects of water
to the flesh.” When he does finally turn to the Old Testament purification
rites, Dunn offers a rationalistic interpretation, asserting that they were
“symbols of the cleansing which God himself immediately effected apart from
this ritual” and “the means God used to encourage the humble and give
confidence to the repentant to approach him, by indicating his gracious will to
forgive and receive such.” But according to Dunn, such purification rites were
never intended to cleanse the heart or take away sins, for they could not
possibly do so—an assertion that Dunn reinforces not with Old Testament or
Jewish texts but with a citation of the New Testament’s Epistle to the Hebrews
(9:9–14, 10:1–4)! For Dunn, then, John’s baptism was not intended to convey
forgiveness; rather, “it is the repentance expressed in the baptism which
resulted in forgiveness,” and that forgiveness was conceived as a future,
eschatological act.
Dunn’s arguments, however, do not
carry conviction, first because John apparently associated his baptismal
ministry with the description in Isa. 40:3 of the preparation of a way in the
wilderness (see app. 8). The previous verse in Isaiah links this description
with the proclamation that Jerusalem’s “penalty” (that is, God’s punishment for
her sinfulness) has already been paid, and the Targum appropriately renders the
latter announcement as “her sins have been forgiven her” (Tg. Isa. 40:2)—an
announcement of an accomplished forgiveness, not a promise of a future one.
Dunn’s case for an anti-sacramental
interpretation of John’s baptism, moreover, ignores central features of the
texts to which he alludes. Numbers 8:6–7, for example, refers straightforwardly
to “waters of expiation” ( ,מי חטאת lit. “waters of sin”) as the means for
purifying the Levites; the dichotomy Dunn posits between cleansing the flesh
from impurity and cleansing the heart from sin is foreign to this sort of
priestly text. Similarly, in 1QS 3:4, “he will not be declared innocent by
ceremonies of atonement” ( (לוא יזכה בכפורים parallels “he will not be purified
by waters of cleansing” ( ;(לוא יטהר במי נדה here again, atonement and rituals
of cleansing are conjoined rather than separated. To be sure, Dunn is right to
claim that, according to 1QS 3:3–9, unrepentant people cannot be purified by
immersion, but this does not mean the author of that text believed that
immersion had no atoning effect; the point of the passage, rather, is that, in
the case of the unrepentant, the waters do not have their normal, expected
consequence (cf. 1 Cor. 11:27–30). Nor is this an idiosyncratic Qumran
perspective; as Jonathan Klawans points out, the default ancient Jewish view is
that expiation of sin is accomplished by sincere repentance in combination
with rituals of atonement.
Dunn, moreover, does not take into
account some relevant evidence from the New Testament itself, which suggests
that early Christians were aware of and troubled by the expiatory implication
of Mark 1:4. Matthew, for example, in redacting Mark, removes from his account
of John’s baptism (Matt. 3:1, 11) the phrase εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν (“unto
forgiveness of sins”), inserting it instead into the cup word in the Last
Supper narrative (see Matt. 26:28//Mark 14:24)—presumably because he wants to
associate forgiveness with Jesus’s death rather than John’s baptism. This seems
like an attempt to suppress an inconvenient memory, namely that John’s baptism
was meant to expiate the sins of its recipients—a memory that ran the risk of
rendering Jesus’s death superfluous. Contrary to Dunn, then, John’s baptism was
understood by some of his contemporaries to convey forgiveness; and therefore,
in view of the strong tie between forgiveness and the Spirit, it is reasonable
to suppose that it was understood to convey the Spirit as well. (Joel Marcus, John
the Baptist in History and Theology [Studies on Personalities of the New
Testament; Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 2018], 68-70)
