The practice of
vicarious baptism is nowhere else mentioned in the New Testament, although a
related practice is known among certain Christian groups from the second
century on. This passage has occasioned well over two dozen interpretations.
This in itself should cause the interpreter to be cautious rather than
imaginative. Actually all that Paul's remarks tell us is how he
understood their practice. For this reason, the implications which can be drawn
from the act are more important, for our purposes, than the act itself.
Assuming that he was correctly informed or that he correctly understood what
they were doing, his remarks mean little unless their practice presupposed that
those who had already died were either alive in some sense or were expected to
live again in some sense. It is an ad hominem argument: what they said
and what they did were inconsistent. Their own practice, therefore,
controverted their position. It is also striking that Paul does not
disapprove the practice. (Carol Holladay, The First Letter of Paul to
the Corinthians [ACU Press, 1979], 204-5, emphasis in bold added)
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