Commenting on 1 Cor 15:29, Didymus the Blind wrote:
Οί από Μαρκίωνος άντί άφωτίστων τεθνεώτων βαπτίζουσι
ζώντας, ούκ είδότες δτι τό βάπτισμα σώζει μόνον τόν είληφότα αύτό. o δέ
απόστολος νεκρούς λίγει τά σώματα ύπέρ ών βαπτιζόμεθα· τώ γάρ Ιδίω λόγω άνευ
ψυχής ού ζή ταύτα, αλλ’ έκ τών συνουσών ψυχών έχει τό ζην. δμως καί δ Άβραάμ τό
άψυχον σώμα νεκρόν ώνόμασεν. (Taken from Alice Thompson Croft, “Didymus the Blind on 1 Corinthians 15”
[MA Thesis; University of Western Ontario, 1976], 46)
Croft provides the following
translation:
The followers of Marcion baptize living persons in place
of unenlightened dead persons. not knowing that baptism saves only the one who
receives it But the apostle calls dead the bodies on behalf of which we are
baptized. For in his own word, these bodies do not live apart from a soul. but
they hate life from their cohabiting souls. Likewise. Abraham too called the
soulless body dead. (Ibid., 47)
Croft then offers the
following analysis:
Didymus tells that the Marcionites baptize living persons
on behalf of unbaptized dead persons. . . . Didymus pronounces the Marcionite
baptism ineffectual: the Marcionites do not realize that baptism has its
salvific effect only on the person who directly receives it, not on the person
who is meant to receive it by proxy. . . . Didymus presents Paul as
indicating that baptism is meant to be done on behalf of the baptisand’s own
basically inanimate (“dead”) body, not someone else’s deceased one. Didymus
statement that Paul has shown “In his own word” that the bodies on behalf of
which “we are baptized” “do not live apart from a soul….,” refers, I believe,
to Paul’s word for the dead, “νεκροι.” It is almost certain that, to Didymus,
Paul’s use of the word “νεκροι,” with its connotation of corpse, indicates the body
or husk of a person that is buried after death. Of course this is not
consistent with what we now understand about Paul’s use of the word “σωμα”
and “ψυκη” (Bultmann, 192ff.). However, Didymus takes it as sufficient
evidence that Paul is distinguishing between the living soul and the “dead” or
inanimate body. (Ibid., 47, 48)
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