This is not the place for a theological
study of baptism (Eph 5:26; Titus 3:5), on which the secular texts shed no
light. But if a sacrament is a sign of a sacred reality, it is important to ask
what that sign represented for first-century Jew or Greek. In the case of loutron, there are three meanings: the
place where one bathes, the bathroom; bath water (Sophocles, Ant. 1201: lousantes hagnon loutron); the action of bathing. This third
meaning is the one used in the lxx.
(a)
The bath, public and private, was quite widespread in antiquity, and the papyri
supply abundant documentation for these bath houses, their founders, their
employees, their management, their functioning, and their prices.
The bath is in the first instance a hygienic practice, a cleansing—one washes
to be clean—but there are many other motives: bathing for pleasure
or enjoyment in the rivers, baths for relaxation, to dispel cares,8
bathing to counter the heat (Sus 1:15, Theodotion; Aesop, Fab. 73), baths to complement athletic exercises,9
remedial baths to treat sickness or for the aged, and for farmers exhausted by
their toils: gerontika loutra therma
(Plato, Leg. 6.761 c).
(b)
If bathing is first of all due to the desire for cleanliness, water is also a
means of achieving purity and getting rid of moral stains. Philo highlights
this correspondence between the efficacy of water for the body and the
symbolism of the soul: “They cleanse their bodies with baths and lustrations,
but they do not wish to be bothered to cleanse their souls of life-staining
passions” (Cherub. 95); “By thus
washing away that which makes dirty, by making use of the lustral waters of
intelligence and its means of purification, it should shine splendidly” (Change of Names 124; cf. Plant. 116, 162). Similarly the Pythian
Oracle: “Proceed with purity of heart, stranger, into the sanctuary of the pure
god. Wash at the spring of the nymphs. A few drops suffice for the good; but
the ocean would not be enough water to purify the wicked” (Anth. Pal. 14.71; cf. Euripides, Hipp. 317: “my hands are pure; it is my heart that is stained”).
Thus the bath has a religious significance and is a rite practiced not only in
Israel and by Jewish sects but also among the Greeks, and perhaps among all
peoples, especially when drawing near to the deity: “One cannot
enter the sanctuary without first washing the body in a complete bath” (Philo, Unchang. God 8). This purifying effect
of bathing is highlighted in Eph 5:26—“Christ loved the church; he gave himself
up for it, so as to sanctify it by purification through the washing of water
with a word (tō loutrō tou hydatos en
rhēmati), because he wanted to present it to himself all shining, without
spot or stain or anything of the sort, but holy and pure.” The instrumental
dative tō loutrō specifies the
manner—“purification carried out by means of and in the form of a bath with
water,”—qualified by en rhēmati, a
reference to the sacramental formula. This is a reference to baptism, which
washes away sins (apolouesthai, Acts
22:16; 1 Cor 6:11) and whitens the soul (leukainō,
Rev 7:14).
The whole pericope teaches that the
union of Christ with humanity is the model for conjugal love in the church: a
love that is intimate, a love that is fecund. From that point on loutron does not envisage cleanliness or
a purification that is necessary after a sexual act, but the fecundity which
for the Greeks was the principal purpose of marriage. It is reminiscent of the
prenuptial bath of young women, the loutron
… nymphikon; since water was for the earth a source of fertility,20
the nuptial bath would be a fertility rite, intended to enhance the likelihood
of procreation; at the very least it enhances access to a new mode of existence
(Euripides, IT 818). In Eph 5:26,
purification-cleanliness (katharizō)
is also sanctification-consecration (hina
autēn hagiasē): Christ takes as his bride the church, which he has washed
of its sins (cf. Acts 22:16).
(c)
If water is the condition of life and fertility, then bathing or immersion, by
the very structure of the act—entering and leaving—symbolizes also the erasure
of the past, the end of a former existence, and makes a renewal possible: one
is born again of the water and of the Spirit. The baptized person is a new
creation. The rite of the loutron
symbolizes this transformation. Having been begotten by the bath, one comes out
from it strong and well. Hence Titus 3:5—“He saved us, according to his mercy,
by a bath of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.” St. Ambrose comments
accurately: “The father has begotten you by the washing” (Sacr. 5.19; Sources Chrétiennes, 25, p. 93). (Ceslas
Spicq, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament, 3 vols. [trans. James
D. Ernest; Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994], 2:410-14)
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