Piotr Ashwin-Siejkowski on Jesus' Baptism and the Question about Jesus' Practice of Baptism of His Followers

  

JESUS’ BAPTISM AND THE QUESTIONS ABOUT JESUS’ PRACTICE OF BAPTISM OF HIS FOLLOWERS

 

 

All four canonical Gospels explore different aspects of Jesus’ baptism. Mark (1.9-11) places it as the opening event in Jesus’ life as the confirmation of Jesus’ selection by God with a ‘voice’ which declares Jesus’ special status (Mk 1.11). Matthew (3.13-17) and Luke (3.21-22) expound the story with different theological agendas. Matthew points out the resistance of John the Baptist to baptize Jesus, while Luke omits the role of John, while reaffirming Markian tradition of the voice from heaven which declares Jesus’ unique status. The Gospel of John does not mention the baptism of Jesus, but its theological focus is on the identification of Jesus as ‘the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’ (Jn 1.29). John also highlights the mission of Jesus who will practise the true ‘baptism by the Holy Spirit’, not just ablution with water (Jn 1.33). The imminent question is: ‘why was Jesus baptised?’ and no doubt the Synoptic sources will give three different reasons: Matthew ‘to fulfil righteousness’, Mark and Luke to facilitate the appointment as God’s ‘beloved son’. This identification is especially important to Mark, as he does not have the nativity story, so we lack the Lukian report on the conversation between angel Gabriel and Mary (1.26-38). We may conclude, both historically and theologically, that Jesus encountered John the Baptist and that that encounter was a changing point in Jesus’ life.

 

Did Jesus continue John’s mission and baptize his followers? Unlike the Synoptics, the Fourth Gospel preserves some short but slightly confusing references to that kind of activity (Jn 3.22 and 26, then later 4.1-2). Let’s look more carefully. The first reference states:

 

After this Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he spent some time there with them and baptized. [. . .] They came to John and said to him, ‘Rabbi, the one who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you testified, here he is baptizing, and all are going to him.’

 

The text, without any alternative readings, clearly states that Jesus was (the Greek uses here the imperfect tense) baptizing for some time. Brown suggests that this was a baptism similar to John the Baptist and not a later Christian ritual. Beasley-Murray argues for the historicity of Jesus’ role as the one who was baptizing and who authorized his followers to perform this act.1 This Scriptural testimony is later contradicted in Jn 4.1-2:

 

Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, ‘Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John’ – although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized.

 

Again, the manuscripts are unanimous about v 2 and the noticeable editorial intervention and explanation of the previous statement in Jn 3.22. Still, we see that the followers of Jesus practised some form of ablution as a possible sign of repentance and then acted as having become members of the earliest community around Jesus. It is clearer from the Acts of the Apostles (2.38- 42) that catechumens were introduced to Christian fellowship by baptism ‘in the name of Jesus Christ’ (2.38). However, as we know from the note in the Acts of the Apostles, a certain Apollos from Alexandria ‘knew only the baptism of John’ (18.25). Similarly, in Paul’s teaching (1 Cor. 1.13 and 15), the ritual happened with different wording (‘in the name of . . .). Ferguson highlights that the baptism ‘in the name of Jesus’s’ was:

 

an expression of faith in him and in worship towards him.

 

Concluding the limited evidence from the emerging authority of the canonical Gospels and Pauline teaching, it is correct to say that baptism was an initiatory ritual offered to adults. It was seen in relation to John’s practice; however, after Jesus’ death and resurrection, Christians understood it as the fundamental relationship between the believer and Christ. That vital link was expressed by the idiom ‘in the name of Jesus Christ’. Baptism, as understood by the early followers of Jesus, brought forgiveness of previous sins, endowed the gifts of the Holy Spirit and led to salvation. Personal faith and commitment to a new way of life were crucial. Further, direct link with other members of the community expounds the social, not private or esoteric, character of baptism. (Piotr Ashwin-Siejkowski, “Community and Liturgy: Emerging of the Trinitarian formula baptism,” in T&T Clark Handbook of The Early Church, ed. Ilaria L. E. Ramelli; John Anthony McGuckin; Piotr Ashwin-Siejkowski [London: T&T Clark, 2022], 262-64)

 

 

Johannes Crell (1590-1633) offering a “Socinian” Interpretation of 1 Corinthians 15:29

  

Of Baptism for the Dead

 

The superstitious rites of the latter kind are again twofold: for some have more of vanity and of superstition, others somewhat less. Of the former kind are the intercessions for the dead, even if you sever from them that which here occurs of the idolatrous (for so far these ceremonies belong to the former kind). Like unto these was the superstition of those of whom, not only in our own judgment but in that of many other most learned men also, Paul speaks 1 Cor. 15:29: who were baptized for the dead, that is, as the words themselves of themselves sound, for the good of the dead.

 

For, as some also of the Fathers, as they are called, assert, it appears that there were some even among the Corinthians themselves, otherwise of great name, who thought that if any had departed without baptism who nevertheless had embraced the Christian religion, then, because they had not professed the name of Christ in that manner which was at that time received in the Church, the omission of baptism would either altogether hinder them unto salvation, or might easily do them hurt. Therefore, lest those men should perchance perish, others were baptized in their stead and in their name, and they judged that this redounded to the good of those men.

 

For although many interpretations are brought forward by others, yet they cannot be fitted to the words, nor do they themselves bring forward any example of that signification of the words for the dead which they pretend; which stands against them in the place of a first argument. Secondly: if the Apostle were speaking of some matter common to all Christians and right and praiseworthy, he would not say, What shall they do are baptized for the dead?—speaking only of certain men and openly distinguishing himself and men like unto himself from them, whereas the Apostle himself also had been baptized with water. There may be added also that which Josephus Scaliger has noted: that the Apostle does not say simply υπερ νεκρων, as though he were speaking of the dead indefinitely, but υπερ των νεκρων, to signify that certain dead are denoted by him. Which agrees but little with the other interpretations, but with ours most exactly.

 

But as to what is objected—first, that it is absurd to set down that the Apostle drew an argument for so great a matter, namely for the resurrection, from a vain and superstitious rite; and secondly, that it does not seem likely that the Apostle would have omitted the reproof of this error—to the former it is to be answered that arguments, as Aristotle also delivers, are twofold. The one sort are called προς πργμα, to the manner; the others προς ανθρωπον, to the man. The former, since they are drawn from the truth of the thing itself, must always and with all men have place; but these latter not with all, but only with him with whom one has to do—whom we either slay with his own sword, when with one of his errors we confute another, or whom we press with the authority of those men to whom he attributes much—as when we urge the Papists with the authority of the Fathers and object to them those things also which we ourselves do not acknowledge all are wont to do who dispute with adversaries.

 

To this kind of arguments, from which the wisest and the most learned by no means shrink, since its force for persuading is very great, and sometimes even greater than that of arguments which are by their own nature most solid, this argument is to be referred. For it is likely that those men whom the Apostle marks had great authority among the Corinthians and the repute of wisdom. Besides, an argument προς πραγμα also may be deduced from a false opinion, as Aristotle very often does, and among other places in the first book of the Ethics, where he confirms his own opinion concerning blessedness out of the manifold and withal erroneous opinions of the philosophers. For it is not likely that they do it without all reason and cause and altogether rashly; and, as Aristotle says in the place named, it is not likely that they err the whole way, but rather that they attain the truth at least in one part, or in most parts. Therefore the cause and the ground of that error is to be dug out, which ground it is probable, and well-night necessary, is of itself true.

 

Let us transfer this to the present place. They who were baptized for the dead had above all this ground and cause of their deed, that the dead should rise again; for unless they had held this for a thing most certain, they would have been the most inept of all men, who were willing to be baptized in the stead of those others, and so for the sake of their advantage and their salvation. Since therefore they held this for a thing most certain, and it is not likely that in so great a matter they erred, by reason of the excellent wisdom which was otherwise in them, or at least was believed to be in them, Paul rightly concludes that it is necessary that the resurrection be set down. And that Paul’s argument was of such a sort the very manner of speaking, in some measure indicates: “What shall they do which are baptized” and so forth—as if he should say: most ineptly would those men have acted, and rashly, and without any cause, whereas it is more than credible that they had at least some probable cause.

 

To the latter it is to be answered that it was not necessary in this place, where he would bring forward this deed as a proof of the resurrection, and that briefly and in passing, the Apostle should have reproved it expressly and openly, especially since the error itself was not of itself so pernicious. Yet meanwhile, by the very manner of speaking, while he removes the deed from himself and attributes it only to certain men, he seems tacitly to disapprove it; which in this place sufficed him. (Johannes Crell, Christian Ethics: An Explanation of the Virtues and Vices Which Holy Scripture Speaks [trans. Marcin Poholski; 2026], 182-83)

 

 

John A. McGuckin on Early Patristic Views of Eschatology

  

EARLY PATRSITIC VIEWS OF THE ESCHATOLOGY

 

The insights of the late Pauline notion of the redemptive presence (Παρουςία) of the risen Christ were developed by the patristic writers as a way of bridging the tension between, on the one hand, the promise of Jesus that God’s vindication was to be fully realized when the Kingdom came in all its fullness, a time of final judgement when evil would be decisively ended and the righteous would enter into their reward; and on the other hand, that in his Resurrection Jesus had somehow or other transcended time and entered into a permanent presence for, and to, his church. The prayer Maranatha, or ‘Come Lord Jesus’ represents the first; the theology of the Fourth Gospel represents the second, where Jesus ‘corrects’ Martha’s future-related conceptions at the tomb of Lazarus and asks her to believe in a resurrection already present in himself.

 

By the end of the first century this disparate approach operative in the foundational texts had already started to be synthesized. Pope Clement is one of the first to speak of individual Christians (here Peter and Paul) having already entered into heaven (like the confessing thief ) as their reward for their martyrdom on earth: not for them the wait until the general resurrection of the dead and the final judgement. The idea of an immediate realization of vindication for all the martyrs was also strong in the early church. The elders of Smyrna confess that the martyred Polycarp has already received ‘the crown of immortality’. Hermas speaking about the destiny of the church in his book The Shepherd depicts it in the late first century as a tower almost nearing completion. When it is finished the end will come. In the early second century Barnabas thinks the last days are already upon the church. He takes clues from the six days of creation to argue that this is already late in the seventh age, and the eighth is the dawning of the ‘New Age’ of the Kingdom. From the symbolic Genesis chronology of ‘seven days’, several writers correlated that seven thousand years since the creation meant that the end of the first century would be the appointed end-time. This idea endured, in the West, even into the fourthcentury writer Lactantius, who adjusted it to fit Constantine’s Golden Age. However, apart from the special dispensation offered to martyrs, who gain a speedy entry to paradise, most of the early church envisaged the general resurrection taking place as the immediate prelude to the Second Coming. In the Didache this is not for all (ὀυ πάντων δέ) seemingly only for the righteous. But the more accepted view was that all human souls would resurrect in the flesh to face the universal judgement. Like much else related to Christian thinking about the church in the earliest centuries, the stance taken was collective more than individual.

 

By the middle to end of the second century this simpler form of the Christian eschatology, turning around the poles of resurrection of the flesh and universal judgement, had come in for a good deal of serious criticism both from the Hellenistic philosophers such as Kelsos, who mocked it as unbelievably crude compared with the Greek philosophical concept of the immortality of the soul, and from Christian Gnostics who used mythic schemes to advance similar ideas of the ascent of the purified soul. The temptation simply to replace biblical eschatology with Hellenistic metaphysics was resisted in the main. Justin Martyr, for example, is sure enough that the Platonic doctrine of immortality is incompatible with the Christian concept that God brought the soul into being by His word and will. Conditional immortality might be as far along that road as the fathers were willing to go. The general insistence of the Apologists (especially Irenaeus, Tertullian and Hippolytus) in their struggle with gnostic-type ‘spiritualisms’ (the flesh is evil or at best irrelevant in terms of salvation which must be solely a matter of spirit) is that God created matter as a holy thing and, through the Incarnation of the Logos, has willed salvation to be a bodily as well as a spiritual matter (as such unavoidably historical): involving the resurrection and judgement of the soul in its own flesh. Their core arguments are based primarily upon the testimony of the scriptures. (John A. McGuckin, “Eschatology in the early Christian thought-world,” in T&T Clark Handbook of The Early Church, ed. Ilaria L. E. Ramelli; John Anthony McGuckin; Piotr Ashwin-Siejkowski [London: T&T Clark, 2022], 148-50)

 

Robert Alter on Psalm 57:8 (Hebrew: v. 9)

  

Awake, O lyre. The Masoretic Text reads kevodi (“my glory” or, perhaps, “my being”), but one manuscript as well as the Syriac reads kinori, “my lyre,” which seems more likely, yielding an incremental repetition of terms for stringed instruments in this verse. (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019], 3:144)

 

Sophie Munroe, Letter to Huldah Salisbury (May 4, 1861) on the Outbreak of the U.S. Civil War and the Fulfillment of D&C 87

The following is a transcription of:

 

Sophia Munroe letter, Bandera, Texas to Huldah Salisbury, Church History Library, Call no.: MS 28609

 

This is important as it was penned just one month after the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War, and the author discusses the fulfillment of portions of D&C 87 as a result:

 

Bandera. May. 4th. 1861.

 

My Dear Mother, Brothers and Sisters one and all I have once more [opportunity?] of sending a letter to you, if I stopped on the way. we boarded a Young Man. this winter he was from the (City of New York) he will soon start for home. i shall ask him to take charge of this hoping it may reach you + our Mails will be uncertain if at all we will go to Catesvill for ours + our portion of the country is as quiet as any part of Texas. we are getting Rangers on the Frontier we think better protection the before but every thing is uncertain in these days. the Indians are worse then common. perhaps gathering up to come down [stronger?] + from what i can learn the North will overpower the South. but those that are in favor of the confederacy think otherwise. i feel willing to let things take there cours i hope to go to Mexico or California in the spring. there is many here that does not want to fight on either side. many have gone to California already we have an abundant rain and will have good harvest we may have war but not famine + Munroe is still got the Bandera Mills + he is putting in a flouring Mill now to grind wheat. there will be a grate deal raised in western Texas this year, corn never looks better. David breaks down some still he goes from morning till knight + and sleeps but little at knight. my health is poore able to be around most time taking Medicine all the time + sew [knitt?] keepe my own some more scrub wash or iron, except my caps + Beanie and family are well + the river is up soe we cannot cross it now fulls slow we have had so much rain [fields?] fair to have more. [Hermenid?] is as large as his Mothers Additional parenthetical notes near the bottom of the page: (Beannie named her baby for me) (his next youngest for Victor)

 

[written upside down:] my love to Huldah tell her she is not forgotten

 

My Friends know that i embraced the or believed the Latter day Saint religion + still believe the first principles as strong as ever the Prophet was killed in prison, his son must succede him or else we have no leader his son has taken his place at the head of a branch of the church, still we cannot gather there now, it is not know[n] where we shal gather yet, i think the time not far distant when we shal know. i want to be gathered with the Church with a Prophet at head i do not believe in the Salt lake Mormons no not I. while the Church was in Missouri the Prophet had a revelation, and it is printed + in a Book of many revelations, the Booke is in Town now, it was printed more then 21 years ago concerning the wars that would begin at South Carolina saying the— [word or words crossed out] north will be divided against the South. and the South will call on Great Britton, and other Nations, to helpe him and it will come to pass that the Slaves will be armed to fight against there Masters. and it shal come to pass that warre shall be poured out on all Nations, this is the sum [briefly?] of the revelation though many more plagues spoken of that will be poured out up on the earth to warn the nations. what i have written on this side of paper may not interest you but if you were to [keep?] track of me it might be som[e] comfort to you that i was gone to a place of Safety. i need not pledge myself to write; if i have opportunity you know i will [write]. And i hope you will [do the same]. this from your affectionate Daughter and Sister

 

Sophia Munroe

 

Brothers and Sisters

Huldah Salisbury

 

Further Reading:

Resources on Joseph Smith's Prophecies

David Kimhi (“Radak”; 1160-1235) on Psalm 51:6 (Hebrew: v. 7)

  

Radak on Psalms 51:7:1

הן. אדוני אבי ז"ל פי' כי אמר דבר זה כדי לסלק מעליו העון ואמר כי מדרך זה העון שעשיתי נבראתי והיא טיפת הזרע וממנה:

 

Radak on Psalms 51:7:2

יחמתני אמי. כאד' שזורע גרעיני מרה האילן והפרי מרים בטבע וכל הדברים ילכו אחר תולדותם והאדם נעשה מטפת זרע בשעת תשמיש ואע"פ שיש בזה מותר ואיסור אם יטעה אדם באותו הדרך טבעו הוא וממנו הוא נוצר ואיננו דבר גדול אם יתקפהו יצרו לעבור על דבר זה וכל חטא אחר אינו מוטבע באדם על כן חייב יותר אם יעשה אותן, והאדם הצדיק המושל בתאותו בדרך תשמיש אם יתקפהו יצרו דבר גדול הוא יותר מאשר ימשול ברוחו מלעבור עבירה אחרת כי זה טבעו וזה אינו טבעו:

 

Radak on Psalms 51:7:3

יחמתני. יחמה אותי כי מהתחממות הנקבה עם הזכר תצא טפת זרע שהולד נוצר ממנה:

 

Radak on Psalms 51:7:4

אמי כי היא סיבת הזכר יותר מן האיש כמו שאמרו אשה מזרעת תחילה יולדת זכר:

 

Radak on Psalms 51:7:5

בעוון. מלא ויש בו דרש רבי אחא אומר בעון מלא אפילו חסיד שבחסידים א"א שלא יהא לו צד עון: (source)

 

 

Radak on Psalms 51:7:1
“‘Behold’ — my father, of blessed memory, explained that he said this in order to remove the guilt from himself, and that the meaning is that because of this sin that I committed, I was created, namely, from the drop of semen from which I came.”

 

Radak on Psalms 51:7:2
“‘My mother conceived me.’ It is like someone who plants bitter seeds in a tree, and the fruit is bitter by nature; and all things follow their origin. Human beings are formed from a drop of semen at the time of intercourse, and although there is both permissibility and prohibition in this matter, if a person errs in that way, it is his nature, and he is formed from it. It is therefore not such a great matter if his inclination overpowers him in regard to violating this matter. But any other sin is not innate in a person, and so he is under greater obligation if he commits those sins. A righteous person who masters his desire in matters of intercourse: if his inclination overpowers him, it is a greater matter than if he controls his spirit and refrains from some other transgression, for this is his nature, whereas that is not his nature.”

 

Radak on Psalms 51:7:3
“‘My mother conceived me.’ She conceived me, for from the warming of the female with the male comes forth the drop of semen from which the embryo is formed.”

 

Radak on Psalms 51:7:4
“‘My mother’ — for she is more the cause than the man, as they אמרו, ‘A woman conceives first and gives birth to a male.’”

 

Radak on Psalms 51:7:5
“‘In iniquity’ — with a full spelling. And there is a midrash: Rabbi Aḥa says, ‘“In iniquity” with a full spelling’ means that even the most pious of the pious cannot avoid having some side of iniquity.”

 

Robert Alter on Psalm 51:6 (Hebrew: v. 7)

  

in transgression was I conceived, / and in offense my mother spawned me. Christian interpreters through the ages have understood this verse as a prime expression of the doctrine of Original Sin. Some of the early rabbis register a similar notion—as they put it, David’s father, Jesse, did not have relations with his wife to fulfill a higher obligation but rather out of sheer lust. Such a reading may be encouraged by the fact that the verb attached to the mother, yaḥam, is typically associated with animals in heat. It may, however, be unwarranted to construct a general theology of sinful human nature from this verse. The speaker of this poem certainly feels permeated with sinfulness. He may indeed trace it back to the sexual act through which he was conceived, but there is not much here to support the idea that this is the case of every human born. (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019], 3:133, emphasis in bold added)