Saturday, June 22, 2019

Ernst Käsemann on Baptism and the Spirit in Acts 8 and 10


Some critics of baptismal regeneration sometimes appeal to Acts 8:14ff and 10:44ff as “proof-texts” to support a symbolic understanding of water baptism, and that it does not affect salvation. Firstly, such ignores the evidence from Acts 2:38 and other like-texts that explicitly teach that, through the instrumentality of water baptism, one receives a remission of one’s past sins (see, for e.g., Christ's baptism is NOT imputed to the believer and Refuting Douglas Wilson on Water Baptism and Salvation; cf. Acts 10:47, Cornelius, and Baptismal RegenerationDoes Cornelius Help Refute Baptismal Regeneration?Was Cornelius Converted Before Acts 10?).

Commenting on this rather naïve reading of such texts, Ernst Käsemann wrote against those who would try to drive a wedge between the water baptism (and thus its salvific efficacy) and the receipt of the Holy Spirit:

Frequent attempt have been made to combat the idea of a necessary connexion between baptism and the Spirit by appealing to these passages, but this is a quite unjustifiable procedure. True, it is easy to be misled by the picture painted in 8.16f. and particularly by the μονον βεβαπτισμενοι in 8.16 which is so strikingly reminiscent  of the expression ‘knowing only the baptism of John’ in 18.25 and which seems even more unlikely. For, quite apart from the significance of baptism for primitive Christianity, the sub-apostolic era and the rise of early Catholicism saw an increase rather than a decrease in the value placed upon the sacrament of baptism. If then, in spite of this, a write can venture to use phraseology such as that of 8.16, he must have overwhelming reason for doing so. These reasons are not far to seek. Philip has begun upon the evangelization of Samaria on his own initiative and without express authorization, and has been highly successful. The result of his efforts has been the emergence of a church almost entirely independent of Jerusalem. In the eyes of later Christendom this is an intolerable state of affairs, threatening to disrupt the unity of the Church. Solidarity must be shown with the claims to primacy which have certainly put forward in Jerusalem by this time. Peter and John must therefore be portrayed as going to Samaria to visit the community which has come into existence there and to receive it into the fellowship of the apostolic Church. Only so can the Samaritans, and, father ton in the book, the Ephesians, receive the Spirit, who is accessible solely within the boundaries of the apostolic fellowship. The turn of phrase ‘only baptized’ thus becomes intelligible. The Church of a later day could not admit the existence in the sacred past of primitive Christian free-lances and communities resting on any other than apostolic authority: because otherwise it would have granted letters to patient to the Gnostics and other heretics by whom it was being menanced. Generally speaking, Acts is silent on the subject of this threat, although we know from the Pauline epistles how early it made itself felt throughout Hellenistic Christendom. It is one of the basic convictions of Luke’s day that schisms and heresy had been unknown in the very earliest days of Christianity.  The whole plan of Acts is conditioned by this view. Only in one passage, which certainly receives unusual emphasis, does Luke fail to uphold this otherwise strictly observed convention. In Paul’s farewell speech delivered, according to Acts 20.17ff., in Miletus, the Apostle can be reported as referring to the dangers and difficulties of his own time and contrasting with them the ideal of the Una sancta, the integrity of which is guaranteed by the teaching office of the Church resting upon the apostolic succession. For all practical purposes Luke’s general picture is shaped by this presupposition, which can be illustrated by the narratives of the Hellenists, of the conversion of Paul and Cornelius, of the emergence of Barnabas in Antioch and of the apostolic Council. These narratives are the pillars of Luke’s historical edifice. 8.14ff. must also be placed in this context. The password ‘Una sancta’ remained ineffectual unless it could be deduced from the history, or rather, read back into it. There could only be a place in the reconstructed past for free-lance evangelists like Philip or free-lance apostles like Paul if they had at least retrospectively received the apostolic blessing and had been legitimatized by Jerusalem. Luke was faced with the necessity either of admitting Philip’s administration of baptism to be fully valid and thus acknowledging the existence of an independent ecclesiastical structure in Samaria or of maintain at all costs the unity of the apostolic fellowship by stigmatizing Philip’s baptism as defective; he chose the latter course. The Samaritans are therefore described as ‘only baptized’ and their real incorporation into the Church is ascribed to the apostolic laying-on of hands. Thus the shape of 8.14ff, is determined by a dogmatic theory

10.14ff. presents us with a similar case. Cornelius and his circle receive the Spirit prior to their baptism and this serves naturally to emphasize the ruling theme of their narrative, namely that it is not man but God who has initiated the Gentile mission with continual signs and leadings and even in the face of apostolic reluctance. He maintains the initiative by sending the Spirit before baptism and thus giving his sanction to the action of the Church which for her part immediately opens her doors to the Gentile world and, by apostolic command, baptizes the representative of this world. Once again, therefore, what we have before us is not the report of an historical happening designed to prove the possibility of separating baptism and the bestowal of the Spirit, or at least of deriving a wedge between them. The passage is orientated in the direction of the whole Lucan interest and goes back to Luke the writer or, even more, to Luke the theologian who is concerned by this means to hammer yet again into the heads of his hearers: ‘This is the will of God.’ (Ernst Käsemann, “The Disciples of John the Baptist in Ephesus” in Essays on New Testament Themes [trans. W.J. Montague; London: SCM Press, 1964], 136-48, here, pp. 144-46)