Saturday, March 26, 2022

M. David Litwa on Baptismal Regeneration in the Gospel of John

  

Ritual Practice

 

Johannine Christians evidently practiced the rituals later known as baptism and the Eucharist. Unlike John the Baptist, Jesus putatively offered a baptism “in the holy Spirit” (John 1:33). He proffered the Samaritan woman “living water” leaping up unto eternal life (4:10, 14). Jesus’s statement that “unless one is born from water and Spirit” assumes that his baptism bestows the Spirit (3:5). Jesus himself was the source of “living water” (19:34). Jesus is said to have baptized more people than John the Baptist himself—through Jesus’s disciples were responsible for this (4:1-2). (M. David Litwa, Found Christianities: Remaking the World of the Second Century CE [London: T&T Clark, 2022], 35-36, emphasis added)

 

Notice how, Jesus (to be more exact, his atoning sacrifice) is the meritorious cause of salvation, but baptism is the instrumental means of appropriating the efficacy thereof in the above.