How did Justin regard baptism? His
main thought is that baptism is a new birth (αναγεννησις). This is in line with
the earliest baptismal tradition of the Church—indeed he explicitly states that
the reason for the rite had been learnt from the apostles and quotes John iii.
3-4, 'Unless you are born again you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven'. It
is in the rite of baptism that the new birth literally takes place and
candidates receive forgiveness of their past sins of which they have repented.
In the Dialogue Justin says that the old rites of Judaism were broken
cisterns, for they were performed without a turning from evil doings: 'Baptise
your soul (free) from anger and from covetousness, from envy, from hatred—and
behold your body is clean' (Dial. xiv, 1-2). The spiritual circumcision
which alone is of any value Christians receive in baptism which is a laver of
repentance and of the knowledge of God (Dial. xiv. 1). Baptism, for
Justin, is the normal way of becoming a Christian and the new birth or
spiritual circumcision occurs in the rite. It would, however, be pressing his
words too hard to say, with Kirsopp Lake, that Justin connected forgiveness
explicitly with the water, and the new life with 'the name' (Encyclopedia of
Religion and Ethics, n, 386). Repentance, forgiveness and the new birth are
part of a single complex of ideas and cannot be partitioned. It is also
significant that in Dial. xxix. 1 Justin connects Christian baptism with
the Holy Spirit: 'What account should I, to whom God has borne testimony, then
take of circumcision? What need of that other baptism (i.e. Jewish proselyte
baptism) to one who has been baptised by the Holy Spirit?' This connection does
not occur in 1 Apol. lxi-lxv although it was part of the received
tradition of the Church. Instead, in 1 Apol. lxi. 12-13 Justin describes
baptism as illumination (φωτισμος) and states that the candidates who have
faithfully received baptismal instruction are illuminated within. Although this
term had a long usage behind it Justin appears to have been the first to have
associated the noun specifically with baptism, although the association of
light with baptism is very old (Selwyn, The First Epistle of St. Peter,
pp. 375-82, on the New Testament evidence).
What did this φωτισμος imply?
Justin believed that in baptism men were empowered with a divine force which
will enable them to live a truly moral life. The whole logos had now come into
a man's life with which he must co-operate for the attainment of salvation:
'They then earnestly offer common prayers for themselves and the one who has
been illuminated and all others everywhere, that we may be made worthy, having
learned the truth, to be found in deed good citizens and keepers of what is
commanded, so that we may be saved with eternal salvation' (1 Apol. lxv.
1; cf. 1 Apol. lxi. 10; 'So that we should not remain children of
necessity and ignorance, but (become sons) of free choice and knowledge and
obtain remission of the sins we have already committed . . .) It may justly be
claimed that Justin has succeeded, perhaps better than any other second-century
writer, in disassociating the rite of baptism from a 'magical' view of regeneration
by emphasising that it is the beginning of a new life during which a man must
strive to make his soul a habitation for the Spirit. His chances of doing so
are immeasurably strengthened by the illumination, the presence of the whole
logos, which came to him in his baptism. The test of the tree is in the quality
of the fruit and not only in the quality of a man's faith. In stating this so
forcibly Justin is in line with the best Catholic tradition of the Church
(Goodenough, Theology of Justin Martyr, p. 269, has some good remarks on
this). (L. W. Barnard, Justin Martyr: His Life and Thought [Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1967], 140-42)
