While opinion is broadly divided
on the question, two points speak in favour of the objective reading. First, in
instances where εις follows βαπτιζω, the preposition draws attention to
that state which is realized through baptism (Beasley-Murray [Baptism in the
New Testament] 1962: 128). Thus, when Paul speaks of believers having been
baptized εις Χριστον ‘Ιησουν (e.g. Rom 6:3) the baptism may be
seen as actualizing their realistic incorporation into Christ. (At the same
time, if the phrase “into Christ Jesus” is shorthand for “in the name of Christ
Jesus,” it is also possible that the import is less radical, signifying nothing
more than allegiance to Christ—an argument supported by the analogy with the
baptism into Moses in 1 Corinthians 10:2.) Second, given the close connection
between baptism and being “clothed with Christ” in Galatians 3:27 (“As many of
you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ”), and
given, too, the likelihood that Paul’s garment metaphor is meant to convey the
believer’s union with Christ, it virtually follows that, for Paul, baptism
betokened the same mystical reality in concrete terms.
In the final analysis, a sharp
dichotomy between the objective-mystical and subjective-experiential interpretation
is unnecessary, and perhaps ultimately misleading. Having expounded upon
humanity’s incorporation into the first Adam (Rom 5:12-17), and seeking to
provide a rationale for a Spirit-led away of life (6:12-13), Paul is plainly speaking
to the objectively wrought transfer from the realm of Adamic flesh to the realm
of the Spirit, effective through baptism, as the proper basis for behavior
consistent with “newness of life.” Baptism is therefore retrospective, inasmuch
as it looks back to Jesus’ death, and prospective, inasmuch as it anticipates
the resurrection, proleptically realized through the giving of the Spirit. It
gives concrete expression both to the forgiveness available through Jesus’
death and the power of the Spirit-enabled life (8:1-4).
In Galatians 3:23-29, Paul takes
the same logic in a slightly different direction by highlighting baptism’s social
implications. Although baptism here as well may imply co-participation in
Christ’s death and therefore also death unto law (Gal 2:20-21), the more
emphatic point bears on the believers’ membership in “the seed” through baptism
(Gal 3:29). This means, in the first place, that baptism serves to validate and
bring to fruition the Abrahamic promises (a covenantal notion); in the second
place, it means the dissolution of ethnic, social, and gender categories, to
the extent that these categories lent fundamental definition to the Galatians’
anthropology (cf. 1 Cor 12:13). If in Romans, the close correlation between
baptism and mystical union constituted a new humanity coram Deo, in
Galatians, it marked off a new economy of human relations.
The ecclesiological import of baptism
is also teased out in 1 Corinthians. Apparently, the Corinthian believers had
been aligning themselves with different apostolic figureheads and using the
baptisms administered by these same individuals (including Paul himself) as a
basis for self-differentiation (1 Cor 1:10-17) (but cf. Pascuzzi [“Baptism-Based
Allegiance and the Divisions in Corinth: A Reexamination of 1 Corinthians
1:13-17,” CBQ 71] 2009). Against this posture, Paul insists that their
baptismal “washing” had instead marked a break with their sinful past (6:11)
and served to incorporate believers into the body of Christ (12:12-13). Again,
for Paul, baptism serves as the threshold to participating in a new humanity,
one in which prior social distinctions are transcended. . . . [in Col 2:11-12]
The Author deems baptism to be a kind of “spiritual circumcision,” certainly
hinting at the shared cleansing symbolism of both rites (Deut 10:6; Jer 4:4).
For the author of Colossians, baptism has a sanctifying function (cf. Tit 3:5);
it connotes “putting off the body of the flesh,” which also lay at the root of
false humility and idolatrous angel worship (Col 2:18, 23). . . . . Finally,
mention should be made of 1 Peter 3:20-21, where the author states that “God
waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which
a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. And baptism, which
this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as
an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”
Two points are instructive. First, the analogy between the Noahic flood and
baptism implies that just as God used water to rescue the primordial patriarch
from impending judgment against an evil generation, so too baptism would have
the effect of rescuing believers from the eschatological judgment looming over
Asia Minor and beyond. Second, it is interesting to note baptism being identified
as an επερωτημα. The word is lexically difficult,
liable to such translation as “request” or “appeal.” However, if with an
increasing number of commentators, we understand the word to mean “pledge”
(i.e. in the sense of a contractual obligation), there this implies that baptism,
again consistent with its covenantal framework, betokened the believer’s public
commitment to moral purity. The various ways in which baptism—and Eucharist—are
put to theological use only underscores the richness of sacramental theology in
the apostolic era. (Nicholas Perrin, “Sacraments and Sacramentality in the New
Testament,” in The Oxford Handbook of Sacramental Theology, ed. Hans
Boersma and Matthew Levering [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015], 62-63,
64-65)
Romans 6 clearly describes baptism
as a “transfer event” (Schnelle [Apostle Paul: His Life and Theology] 2005:
328-332). Paul portrays the baptized as having been crucified with Christ (v.
6), baptized into the death of Jesus (v. 3), buried with him by baptism into
death (v. 4), and thus sharing in some sense in his resurrection (vv. 4-5).
Here Paul is more precisely presenting a fusion of two events that belong
equally to the past—namely the death of Jesus and the baptism of Roman Christians,
though of course from the perspective of one about to be baptized, this would
appear as an actualization of the death of Christ, a fusion of horizons as it
were. Paul’s words here go beyond a mere rhetorical strategy to express the
reality of his participationist soteriology, but this demonstrates the
permeability of the boundary between past and present for Paul, as the ritual
of baptism in some sense re-presents the death, burial, and resurrection of
Jesus in the sacramental act. The experience of Christ and the Spirit evidently
necessitated a significant change in vocabulary, including a large number of syn-compound
words(here, for example, “buried with him”; cf. Riddle [“The Non-Septuagint
Element in the Vocabulary of Paul,” JBL 47] 1928).
We see here clearly once more the
ethnical implications of baptism, in which a death to sin and resurrection to
newness of life entails a change of lordship: death and sin no longer have dominion
over the baptized Christian, but the person now owes their allegiance to the
crucified Lord (Rom 6:12-13). The baptized body remains “your mortal body” (v.
12), but the baptismal transfer removes one from existence merely “in Adam” and
the old age, and relocates one to new existence in the Messiah and the age that
is to come. In this sense, it is appropriate to describe baptism as an
eschatological rite, a concrete act that, through faith and by the Spirit,
effects the transfer from the present evil age to the overlapping new age.
In Colossians, Ephesians, and
Titus, treated here as probably Deutero-Pauline, we see a continuation and
extension of characteristically Pauline themes. In Colossians 2:11-13, we find
a parallel between putting off the body of flesh, the circumcision of Christ,
and we find a parallel between putting off the body of flesh, the circumcision
of Christ, and baptism (Ferguson 2009: 159; cf. 158-160). The schema of death,
burial, and resurrection closely parallels that found in Romans 6, though now
some of the imagery has changed. . . . Colossians goes on, in chapter 3, to
offer paraenesis on the basis of this resurrection—admittedly a somewhat more
realized picture of the resurrection than in the undisputed Pauline letters.
But this does attest to the Pauline connection between renewed post-baptismal
life and the resistance of sin.
Ephesians mentions baptism once
explicitly (4:4-6), another time highly probably (5:25-26) . . . . In Ephesians
5:25-26 . . . Given the signifying nature of the mystery of marriage for the
relationship between Christ and the church, it seems reasonable to understand “cleansing
her with the washing of water” to recall baptism, here understood in its
purifying function as a removal of impurity and sin. Dahl is thus correct to point
out the significance of baptism for Ephesians; as he writes, “IN Ephesians
baptism marks the entry to a new room, both in terms of a new time and a new
world, a universe that has been subordinated to Christ” (Dahl [“The Concept of
Baptism in Ephesians”] 2000: 416).
Finally, in Titus 3:4-7 we find a
hymn-like statement that includes the lines, “he saved us, not because of any
works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through
the washing of rebirth, and renewal of the Holy Spirit.” The “washing of
rebirth,” as in Ephesians 5:25-26, most plausibly recalls baptism, and perhaps
offers some indication of the growing esteem in which it was held, with a
greater emphasis on the effect of baptism than in previous writings. (David Lincicum,
“Sacraments in the Pauline Epistles,” ibid., 104, 105)
