Friday, July 7, 2023

Jean Daniélou on Clement of Alexandria's Theology of Baptismal Regeneration

  

Regeneration is wrought by water and the Spirit, likewise all generation, for: the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the water’ (Gn. 1:2) (Clement of Alexandria, Eclogae VII, 1, in Jean Daniélou, The Theology of Jewish Christianity: The Development of Christian Doctrine Before the Council of Nicaea [trans. John A. Baker; London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1964], 109)

 

Ignatius writes: ‘our God, Jesus the Christ . . . was born and was baptised that by his Passion he might cleanse water’ (Eph. XVIII, 2). The most natural explanation of these expressions is that Christ, by descending into the water destroyed the demonic forces that dwelt in it, thus purifying them by his Passion, that is to say, by his death, which is a descent into the world of death.

 

There is a conception closely related to that of Ignatius in the Eclogae Propheticae of Clement of Alexandria. Clement writes:

 

The Lord had himself baptised, not that he had need of it for himself, but so that he might sanctify all water for those that are regenerated in it. In this way not only are our bodies cleansed but our souls also, and the sanctification of the invisible parts of our being is signified by the fact that even the impure spirits which cleave to our soul, are rooted out from the time of the new spiritual birth’ (7).

 

Here again the object of Christ’s descent into the water is to purify it from the presence of demonic beings, and so to make it able to purify from the same powers those who are baptised.

 

There is another line of development which is related to the eschatological significance of Christ’s Baptism: this is the imagery which links the baptism of water with baptism of fire. This theme goes back to the pericope of Mt. 3:11: ‘I baptize you with water . . . He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire’, which, of course, is strongly eschatological in character. There seems to be an allusion here to at least judgment by fire, and to the quality of judgment inherent in the coming of the Messiah. Nevertheless, by the time of Mark 1:8 this archaic feature has already disappeared from the New Testament, and only a reference to Baptism with the Holy Spirit remains. (Jean Daniélou, The Theology of Jewish Christianity: The Development of Christian Doctrine Before the Council of Nicaea [trans. John A. Baker; London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1964], 226-27)