. . . Paul had preached and taught so strongly that baptism meant
incorporation into the body of Christ that some at Corinth wanted to be
baptized on behalf of the dead so that those who had died outside of Christ
might be incorporated into him (1 Cor. 15:29-34). This passage speaks
distinctly to that emphasis of baptism in the teaching of Paul and allows for
the foregoing explanation when seen in the perspective of the total Pauline
teaching. The passage seems to warrant the conclusion that some Corinthians were
practicing vicarious baptism of some kind. It had the meaning of transferring
those who were dead without Christ to the community of those who belonged to
Christ. It was baptism on behalf of another.
Schweitzer clarifies this practice when he writes that it did not
represent a misuse of Christian baptism being influenced by the practice of the
mystery religions, but that it represented a development from the teaching of
Paul about being “in Christ.” Paul’s teaching about incorporation into the body
of Christ effected by baptism had been so forceful that this practice for the
dead did seem rational.’ If baptism meant to transfer one from the kingdom of
Satan to the kingdom of Christ and cause him to belong to Christ in a body
which included both the living and the dead, many people would desire to have
dead relatives transferred through baptism and to be baptized on their behalf.
Paul had taught so strongly that baptism achieves a solidarity of Christians
with Christ in one body that it is quite understandable that some Corinthians
would begin this practice.
It is probably similar to many of the faith healing practices in
Christianity today by those who are extremely sick. There is always hope that
such practices may bring some good; there is everything to gain and nothing to
lose. No one of us can criticize the man who is ill when he participates in
that which he believes offers some ray of hope for his betterment. Paul neither
approves nor condemns this practice among the Corinthians. Perhaps he
understood how it followed from his own thought. What Paul vigorously opposes
in the first part of 1 Corinthians 15 is a “no resurrection” theology which
would deny the solidarity of Christians with Christ achieved in baptism. (J.
Daniel Joyce, The Place of the Sacraments in Worship [St. Louis, Miss.:
The Bethany Press, 1967], 114-15)
