On baptismal regeneration being unanimous in early
Christianity:
Whatever may have been the
position of baptism in Palestine, it always held the central position in
Christian doctrine and practice in the Graeco-Roman world. Christians regarded
themselves as men who had accepted the Messiah, and had in some sense entered
into his kingdom before his coming in power; they were "proleptic"
members of the kingdom. The condition of their entry into it was acceptance of
the Messiah, but the actual method of entry was baptism. In Christian baptism
the convert was said to be born again to eternal life, to become a new creature,
to be set free from evil spirits, and to be cleansed from sin. The importance
of this doctrine for the propagation of Christianity in the second century can
scarcely be overestimated. Baptism was the great "mystery" of
Christianity, just as, for instance, the "taurobolium" was the great
"mystery" of Mithraism. The oriental religions were all
mystery-religions, or, as we now should say, sacramental: that is to say, they
offered to their votaries participation in eternal life. The differences
between them in this respect were formal rather than essential, as can be
illustrated from the fact that the phrase "born again into eternity"
(in aeternum renatus) is applied in an inscription to worshippers of
Mithra as well as to Christians. Thus the Christian teachers had the great
advantage, from a missionary point of view, that they were teaching not only in
a language, but also in a form of thought, which was understood by their
public.
It cannot be accidental that all
the forms of religion which became popular at this time in Rome were
sacramental, and the explanation is probably to be sought in psychology. In the
lan- guage of William James, there were in the beginning of the second century
a number of "sick souls," who found a remedy in a combination of
faith and outward acts to which a specifically healing character was given, and
it is worth noting that, whether we accept the sacramental theories of the
second century or not, the actual psychiatric efficiency of the sacraments
themselves is undoubted. The theory was that baptism admitted to the Messianic
kingdom, and incidentally, because all evil was excluded from that kingdom,
gave release from sin. The fact was that the sick soul who believed was
healed,-whether it would equally well have been healed if it had believed in
something else is a question which is exceedingly important in itself but not
important for the pure historian. (Kirsopp Lake, “The Shepherd of Hermas and Christian
Life in the Second Century,” The Harvard Theological Review 4, no. 1
[January 1911]: 27-28)
On the theology of water baptism in the Shepherd of Hermas:
That Hermas fully accepted this
central position of baptism is clear from Vis. iii. In this he describes a
great tower, built over a spring of water, and explains that the meaning is,
"your life was saved, and shall be saved, by water," and adds that
the tower (the church) is founded on "the word (ρημα) of the almighty and glorious
Name." The reference to water and to the "Name" in baptism calls
for no further comment. Or again in Sim. ix, 16 he says:
For before man bears the name of
the Son of God he is dead, but when he receives the seal, he puts off mortality
and receives life. The seal, then, is the water. They go down, then, into the
water dead and come up alive.
The doctrine of baptismal
regeneration, taking place ex opere operato, could scarcely be more
clearly expressed.
Such teaching was probably
typical of all the mystery-religions, and it is plain that in the use of such
modes of thought the danger of an absolutely unethical development was
considerable. Theoretically, indeed, there is no room in such a view for a
moral or ethical element. The baptized Christian was ipso facto a member
of the Messianic kingdom, had obtained eternal life, and was free from sin. (Kirsopp
Lake, “The Shepherd of
Hermas and Christian Life in the Second Century,” The Harvard Theological
Review 4, no. 1 [January 1911]: 28-29)
