Baptism 2: Paul

I suppose Paul's comments in 1 Corinthians on baptism are a little surprising at first. Paul starts off in chapter 1 sounding like baptism wasn't a high priority for him and seems to have difficulty remembering who he had actually baptized while he was at Corinth. He baptized Crispus and Gaius, oh, and now that I think of it, I baptized the house of Stephanus as well (1:14-16).

The way Paul says all this, and a little extra reflection, stretches my imagination a little. For one thing, the baptism of the house of Stephanus is introduced as if it were an oversight. He started in 1:14 with the impression that Crispus and Gaius were it. Further, it is then doubly suspicious that the house of Stephanus shows up in chapter 16, and we find out that Stephanus and his servants were in fact the first converts of southern Greece!!! (16:15). How do you forget that? And, indeed, it makes sense to see them as the ones who brought the letter that Paul is answering for so many chapters of 1 Corinthians (chaps. 7ff).

In short, I have good reason to see Paul's deemphasis on baptism in chapter 1 closely in relation to the situation at Corinth. So I'll respect Quakers and Salvationists who might use this chapter as an argument against the significance of baptism. But ultimately I think Paul considered baptism the fare of every convert. See next paragraph.

Galatians 3:27 implies that all the true sons of God (which, remember, explicitly includes women in this passage) have been baptized. Romans 6:3 also implies that baptism is the common experience of all Christians. In a side note to Friends and Salvationists, we have no evidence here that Paul used the word baptism only in relation to the Spirit. Indeed, Ephesians (which may not reflect Paul's normal use of language, but that's a different issue) speaks only of one baptism (Eph. 4:5).

And if we have to decide on the evidence whether it is more likely that a reference to baptism without explanation would be to water or to a more metaphorical meaning, the normal use of the word is the more likely. Hebrews will later use the image of the washing of the body with pure water (Heb. 10:22); Acts clearly uses baptism primarily in relation to literal water (cf. Acts 8:36); and Paul speaks of being buried with Christ (6:4)--so tempting to see such a comment in relation to immersion in water.

I imagine that most of Paul's references to baptism in these passages relate to adult baptism. After all, he was a church planter who 1) did not like to minister where the gospel had already reached (cf. Rom. 15:20) and 2) saw himself as an apostle to Gentiles rather than to Jews (cf. Gal. 2:8). It thus makes sense that most of his baptisms were adults accepting Christ for the first time.

As a side note, Paul never connects baptism with repentance. Indeed, repentance is not one of Paul's dominant categories, an observation that has sparked a good deal of discussion in terms of how Paul related to his Jewish background.

We can at this point ask how the early Christians came to baptize. For various reasons I will leave Matthew 28:19 out of consideration at this point. I imagine that early Christian baptism was an extension of JB's baptism. At first I imagine that many Christians continued to baptize in preparation for Christ's return and the restoration of the nation of Israel. I wonder if at first they saw such baptism much differently from the baptism of JB.

I imagine that baptism was an essential part of converting to Judaism if you were a Gentile. I don't think it was an initiatory rite per se, but rather essential because a Gentile would simply have massive amounts of sins to cleanse. A Jew who accepted Christ as Messiah would want to purify him or herself in preparation no doubt, and perhaps eventually as a sign of allegiance and acceptance of the gospel. Whenever the early Christians came to see Jesus' death to have atoning value (I think almost immediately), baptism in Jesus' name would have been a completely appropriate way of appropriating that atonement.

These are all thought experiments, attempts to fill in gaps in our knowledge of how the early church got from Jesus to Paul. Acts is of course written much later and, as the gospels, is written with the benefit of hindsight.

So eventually Christian baptism is connected with the death of Christ (e.g., Rom. 6:4). It is uniting with Christ. For Gentiles in particular, Paul connects it with adoption into the people of God (e.g., Gal. 3:27). It is possible, although I will just mention the thought, that from 1 Corinthians to Galatians we see some solidifying of Paul's practice of baptism. Since many evangelicals date Galatians before 1 Corinthians, of course, that thought would not be viable for them.

I do not find it at all surprising that Paul baptized whole households like that of Stephanus (e.g., 1 Cor. 1:16). Would this have included children? Given the way I think Paul thinks, I believe it would have. On the other hand, given how pragmatic Paul was, I don't know if he would have baptized very small babies. I'm not sure that Paul would have been a stickler on a particular mode of baptism, but I suspect he at least primarily immersed.

The next text you might expect me to turn to is 1 Corinthians 7:14. In this "strange" verse, Paul encourages those married to unbelievers to stay with them. His reasoning goes like this: the unbelieving spouse is sanctified by the believing spouse, and this sanctifies (makes holy) the children as well. Needless to say, this is not a verse that the typical evangelical would have written. We usually resort to some banal comment on spiritual influence--which seems a rather weak translation of "to sanctify."

Indeed, Paul addresses the church at Corinth as "those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called..." The most natural inference is that the unbeliever and the church are brought into the church by their relationship with the believer--the holiness is contagious in the direction of the non-believer and the children. Now Paul does not equate such sanctification with being saved. He tells the believer not to worry if the unbeliever departs: "How do you know if you will save your spouse?" Here we remember that Paul thinks of salvation mostly in the future tense, as escaping God's wrath on the Day of Judgment (e.g., Rom. 5:9). The connection with the believer brings them into the Spiritual force field of the church, but it does not ensure that they will escape the coming wrath of God.

What does this imply about child baptism? I don't know whether the practical side of baptizing an infant came into play with Paul. But if Paul considered the children from even one Christian parent "in" and sanctified, then how much more would he have considered children from two Christian parents in. I truly believe that Paul would have baptized everyone in the household who was at all willing, including children. And think it would even have been appropriate in that world for fathers of households even to twist a few arms in some cases.

So if Paul were here today and were to comment on this issue, I truly believe he would be in favor of infant baptism--the children are sanctified by the believing parent or parents. Salvation is not thereby a done deal, for salvation depends on where you stand when God comes in judgment. And there might just be a whole lot of time between childhood and that Day.

I don't think I should close until I have mentioned Paul's peculiar reference to baptism for the dead in 1 Corinthians 15:29: "Then what will those are are baptized on behalf of the dead do? If the dead are not raised at all, why are they even baptized for them?"

To be clear, Paul does not include himself among this group. He does not argue against such individuals, but he does not argue for them either. Here are some thoughts:

1. He is surely referring to Christians, unless this is some strange mystery religion rite he has in mind. Baptism seems a word with a Jewish provenance. But Jews themselves would probably not feel a need to baptize so that other Jews would be part of the resurrection.

2. So we most likely have Gentile Christians being baptized for individuals who died before the Christian message came. Or perhaps we have Jewish Christians who believed baptism in Jesus' name was essential for resurrection and are doing similar things. In either case, Paul's argument makes it clear that it is baptism with a view to future resurrection.

3. Whoever they are, they must be some group that the audience of 1 Corinthians would respect or that Paul thinks they might respect. Apollos or Peter would fit that bill, but I have difficulty picturing Peter teaching this. Wouldn't he more assume that Jewish heroes of faith would be resurrected? Very difficult. 1 Peter 4:6 may picture Christ preaching to the dead after his resurrection, another possible solution to the question.

While I find the following interpretation difficult, it is where I'm at right now. After Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians, we have the teaching that the dead in Christ will rise. But there is no clear teaching by Paul on other dead. What about Jews before Christ? What about Gentiles who never heard of Christ? I wonder if some segments of Gentile Christianity started baptizing themselves for family who had never heard the gospel so that they might be part of the resurrection.

Again, Paul does not promote such a practice. But it helps us get into the minds of the ancient church a little, a church that existed in a world where identity was far more a matter of the groups in which you were embedded than of you as an individual. You can bet that if they were being baptized for the dead, then they were having their infants baptized as well.

So some options on how we might reflect on our our often hyper-individualistic focus today: 1) a God-sanctioned development in understanding from that of the NT world, 2) a balancing out of excess in the early church, 3) we might see it needing some corrective, a partial by product of our own cultural factors today.