Baptism

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BAPTISM

BAPTISM . The word baptism comes from the Greek baptein, which means to plunge, to immerse, or to wash; it also signifies, from the Homeric period onward, any rite of immersion in water. The frequentative form, baptizein, appears much later (Plato, Euthydemus 227d; Symposium 176b). The baptismal rite is similar to many other ablution rituals found in a number of religions, but it is the symbolic value of baptism and the psychological intent underlying it that provide the true definition of the rite, a rite usually found associated with a religious initiation.

Pre-Christian Religions

The purifying properties of water have been ritually attested to ever since the rise of civilization in the ancient Near East. In Babylonia, according to the Tablets of Maklu, water was important in the cult of Enki, lord of Eridu. In Egypt, the Book of Going Forth by Day (17) contains a treatise on the baptism of newborn children, which is performed to purify them of blemishes acquired in the womb. Water, especially the Nile's cold water, which is believed to have regenerative powers, is used to baptize the dead in a ritual based on the Osiris myth. This ritual both assures the dead of an afterlife and rids them of blemishes that may not be taken into the other world. Baptism of the dead is also found among the Mandaeans (cf., the Book of John ), and a similar rite is mentioned on Orphic tablets (Orphicorum fragmenta, 2d ed., Otto Kern, ed., Berlin, 1963, p. 232).

The property of immortality is also associated with baptism in the Greek world: according to Cretan funeral tablets, it was associated especially with the spring of Mnemosyne (memory). A bath in the sanctuary of Trophonios procured for the initiate a blessed immortality even while in this world (Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.39.5). Greek religious sanctions did impose a number of lustral ablution rites for the removal of sins, but these rites were only preliminary to the principal rites of the mysteries. Thus, the bath in the sea with which the initiation rites of the great Eleusinian mysteries began was simply a physical purification, accompanied by the sacrifice of a piglet. This was true as well of the immersion of the followers of the god Men Askaenos, near Antioch in Pisidia, and of the ablutions required of the Corybantes and of the followers of the Thracian goddess Cotyto, who were called baptai ("the baptized ones"). In all these cases, baptism was only a preamble, as the Magic Papyrus of Paris testifies (43): "Jump into the river with your clothes on. After you have immersed yourself, come out, change your clothes, and depart without looking back." Such a rite marked the beginning of an initiation; this practice was required to put the neophyte in the state of purity necessary for him to receive the god's oracle or an esoteric teaching.

In Hellenistic philosophy, as in Egyptian speculation, divine water possessed a real power of transformation. Hermetism offered to man the possibility of being transformed into a spiritual being after immersion in the baptismal crater of the nous ; this baptism conferred knowledge on man and permitted him to participate in the gnosis and, hence, to know the origins of the soul. Having received baptism, the gnostic "knows why he has come into existence, while others do not know why or whence they are born" (Corpus Hermeticum 1.4.4). Egyptian cults also developed the idea of regeneration through water. The bath preceding initiation into the cult of Isis seems to have been more than a simple ritual purification; it was probably intended to represent symbolically the initiate's death to the life of this world by recalling Osiris' drowning in the Nile (Apuleius, Metamorphoses 11.23.1).

In the cult of Cybele, a baptism of blood was practiced in the rite of the taurobolium : the initiate went down into a pit and was completely covered with the blood of a bull, whose throat was cut above him. At first, the goal of this rite seems to have been to provide the initiate with greater physical vitality, but later it acquired more of a spiritual importance. A well-known inscription attests that he who has received baptism of blood is renatus in aeternum, that he has received a new birth in eternity (Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum 6.510). In other inscriptions associated with the tauro-bolium, the word natalicium seems to be the exact equivalent of the Christians' natalis, suggesting that the day of the baptism of blood is also the day of a new and spiritual birth. However, the fact that this baptism was repeated periodically shows that the idea of complete spiritual regeneration was not originally associated with it. Only under the influences of Christianity and the Mithraic cult does the idea of an atonement for past sins through shed blood appear; henceforth, it was possible to believe that the taurobolium procured the hope of eternity, and that the Mithraic bull sacrifice was a redeeming act that gave the initiate a new life.

The liturgical use of water was common in the Jewish world. Mosaic law imposes the performance of ablutions before ritual entry into sacred areas; likewise, it describes the chief impurities that water can erase (Nm. 19:1–22; Lv. 14, 15, 16:24–28). Under Persian influence, rites of immersion multiplied after the exile. Some prophets saw in the requirement of physical purity a sign of the necessity of inner and spiritual purification (Ez. 36:25–28). The Essenes linked the pouring forth of the divine life in man to purification by baptism in flowing water. They practiced a baptism of initiation that brought the neophyte into the community at Qumran after a year's probation. However, the rite did not produce any magical effects, for, as the Manual of Discipline asserts, a pure heart was necessary for the bath to be effective, and an impure man who receives it merely soils the sanctified water (Manual of Discipline 6.16–17, 6.21).

Toward the beginning of the Christian era, the Jews adopted the custom of baptizing proselytes seven days after their circumcision, the rabbis having added the impurity of converted gentiles to the chief impurities enumerated in the Torah. After their baptism, new converts were allowed access to the sacrifices in the Temple. A series of specific interrogations made it possible to judge the real intentions of the candidate who wished to adopt the Jewish religion. After submitting to these interrogations, he was circumcised and later baptized before witnesses. In the baptism, he was immersed naked in a pool of flowing water; when he rose from the pool, he was a true son of Israel. Clearly a rite of unification with the community of believers, this baptism developed under the influence of the school of Hillel and emphasized the importance of a new birth. "Every proselyte," says the Babylonian Talmud, "is like a newborn child" (Yev. 22a, 48b, 62a, etc.).

The ministry of John the Baptist in the Jordanian desert was connected with this baptist movement, which symbolically linked immersion in a river of flowing water to the passage from death to a new and supernatural life. To achieve the erasing of sin that is closely tied to inner conversion, John administered a baptism of water, but by doing so in the water of the Jordan itself, not in the ritual water of purified pools, John made a clear departure from official practice. This departure was all the more striking because his baptism appears to be a substitute for the ḥaṭaʾt, the sacrifice for sin, and is not a rite of unification with the Israelite community but rather a sign of divine pardon and of the advent of the messianic era. Not surprisingly, John drew down upon himself the fierce hatred of the scribes and Jewish authorities (Josephus Flavius, Jewish Antiquities 18.116–119).

The Mandaeans take their baptismal practice directly from the example of John, whom they consider the perfect gnostic; they administer baptism in the flowing water of a symbolic Jordan. "Be baptized with the flowing water I have brought you from the world of light," says the Right Ginza (19.24). Mandaean baptism is followed by a sacred meal where a blessing is given to bread and water mixed with wine, considered the sustenance of divine beings; in addition, the Mandaeans practice baptism of the dead. Johannine and Christian rites of baptism do not, however, have their origin in these practices, as was thought at the beginning of the twentieth century. Rather, Jewish and Christian influences create the numerous ritual similarities found in Mandaean practice, including the white garments with which recipients of Mandaean baptism are clothed. "Clothe yourselves in white, to be like the mystery of this flowing water," says the Right Ginza.

The same influences were felt by the Elkesaites, who at the beginning of the second century abolished the fire of the patriarchal sacrifice and substituted for it a baptism by water that both remits sin and brings the neophytes into a new religion. Their baptismal ritual takes place in the flowing water of a brook or river after invocations are addressed to earth, air, oil, and salt. This sort of baptism also becomes a method of physical healing and appears again in numerous Baptist sects of the modern period.

Christian Baptism

John baptized Jesus, like others who came to him, in the waters of the Jordan, but the manifestations of the Father and the Holy Spirit during Jesus' baptism give it a completely new dimension (Mk. 1:9–11). Jesus' baptism also inaugurated his public ministry, and he later gave his disciples the mission of baptizing in the name of the trinitarian faith—a mission that they carried out even before their master's death (Mt. 28:19, Jn. 4:1–2). The apostles continued to practice the baptism of water of the type administered by John; but they emphasized the necessity of an inner conversion preceding the profession of the trinitarian faith, the focus of the new belief.

It was Paul who first defined the theological and symbolic significance of Christian baptism, joining the neophyte's ritual descent into water to Christ's death and rebirth to a new and spiritual life through his resurrection (Rom. 6:3–4). Sin is not carried away by the flowing water but by the Lord's death and resurrection; through baptismal immersion, the Christian is able to participate in this new existence (Col. 2:12). In Titus 3:5, Paul describes baptism as the gift of "a bath of regeneration and renewal"; the baptismal water is at once the water of death in which the old, sinful man is immersed and the water of life from which he emerges renewed. In fact, Paul rediscovers the meaning of a very ancient symbolism of death and resurrection found in archaic initiation rituals a symbolism that has been admirably analyzed by Mircea Eliade (Images et symbols: Essais sur le symbolisme magico-religieux, Paris, 1952, pp. 199–212; Traité d'histoire des religions, Paris, 1949, pp. 64–65).

Every detail of the Christian ritual is intended to symbolize birth to a new life in Jesus Christ: nudity (at least for men) during immersion; conferral of new names on the neophytes, who are also given new, white garments; imposition of the sign of the cross, understood as the seal (sphragis ), mentioned in Revelation; and the dispensation of a drink of milk and honey to the newly baptized. Ever since the First Letter of Peter, new Christians have been compared to little children (1 Pt. 2:2), a comparison frequently represented in the early Christian art of the catacombs; in another early symbol, they are likened to "little fish, so named for our great Ichthus, Jesus Christ, who is born in water and remains alive by living there" (Tertullian, On Baptism 1.3). Old Testament prototypes of baptism—the Flood, the crossing of the Red Sea, the crossing of the Jordan, and entrance into the Promised Land—are evoked in catechesis even by the first generations of Christians, who recognized in them the passage through the water of life and death (cf. 1 Cor. 10:1–2). As Chrysostom explained in the fourth century, "Baptism represents death and the sepulcher but also resurrection and life. Just as the old man is buried in the sepulcher, so we immerse our heads in water. At the moment when we come out of the water, the new man appears" (Homilies 25.2). Christian representations of baptism were also enriched by other symbols drawn from the Old Testament, notably the deer drinking at the spring, from Psalm 42, and the Good Shepherd surrounded by his sheep, from Psalm 23 (Ps. 23, 42:25). Both these psalms were sung during the Easter Vigil by candidates for baptism.

Christian baptismal practice is founded on the commandment of Jesus himself to his disciples (Mt. 28:19). Its administration during the first centuries of the church took place at Easter night and Pentecost and was limited to bishops, the heads of the Christian communities. Reception of baptism seems often to have been put off until the moment of death by neophytes who were reluctant to accept the full consequences of inner conversion; and infant baptism, though possible, was probably not practiced in the early period of the church (cf. Mt. 19:14, Acts 16:33, 1 Tm. 2:4). As the gateway to the sacraments, baptism opened the way into the church community, and prayers and rites increasingly describe it as the entrance to a holy place, the opening of the different routes offered by the faith.

The church was especially concerned, however, to organize a period of probation during which the catechumens were prepared to receive the sacrament through prayer, fasting, and doctrinal instruction. The Didache, in chapter 7, clearly asserts the duty of candidates to live according to evangelical precepts and to renounce evil in all its forms. As a number of patristic texts attest, the baptismal ritual was quickly enriched through such additions as interrogations (like those preceding Jewish baptism), a triple renunciation of the devil (recalling Jesus' triple renunciation during his temptations), a triple immersion (representing the Trinity), the anointing of the neophyte with the holy chrism, and the laying on of hands by the bishop or priest (Tertullian, Against Praxeas 26; On Baptism; Hippolytus, Apostolic Tradition ).

Because it was the sacrament that indicated entrance into the life of faith and the community of the church, baptism was also considered a means to inner enlightenment. In the Eastern church, those who were initiated into the Christian mysteries by baptism were called the "enlightened," for, as Gregory of Nazianzus explains, the baptismal rite opens the catechumen's eyes to the light that indicates God's symbolic birth in man (Discourse 40: On Baptism ). In this view, the bishop theologian merely continues a long tradition begun by Paul. "Awake, sleeper," the apostle writes in Ephesians, "and Christ will shine upon you"—an admonition he repeats in the Letter to the Hebrews (Eph. 5:14, Heb. 6:4, 10:32). Writing of baptism in the second century, Justin Martyr speaks of the "bath that is called enlightenment" (First Apology 61); in the following century, Clement of Alexandria wrote: "Baptized, we are enlightened; enlightened, we are adopted; adopted, we are made perfect; perfect, we become immortal" (Pedagogue 1.6.26). Thus, in the early church, baptism was clearly understood as the initiation required for a man to recognize the divine light and to participate in eternal life while still in this world.

But because it was also the fundamental rite of entry into the church community, baptism was quickly claimed as a prerogative by several rival churches, each of which called itself orthodox and accused the others of heresy and schism. Modifications of baptismal rites by the various sects were inevitable. After the second half of the fourth century, the Anomoeans, exponents of a doctrine akin to Arianism, rejected triple immersion, the symbol of a Trinity equal in all its members, a doctrine they contested; for the same reason, they even modified the baptismal formula that had been fixed by scripture (Mt. 28:19). What is more important, from the third century on, the Arians insisted upon the invalidity of a rite of baptism conferred by a heretic or schismatic, a view given great importance by the Donatists. The Arians denied the validity of Catholic baptism, and in Italy (especially in Milan) and Vandal Africa they required rebaptism (cf. Michel Meslin, Les Ariens d'Occident, Paris, 1967, pp. 382–390). Arians and Donatists alike did not believe that a person could be brought within the church community by a minister who was personally alien to it and did not share its faith; they held that baptism was valid only if it was accompanied by a pure intention in the person who administered it, who had also to belong to the true church. They refused to accept the Catholic view that the rite of baptism is in itself the canal of an omnipotent divine grace that completely surpasses a channel for qualities of the individual who administers it.

From the sixth century on at the latest, the Catholic church permitted the baptism of children, the engagement to follow the faith being taken in their name by adult Christians. The custom of baptizing infants soon after birth became popular in the tenth or eleventh century and was generally accepted by the thirteenth (Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae 3.68.3). In the fourteenth century, baptismal ritual was simplified, and a rite of spiritual infusion, in which water is poured on the head of a child held above the baptismal font, replaced baptism by immersion.

After 1517, the questions posed by the practice of the baptism of small children served as a major foundation for dissident Christian movements stemming from the Reformation. To adherents of these movements, an uncompromising interpretation of the doctrine of individual justification by faith alone implied that the rite of entry into the Christian community had to be restricted to adults who were conscious of their salvation through Christ and who asked to be baptized. The dissidents formally denied the validity of baptism given to nonresponsible children and required those who had received such baptism to be rebaptized as adults, thus earning the name Anabaptists (Wiedertäufer ). Going even further, Thomas Müntzer (1485–1525), one of the "prophets of Zwickau," affirmed that individual inspiration by the Holy Spirit determined a person's conduct and demonstrated the unique rule of faith. Along with this demand for religious discipline, the Anabaptist movement, especially in Germany, developed a revolutionary ideology, preached radical egalitarianism, community of property, and even polygamy, and actively supported the German Peasants' Revolt. Denounced and condemned by Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli, Müntzer was executed at Mülhausen, and the Anabaptists were subjected to a pitiless repression. Nevertheless, their movement survived in northern Europe and expanded during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Holland, where the Mennonites still practice adult baptism by immersion and advocate a policy of nonviolence that denies them participation in public office or military service.

In 1633, a group of English Baptists immigrated to North America, beginning the development in the New World of a number of Baptist sects and churches, whose members founded their belief on the theological baptism of Paul (cf. Rom. 6:4, Col. 2:12) and insisted upon a return to strict apostolic practice. These sects and churches have in common the practice of baptism by immersion administered in the name of the Trinity only to adults who believe and confess their faith in Jesus Christ; in addition, from their distant Anabaptist origins, a majority retains the doctrine of the freedom of each confessional community to interpret the scriptures and the Christian faith.

Bibliography

Beasley-Murray, G. R. Baptism in the New Testament. New York, 1962.

Beirnaert, Louis. "La dimension mythique dans le sacramentalisme chrétien." Eranos-Jahrbuch (Zurich) 17 (1949): 255–286.

Drower, Ethel S., trans. The Canonical Prayerbook of the Mandaeans. Leiden, 1959.

Gilmore, Alec, ed. Christian Baptism. Chicago, 1959.

Lundberg, Per. La typologie baptismale dans l'ancienne église. Leipzig, 1942.

Malaise, Michel. Les conditions de pénétration et de diffusion des cultes égyptiens en Italie. Leiden, 1972.

Meslin, Michel. "Réalités psychiques et valeurs religieuses dans les cultes orientaux (premier-quatrième siècles)." Revue historique 512 (October–December 1974): 289–314.