In the early church the answer would have been “Yes, but…” Baptism and faith were regarded as being as closely bound together as two sides of a coin, effectively inseparable.
Something we miss is that often baptism was called a “symbol”, but that was not meant in the modern sense of just standing for something else; a symbol was something that conveyed what it portrayed, and thus baptism conveyed remission of sins, burial with Christ, washing away guilt, etc. This governed the limitations on what counted as baptism; immersion, contrary to many today, was not required (the word baptize was used of couches and tables), but the symbol of washing required as much water as was available. This also involved the intent; so long as there was water and the words given by Christ, if what was intended was to follow His command it was deemed sufficient – even if what was available was only a handful of water or something mostly made of water (in one instance, a council affirmed the validity of a baptism performed with beer!).
The idea of being a Christian and not being baptized was inconceivable because of all this: to have faith meant there would be a desire to be baptized, though the when and where of it changed through time (the waiting till deathbed aberration being the strangest).
This bridges into the idea of faith as allegiance: to profess allegiance but reject the rite through which allegiance was proclaimed and its benefits bestowed was an indication of empty faith. A comparison to OT circumcision is often made, but a stronger comparison goes to the covenant-making rituals where the same ritual bound both parties to their portions of the covenant, a lot like the medieval ceremony of fealty; the oaths spoken with extended hands held between the hands of the overlord established a two-way relationship.
Irrelevant…i have not changed the text and its quoted as you stated.
The reason for the past tense is because many, if not most of Christendom, agrees that once we believe we are saved, we are saved. Given that the use of the word there is past tense (because of pre existing belief) then salvation beyond that point is a given and therefore already in the future (if that makes sense to you)
Another example is the statement by Christ to the thief on the cross…i tell you this day you will be with me in paradise…salvation was already decided at that point because the thief believed.
The point of the above is thst God doesnt choose salvation, He offers it to everyone…its up to us to make the choice.
“Abrahams faith was credited to him as righteousness.” Gen 15.6 (Ggal 3.6-9, Rom 4.1-22)
Hi Adam, your post about whether water baptism is necessary filled me with sympathy, because that was an issue I struggled with decades and decades ago. So I will offer my analysis and conclusions on this matter.
When I was born, my parents lived a distance from a church and didn’t have a car. They didn’t think baptism was important, so I was never baptised as a child. When as a teenager, I completed Confirmation classes in a Methodist Church and looked forward to Confirmation, the minister said we should check if we’d been baptised. To my surprise, I found I had not. But this Methodist minister said it wasn’t really important, so he went ahead and Confirmed me anyway.
A bit later, I found myself in a Presbyterian Church, and when I told the minister I had never been baptised, he was quite insistent that I must be. Troubled by this, I discussed it with a Christian friend in high school. He was a Baptist, and in those parts most Baptists were ardent fundamentalists. He said I could not be saved if I was not baptised. It was a matter of obedience. Sound familiar?
Decades later I came to the end of a postgraduate divinity degree and decided to do an extra honours year to tackle the issue. However, looking back, I have moved on a bit on the subject since then, so here is my analysis nowadays.
All four Gospels include the earliest stage of Jesus’ ministry with his baptism by John the Baptist. John famously announces that he baptised with water, but the coming one would baptise with the Spirit (and two of them add “and with fire”). We can clearly see a distinction between a literal baptism with water and a metaphorical baptism with the Spirit. The question is, “What is the relationship between the two?”. This is the core question which leads to different answers. None of the holders of these positions is really concerned with the situation you describe. They hold their positions for different, defensive reasons.
The subjective view: This view holds that you get baptised with water as an expression of your faith. This means that baptism is a tool in the hands of the believer. You have received the Spirit by hearing in faith, (a position that St Paul certainly held). You now get baptised as a witness to this spiritual reality.
A slight variation of this view was proposed by J.D.G. Dunn, who in his earlier works saw the believer’s decision to be baptised in water as the climactic point of faith in which the baptism in Spirit was received. I am not sure whether he held this view in later life.
The objective view: This view holds that baptism with water and baptism with Spirit occur simultaneously as an act of God’s grace. In this view, baptism with water is a tool in the hands of God. In other words, the opposite of the subjective view. This view might be called the sacramentalist view; but the sacramentalist view comes in a few shades.
Before we dive into a deeper analysis, there is a third approach, which might be called the Pentacostalist view. According to this view, one believes, then gets baptised in water, and then receives the baptism with Spirit as a “second blessing”, as evidenced by speaking in tongues. This view creates a two-tier Christianity in which there are the “super spirituals” and the not-so-spirituals. I reject this view and the division it creates. In 1 Corinthians 12-14, St Paul begins by saying to the Corinthians:
“For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body – Jews or Greeks, slaves or free – and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.” (1Corinthians 12:13 NRS). Then he continues by saying of these people who have all been baptised in the Spirit, that they do not all speak in tongues, or in any other singular gift. Sometimes these words are translated as questions:
Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? (1Corinthians 12:29-30 NRS)
Some see a loophole here where they can enter a “yes” for speaking in tongues. However, in the original Greek there are two ways of asking a question. One leaves the answer open; the other implies a negative answer. Paul’s Greek here uses the word that implies a negative answer, so some translations avoid the trap by translating these sentences as statements in the negative.
Fourthly, there is a fairly shallow view that ignores the rich symbolism of baptism and simply sees baptism as the mark of the New Covenant as distinct from circumcision as the mark of the Old Covenant.
The subjective versus the objective view .
For many people, the moment they come to faith can be a time when their faith feels very real. There is a temptation to see others who have not had such a subjective experience as not real Christians. However, over time this view can mellow. One’s faith can fluctuate, even disappear, both for a while and even terminally. If one loses faith and then finds it again, what does that makes of one’s water baptism, seen as a tool expressing one’s faith in an older time? Should one get baptised again to witness to the resurgence of that faith?
When we look at the Church at Corinth we can see that despite their faith, they are truly in a bad predicament. They supposedly have the gifts of the Spirit, but the thing that matters more, the fruit of the Spirit, is in short supply, even though they see themselves as the people of faith.
In my analysis, the subjective view clings to its position because it looks to a church which is “alive”. This view is held with little regard for those who ask whether they must be baptised in water to be saved. They cannot imagine such a position because they got baptised in water at a time in their life when they were on a high.
The objective view sees water baptism as a tool in the hands of God which testifies to God’s grace toward the one baptised. The advantage here is that there is no failure in the sacrament as a tool in the hands of God because God is always faithful when human beings are not. The objective view stands to generate human faith again and again. This is the sacramentalist position and in the hands of sacramentalists is probably seen as a defence against the need to have some kind of faith experience indicating one has “arrived”. The problem is that a sacramentlist position that is too exclusivist, in the sense that the baptism in Spirit can only occur within baptism with water, leads to the confinement of salvation to sacraments. Unfortunately, out of fear of subjective faith, such sacramentalists exclude genuine faith experiences.
My view is that there is truth in the objective view, but the sacraments of water baptism should be seen as an assurance of God’s actions towards the one baptised, not the exclusion of those who have not been so baptised. After all, according to Paul, one receives the Spirit by hearing in faith (Galatians 3:2ff) and no sacramentalist exclusivism, driven by fear of the subjective, can take that way from us. As Jesus said, the Spirit goes wherever it wishes (John 3:8).
Finally, there is that view that water baptism is just the sign of the New Covenant, as circumcision was of the Old Testament. In my view, such a theology is extremely shallow and fails to see the rich symbolism in the baptism metaphor. For example, Paul’s statement that “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5:5 NRS) is surely an allusion to baptism.
At the end of the day, baptism is about a two-sided relationship between God and us in which God always takes the initiative and where God is unrelentingly faithful to us.
Thanks for the description of what you have concluded. Although I do not agree in all details you wrote, your comment was a nice attempt to include and describe different interpretations about the matter.
I assume that this was just the tip of an iceberg, that you could give a much more thorough explanation of the issue, so I take this comment as a positive condensed description that cannot include everything to keep the comment short.
What seemed to be a too black-and-white description was the division to subjective and objective alternatives. In reality, these alternatives are mixed to some extent because God does not come Himself and baptize us in water. Either faith works in the heart of the believer and leads her/him to be baptized, or some sort of faith (or social pressure) works in the heart of the parents and leads them to bring the baby to be baptized by a priest. In both cases, there is necessarily a part to both the humans and (hopefully) God, assuming that God accepts the baptism and acts in and through it. Faith and grace are tied together according to the scriptures, although I believe that God can show grace also to someone who does not yet have faith, if He so decides.
Although I agree that speaking in tongues is not a necessary sign of getting what the Pentecostals usually call ‘baptism in/with Spirit’, I do think that baptism in water and in Spirit do not usually happen simultaneously. Someone may be a believer and the gifts of the Spirit work wonderfully through her/him even if the person has not yet been baptized in water. The opposite may also be true, the person is baptized in water but still lacks the baptism in Spirit (Acts 8:15-17).
A small comment about Romans 5:5: I do not agree that it is ‘surely an allusion to baptism’.
… your comment was a nice attempt to include and describe different interpretations about the matter.
Well, yes, there are other interpretations, though some are harder to explain. First, I must set up the context. In those early words of John the Baptist, John says, “… he will baptise you in the holy spirit …”. The subject of the verb, the pronoun “he”, is universally taken to be Christ, given the surrounding context. Thus, Christ is the personal agent who acts in this sentence. We then skip across to Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 12:13. “For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body …”. This sentence is in the passive, so the personal agent is missing from the sentence. The expression, “in the one Spirit”, is in the dative case in the original Greek, which normally indicates the instrument the personal agent uses.
Now, I got taught Biblical Greek from a textbook by J.G. Machen, for whom the dative case is never the personal agent. However, later scholars have suggested it might occasionally be so. If so, the sentence could be rendered, " For by the one Spirit we were all baptised into one body …" Some interpreters have argued that it is the presence of the holy Spirit in the life of the congregation that delivers the baptism in the holy Spirit. Gordon Fee and many other scholars reject this interpretation for its Biblical inconsistency. Me too. However, I think many people don’t need to know about the theological problems to reject this interpretation. With the amount of organisational psychopaths in some churches and pedophile priests in the Catholic Church, many people have been thoroughly alienated by the dynamics of congregations, not drawn into an experience of the holy Spirit by them.
So if you don’t understand the above interpretation, I wouldn’t waste any time on it.
Yes – and that makes Baptism a weapon; since it is something God did to the believer, it stands accomplished and cannot be undone, and thus any harassment from the “dark side” can be met by declaring that the waters of Baptism still surround, and the evil foe has to contend with those.
That wouldn’t be the Lutheran position nor the Anglican/Episcopalian one. There, a sacrament is a guaranteed locus of grace, but not an exclusive one. It’s like having a steak house down the street: while some other restaurant picked at random might have steak dinners, at the steak house that is guaranteed.
More accurately, what is held is that (as a Lutheran pastor titled a book back in the day) the gift is already yours; it is implicit in Baptism, but doesn’t necessarily appear at that time. The situation with the disciples in Samaria (Acts 8) is linked to this: it was expected that the Spirit would be given at Baptism, but for some reason that didn’t happen, and the Apostles moved to correct things.
Thus the statement of theologians that Baptism is necessary, just not absolutely necessary.
This was mentioned in about fourth year Greek one day. The professor’s response was a blunt, “Machen is wrong”, then a pause and a five-minute exposition of the dative having absorbed the functions of the instrumental.
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