The Rich Symbolism of Baptism

One of the most contentious issues in the church today is baptism. "Should we sprinkle?" "Should we immerse?" "Do you have to be baptized to be saved?" "Should we baptize infants?" "Should we re-baptize?" And around and around we go. Unfortunately, our hangups on these issues cause us to miss the deep theological beauty that is signified in baptism.

In three Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) we have the account of Jesus submitting to the baptism by John. This is strong evidence that one of the earliest memories of Christ was his being baptized. Perhaps it was the first public act that anyone witnessed Jesus do. Baptism in Judaism was the way that Gentile converts (Godfearers) could enter the fold of Judaism. It symbolized a passing through water, much like the Hebrew slaves passed through the Red Sea in their Exodus from Egypt and passed through the Jordan in their march into the Promised Land. Significantly, Jesus is baptized in the Jordan, thus sanctifying the act as a Christian sacrament. Matthew records that Jesus' last command to his disciples was: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Mt 28:19). So, then, one of our earliest liturgical, Trinitarian creeds, comes in the context of baptism.

The early Christians developed the theology around this earliest of Christian rites. The writer of 1 Peter, for example, sees in baptism an antitype of the Ark: ". . . God's patience waited in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ" (1 Pt 3:20-21).

Paul, though capable of the Jewish connection of baptism to the crossing of the Red Sea (1 Cor 10:1-2), he rather prefers baptism as the symbol of our dying with Christ and so rising with him in new life: "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his" (Rom 6:3-5). Such imagery does likely not originate with Paul, but is taken from the rite of baptism itself that developed early in the history of the church: on Easter Sunday, all of the catechumens were taken to a river, stripped naked, and descended into the water (symbolizing death). When they came out of the water, they were given white robes (symbolizing new life). As Paul says later in the same letter: "But put on the Lord Jesus Christ . . ." (Rom 13:14).

As theology and Christian thought developed, the dominate connection to baptism became circumcision. That is the mark that God commanded Abraham and all male Jews after him to receive as a sign that they were in the covenant and, thus, a sign of their salvation. Corresponding to this, baptism became the mark that one was in the new covenantal people of God, the Church, and, thus, was also a sign of their salvation.

I think that there is truth in all of these metaphors, each displaying a different facet of the wonderful sacrament that has been given the Church in baptism. What I think interesting about the circumcision comparison, and I will conclude with this, is that Christians, as they always did and do, appropriated the metaphor through the lens of Christ. In other words, circumcision, as is obvious, only involved the male. Therefore, a female's part in the covenant came through her participation in the lineage as a mother or daughter. (Incidentally, this is why widows and orphans are such a problem in the Old Covenant.) Yet, as strong as the correlation between baptism and circumcision became in the Church, this distinction of sexes (to the detriment of women) was never held. Baptism, as such, is the same rite for both men and women. Both descend into the water, and so die, and both ascend out of the water into newness of life with Jesus Christ.