134 Dimensions of Baptism
suggests that there is anything automatic about baptism, but he does see it as
a place where God's promise of the Spirit is fulfilled in the believer because
baptism is an expression of their faith in Christ. That salvation is of God is
an axiom of Biblical religion. The Gospel declares what God has done in
Christ for the redemption of the world. The sacraments are embodiments of
that Gospel, deriving significance from their relation to the acts of God in
Christ. '^45 Baptism, then, is a 'trysting place' for the sinner with their saviour
and 'in the last resort it is only a place'.^46 The important thing is faith:
'Against every tendency of New Testament theologians to minimize thePauline doctrine of faith it must be insisted that in his teaching faith in God
manifested in Christ is prior to baptism, and faith receives the gift of God in
baptism, and faith in God is the constitutive principle of the Christian life
after baptism.'^47
Fee and Dunn rightly stress that the reference in 1 Cor. 12.13 is to the
Spirit: in Fee's terms, 'it is not baptism but the one Spirit, repeated in both
clauses, that in Paul's present argument is the basis for unity (cf. w. 4-
II)'.^48 Recognition of the primacy of the gift of the Spirit here does not,however, preclude a secondary reference, particularly if it is to something
closely associated with the primary one both theologically and temporally,
as Spirit- and water-baptism are in conversion-initiation. Fee is at one
level correct when he criticizes those like Rudolf Schnackenburg who
equate baptism in the Spirit with water-baptism on the basis of 1 Cor. 6.11
and 12.13 on the grounds that this is a circular argument.^49 However, such
a line of argument can be justified if there are broader theological reasons
for it. Beasley-Murray provides such a justification in his broader theologi-
cal discussion, recognition of which suggests that there is a danger in
restricting the discussion to exegesis of particular passages without thewhole of his chapter entitled 'The Doctrine of Christian Baptism in the New Testa-
ment', pp. 263-305 and passim, also his 'Faith in New Testament Perspective: A
Baptist Perspective', ABQ 1.2 (1982), pp. 137-43 (140-41).
- Beasley-Murray, Baptism, p. 344.
- Beasley-Murray, Baptism, p. 305.
- Beasley-Murray, Baptism, p. 304, italics original.
- Fee, First Corinthians, p. 604. Cf. his God's Empowering Presence, p. 178:
'Paul's present concern is not to delineate how an individual becomes a believer, but to
explain how the many of them, diverse as they are, are in fact one body. The answer:
The Spirit, whom all alike received', italics original. Cf. Dunn, Theology, p. 451. - Fee, First Corinthians, p. 604 see also n. 25, and Schnackenburg, Baptism,
p. 83.