CROSS Spirit- and Water-Baptism 141
Bruce's comment on Gal. 3.27, a passage which is, as already noted, often
connected with 1 Cor. 12.13:
If it is remembered that repentance and faith, with baptism in water and
reception of the Spirit, followed by first communion, constituted one com-
plex experience of Christian initiation, then what is true of the experience
as a whole can in practice be predicated of any element in it. The creative
agent, however, is the Spirit.^78While Dunn does not use the term synecdoche, this appears to be how
he understands the reference to baptism in at least two passages. On Eph.
4.5 he follows his discussion of what he calls 'the exegetical basis for
a "high" view of baptism' (including Acts 2.38; 22.16; 1 Pet. 3.21; Rom.
6.3-4; Col. 2.12; Gal. 3.27; and possibly also 1 Cor. 10.2), with the com-
ment that 'it is easy to see how a strong sacramental theology of Christian
baptism can be founded upon the New Testament. To be baptized means
to be baptized into Christ. From which it would follow quite naturally that
the "one baptism " ofEphesians 4.5, which is one of the bases of Christian
unity, is the full sacrament of baptism, the entirety of Christian initia-
tion.'^19 More significant is his statement at the beginning of his Baptism in
the Holy Spiritthat 'baptism' is the 'shorthand description' of conversion-
initiation. He goes further: 'the trouble with "baptism" is that it is a "con-
certina" word: it may be used simply for the actual act of the immersion in
water, or its meaning may be expanded to take in more and more of the
rites and constituent parts of conversion-initiation until it embraces the
whole.'*^0 What is more, given Dunn's acceptance that Eph. 4.5's reference
to baptism is to 'the fiill sacrament of baptism, the entirety of Christian
initiation', it seems incongruous that he should separate Spirit- and water-
baptism as sharply as he does, for in so doing he implies that in the New
Testament there were two baptisms not one. A viable case, I believe, canImagery, pp. 135-36, observes that there are two examples of synecdoche in 1 Cor. in
which Paul uses 'Christ' when he means 'the Church', namely in 1.13, 'Is Christ
divided?', and 12.12, 'As the body is one.. .so it is with Christ', though he does not go
so far as seeing 'baptism' in 12.13 as another example.- F.F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Galatians: A Commentary on the Greek Text
(NIGTC; Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1982), p. 186, italics added. - Dunn, 'Baptism and the Unity of the Church', p. 93, italics added. It should be
noted that 1 Cor. 12 shares with Eph. 4.4-6 the theme of the Church's unity, with its
metaphor of the 'one body', a unity of believers in the 'body of Christ', the Church (cf.
12.12-27). - Dunn, Baptism, p. 5, italics added.