CROSS Spirit- and Water-Baptism 145
This brings us to the issue of experience. Fee appears not to see baptism
as an experience, merely a rite. He talks of the reception of the Spirit in
Gal. 3.2-5 as coming by faith and as 'dramatic and evidential' and then
remarks that nothing in the text suggests that Paul presupposes this recep-
tion took place at baptism: 'indeed, his argument loses its point if the
reception of the Spirit were simply being transferred from one rite (cir-
cumcision) to another (baptism)'.^94 However, in his discussion of the
Spirit as a shared experience, Dunn remarks that 'The Corinthians knew
they were members of the one body because the metaphor of being "bap-
tized in one Spirit" and of being "drenched in one Spirit" were living reali-
ties in their common experience and memory ("all")'.^95 But the Corin-thians' water-baptism was also a common experience which marked the
beginning of their Christian lives, as baptism was administered immedi-
ately on conversion, as Dunn admits,^96 so it is reasonable to presume that
even at a secondary level, the Corinthians would at the very least have
called it to mind if not equated Spirit- and water-baptism.
Dunn is comfortable to speak of Spirit-baptism as an experience, yet he
demurs from speaking of water-baptism as equally an experience.^97 A num-ber of other scholars are happy to do so, but they do not develop the point.
For instance, Ralph Martin remarks that Paul's second rationale and plea for
unity (1 Cor. 12.13) is argued 'on the basis of Christian experience. It wasby "one Spirit" that all were initiated into the one body, and this shared
experience, actualized in baptism and incorporation, cancels out even the
inveterate distinctions that kept people apart in the ancient world.'^98 Else-
where he maintains that v. 13's 'baptism in the Spirit' and 'drinking the
Spirit' are both 'ways of writing [which] are rooted in experience...'"- Fee, God's Empowering Presence, p. 863.
- Dunn, Jesus and the Spirit, pp. 261-62.
- See Dunn, 'Baptism and the Unity of the Church', p. 93.
- Dunn, Baptism, p. 4, states that 'The high point in conversion-initiation is the
gift of the Spirit, and the beginning of the Christian life is to be reckoned from the
experience of Spirit-baptism'. - R.P. Martin, The Spirit and the Congregation: Studies in 1 Corinthians 12-15
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), p. 24. - R.P. Martin, 1, 2 Corinthians (WBT; Dallas: Word Books, 1988), p. 112. See
also Schnackenburg, Baptism, p. 108. Cf. B.M. Ahern, 'The Christian's Union with the
Body of Christ in Cor, Gal, and Rom', CBQ 23 (1961), pp. 199-209 (204), who, dis-
cussing incorporation through baptism, believes that it probably never occurred to Paul
to differentiate the two moments between the theophany on the Damascus Road or his
baptism a few days later, 'since in his mind both elements formed but one experience'.