Dimensions of Baptism Biblical and Theological Studies

146 Dimensions of Baptism

Dunn maintains that Paul, like Luke before him, repeatedly emphasizes

faith and the Spirit within Christian beginnings, but remains unsure quite

'how he correlated baptism with the process. That he saw baptism as the

expression of faith is quite probable', and this seems to be implied in the

way he talks of baptism in 1 Cor. 12.13.^100 The answer, Beasley-Murray

contends, lies in the relationship between faith and grace in baptism.

According to Gal. 3.26-27 sonship is granted by God through faith

expressed in baptism, but this same promise is unambiguously offered to

faith in Jn 1.12. In Rom. 3.28 justification is by faith alone, while 1 Cor.

6.11 assigns it to the baptismal event. According to Gal. 3.2 and 14 the

Spirit is given to faith, but is associated with baptism in 1 Cor, 12.13.

Union with Christ is accorded to faith in Eph. 3.17 and rooted in baptismal

experience in Gal. 3.27. In Gal. 2.20 being crucified with Christ is in the

context of faith alone, but in Rom. 6.3-11 it is closely associated with

baptism. In Mk 10.15 and Jn 3.14-16 the kingdom and eternal life are

promised to faith, but in 1 Cor. 6.9-11 it is given to the Corinthians who

were 'washed.. .sanctified... [and] justified in the name of the Lord Jesus

Christ and by the Spirit of our God'. Beasley-Murray concludes:

From such evidence I do not see how we can avoid this affirmation: If God

gives his gracious gifts to faith and baptism, he gives them in association,

i.e. he gives them to faith in baptism, or (which amounts to the same thing)

to baptism in faith.

This, he believes, is the key to the New Testament teaching on baptism:

Baptism was never conceived of by the apostolic writers apart from faith

that turns to the Lord for salvation. Any interpretation that diminishes the

crucial significance of faith is unfaithful to the apostolic gospel.

Further:

However removed from our own habit of thinking about baptism it maybe,

Paul associates union with Christ and life with him in his resurrection from

the dead with the baptismal experience. The reconciliation of these two

viewpoints is surely possible on one assumption only: that baptism, for

Paul, was the climax of conversion. Because the experiences of conversion

and baptism were viewed as a unity, he could ascribe to baptism a content

we normally reserve for conversion and which, in fact, can be predicated

only of a radical turning to God in Christ. But that was precisely what

constituted the heart of apostolic baptism.^101

100. Dunn, 'Baptism and the Unity of the Church', p. 100.


101. G.R. Beasley-Murray, 'Baptism in the New Testament', Foundations 3 (1960),