Introduction 3
and Hippolytus. Cross later examines the figurative use of baptism in 1
Cor. 12.13 which he proposes is best understood as an example of synec-
doche, not metaphor, thereby enabling the reference to be to both Spirit-
and water-baptism. Both Joel Green and Stanley Porter build on their
research on the Acts of the Apostles.^4 Green explores the controversial
issue of household baptisms, noting how these accounts occur on the
missionary frontier where the crossing of ideological and theological
boundaries was a prerequisite for the spread of the gospel. He argues that
the baptism of households at these points entailed the embracing of the
household as the cultural centre for God's people. Porter investigates the
linguistic issues of the Greek voice system in relation to the possible
interpretation of Acts 22.16 that Paul baptized himself. He highlights the
linguistic inadequacy of many studies at this point, and concludes that while
Paul was most probably baptized by Ananias, neither this nor his self-
baptism can be determined from Luke's employment of the middle voice
form. Ramsey Michaels studies the subject of purification from sin in the
Johannine tradition, and contends that it was the problem of post-baptis-
mal sin that gave rise to the theology of atonement in the Fourth Gospel
and 1 John.
Three of the essays bridge the period of the New Testament and patristic
era. David Wright studies the way Jesus' blessing of the children was used
in the early Church, noting the story's virtual absence as a justification for
the practice of infant baptism. Along the way he also has his eye on the
way this Gospel story has been used in the liturgies of various modern
paedobaptist traditions. Everett Ferguson's second essay looks into Greg-
ory of Nyssa's catechetical Oratio Catechetica which expounds Christian
teaching and also provides an apologetic against objections to it. The firm
theological base of Gregory's baptismal teaching is shown to be both
christological and soteriological, and he traces how various images and
synonyms for baptism were developed from their New Testament usage in
the thought of one of the leading theologians of the fourth century.
- J.B. Green, The Theology of the Gospel of Luke (NTT; Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995), The Acts of the Apostles (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
forthcoming), and 'Baptism in Luke-Acts', in Porter and Cross (eds.), Baptism, pp.
157-72; S.E. Porter's The Paul of Acts: Essays in Literary Criticism, Rhetoric, and
Theology (WUNT, 115; Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), and his forthcoming The Acts
of the Apostles (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Carlisle: Paternoster) and The Acts
of the Apostles: An Introduction (Carlisle: Paternoster Press).