Dimensions of Baptism Biblical and Theological Studies

240 Dimensions of Baptism

human nature (De anima 16). The powers of the demonic world domi-

nated infancy everywhere through pagan rituals, only to be combated by

the divine operation found in Christian parenthood, education and baptism

(De anima 39).

But this is only part of the link between baptism and freedom. Above

all, baptism is a power that sets free from death, from despair and, we

would say today, meaninglessness. Through the water we are set free for

eternal life (De bapt. 1). By bathing, death is washed away (De bapt. 2).

The waters brought forth the living world, so 'in baptism it need be no

wonder if waters already know how to make alive' (De bapt. 3). Baptism

cancels on God's behalf'the decree of death' (Depudic. 19). Of course,

the biblical connection between sin and death lingers in Tertullian's

theology which means only that ethics and discipleship are at the heart of

his baptismal thinking. Peter was the first to open the gate of the kingdom

of God in the baptism that frees us from sin (Depudic. 21). The waters

and the presence of the angel have the power every day to 'save nations,

destroying death by the washing away of sins' (De bapt. 5).

Asking the question of freedom and baptism in Tertullian is barely dif-

ferent from asking the question of what the Holy Spirit is to baptism. For

the Holy Spirit is the key to unlocking the conflict between creation and

Spirit, what Cramer calls 'the descent of spirit into matter'.^10 The Holy

Spirit unites natural water to 'sacred' water so undoing the very distinction

of sacred and secular. The Spirit liberates us from the cosmic dualism that

dominated so much ancient thinking. The world is all one for it is all the

world of one creator. The same water that generates natural life receives a

call to sacred function. The waters have always been the resting-place of

the Spirit (De bapt. 3) and as the Spirit was from the beginning borne upon

the waters, the Spirit 'would as baptizer abide upon the waters' (De bapt.

4). The Spirit's work in the sacrament of baptism stems from the Spirit's

powerful operation in the rational ordering of the earth. The Spirit 'hovers'

equally over primal waters and over the waters of baptism ready at the

invocation to extend the very same power in sanctifying efficacy.^11 Hence

also make tempting his tying together of threefold baptism, threefold name and three-
fold adoption from the power of slavery to the devil. See Creehan, Early Christian
Baptism, pp. 98-100.

10. Cramer, Baptism and Change, p. 58.


11. R. Kearsley, Tertullian's Theology of Divine Power (Rutherford Studies in
    Historical Theology; Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1999), p. 83. P. Langlois argues that
    Adv. Prax. 31 may imply that the emergence of the Spirit in the New Prophecy indicates
    attainment of creation's goals (cited in Kearsley, Tertullian's Theology, p. 83).