278 Dimensions of Baptism
the narrated past and the promised goal. The crucified and risen Christ is
present as the one who is the coming one. As Jenson puts it, 'the past is
narrated just as the identity of the promised goal'.^22 In this way baptism is
a sign which narrates the past and re-presents that past by the power of the
promise which that past narrates. Perhaps more clearly, the Christ who died
and is risen is re-presented as the coming one, as promise. This presence
of God in the freedom of the Spirit is hidden, it is a sign of the promise, of
the End which is to come.
Baptism is also ethical. We are freed in the Spirit to live for God: 'count
yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus' (Rom. 6.11).
Baptism marks a radical transition, a completely new way of living which
is focused on God instead of self. Just as baptism is a free human decision
grounded in and constituted by the sovereign work of God in the freedom
of his Spirit, so the life which flows from this is lived freely in conver-
sation and co-operation with the triune God. Christian ethics is about
human decision-making in the freedom which is given by God; without
the liberating work of the Spirit it becomes idolatry, an attempt to enlist
God in our own good cause. True Christian ethics is consequently trinitar-
ian in scope and entails some grasp of the notion of the freedom of God
into which we are drawn through the Holy Spirit. Once again, we must
affirm that true human freedom gains its reality from the prior liberating
act of God: human action which is truly free is grounded in divine action.
A theology of believer's baptism oriented this way will always engender a
radical Christian ethic.V
Some final thoughts remain, and a consideration of some possible objec-
tions. First, is this focus on the concept of God's hiddenness simply a
rather complex way of approaching a theology of baptism? It is not sug-
gested that this is the only, or indeed the most important approach. Yet is
it surely of great significance for those who retain theological convictions
as to the appropriateness of believer's baptism to integrate this belief with
a serious trinitarian theology. The recovery of a properly construed sacra-- Jenson, Systematic Theology, II, p. 259. This approach rests on a particular
understanding of the relationship between space and time—space is time's present
tense. 'The relations between the place that God is and his heaven and our earth are
founded in relations between the future and the present and past. And it is these
temporal relations that words open and maintain' (p. 259).