Baptismal Imagery in Early Christianity

Ritual, Visual, and Theological Dimensions

Robin M. Jensen

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780801048326
• eBook ISBN: 9781441236272
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Rituales cristianos y práctica

2013 Catholic Press Award Winner

What can we learn from early Christian imagery about the theological meaning of baptism? Robin Jensen, a leading scholar of early Christian art and worship, examines multiple dimensions of the early Christian baptismal rite. She explores five models for understanding baptism--as cleansing from sin, sickness, and Satan; as incorporation into the community; as sanctifying and illuminative; as death and regeneration; and as the beginning of the new creation--showing how visual images, poetic language, architectural space, and symbolic actions signify and convey the theological meaning of this ritual practice. Considering image and action together, Jensen offers a holistic and integrated understanding of the power of baptism. The book is illustrated with photos.

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Baptism as Cleansing from Sin and Sickness

The story of Christian baptism begins with John the Baptist’s baptizing Jesus in the Jordan River (Matt. 3; Mark 1; Luke 3). Although the accounts of the three Synoptic Gospels differ in certain respects, their descriptions of this event are more consistent than divergent. John goes about Judea preaching baptism for repentance from sin, yet he also tells those who receive his baptism that someone mightier than he is coming after him: someone who will baptize with the Holy Spirit (and with fire, according to Matthew and Luke). Jesus comes to be baptized and, according to Matthew, John consents to administer it. After Jesus comes up from the water, the Holy Spirit descends like a dove, and a voice from heaven announces, “This is my Son.”

This event is the source, authorization, and paradigm for Christian baptism. The following discussion does not try to re-create its historical context or origins; rather, it attends to the ways early Christian exegetes interpreted the story of Jesus’s baptism, how those interpretations shaped the developing theology and practice of Christian baptism, and the material expressions of that theology and practice in visual art and architecture. Specifically, this first chapter focuses on an aspect of the rite that was proclaimed by John: repentance and sin forgiveness. It assesses the paradigmatic baptism of Jesus as a cleansing ritual and then considers the ways that other biblical stories were construed as types or prefigurations of baptismal purification. Following the presentation of those stories, the chapter attends to how they appeared in early Christian visual art. The chapter concludes with a summary of specifically purificatory ritual acts in order to examine the ways the actual ritual contained or conveyed this cleansing benefit.

New Testament Baptisms as Cleansing Rites

All four canonical Gospels present John the Baptist as a prophet, warning sinners of imminent crisis, preaching repentance, baptizing (baptizein = “to dip in water”), and proclaiming the one who was to come after him.[6] The baptism that John offered appears to have been a symbolic, bodily cleansing that signified the recipient’s repentance and desire for forgiveness of his or her sins. Although the rite appears to be unprecedented, the texts do not imply that John’s audience found his words or actions inexplicable. Certain other passages from the Synoptic Gospels suggest that witnesses were confused about the authority by which John acted, asking whether it was “from heaven” or of “human origin” (cf. Matt. 21:25; Mark 11:30; Luke 20:4).[7] Yet, since the initial accounts of Jesus’s baptism offer neither explanation for the ritual nor defense of John’s role, it seems the Baptist rite was understood in his own milieu (or at least retrospectively to the authors or redactors of the narratives).

The Synoptic Gospels each claim that the central purpose of John’s baptism was for the sake of repentance. Luke and Mark add that such repentance led to forgiveness. The Baptist issued warnings that divine wrath was imminent. His exhortations have the ring of the prophets’ admonitions, for example, “Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good” (Isa. 1:16–17a). In Luke’s narrative, John admonishes his listeners to perform charitable acts, to abstain from extortion and false accusations, and to be satisfied with their wages.

John also announces that his baptism is preparatory: someone to come after him would surpass him. This one, whose sandals he was unworthy to untie, would baptize not with water but with the Holy Spirit. Matthew and Luke add that he would also baptize with fire. John likens this baptism of fire to the fire that burns chaff off wheat before it can be gathered into the granary (Matt. 3:11–12; Luke 3:17–18). John’s Gospel lacks an account of Jesus’s baptism but reports that when the Pharisees interrogate John about his authority to baptize, John testifies that he baptized with water in order to reveal another one (a man who was already standing among them)—the Son of God, who would baptize with the Holy Spirit (John 1:24–31). Without saying that he baptized Jesus, John identified him as the Lamb of God, who would take away the sins of the world, the one who ranked before him (because he came before him), and upon whom John himself saw the Spirit descend in the form of a dove. Based on these different narratives, early Christian readers would have interpreted John’s baptism, on one hand, as cleansing or expiatory or, on the other, as transitional and eschatological. The baptism of the coming one would be purificatory, sanctifying, ethical, and apocalyptic.

All four Gospels refer to the Holy Spirit’s descent upon Jesus. In the Synoptic Gospels this distinguishes Jesus’s baptism from the other baptisms that John administers, even though they are ambiguous about whether anyone apart from Jesus could see the dove or hear the voice from heaven say, “You are my Son, the Beloved” (Luke 3:22). Thus, while John’s baptism was offered to ordinary folk as a sign of their repentance, Jesus’s baptism included something that John could not give: the gift of the Holy Spirit. Eventually, both elements in Jesus’s paradigmatic baptism (immersion in water and the descent of the Spirit) became incorporated into the ritual of Christian initiation. In this respect, Jesus’s baptism did inaugurate baptism with the Holy Spirit, as prophesied by John, even as water baptism continued to be practiced as the primary symbol of repentance and cleansing from sin.

In summary, before Jesus came to be baptized, John’s proffered baptism in water was essentially penitential and signaled an individual’s repentance and desire for forgiveness. The Gospels do not present John as performing an initiatory rite that granted membership in an exclusive community, a permanent spiritual (or bodily) transformation, or a one-time, nonrepeatable act. Moreover, John foretells a future baptism given by one mightier than he, which would substantially differ from what he offers: a baptism in the Holy Spirit (and fire). Thus, while John’s baptism serves as a prototype for later Christian baptism, it does so only in respect to its offering reconciliation to sinners.

Other New Testament passages emphasize the importance of being cleansed and sanctified through ritual washing. For example, 1 Corinthians 6:11 starkly contrasts sinners (fornicators, idolaters, thieves, etc.) with those who have been “washed,” “sanctified,” and “justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” Readers of Ephesians are asked to recall the purifying bath given to the bride prior to marriage—a sign that the church (also called a “bride”) has been cleansed and consecrated “with the washing of water by the word” (5:25–26). The Epistle to the Hebrews invites the faithful to approach the house of God, having “hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and . . . bodies washed with pure water” (10:22). All these texts, but especially the last, echo the lines from the book of Ezekiel where the Lord says, “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you” (36:25).

Despite this emphasis on washing as sanctifying in the New Testament Epistles, only three of the eight baptism accounts in the Acts of the Apostles specifically mention the necessity of repentance and imply that the rite’s primary purpose was to wash away sin. The first of these three, the story of the baptism of the three thousand in Acts 2, followed a call to repentance. When the crowd asked Peter, “What shall we do?” he answered, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (2:38). Although Acts’ first report of Ananias’s baptizing Saul (Paul) is vague regarding the rite’s purpose (9:17–18), in Paul’s retelling (22:16), it was clearly a rite of sin remission. The baptism of Cornelius and his household (10:42–48) brought about the forgiveness of sins as well.

By contrast, the effects of Philip’s baptism of Simon and the Samaritans (8:9–14) or his baptism of the Ethiopian court official (8:26–29) are unspecified. This is also the case in the baptisms of Lydia (16:15), Paul and Silas’s jailers (16:30–33), and the household of Crispus (18:8). Those accounts suggest that the rite’s foremost purpose is to demonstrate the candidate’s belief in the good news of the kingdom of God and allegiance to the name of Jesus.

Jesus’s Baptism as a Cleansing Rite in Early Christian Writings

Despite John the Baptist’s proclamation that his baptism would be superseded, early Christian writers understood John’s baptism as more than a provisional or preparatory rite. This is primarily because he baptized Jesus. For example, although Basil of Caesarea describes John’s baptism of others as a preliminary ritual, he judges Jesus’s baptism as the fulfilled and paradigmatic act. John’s baptisms signified simple repudiation of sin; Jesus’s baptism effected union with God.[8] And while such a view could have justified supplanting water (cleansing) baptism for some kind of Spirit baptism, most early theologians and catechists continued to emphasize water immersion as a means—and demonstration—of sin forgiveness.[9] Understanding the rite as retaining this original purpose raised a particular question, however: If baptism was the means by which sinners could be cleansed of sin, then was Jesus a sinner who similarly required cleansing and forgiveness? If not, what other purpose did Jesus’s baptism serve?

Did Jesus Need Baptism?

If baptism was for sinners, why did Jesus seek it? This awkward question appears implicitly, even prior to the final stages of textual redaction in the Gospel of Matthew, where John is resistant to baptizing Jesus: “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” (Matt. 3:14). Jesus answers enigmatically that he should receive baptism because “it is proper in this way to fulfill all righteousness” (Matt. 3:15). This was apparently not a completely satisfactory clarification, for the question surfaced again in early Christian documents, as well as in fragments of two apocryphal gospels, the Gospel of the Hebrews and the Gospel of the Ebionites (both are found in later orthodox polemics against various heresies).[10] While the latter is a gloss on the above-cited passage in Matthew, the former elaborates. It describes Jesus as initially resisting the suggestion of Mary and his brothers that they should go to be baptized by John for the remission of sins. He asks, rather, what sin he has committed that he should need it.[11]

Early theologians also recognized the problem and tried to resolve it. The troubling implication (that Jesus was a repentant sinner) needed to be addressed, especially at a time when critics of the Jesus movement were raising questions about the origins and character of its savior figure. For example, Ignatius of Antioch cites Jesus’s explanation that he sought baptism “so that all righteousness might be fulfilled” and adds a new idea: that Jesus submitted to baptism in order to cleanse the water.[12] This assertion, that Jesus was baptized in order to sanctify the water of the Jordan and thereby all future baptismal water, became standard.[13]

Justin Martyr proposes a different solution. He asserts that Jesus’s baptism was not for his own sake (i.e., to be cleansed of personal transgression) but so that he might be revealed to the world and publicly identified as the Messiah (as opposed to being merely Jesus, son of the carpenter Joseph). This revelation was accomplished through the descent of the Spirit and the divine proclamation, “This is my Son” (Matt. 3:17). Justin thereby repudiates any suggestion that Jesus became the Messiah only at his baptism, when God adopted him as his Son and (by God’s spoken words and the dove’s descent) was endowed with divine power. Instead, Justin points out that the magi had already recognized Jesus’s divinity at his nativity. Just as he condescended to birth and suffered crucifixion, Jesus submitted to baptism in order to enter, transform, and redeem the human race from the power of sin and death. By his baptism he proved that he was the Christ who had come to save humankind.[14]

Irenaeus similarly argues that the Spirit descended upon Jesus at his baptism and, against the gnostics, not on some other divine being or the so-called superior savior. Thus, like Justin, Irenaeus sees this event not as the inception of Jesus’s messianic identity but as the inauguration of his public ministry. The Spirit’s descent upon the Son in his human incarnation declared his identity. Jesus’s baptism further signaled his willingness to be fully human and his desire to renew humanity through his becoming one with it.[15]

By contrast with Irenaeus’s emphasis on—and explanation for—the Spirit’s descent, Tertullian simply asserts that Jesus was baptized even though he had nothing to repent of.[16] Tertullian may have intended to refute a troublesome teaching in Carthage. The third-century Treatise on Rebaptism, written by an anonymous African, cites a heretical book titled The Preaching of Paul, in which, contrary to Scripture, Christ confesses personal sin and is unwillingly compelled by his mother to accept John’s baptism.[17] This apocryphal text has been lost, but it bears similarities to the above-mentioned Gospel of the Hebrews.[18]

Jesus’s Baptism as Cleansing and Sanctifying Water

Fourth-century writers tend to repeat the older explanations for why Jesus was baptized. Like Ignatius, Cyril of Jerusalem explains that Christ did not receive baptism for remission of sins (since he was without sin), but he received it so t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Endorsements
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Baptism as Cleansing from Sin and Sickness
• 2 Incorporation into the Community
• 3 Baptism as Sanctifying and Illuminative
• 4 Baptism as Dying and Rising
• 5 Baptism as the Beginning of the New Creation
• Bibliography
• Ancient Writings Index
• Subject Index
• Notes
• Back Cover