Many of my Baptist brethren are fond of pointing out the fact that there are no explicit examples of infants being baptized anywhere in the Bible (I'm equally fond of pointing out that these same Baptist brethren aren't bothered by the lack of explicit scriptural examples for women taking communion... but perhaps more on that another day). They feel they hold the high ground of scriptural narrative because the typical baptism story told in the New Testament includes an adult candidate. But rather than combat this point by taking the oft-traveled road of "Household Baptisms" from the New Testament (Cornelius and the Philippian Jailer to name a couple), let's take a moment to consider one of the earliest baptisms documented in the Bible -- the story of Moses and all Israel passing through the Red Sea in Exodus 14. And before you object that this is pre-Christ, non-sacramental, and irrelevant to the discussion, lets take a quick look at 1 Corinthians 10:1-4.
Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; And did all eat the same spiritual meat; And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ. (emphasis mine)
Now if this were one of my sophomoric Calvinist buddies talking, I'd probably tell him that he should be a little more cautious with such evocative sacramental terminology. But since this is the apostle Paul writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit we should certainly ask ourselves what this means. We have a story here of an entire nation being baptized... without any of them getting wet! At the very least this should cause us to pause and reflect on the questions of meaning and mode of baptism -- Meaning, because we know from later in the Exodus story that not all of these Israelites were faithful covenant keepers (see Num. 16); and Mode, because nobody even gets wet.
11 years ago
5 comments:
Interesting!
I'm looking forward to future postings on the subject.
Keep up the good work!
An excellent post.
It's great to see that you finally started a blog!
~Bradley
Welcome to another good Presbyterian blogger!
Here I am! Looking forward to future posts.
Keep your powder dry!
To quote Matthew Henry:
"They were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud, and in the sea (v. 2), or into Moses, that is, brought under obligation to Moses’s law and covenant, as we are by baptism under the Christian law and covenant. It was to them a typical baptism."
So this would describe all those under the old covenant. The overall theme in this chapter has to do with Paul addressing the issue of idolatry and here is giving a short history lesson - not making a statement about baptism.
I would argue that this is not an either/or situation. Instead the passage is emphatically BOTH: a brief history lesson and a tremendously important statement on baptism. Even if for no other reason than its use of "baptizo" in a definitively non-immersion context.
And certainly this story is both old covenant and typological -- but I don't think that poses any problem to my point that even a typological baptism of a whole people, without anyone getting wet, should certainly give us pause to question whether an accurate definition of biblical baptism should include phrases like "statement of faith" and/or "immersion".
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