This post is part of an ongoing dialog I’m having with Sean Gallagher at his Bene Diction blog. Right now we’re discussing what it means to follow Jesus, and the current subtopic is how baptism relates to that. This post will be concise because of the blog medium, so please let me know if anything is unclear.
Sean believes that one becomes a Christian upon being baptized. In his own words,
As a Catholic, I believe that a follower of Jesus is one who is “born of water and Spirit” (Jn 3:5), that is, one who has been baptized… Once a person has been baptized, at any age, this ability is never taken away… even if a person totally refuses to work with that grace [of baptism], that person is still a follower of Jesus.
Wow. It took us exactly one round of replies to get to core Catholic/Protestant differences.
One of the crucial texts here is John 3.3–7:
Jesus replied, “I tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter his mother’s womb and be born a second time, can he?” Jesus answered, “I tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must all be born from above.’ ” (John 3.3–7, NET Bible)
In this passage, Jesus tells Nicodemus that everyone must be born anothen. The word anothen is ambigious in Greek. It can either mean “again” or “from above.”
Nicodemus thinks Jesus is saying “you must be born again” (hence his question, “How can a man be reborn? He can’t enter his mother’s womb again, can he?”) Nicodemus has misunderstood Jesus, and that is the context for what follows!
Jesus answers, “No, I’m not telling you to be born twice in a physical sense. You have to be both physically born [born of water] and spiritually born [born from above]. What is produced by flesh is flesh, but what is produced by Spirit is spirit.” (please note the use of parallelism here–it’s essential for interpreting the passage properly: ‘flesh’ parallels ‘water’ and ‘from above’ parallels ‘spirit’.)
In other words, neither person is discussing baptism. Jesus says that we are given physical life in our first birth (a birth of water), and that now we must have spiritual life planted in us (a birth of spirit). He goes on to explain exactly what that means later in the same conversation:
“For this is the way God loved the world: he gave his one and only Son that everyone who believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him. The one who believes in him is not condemned. The one who does not believe has been condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.” (John 3.16–18, NET Bible)
In other words, we are made alive spiritually by placing our faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
I’m sure there are other references that Sean takes to support salvific baptism, and I’m eager to dialog about them. I’m also curious to see what people think about the “born again/born from above” interpretative issue. I find that the wording is one of those sacred cows in the evangelical world even though it’s an untenable translation.
P.S. The NET Bible is one of my favorite translations, but I can’t find a way to directly link to a reference them. Hence my links are to the NIV at http://bible.gospelcom.net even though I quote from the NET Bible! If you know how to link directly to a NET Bible reference (a specific chapter and verse), please let me know!
I realize that this dialogue is one primarily between Glen and Sean. So let me begin by apologizing for the intrusion. However, I find this dialogue to be more interesting than most of what is floating around St. Blog’s these days. As I mentioned to Sean, I have personal experience with Chi Alpha, so I’m intrigued on that level too.
The question of baptism is a good place to start. However, Glen, it might be helpful to Catholics following this dialogue to have a fuller sense of what the Assemblies of God think about baptism. Catholics may not pick up from your post the separation between salvation and baptism that you are drawing.
For example, I presume that you subscribe to the idea that water baptism is something that follows one’s acceptance of Christ and forgiveness of one’s sins. Accordingly, someone baptized as an infant would be rebaptized after his conversion. (Ironically, both churches have similar thoughts about children. From what I understand an AG would point to the love of children expressed in scripture and the prohibitions of infant sacrifices as a sign that God would make a place in heaven for children who die before reaching the age of accountability. These same passages move Catholics to place their hope in the mercy of God that there is a path of salvation for children who are not baptized. At the same time, the Church takes this question as a sign it should not delay a child’s receipt of the sacrament of Baptism. I think most AG’s would recognize that, if the Catholic teachings about what baptism is are true, this makes immense sense.)
Second, I’m not sure if all Catholics would initially recognize and understand the special emphasis AGs place on baptism in the Spirit, specifically as evidenced by tongues. (Although a fair number would, especially those of the Charismatic Renewal.) As the dialogue progresses, they might not realize that we are probably talking about two different things when we loosely use the word “baptism”: Catholics refering to baptism in the name of the Trinity and with water and AG’s probably referring to baptism in the Spirit. The gifts of the Spirit are recognized by the Church, but they are not the first thing that would come to the mind of a Catholic when they hear the word “baptism”. Your post has been careful on this point, but it’s worth, I think, raising the distinctions now given the distinct emphasis AGs place on baptism in the Spirit.
So back to the Catholic understanding of baptism. I think the Catholic would say that its understanding is drawn from the very mission that Christ gave his apostles and the clear importance baptism took in their early preaching. Aside from John 3:5, which Sean cited, we would look at Matthew 28:19–20 (“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in th ename of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.”) and Mark 16:15–16 (“Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation. he who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.”)
And it is clear that the apostles placed great importance on baptism: Acts 2:38; 41 (“And Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and be batpized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your signs; ahd you shall received the gifts of the Holy Spirit.’ … So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.”); Acts 8:12 (“But when they believed Philip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized both men and women.”); Acts 10:47–48 (“ ‘Can any one forbid water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?’ And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they ask him to remain for some days.”); Acts 16:14–15 (“the Lord opened her heart to give heed to what was said by Paul And when she was baptized, with her household, …”); Act 16:31–33 (“And they said, ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.’ And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all that were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their wounds, and he was baptized at once, with all his family.”). The Catholic would draw from these examples and others that there is something more to baptism than merely a symbol of one’s acceptance of Christ.
The Church would also point to the words of Peter and Paul on how baptism incorporates us into the Body of Christ: Romans 6:3–4 (“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newnes of life.”); Col 2:12 (“and you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.”). And through this baptism, we are sanctified: 1 Peter 1:23 (“ ‘You have been born anew, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God‘”); 1 Cor 6:11 (“And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.”). Catholics would see this all as pointing to the sacramental nature of baptism, through which God infuses us with grace which, we hope, will work in our lives to sanctify us and result in the attainment of heaven.
I think most Catholics would be curious to understand exactly what an AG believes a water baptism does to the recipient. If it is an affirmation only, why is it so important in scripture?
One last thing: I’m not sure if I follow your whole “anothen” line of argument. It would seem to me that “anothen” (whichever interpretation you ascribe to it) points to a salvific and not symbolic baptism. Your argument seems to be more rooted in your idea that “water” is a reference to “physical birth” in that passage. What is the basis for that?
Okay, I swear this is my last post. After re-reading the last post, I realized that you might think I just missed your entire discussion of that passage of John. To make my question more explicit: what I don’t understand is how you reconcile this “physical birth” interpretation in the context of Jesus stating the conditions of entry into the Kingdom. Are you suggesting that it read as, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is physically born and spiritually born, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” Doesn’t seem odd to cite physical birth — something we all have experienced by the virtue of our existence — as a condition to entry into Heaven? Doesn’t that interpretation render the “of water” part of the phrase a moot point? After all, who hasn’t been physically born?
FYI: I’ve made a response at http://www.glenandpaula.com/archives/000077.html