The Baptisms of Jesus
Jesus was baptised Himself by John and immediately started gaining disciples and baptising them – although John’s Gospel points out that it was his disciples who had been baptised by John who baptised others. This lay conduct of baptism is in line with the practise of proselyte baptism which required a witness, but not necessarily a Rabbi.
The archaeological discoveries have further confirmed two aspects of our knowledge of Jesus: all that Jesus did and said is consistent with the times in which He lived, and the scriptural records of His baptism have been confirmed by similar baptisms by immersion, for a similar reason in the same geographic region. During these same three decades, theology has been seeing Jesus more clearly within Judaism. As James H. Charlesworth writes:
“What is most significant in recent research on Jesus? The single most important result of “disinterested scientific” historical research is the discovery in our time of date clarifying the life of a man from another time.”
As the Jew Gaalyah Cornfeld, in ‘The Historical Jesus’ (pp.11-12), states:
“Modern archaeology and scholarship have now established beyond doubt that a man known as Jesus certainly did exist in history and that the criticism of the sceptics was ill founded.”
This statement is possible because of amazing discoveries, especially those near Qumran, Nag Hammadi, and throughout what is now Israel. It also comes after an unparalleled barrage of charges that Jesus never existed – claims espoused especially by critics in Russia, West Germany, and England.
The monumental discoveries, however, do more than prove the polemist wrong; they help us, indeed compel us, to engage in Jesus Research. Long ago a distinguished and influential New Testament scholar at Yale, Hils Dahl, correctly argued that “we must view Jesus within the context of Palestinian Judaism. Everything which enlarges our knowledge of this environment of Jesus indirectly extends our knowledge of the historical Jesus himself.”
It is still not possible to estimate what the textual findings from the Qumran caves (Dead Sea Scrolls) may yield; in any case they impel us to resume the quest of the historical Jesus. As never before we have the possibility of tracing the trends and ideas which, both positively and negatively, form the presuppositions for his ministry.” “Jesus Within Judaism” James H. Charlesworth. p.168. Doubleday 1988.
The baptism of Jesus, seen in the context of first century baptisms, shows both that Christian baptism has its roots in a Jewish rite, and that its meaning comes from the baptism of Jesus itself. There was that about the baptism of Jesus that gave to Christian baptism new meaning and significance. If this is so, then it has immense significance to contemporary practise concerning both the mode of baptism and the candidate for baptism. If the meaning is uniquely Christian, then arguments from the Old Testament about candidates are pointless. While it is not the point of this paper to pursue this insight it should be considered. This line of argument is presented by the English theologian R.E.O.White:
“The baptism of Jesus affects the meaning of the baptismal rite in at least five ways. First, it lends to the practice His personal authority, thus ensuring for all His followers that baptism may never be a “mere” rite, devoid of truth, value or importance. Secondly, it lends a note of positive enrichment, rather than of negative renunciation, to baptism; expectation of immediate and future blessing becomes as prominent in the mood of the baptised, as regret for the past – a change of emphasis which led indirectly to more sacramental interpretations, and which rests upon the experience that came to Jesus.”“Thirdly, our Lord’s submission to the rite has added to the motives for its acceptance the powerful one of personal dedication and obedience – the emulation of the attitude in which He also approached the decisive event; baptism thus is linked to one of the most formative and fundamental of New Testament conceptions, the imitatio Christi. Fourthly, our Lord’s experience at Jordan has added to baptism a “filial overtone” – an awareness, given and received, of filial relationship and privilege, which becomes a constitutive element in the Christian doctrine of baptism (John 3, Gal. 3:26,27. Rom. 8:14-17, etc.).”
“And finally, our Lord’s experience in baptism transformed the rite by linking with it the reception of the Holy Spirit; the prophets’ association of water and the Spirit is here translated into reality and becomes normative for the Church – baptism becomes the “sacrament for the transmission of the Spirit.”
Taken together, these five new elements in the baptismal conception, deriving almost wholly from the baptismal experience of Jesus, abundantly justify the contention that it is to His act we must look for the main origin of the Christian rite.
It remains only to add that not one of these new dimensions of meaning, derived from the baptism of Christ, can be predicated, except in the most faint and distorted fashion, of the rite of infant baptism. Conscious obedience or imitation of Jesus, positive dedication to new ideals, acceptance of the new endowments of grace, the awareness of belonging to the divine family, the moral and spiritual regeneration consequent upon personal appropriation of the gift of the Spirit – none of these can be affirmed to be the experience of the baptised babe, except with all kinds of reservations, qualifications and assumptions that modify their meaning beyond recognition. All that happened in baptism for Jesus, at about thirty years of age, as the crown of one stage of development and the deliberate entrance upon another, is beyond the understanding and experience of the child, and it is no exaggeration to say that when scholars pass from discussion of Christ’s baptism to discussion of infant baptism they leap a gulf of meaning and implication in which deep differences in connotation are concealed by the simple device of using one word – baptism – in two totally different meanings.
Christ’s baptism was not merely something done to Him; the effect of His baptism was not traceable to the objective act, the authority of the baptiser, prevenient grace working independently of human response, proleptic or vicarious faith, or any of the other theological devices invented to “explain” the efficacy of infant baptism. The relation of infant baptism to Christ’s baptism in fact neither one of theological consistency nor precise historical derivation, but is largely accidental, if not indeed a purely verbal coincidence.” “Christian Baptism” Ed: A. Gilmore. p.96-98. Lutterworth Press 1959.
