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Section XLIV. —The Levitical Baptisms in the Christian Fathers
The writers of the primitive church distinctly recognize the Old Testament sprinklings, and especially the water of separation, by the name of baptism. By the same name, they designate the idolatrous imitations above described. Tertullian was born about fifty years after the death of the apostle John. In allusion to the renewing efficacy which he attributed to Christian baptism and the futility of the Gentile rites, he says, – “The nations, strangers to all understanding of true spiritual potencies, ascribe to their idols the self-same efficacy. But they defraud themselves with unwedded waters; for they are initiated, by washing, into certain of their sacred mysteries – as for example of Isis, or Mithras. Even their gods themselves they honor with lavations. Moreover, everywhere, country seats, houses, temples and whole cities are purified by sprinkling with water carried around. So, it is certain they are imbued (tinguntur) in the rituals of Apollo and Eleusis; and they imagine this to accomplish for them renewing and impunity for their perjuries. Moreover, among the ancients, whoever was polluted with murder, expiated himself with purifying waters… We see here the diligence of the devil, emulating the things of God, since he even administers baptism to his own.”62
Here, Tertullian expressly designates these rites of the Gentile idolatries by the name of baptism, and represents them as imitations of the divinely appointed ordinance. Some he distinctly describes as sprinklings, and among them evidently refers to Ovid’s representation of the dishonest merchant, sprinkling himself to wash out his “perjuries.” He does not allude to immersion, and in fact that form of rite was not found among the Greek and Roman superstitions. The only difference which Tertullian recognizes between the idolatrous rites and Christian baptism is indicated by the phrase (viduis aquis), “unwedded,” or “widowed, waters,” by which he designates the element used in the pagan rites. His meaning, here, is to be found in the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, which already prevailed in the church; according to which, it was believed that, in baptism, in response to the invocation of the officiating minister, the Holy Spirit descended upon the water, imparting to it a divine potency to produce a new birth in the recipient of the rite. Thus, the waters of Christian baptism were married waters, as being capable of generating life; whilst the others were unmarried, – unendowed with any “spiritual potency.”
It is further worthy of special notice, that Tertullian here refers, among other Gentile imitations of baptism, to that purgation for murder, by affusion of water, from which evidently Josephus derived his preposterous explanation of the sprinkling of the water of separation, for defilement by the dead. The probability is great that the Greek purgation was derived from that appointed for the elders of Israel, in the case of a concealed murder.
Jerome, living between A. D. 340 and 420, comments thus upon Ezekiel xxxvi, 25-27. – “I will pour out or sprinkle (effundam sive aspergam), upon you clean water and ye shall be cleansed from all your defilements. And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a right spirit within you… I will pour out the clean water of saving baptism… It is to be observed that a new heart and a new spirit may be given by the pouring out or sprinkling of water.” Again, he paraphrases; – “I will no more pour out on them the waters of saving baptism, but the waters of doctrine and of the word of God.” – Jerome v, 341.
Ambrose, bishop of Milan from A. D. 374 to 391, thus expounds the 7th verse of Psa. li. – “He asks to be cleansed with hyssop, according to the law. He desires to be washed according to the gospel, and trusts that if washed he will be whiter than snow. He who would be purified by typical baptism was sprinkled with the blood of a lamb, by a hyssop bush.”63
Again he says, “He (the priest), dipping the living sparrow, with cedar, scarlet and hyssop, into water in which had been mingled the blood of the slain sparrow, sprinkled the leper seven times, and thus was he rightly purified… By the cedar wood, the Father, by the hyssop the Son, and by the scarlet wool, having the brightness of fire, the Holy Spirit, is designated. With these three, he was sprinkled who would be rightly purified, because no one can be cleansed from the leprosy of sins, by the water of baptism, except through invocation of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit… We are represented by the leper.”64
Again, addressing the newly baptized, he says, – “You took the white garments, to indicate that you cast away the cloak of sin and put on the spotless robe of innocence; whereof the prophet said: ‘Thou shalt sprinkle me with hyssop and I shall be clean, thou shalt wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow.’ For he that is baptized appears cleansed both according to the law and the gospel; according to the law, since Moses, with a bunch of hyssop sprinkled the blood of a bird; according to the gospel, because the garments of Christ were white as snow, when, in the gospel, he showed the glory of his resurrection. He whose sins are forgiven is made whiter than snow.”65
Cyril lived in the next century. He was bishop of Alexandria, A. D. 412-444. In his exposition of Isaiah iv, 4, he says, “We have been baptized, not with bare water, nor with the ashes of a heifer, – We are sprinkled [with these] to purify the flesh, alone, as says the blessed Paul, – but with the Holy Spirit, and fire.”
Thus, from the translation of the Old Testament into Greek down through the time of Christ and the apostles, and to the middle of the fifth century, the Levitical sprinklings were known and designated as baptisms. Further we need not trace them.
Part VI.
STATE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT ARGUMENT
Section XLV. —Points established by the foregoing Evidence
A review of the preceding pages will discover the following points to have been established.
1. Baptism was a rite familiar among the Jews at the time of Christ’s coming, and not a new institution then first introduced.
2. Paul being witness, it was an ordinance imposed on Israel at Sinai, as part of the Levitical system.
3. There is no trace, in the Levitical law, of an ordinance for the immersion of the person, in any circumstances, or for any purpose whatever.
4. There is not, anywhere, in the Old Testament an allusion to immersion as a symbolic rite, nor a figure derived from it, although those Scriptures are full of allusions and figures referring to the symbolic import of the pouring and sprinkling of water.
5. There was an ordinance for the immersion of certain things very slightly defiled; which at once illustrates the ritual value of immersion as compared with sprinkling, and the plainness of the language where immersion was meant.
6. The baptisms, therefore, to which Paul refers as having been “imposed on” Israel, could not have been immersions, and the word, baptizo, did not in his vocabulary mean, to immerse.
7. The only institutions to which he can have referred are comprehended under the two heads of, administered rites, and self-performed washings.
8. The self-washings were not sacraments, or seals of the covenant, but monitory symbols of duty.
9. The gradation of these washings, the frequency and circumstances of their observance, and the limited facilities available, render it impossible that they can have been immersions.
10. Their symbolic significance, the words used to describe them, the customs as to ablutions, and the washings of the priests in the court of the sanctuary, and of the high priest in the holy place, concur to demonstrate that they were ablutions performed by affusion.
11. The administered rites were sacramental seals of the covenant. They were essentially one in meaning, office, and form; and were invariably performed with a hyssop bush, by an official administrator, sprinkling the recipient with living water, in which was the blood or ashes of sacrifice.
12. In the Hellenistic Greek, the language of the Septuagint, the Apocrypha, and the New Testament, these purifications by sprinkling were called baptisms, and they were known and designated by that name by the primitive fathers of the Christian church.
13. These sprinklings of the law were the “divers baptisms” of Paul. So far, therefore, from baptizo meaning to dip, or, to immerse, and nothing else, it is an indisputable fact that for at least fifteen hundred years after the first institution of the rite, baptism was always performed by sprinkling.
14. The ordinance was first instituted to seal the covenant by which the church of God was founded in Israel; and that form of it in which the ashes of the red heifer were used was divinely appointed as the ordinary rite for the reception of applicants to the privileges of that covenant and church.
15. Its symbolism set forth all that is recognized in the Scriptures as meant by Christian baptism. Especially and distinctively was it the sacrament of the purification, or remission of sins.
16. The figure presented in the form of sprinkling or pouring is derived from the rain descending out of heaven, penetrating the earth and making it fruitful; and it signifies the Spirit of life from God imparted to the dead, entering the heart, purging its corruption, and creating new life. To the case of indwelling corruption, with reference to which this rite was appointed, no external washing, such as immersion is supposed to represent, can be of any avail.
17. Affusion is the constant form of action in the ritual law, whether with water, blood, or oil, to signify the efficient agency of the Lord Jesus, in all the functions of administration in his mediatorial office.
18. The recipients of the Levitical baptism, were, at its first institution, the whole congregation of Israel, old and young, thus purified from the defilements of Egypt, sealed unto the covenant of God, and installed as his church. Afterward, they were all, without distinction of sex, age, or nation, who having been suspended for any cause from the communion of the church of Israel, sought in the appointed way restoration; or who were received into it, as infants or proselytes.
19. While this rite was the door of admission to the privileges of the covenant, at Sinai, and so long as the Levitical system survived, it is appropriated by the Spirit, as the chosen figure by which is set forth, in prophecy, the bestowal of the grace of Christ upon the Gentiles, in the gospel day, and upon Israel, restored. “So shall he sprinkle many nations.” “Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean.”
20. The figures of speech corresponding to the forms of sprinkling and pouring appear everywhere in the Old Testament. Pervading and determining the entire structure of the ritual law, they reappear continually, in the historical records, in the devotional and penitent utterances of the Psalmist, the discourses of the Preacher, and the expostulations and warnings of the prophets, and in their glad anticipations of the grace of the coming Messiah. With one and the same spiritual meaning everywhere, these figures pervade and control the whole texture of thought and mode of expression of the sacred writers.
21. This rite of purification by sprinkling was not only thus familiar to Israel, but, under corrupted forms, it had been disseminated throughout the civilized world; so that when the apostles went forth to carry the gospel to the nations, the ideas of sin and guilt, defilement and cleansing, thus nourished, were a very important element in the providential preparation of the world to appreciate and accept the salvation of Christ. While such was the case, the fact is equally significant that among the nations contiguous to Israel there is no trace of ritual purification by immersion, – a form of observance which, had it existed in Israel, could not have failed of imitation by her idolatrous neighbors.
Thus assiduously and multifariously were the people of Israel taught, and trained – by instructions, by warnings, by promises, by rites and ceremonies, enjoined and observed at the sanctuary and at home, which laid hold upon them in every relation of their being and every function of their lives – to conceive of themselves in all their sinfulness and need, and of the coming Messiah in his offices of grace, in the light of this ordinance, and according to the similitude embodied in it. For fifteen centuries these influences were continually at work, until the very bent and tendency of their thoughts and conceptions, in so far as they yielded themselves to the divine agencies thus applied, were moulded to the forms of those rites.
In view of the facts thus developed, two questions present themselves for thoughtful consideration as we proceed with our inquiry. (1.) Is it to be imagined that John and Jesus, in coming to fulfill the prophecies of the Old Testament, which were embodied in sprinkled baptism, would ignore that ordinance, and silently substitute in its place the rite of immersion; thus bringing to naught and repudiating the products of the divine discipline so assiduously pursued through all those centuries, and dissolving every tie of association between the gospel of Christ and the hopes and expectations which the saints had been taught to cherish, by the unanimous testimony of the law, the prophets, and the Psalms, all speaking in the language of the repudiated rite? (2.) Since the name of baptism, was, beyond question the designation used for the Levitical sprinklings, how else can we understand John, Christ, and the apostles, than as meaning the same thing, in the similar use which they make of the same word?
Book II.
NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY
Part VII.
INTRODUCTORY
Section XLVI. —State of the Question
Before entering upon an examination of the New Testament, it will be well to notice distinctly what, at this stage of our inquiry, is the precise state of the question to which our attention is directed. In a word, two rites present themselves, each claiming to be the true and legitimate ordinance which Christ commanded to be dispensed to all nations.
On the one hand is the ritual sprinkling of water. In this rite, we have an ordinance instituted at Sinai by divine command, with specific directions as to the mode of observance, and abundant exemplification in the history of Israel and the writings of the Old Testament, – an ordinance by which the tribes of Israel and the Gentile children of Midian were both alike received and sealed unto the covenant of God, – its rites replete with the richest gospel meaning, as expounded by poets and prophets, and constituting in connection with the Lord’s supper, a clear and symmetrical representation of the whole plan of grace. In this ordinance, the sprinkling of water for the ritual purging of sin, is a lucid symbol of the very baptizing office which is now fulfilled from the throne of heaven by Him whom John fore-announced as the Baptizer with the Holy Ghost. That the doctrine which the New Testament identifies with Christian baptism was symbolized by the ordinance, in its Old Testament form, can not be successfully questioned; nor that there was a beautiful symmetry, congruity and significance in each several part and feature of the observance. It thus stands forth, luminous with most precious gospel truth. Appointed of God at Sinai, as the most fitting form under which to figure the first act of His grace, in the bestowal of salvation on sinners, – honored as the rite by which the church was at the beginning consecrated to her exalted office, as God’s witness and herald to the nations, – it comes to the New Testament church, hoary and venerable with a history of fifteen centuries, – embalmed and hallowed by commemoration in the poetic strains of the psalmist and the brightest visions of the prophets, and fragrant from association with the profoundest and most precious experiences of God’s people, in all those centuries, and with every beam of hope for a better life beyond, which shone into their stricken hearts, in the times of bereavement and mourning. It comes, its image indelibly stamped on the face of God’s word, and its conceptions therein transmitted to blend with the clearer visions of hope revealed to the gospel church, by Him, in whom life and immortality are brought to light.
On the other hand is that form of observance in which the person of the subject is immersed in water, as a symbol of the burial of the Lord Jesus. For this rite, no higher antiquity is claimed, by its advocates, than that involved in its supposed institution by the Lord Jesus, after his resurrection. It has no precedent in the Levitical ritual, nor place among the figures employed by the Old Testament writers. The prophets did not foreshadow it in their imagery, nor the psalmist in his strains. All other rites of divine authority, are distinctly described, both as to office and form. But, of the rite of immersion, there is neither description nor explanation anywhere in the Scriptures. Its evidence stands wholly in definitions, contrary to the unanimous testimony of lexicographers, unsustained by any broad inductions from the facts and analogy of Scripture, and at variance with the conclusions which such induction demands.
And when we examine the relations and details of the rite, we find incongruity and contradiction conspicuously displayed. If the rite be regarded as a typical seal of the covenant of grace, as are all sacraments, it follows that the administrator represents the Lord Jesus, administering the true baptism, the real seal of that covenant. But, if baptism is by immersion, to represent the burial of the body of the Lord Jesus, we are reduced to the alternative that the office of the administrator means nothing, in which case we have a burial with no one to perform it; – or, that he represents Joseph of Arimathea, and Nicodemus; by whom the body of Jesus was laid in the sepulcher.
Again, in the Scriptures everywhere, and especially, and in the most express terms, by the Lord Jesus himself (John iv, 14; vii, 37-39), living water is recognized as the divinely appointed symbol of the Holy Spirit, as the Spirit of quickening and life. How beautifully and richly appropriate to this purpose it is, we have seen. But, according to the immersion theory, the dipping of the person in this element, – that is, mersion in water of life, represents the consigning of the body of Jesus to the grave, the den of corruption and death!
Besides, the supposed resemblance of this rite to the burial of Christ’s body is a transparent misconception. It results from the transfer to Palestine of ideas derived from the wholly different western method of interment. In the sense required by immersion, Jesus never was “buried.” The sepulcher of Joseph, in which his body was laid was not a grave, but a spacious above-ground chamber. Such were its dimensions that, at one time, on the morning of the resurrection, there were present in it “Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and other women,” at least five or six persons, and with them the two angels before whom they fell prostrate. (Luke xxiv, 1-10.) To this day, the hillsides around Jerusalem and throughout Palestine are pierced with innumerable such chambers, excavated horizontally in the rock, and frequently used as dwellings by the present inhabitants. Such was the sepulcher of Jesus, – an artificial chamber with a perpendicular door, so that Peter and John and the women could by stooping walk into it. – John xx, 5-8. The entombing of Jesus was no more a burial, in the sense required by the immersion theory, than was the laying of the body of Dorcas in an upper chamber. (Acts ix, 37.) The supposed similitude of immersion in water is a figment of the imagination, in entire disregard of the real facts.
But, even should we allow the ordinance to be a true and fitting symbol of the burial of Christ, it remains void of all spiritual significance. Study it as we may, it teaches nothing, – it means nothing. In all other sacraments the plan of salvation, in one or other of its grand features, is lucidly represented. The Lord’s supper is the acknowledged symbol of Christ’s atonement and death, and of the manner in which he imparts to his people the benefits of that death, – while they by faith feed upon his broken body. According to the immersion theory, baptism represents and shows forth the burial of the dead body of Jesus, contradistinguished from his death, as symbolized in the Lord’s supper. But that burial is a thing wholly unimportant and insignificant, in itself, whether viewed as to the fact or the mode. No emphasis is ever in the Scriptures put upon either, nor spiritual meaning attributed to them. Thus, if we admit immersion to a place among the ordinances, it must remain a mere form, shedding no ray of divine light, – an opaque spot among the luminaries in the instructive constellation of Scripture rites. The result moreover of accepting this ordinance is, to strip the New Testament church of all sacramental knowledge of the power and glory of Christ’s triumphant sceptre. In Levitical baptism, the Old Testament church had a most beautiful pledge of his triumph over death and a symbol of his grace shed down from the throne of his glory. But, upon the immersion theory, all this is utterly ignored in the New Testament ritual, and all attention directed to the humiliation, sufferings and death, – one sacrament setting forth his death, and the other his burial; whilst both are left void of meaning; since the intent of the abasement can only be found in his exaltation, and the baptizing office exercised from his throne. We are to believe that at the very moment when his exaltation became a glorious reality, and his baptizing office an active function, and when these facts had become the very crown and sum of the gospel thereupon sent forth to the world, all trace of them was obliterated from the sacramental system, to the marring of its symmetry and the utter destruction of its completeness and adequacy as a symbolical gospel.
Moreover, it is the office of the rite of baptism, to seal admission to the benefits of the covenant, in the bosom of the visible church. Appropriate to this office, the Old Testament rite was a symbol of that renewing and cleansing which the Lord Jesus by his Spirit gives, in the bestowal upon his people of the benefits of the better covenant, and the fellowship of the invisible church. The same import is attributed to baptism throughout the New Testament. But in the rite of immersion, as symbolizing the burial of the Lord Jesus, not only is this meaning excluded, but the ordinance has no conceivable congruity to the office which it fills. Dr. Carson attempts to evade this difficulty by the assumption that there are two distinct emblems in baptism, – one, of purification by washing; another of death, burial and resurrection, by immersion.66 Then, we are to understand that in baptism, the administrator represents at once, the men by whom the body of Jesus was laid in the sepulchre, and the Lord Jesus himself, dispensing the baptism of his Spirit! The water symbolizes both the grave which is the abode of death and corruption, and the Holy Spirit of life! And the immersion of the person of the baptized represents at one and the same time, the placing of the body in the grave, and the bestowal of his Spirit by Jesus, for quickening and sanctifying his people! Manifestly, the two sets of ideas thus brought together, as involved and represented in the one form, are wholly irreconcilable. They are not merely incongruous, but mutually destructive. To assert water, in one and the same act, to signify the Spirit of life, and the corruption of the grave; or an immersion to symbolize, at once, the burial of the dead body, and the quickening of dead souls, is to deny it to have any meaning at all. The rite may be labelled with these incongruous ideas. But they can not be made to cohere in it. The theory ignores and contradicts the true nature of the rites of God’s appointment; which are not mere mnemonical tokens, but representative figures, ordained as testimonies, which convey intelligible expression of their meaning by their forms; and are therefore constructed upon fixed and invariable principles, and characterized by definiteness and unity of meaning.
Are these difficulties evaded by falling back to the position of the first Baptist confession, – that baptism “being a sign, must answer the thing signified, which is, the interest the saints have in the death, burial and resurrection of Christ; and that as certainly as the body is buried under the water and risen again, so certainly shall the bodies of the saints be raised by the power of Christ, in the day of the resurrection?” This is, to abandon the very citadel of the cause, which consists in the position that the form and meaning of the ordinance are to be determined by a strict interpretation of the classic meaning of the word baptizo. That word never means “burial and resurrection,” – the immersion and raising up of the subject. It sometimes means a submersion; that, and nothing more. This is now distinctly admitted by the ablest representatives of the immersion theory, as we shall see abundantly evinced before we close.
Such are some of the considerations that present themselves, as, at this point in our inquiry, we view the two diverse rites which assume the name of Christian baptism. Their claims are now to be judged, by a comparison of the New Testament evidence, with what has been already concentrated from the law, the prophets, and the Psalms; – writings all of them equally authoritative and divine.
