First to be noted is the various names and descriptive titles given to baptism. It is called a “seal,” “illumination,” and “purifying.” It is “the water and laver of regeneration” as well as the “washing with water.” It is also called the “laver of repentance.”
More importantly we should note what exactly these passages say occurs in the rite of baptism. Before we do, however, let me give a brief synopsis of what I have been taught. It will probably be much the same as many of the readers.
When a person is convicted of his/her sins, he/she responds to an altar call or to a more personal inner call if not in a service. They then pray and repent of their sins (in our tradition this is usually accompanied by crying and such while at a mourner’s bench—which we erroneously call the “altar”). After the person has “prayed through” (a totally unbiblical term), we then allow them to be baptized in water. What occurs in baptism? Succinctly, one gets wet. From our point of view, not much else happens. After all, the person has already “gotten saved.”
Thus, baptism in my Pentecostal tradition is an act of obedience to Christ who told us to be baptized that accomplishes nothing in particular. No grace is imparted; no seal, no illumination. We obey Jesus and witness to our former salvation by being dipped in the water. We are symbolically buried and raised again because this has taken place previous to the baptism in reality.
But shock of all shocks, this is nothing like what the Early Church wrote about baptism. What did they say? In baptism, a man “lays aside his deadness, and obtains life.” When we are baptized, “we are washed from all our sins, and are no longer entangled in evil.” We are regenerated and receive “the second birth, which occurs in baptism.” In fact, we “receive repentance and remission of sins, through the water and laver of regeneration”
In our tradition, baptism is viewed as an adjunct of salvation. Many feel that it is not necessary for a person to be baptized. But look at the attitude of the aforementioned early saints. Justin Martyr tells us the “very baptism which he [Isaiah] announced is alone able to purify those who have repented.” St. Cyprian states plainly that “unless a man have been baptized and born again, he cannot attain unto the kingdom of God.”
Many of the writers of the period tie baptism to a Scripture that I have never heard anyone in my tradition tie to it. That passage is John 3:5 “Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” This verse was always explained to refer to two births—one physical (water) and one spiritual. That explanation makes very little sense. If one has not had a physical birth, he or she would not be a person at all. So why would Jesus make that one of the criteria for the Kingdom.
The ancient writers explained that the two things mentioned together comprise the one new birth. One comes to the new birth by the water of baptism and the power of the Holy Spirit. Like many other passages, this one seemed to become suddenly understandable when I read this explanation. It was an interpretation which was much more genuine and less forced. And besides, whose explanation is more credible—the many Early Church fathers or the modern writers?
So what does all this say about the necessity of baptism? Do these writers see it as just a good thing but not really important or necessary? I will let Tertullian answer with the following:
“When, however, the prescript is laid down that “without baptism, salvation is attainable by none” (chiefly on the ground of that declaration of the Lord, who says, “Unless one be born of water, he hath not life”), there arise immediately scrupulous, nay rather audacious, doubts on the part of some…. And so they say, “Baptism is not necessary for them to whom faith is sufficient; for withal, Abraham pleased God by a sacrament of no water, but of faith.” But in all cases it is the later things which have a conclusive force, and the subsequent which prevail over the antecedent. Grant that, in days gone by, there was salvation by means of bare faith, before the passion and resurrection of the Lord. But now that faith has been enlarged, and is become a faith which believes in His nativity, passion, and resurrection, there has been an amplification added to the sacrament, viz., the sealing act of baptism; the clothing, in some sense, of the faith which before was bare, and which cannot exist now without its proper law.” [ANF 3: 676-6]
I will close with the Introduction from Tertullian’s treatise On Baptism:
Happy is our sacrament of water, in that, by washing away the sins of our early blindness, we are set free and admitted into eternal life! A treatise on this matter will not be superfluous; instructing not only such as are just becoming formed (in the faith), but them who, content with having simply believed, without full examination of the grounds of the traditions, carry (in mind), through ignorance, an untried though probable faith. The consequence is, that a viper of the Cainite heresy, lately conversant in this quarter, has carried away a great number with her most venomous doctrine, making it her first aim to destroy baptism. Which is quite in accordance with nature; for vipers and asps and basilisks themselves generally do affect arid and waterless places. But we, little fishes, after the example of our ΙΧΘΥΣ Jesus Christ, are born in water, nor have we safety in any other way than by permanently abiding in water; so that most monstrous creature, who had no right to teach even sound doctrine, knew full well how to kill the little fishes, by taking them away from the water! [ANF 3:669]
One can only imagine how many little fishes have been killed by taking them away from the water!
