Logos & Muse

OD HAS A REMARKABLE PROCLIVITY for accom­plish­ing his work through the mate­r­ial things of this earth–but fore­most among them, pos­si­bly, is water. At the very begin­ning of cre­ation, God is said to be “mov­ing over the face of the waters” (Gen. 1:2). Before God has cre­ated any­thing spe­cific or con­crete, water exists. He cre­ates the “heav­ens and the earth,” but as yet they are “with­out form and void.” They are just the raw mate­ri­als, cre­ated ex nihilo. But there is water; when God says, “let there be light,” his spirit is upon the waters. And then, God’s very next cre­ative act is to “sep­a­rate the waters from the waters” (Gen. 1:6). Water exists with God from the beginning.

Who can list all the exam­ples, through all of Sacred Scrip­ture, in which God uses water to accom­plish his pur­poses? Once when I was in Sun­day School as a United Methodist, the teacher gave us the assign­ment to find all the exam­ples we could where the word “love” was used in the Bible. We had a week. We may as well have been told to find all the exam­ples where God uses water. If human beings can­not sur­vive with­out water, it would seem that God can­not do some of his great­est acts except through water. Or, he could, but he doesn’t, which sug­gests to me that these acts are best achieved through water.

Thou­sands of years after the cre­ation God, through Moses, is lead­ing the descen­dants of Abra­ham away from Egypt after being freed by Pharoah. Pharoah has decided he made a mis­take in let­ting them go; after all, they meant wealth to Egypt. He sends his char­i­ots after them. The Israelites are unarmed and on foot. Exo­dus 14:26–29 con­tin­ues the story:

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea, that the water may come back upon the Egyp­tians, upon their char­i­ots, and upon their horse­men.” So Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its wonted flow when the morn­ing appeared; and the Egyp­tians fled into it, and the Lord routed the Egyp­tians in the midst of the sea. The waters returned and cov­ered the char­i­ots and the horse­men and all the host of Pharoah that had fol­lowed them into the sea; not so much as one of them remained. But the peo­ple of Israel walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left.

Did you catch that? “The waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left”: Where have you heard that before? Right from the begin­ning, in fact: “And God said, ‘Let there be a fir­ma­ment in the midst of the waters, and let it sep­a­rate the waters from the waters’” (Gen. 1:6). God cre­ates the Earth by sep­a­rat­ing the waters, and God cre­ates the nation of Israel by sep­a­rat­ing the waters. Later, God cre­ates the Church through another sep­a­ra­tion of water, after Christ has died but before he has been removed from the Cross: “But one of the sol­diers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water” (John 19:34). The world, the nation of Israel, and the Church are all cre­ated through a sep­a­ra­tion of water. Some­thing important–a great mystery–would seem to be involved in all that.

One last exam­ple from the Old Tes­ta­ment would bear look­ing at, and that is the heal­ing of Naa­man of lep­rosy in 2 Kings. In the Old Tes­ta­ment, lep­rosy is a fig­ure of sin: In the same way that sin sep­a­rates us from God, lep­rosy sep­a­rates one from the com­mu­nity. Pos­si­bly the con­nec­tion was made because of the greatly con­ta­gious nature of both. Naa­man was “com­man­der of the army of the king of Syria,” and highly-favored by his mas­ter because of his vic­to­ries in bat­tle. As the writer of 2 Kings tells it, Naa­man was “a mighty man of valor.” But he had lep­rosy, and so he goes to the prophet Elisha seek­ing to be healed. Elisha tells him, “Go and wash in the Jor­dan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean” (2 Kings 5:10).

Naa­man does not take the sug­ges­tion well. His thought was that Elisha would merely “call on the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand all over the place” (2 Kings 5:11). If I didn’t know any bet­ter, I would sus­pect that Naa­man had been watch­ing too many faith-healing pro­grams on the Chris­t­ian Broad­cast­ing Net­work. Naa­man has a fur­ther com­plaint, which has to do with his notion of the dirt­i­ness of the Jor­dan River. “Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Dam­as­cus, bet­ter than all the waters of Israel?” he says. “Could I not wash in them, and be clean?” And thus, because God refuses to heal Naa­man in the man­ner that Naa­man thinks God ought to heal him, “he turned and went away in a rage.” Well, it is funny, but if the doc­tor told me that I was in need of surgery, I’m sure my first reac­tion would be, “Couldn’t you just give me a pill for that?”

Saner heads pre­vail among Naaman’s ser­vants, who instruct Naa­man that if Elisha had told him to lead men into a great bat­tle and he would be healed, surely Naa­man would have done that. “How much rather, then, when he says to you, ‘Wash, and be clean?’” (2 Kings 5:13). Just take a bath, already, Naa­man; why must you protest because God doesn’t want to heal you your way? So Naa­man does, “and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a lit­tle child, and he was clean” (1 Kings 5:14).

God heals us with water; and if lep­rosy is, in the Old Tes­ta­ment, a fig­ure of sin, would it not be sur­pris­ing if God were to heal our sin with water too? Some peo­ple do have trou­ble grasp­ing that.

ESUS CAME TO THE SAME RIVER–the Jordan–seeking to be bap­tized. He didn’t have lep­rosy, and he didn’t have sin, so John the Bap­tist is sur­prised and protests. “I need to be bap­tized by you, and you come to me?” (Matt. 3:14). In the movies these lines could be deliv­ered in a vari­ety of ways, though I nor­mally see the actor deliver them with humil­ity, in recog­ni­tion that he has been given a great honor to be the one who bap­tizes Christ. That is exactly right. In the Guido Reni paint­ing, both Christ and John are in a pos­ture of humil­ity: Christ with his hands folded in prayer and his gaze toward the earth; John with his gaze down as well, but his right knee bent in a kneel­ing pos­ture. Christ’s answer to John is sig­nif­i­cant: “Let it be so now; for thus it is fit­ting for us to ful­fil all right­eous­ness” (Matt. 3:15). This is a sacra­men­tal answer; by being bap­tized, in some mys­te­ri­ous way we ful­fil righteousness.

Some Protes­tant denominations–mainly Reformed churches, as well as some other Bap­tist groups that reject Calvinism–think of bap­tism as an “ordi­nance.” They reject a sacra­men­tal under­stand­ing of Chris­tian­ity, and so they talk about two “ordi­nances” estab­lished by Christ: bap­tism and The Lord’s Sup­per (which is how they refer to the Eucharist). To my ears, it is as though Christ is the mayor of the local church body, and he might issue a cita­tion if you’re not bap­tized (as an adult, of course). I think that the legal­ism in this is a byprod­uct of how Reformed churches think of justification–that it is a legal impu­ta­tion of Christ’s right­eous­ness. Thus they can refer to what Catholics under­stand as sacra­men­tal in the cold and legal ter­mi­nol­ogy of “ordi­nances.” But this is not how Christ spoke of bap­tism when he spoke of it as “ful­fill­ing right­eous­ness”; legal­is­tic lan­guage does not fol­low from his words to Nicode­mus in John 3, when he spoke of being “born of water” in the con­text of “hav­ing eter­nal life.”

In his first epis­tle, St. Peter spoke of bap­tism in sacra­men­tal lan­guage as well. In chap­ter 3, St. Peter devel­ops what might be described as a the­ol­ogy of water:

God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, dur­ing the build­ing of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight per­sons, were saved through water. Bap­tism, which cor­re­sponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a clear con­science, through the res­ur­rec­tion of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 3:20–21).

Bap­tism, in Peter’s words, is not merely “a removal of dirt from the body.” He’s speak­ing here of phys­i­cal dirt, not moral dirt. It doesn’t merely have phys­i­cal prop­er­ties; it has sacra­men­tal, salvific prop­er­ties. He speaks of Noah and his fam­ily being “saved through water.” By the waters of the flood, God destroyed the earth but saved a right­eous peo­ple. That is to say, through water, God removed sin and restored right­eous­ness. Bap­tism, as Peter explains, “cor­re­sponds to this.” It “saves”–just as right­eous­ness was saved through the flood–and Peter appeals to the very Res­ur­rec­tion as tes­ti­mony for that. It might be said that 1 Peter 3:20–21 is an exe­ge­sis of Christ’s words about bap­tism “ful­fill­ing all righteousness.”

Through the waters of birth, we are born into life. Through the waters of bap­tism, we are born into the King­dom of God. Bap­tism now saves you.

ARTIN LUTHER–WHO WAS RIGHT ABOUT SOME THINGS; he did under­stand bap­tism as both sacra­men­tal and salvific–is often known for his words “Remem­ber your bap­tism.” When you wash your face in the morn­ing, when you wash your face at night: Remem­ber your bap­tism. It’s a good prac­tice. There was a time when I seri­ously con­tem­plated join­ing a Bap­tist church. But I knew that to do so I would need to be rebap­tized, because I was bap­tized as a child; Bap­tists do not believe in infant bap­tism. I also knew, how­ever, that my grand­fa­ther bap­tized me. He was a United Methodist min­is­ter. That was far too spe­cial a point of knowl­edge on my part to ever con­tem­plate under­go­ing an act that I felt would “redo” or “undo” what my grand­fa­ther had given me. I didn’t have a fully-worked-out the­ol­ogy of bap­tism wherein I nec­es­sar­ily thought of it as a once-for-all act. I do now. But I knew that my grand­fa­ther had bap­tized me. That was enough.

I don’t mean to sug­gest that I would never ulti­mately have become Catholic if I had made that move. I know I would have. But I would also have brought with me the knowl­edge that in some way I had undone what my grand­fa­ther had given me, and that would be too great a pain–particularly with the knowl­edge that the refusal of infant bap­tism, and the act of anabap­tism, are both heresy.

Thus I am able, every morn­ing and ever night, to remem­ber my bap­tism, despite it hav­ing occurred when I was only two months old.

Remem­ber yours.

Photo credit: (1) Gus­tave Dore, “Cre­ation of Light.” Engrav­ing, 19th cen­tury. Pub­lic domain. (2) Still shot, “The Ten Com­mand­ments” (1956), directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Fair use, Copy­right Act of 1976. (3) Guido Reni, “The Bap­tism of Christ.” Oil on can­vas, 1623. Kun­sthis­torisches Museum, Vienna, Aus­tria. Pub­lic domain.