Walk with me a bit as I am studying my first course in Sacramental Theology…my first stop is the Seven Sacraments, beginning with the aquatic ritual known as baptism…
When it comes to baptism, I think most people probably have visions of either screaming infants flailing under the sprinkles of a priest, or groups of white-clothed converts being ceremoniously dunked into a muddy creek. In Sacramental Theology, questions of course arise…infant or adult? Total immersion or sprinkles?
Coming from a mixed background of Catholic and Protestant, I got wet twice, thus ensuring that if God was either of those two things, my grandparents would be sure that my soul was not to go to either Limbo (which evidently doesn’t exist anymore) or straight to hell.
Baptism, as with everything else in the world of the spirit, is not something that I think can be very well described in physical terms. It would be inappropriate at best and useless at worst, to try to convince other kinds of Christians of the validity and nature of the sacraments…but from the Gnostic vantage, this first sacrament unfolds a lot of mystery that might be useful to our understanding of this journey that we call life.
In Gnostic, Catholic and many other Christian traditions, baptism is the first sacrament; indeed the one that opens the door to a life in the spirit. It symbolizes many things, among which is death and resurrection; renewal by the Holy Spirit; and following the Gospel of John, enlightenment.
‘This bath is called enlightenment, because those who receive this [catechetical] instruction are enlightened in their understanding . . . .’ Having received in Baptism the Word, ‘the true light that enlightens every man,’ the person baptized has been ‘enlightened’, he becomes a ‘son of light’, indeed, he becomes ‘light’ himself[1]
I’m sure that there are plenty of theologians who could run circles around me, who would like to argue that the physical immersion or act of christening holds the power of initiation into the Christian spiritual order. Although I am just now beginning my formal theological studies, I don’t think that I am going to go that far…
It seems more likely that the screaming babies who periodically hover over baptisteries from Moscow to Moose Jaw, and the droves of new faithful who plummet back first into the Jordan, are taking part in a solemn reenactment of the baptism of Christ, and in certain respects a tradition that predates Christianity by thousands of years.[2]
St John and his trusty scribes were pretty good at recounting the story of John the Baptist and the thoughts of Jesus regarding baptism…the only problem is that many of us have taken these messages literally, leaving behind some pretty juicy meat on these sacramental bones. In John 3, a rather witty Nicodemus asks Jesus how a grown man could be reborn in the spirit…and Jesus proceeds to ignore his joke about crawling back into his mother’s womb. Instead Jesus explains that those wanting to find God must be baptized in water and the Spirit.[3]
So what does being baptized in water and the Spirit mean? I think a wild stab in the dark might lead us to our own traditions…the rite of baptism as a public, initiatory statement of one’s inner journey towards enlightenment. In the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary, which were developed by the Mariologist St Louis de Montfort (officially added to the other Mysteries by Pope John Paul II)[4] the fruit of the mystery is “openness to the Holy Spirit.” This is an incredibly beautiful expression of the inner meaning of the Baptism of Jesus – and of every one of us who is a conscious child of light.[5]
If this light lights every person coming into the world, then worthiness and the necessity of baptism to wash away original sin is frankly out of context. When John the Baptist tells his inquisitors that he is not worthy to untie the sandal of the “one whom ye know not”, he is speaking in bewildered awe of the Incarnation of the Spirit into matter, for which there is no explanation except love and grace.[6] This could be taken to mean the incarnation of the Word (Logos) in the person of Jesus, and it can also be understood as the definition of being a human endowed with a body, soul and spirit. The flesh, as Herakleon commented, ‘is the sandal.’
In John’s commentary on John the Baptist (1:23) ‘I am the voice of one crying in the desert’, there is a whole picture of the relationship between the voice, the word; matter and spirit…female and male…Holy Sophia and Christ the Logos.[7] Here I see the beginning of understanding baptism and our own nature…the recognition of the substantiality that gives (material) form it substance.
Notes:
Relevant verses from the Gospel of John:
1:26John answered them, saying, I baptize in water: in the midst of you standeth one whom ye know not, 1:27even he that cometh after me, the latchet of whose shoe I am not worthy to unloose.
This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man who is become before me: for he was before me. 1:31And I knew him not; but that he should be made manifest to Israel, for this cause came I baptizing in water. 1:32And John bare witness, saying, I have beheld the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven; and it abode upon him. 1:33And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize in water, he said unto me, Upon whomsoever thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and abiding upon him, the same is he that baptizeth in the Holy Spirit.
When it comes to baptism, I think most people probably have visions of either screaming infants flailing under the sprinkles of a priest, or groups of white-clothed converts being ceremoniously dunked into a muddy creek. In Sacramental Theology, questions of course arise…infant or adult? Total immersion or sprinkles?
Coming from a mixed background of Catholic and Protestant, I got wet twice, thus ensuring that if God was either of those two things, my grandparents would be sure that my soul was not to go to either Limbo (which evidently doesn’t exist anymore) or straight to hell.
Baptism, as with everything else in the world of the spirit, is not something that I think can be very well described in physical terms. It would be inappropriate at best and useless at worst, to try to convince other kinds of Christians of the validity and nature of the sacraments…but from the Gnostic vantage, this first sacrament unfolds a lot of mystery that might be useful to our understanding of this journey that we call life.
In Gnostic, Catholic and many other Christian traditions, baptism is the first sacrament; indeed the one that opens the door to a life in the spirit. It symbolizes many things, among which is death and resurrection; renewal by the Holy Spirit; and following the Gospel of John, enlightenment.
‘This bath is called enlightenment, because those who receive this [catechetical] instruction are enlightened in their understanding . . . .’ Having received in Baptism the Word, ‘the true light that enlightens every man,’ the person baptized has been ‘enlightened’, he becomes a ‘son of light’, indeed, he becomes ‘light’ himself[1]
I’m sure that there are plenty of theologians who could run circles around me, who would like to argue that the physical immersion or act of christening holds the power of initiation into the Christian spiritual order. Although I am just now beginning my formal theological studies, I don’t think that I am going to go that far…
It seems more likely that the screaming babies who periodically hover over baptisteries from Moscow to Moose Jaw, and the droves of new faithful who plummet back first into the Jordan, are taking part in a solemn reenactment of the baptism of Christ, and in certain respects a tradition that predates Christianity by thousands of years.[2]
St John and his trusty scribes were pretty good at recounting the story of John the Baptist and the thoughts of Jesus regarding baptism…the only problem is that many of us have taken these messages literally, leaving behind some pretty juicy meat on these sacramental bones. In John 3, a rather witty Nicodemus asks Jesus how a grown man could be reborn in the spirit…and Jesus proceeds to ignore his joke about crawling back into his mother’s womb. Instead Jesus explains that those wanting to find God must be baptized in water and the Spirit.[3]
So what does being baptized in water and the Spirit mean? I think a wild stab in the dark might lead us to our own traditions…the rite of baptism as a public, initiatory statement of one’s inner journey towards enlightenment. In the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary, which were developed by the Mariologist St Louis de Montfort (officially added to the other Mysteries by Pope John Paul II)[4] the fruit of the mystery is “openness to the Holy Spirit.” This is an incredibly beautiful expression of the inner meaning of the Baptism of Jesus – and of every one of us who is a conscious child of light.[5]
If this light lights every person coming into the world, then worthiness and the necessity of baptism to wash away original sin is frankly out of context. When John the Baptist tells his inquisitors that he is not worthy to untie the sandal of the “one whom ye know not”, he is speaking in bewildered awe of the Incarnation of the Spirit into matter, for which there is no explanation except love and grace.[6] This could be taken to mean the incarnation of the Word (Logos) in the person of Jesus, and it can also be understood as the definition of being a human endowed with a body, soul and spirit. The flesh, as Herakleon commented, ‘is the sandal.’
In John’s commentary on John the Baptist (1:23) ‘I am the voice of one crying in the desert’, there is a whole picture of the relationship between the voice, the word; matter and spirit…female and male…Holy Sophia and Christ the Logos.[7] Here I see the beginning of understanding baptism and our own nature…the recognition of the substantiality that gives (material) form it substance.
Notes:
Relevant verses from the Gospel of John:
1:26John answered them, saying, I baptize in water: in the midst of you standeth one whom ye know not, 1:27even he that cometh after me, the latchet of whose shoe I am not worthy to unloose.
This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man who is become before me: for he was before me. 1:31And I knew him not; but that he should be made manifest to Israel, for this cause came I baptizing in water. 1:32And John bare witness, saying, I have beheld the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven; and it abode upon him. 1:33And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize in water, he said unto me, Upon whomsoever thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and abiding upon him, the same is he that baptizeth in the Holy Spirit.
[1] St. Justin, Apol. 1,61,12:PG 6,421 and the Catechism of the (Roman) Catholic Church, 1216.
[2] The themes of ritual baptism: death, and immersion in water appear in Sumerian myth in the form of Oannes, in the Dionysian Mysteries; and in the Egyptian cult of Osiris.
[3] John 3:4-6. 3:4Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter a second time into his mother's womb, and be born? 3:5Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God! 3:6That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
[5] Cf John 1:6-14. There came a man, sent from God, whose name was John. 1:7The same came for witness, that he might bear witness of the light, that all might believe through him. 1:8He was not the light, but came that he might bear witness of the light. 1:9There was the true light, even the light which lighteth every man, coming into the world. 1:10He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world knew him not. 1:11He came unto his own, and they that were his own received him not. 1:12But as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name: 1:13who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. 1:14And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth.
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1 comments:
I was baptized in a swimming pool when I became a 'born again' Christian in my 20s :) After a period of several years of 'backsliding', I rededicated myself to the Message of Jesus The Christ through another baptism. In another swimming pool.
For me it was definitely an 'outward' sign of an inward commitment that I had made to God and to myself...Yes, there was the whole 'washing away of sins' thing...but more than that, it was a publich statement that I was dying to an old way of life that was not in service to my Higher Power...in order to rise up..born anew...to a new way of living.
Of course, now I believe we can each do that every day, no matter what our "religion" is.
I like ritual. Not for the sake of appeasing an angry 'god' who demands his pound of spiritual flesh or needs us to spruce up our act before we are acceptable to him. But because a life rich in symbolic gesture is an awake life....a life being lived on purpose, and with purpose.
Great post :)
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