Tag Archives: Baptism

Christ vs. Belial?

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Believers would be baptized in this ancient Christian baptismal font, stepping down three steps into the water. The font was kept supplied with “living water” (i.e. running water) by a series of pipes and plumbing–the first directions (in chapter 7 of the Didache, written AD 60) for how to baptize said that it was always better to use living/running water for baptism. Baptism is what distinguished the Church from the pagan world. There could be no agreement between the Church and the world, between believers and the Devil, between Christ and Ceasar because–as Tertullian said in the 2nd century–if Ceasar were to be baptized he would have to renounce being Ceasar!



What fellowship does light have with darkness? What does Christ have in common with Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God …. (2 Cor. 6:14-16)

I have heard many preachers use this passage to insist that believers should not marry unbelievers. But there is no direct mention of marriage in this passage. The passage itself seems to suggest that there should be a radical separation between the Church and the society in which believers live. St. Paul seems to be saying that outside the Church there is nothing but darkness and devils; what could that world have in common with the Church, the Body of Christ and the light of the world?

The great teachers of the Church have understood this passage to condemn a person’s efforts to have two opinions in their own mind.

There cannot be two contradictory loves in one person. Just as there is no harmony between Christ and Belial, between justice and iniquity, so it is impossible for one soul to love both good and evil. You that love the Lord, hate evil, the devil; in every deed, there is love of one and hatred of the other. “He who has my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me…” [John 14:21] You that love the things that are good, hate the things that are bad. You cannot love good unless you hate evil.

St. Jerome, Homily 73 on the Psalms

The Church understands that our baptism cannot be something that we put on or take off, depending on whether it is convenient on any particular day or not.

Neither the wetness of the water in which we are baptized not the oiliness of the oil with which we are anointed remain with us…. But the Holy Spirit, who is mingled in our souls and bodies through the oil and water, does remain with us, both in this life and after our death.

Philoxenus of Mabbug, On the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit

A person can try to have a foot in two camps but that never works. Not in the long run. If we are the temple of God because we are baptized and anointed, then we cannot also worship idols. Most baptized people don’t think they worship idols. But anytime we put ourselves first–before God’s command to love–we are making an idol of ourselves. Anytime I prefer injustice–because it is convenient for me–I am not loving my neighbor and I am worshipping the idol of myself.

If the Church cuts herself off from society, she cannot be the Church–the fountain of health, the fountain of salvation for the world. We cannot hide from the world and refuse to participate in it and still call ourselves followers of Christ. Even the hermits and monks in the desert did not cut themselves off from the world. They cut themselves off from distractions so that they could pray the more earnestly for the world and the people living in it. Scrooge in his counting house on a busy London street cut himself off from the world more completely than any monk or hermit ever did.

Jesus didn’t tell the apostles to teach all the nations so that the nations would believe what he said; he told the apostles to teach the nations so that they would obey what he said. (Matthew 28)

Obey. Do. “Love is the soul of justice; justice is the body, the flesh, of love.” (M. Borg and J. Crossan, The Last Week)

Let Light Shine

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Depictions of St. Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, blinded by the divine light of Christ who spoke to him as he was going to arrest Christians for execution in Jerusalem.


On the contrary, we have renounced the deeds one hides for shame; we do not practice cunning or falsify the word of God, but through the open preaching of the truth we commend ourselves to anyone’s conscience in the sight of God…. it is the same God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has caused his light to shine in our hearts to spread the light of the knowledge of God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Cor. 4:2, 5-6)

St. Paul was accused by his enemies in Corinth of “cunning” financial business; i.e., they accused him of shady and dishonest business deals with church money. They also accused him of “cunning” ways to read the Bible that were also shady and dishonest. He tells them that he has not been involved in any “cunning” behavior–not with money and not with reading the Bible. His interpretation of Scripture is open and honest and available to anyone with an honest, open conscience.

St. Paul alludes to Genesis 1 (“Let there be light”) when he paraphrases the Father’s command, “Let light shine out of darkness.” He might also be paraphrasing the prophet Isaiah: “O people walking in darkness, behold a great light: you that dwell in the land and shadow of death, a light shall shine upon you.” (Is. 9:2) St. Paul is saying that the same light that overcame the darkness in the beginning of the world and at the destruction of Death has shone in his heart-mind and shines in the hearts-minds of all honest people.

The light of God that shines in St. Paul and in honest people reveals the truth of the Gospel. (Remember the light that shone on St. Paul at his conversion? It struck him blind in order to heal his heart, St. Augustine said.) People “see” the brightness of the Gospel and then personally adopt it and are transformed by it; they are transformed into the image of the glorious Christ and communicate it to others who are “illuminated.” (One ancient way to refer to baptism is to call it “illumination.” Old prayers for those about to be baptized asl God to bless “those preparing for holy illumination.”)

But our actual daily experience is not bright and glorious. We are wasting away and eventually die. Yet what is strong already manifests itself in what is weak and the future erupts into the present. The eternal breaks into the perishable and enlightens what is temporary and transient.

Knowing Christ as the true light, inaccessible to falsehood, we learn this, namely, that it is necessary for us to be illuminated by the rays of the true light. But virtues are the rays of the Sun of Justice streaming forth for our illumination, through which we lay aside the works of darkness and walk becomingly as in the day and we renounce those things which shame conceals. By doing all things in the light, we become the light itself so that it shines before others which is the unique quality of light. If we recognize Christ as sanctification, in whom every action is steadfast and pure, let us prove by our actions that we ourselves stand apart, being ourselves true sharers of his name, our deeds–not just our words–coinciding with his power of sanctification.

St. Gregory of Nyssa, On Perfection

Baptism For The Dead?

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The earliest known indoor font and baptistery is from a house church located at Dura-Europos in modern-day Syria. It seems to have occupied an ordinary house that was converted for worship between AD 233 and 256.
The church was uncovered by a team of archaeologists during two excavation campaigns in the city from 1931-32. The frescos were removed after their discovery and are preserved at Yale University Art Gallery.



Otherwise, what do those who are baptized for the sake of the dead? If those who are really dead are not raised, why at all are they baptized for their sake? And why are we in danger at every hour? I die every day. (1 Cor. 15:29-30)

St. Paul refers to the living being baptized for the sake of the dead, a practice otherwise unknown in the early church. But it seems to be a practice that the Corinthians were familiar with. “Why be baptized for the dead if Christ is not raised from the dead?” The apostle refers to the liturgical practice of the Corinthians to underscore the point he has been making in the epistle: Christ was raised form the dead. Why else are we in church or doing anything as members of the Church? Nothing we do makes sense if Christ is not risen from the dead.

Sin has brought death into the world and we are baptized in the hope that our dead bodies will be raised again in the resurrection. If there is no resurrection, our baptism is meaningless and our bodies remain as dead as they are now.

St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Epistles to the Corinthians 40.2

The apostle might be referring to the baptism of those in bed and about to die or new-born infants about to die. Why baptize the dying and those as-good-as-dead if there is no Resurrection of the body?

But he seems to be referring not to deathbed baptisms but to people who are being baptized for vicariously for the deceased. People in the city of Corinth were generally concerned about the fate of the dead. Perhaps the living Corinthian Christians were baptized on behalf of their friends and neighbors–as well as their family members–who had not had the opportunity to become Christians during their lifetimes. If baptism was critical for sharing the Resurrection, how else could the living best serve the deceased?

Wherever the Gospel was preached, the new converts were always concerned about the fates of the non-Christian ancestors. Pagan Greeks came to see the poets and philosophers as the equivalent of the prophets in ancient Israel, so their ancestors had some access to the Good News just as ancient Jews did. In Gaul, it was common to bless pagan graves with holy water, baptizing the dead who were buried there. In other places, the prayers for the dead–especially on All Souls’ Day–were the most important prayers a new Christian could offer.

Prayers for the dead. Baptism on behalf of the dead. Blessing the pagan graves. These were all ways the living Christians showed their love and concern for their non-Christian dead relatives, trying to include the dead in the Kingdom of God. No one is ever saved alone. Salvation is, by definition, a communal event.