The Early Christian Writers

I quote from your reply to my twelfth letter: “Your exposition of John 3: 5 has interested me deeply, and although it was entirely new to me it carries upon its own face evidence that it is the true one. It makes the whole connection plain and obvious. I have read that part of your letter to two of my medical acquaintances, and they say they have no doubt that you have the right of it. I want to know how you got hold of it. Have any of the commentaries suggested it? and is there anything anywhere in the Bible to confirm such an interpretation? I ask both of these questions more out of curiosity than anything else; for it seems to me so manifestly true that it needs no confirmation.”

Let me say: the interpretation was not evolved entirely out of my own consciousness. Some years ago I saw in the Comprehensive Commentary a quotation from some old commentator (whose name I have forgotten) of three or four lines, suggesting this interpretation. No argument was offered to maintain that view, but the suggestion struck me with so much force that I set myself to examining the matter, and was convinced of the soundness of the exposition; since then I have never had a doubt upon the subject.

As to your other inquiry, whether there is anywhere in the Bible anything to confirm that interpretation, I answer, I think there are two or three passages in the Old Testament which show that such a mode of speech would have been readily understood as referring to natural birth and nothing else. I quote but one of them, Is. 48:1: “Hear ye this, oh house of Jacob, which are called by the name of Israel, and are come forth out of the waters of Judah.” The natural descendants of Judah are here spoken of without doubt.

But the arguments against referring the passage in John to baptism are too many to allow us to entertain for a moment that idea. One of them, that does not appear from our translation, is that the expression, “Except a man be born again,” means properly “Except a man be born from above.” This rendering you will find in the margin, and no other rendering should ever have been thought of. The Greek word which is found here is anothen, and means everywhere else “from above,” and only that. Birth from above is simply spiritual birth, not ritual. Besides, baptism is nowhere else ever spoken of as a birth. And you will see that if it is objected to my interpretation of the words, “born of water,” that they are never used anywhere else, the same objection might be urged still more emphatically against the common interpretation. It is not strange that an expression of that sort, referring to natural birth, should be found but once; but if baptism is to be understood as a new birth, it is quite unaccountable that it should be thus spoken of only once, and that so blindly. And more than all is the intrinsically absurd teaching that there can be no salvation without baptism! For, if this expression refers to baptism at all, it is plainly taught that no one can enter into the kingdom of God who is not baptized. Words could not be more emphatic — “Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God!” Being baptized, according to this interpretation, is just as absolutely required as to be born of the Spirit. The more you look at the aigument the plainer it will appear that the expression, “born of the water,” cannot be interpreted as referring to anything but natural birth.

I come now to the consideration of the passage in the sixth of Romans, upon which so much stress is laid by our Baptist brethren in proof of immersion as the only baptism. The expression, “buried through baptism,” found in Romans, and a similar expression, “buried in baptism,” found in Colossians, are appealed to as though they were conclusive of the whole discussion. But I think that a close study of the passages will show that this is but an instance of what some of the old writers speak of as “an interpretation that sticks in the bark.”

That the matter may be before us in full, let me quote the entire passage in Romans. It embraces the first eleven verses of the sixth chapter, and reads thus in the Revised Version: —

What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. We who died to sin, how shall we any longer live therein? Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with him by the likeness of his death, we shall be also by the likeness of his resurrection; knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away, that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin; for he that hath died is justified from sin. But if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him; knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death no more hath dominion over him. For the death that he died, he died unto sin once: but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus.

It is not necessary that I should enter into the exposition of every clause in this paragraph; but the key to the main thought that runs through it is obviously in the second sentence: “How shall we who died to sin, live any longer therein?” All that follows goes to enforce the idea of the utter inconsistency of a Christian profession with a continued living in sin. The very purpose for which Christ died was to put an end to the dominion of sin. Our consecration to him is a consecration to all that his death signified. We were crucified with him. We have become utterly dead and buried to the old life, and have been raised from the dead to a new life. This did our consecration to him (made in our baptism) signify. It is therefore utterly preposterous to talk of our continuance in sin “that grace may abound,” or for any other reason.

The whole argument of the apostle rests, not on the mode of the outward ordinance, but upon the meaning of it as the beginning of an entirely new life.

“Buried into death” (or “buried to death” ) is a peculiar form of expression which seems to be equivalent to our saying, “dead and buried”; that is, dead beyond any question.

As the discourse in Colossians is of substantially the same sort as in Romans, it is not necessary to repeat it. You will find it in the second chapter; but you will notice one slight difference in the form of words. Whereas in Romans it is “dead and buried,” in Colossians it is simply “buried”; the burial implying the death. Just as often with us — we inquire after some old acquaintance, from whom we have heard no news of late, and the answer is: “He was buried three months ago.” That tells the whole story as completely as the fuller form.

I call your attention in this connection to two other points: —

(1) That all argument for immersion, drawn from the word “buried,” depends upon the conception of a literal burial in the waters of baptism. But when we bear in mind that the death spoken of in both of these passages is not literal death, but figurative; that the crucifixion spoken of is not literal, but figurative; that the resurrection in like manner is not literal, but figurative, — is it not a plain violation of every law of language to understand the burial alone as literal?

(2) To what seems to me to be a manifest belittling of the apostle’s argument by the interpretation which the Baptist theory gives to it. I know full well that our Baptist brethren would not willingly lower the dignity of anything which the apostle says, but I cannot help the feeling that an appeal to the acknowledged import of baptism as an act of entire consecration of soul, body, and spirit to the crucified yet ever-living Christ would be far more impressive than any reference to a mere external form. The latter would seem to me to be trivial as compared with the grandeur and majesty of the former. Am I not right? It was the meaning of their baptism and not the mode of it which the great apostle would burn into the souls of these Christians at Rome and at Colossæ.

You have requested in one of your letters that I should make it a little plainer, if possible, that the word en, which our Baptist brethren lay* so much stress on as showing that immersion was implied by it, does not prove that fact. I may as well do that just now, at the close of this letter.

Of course I do not deny that en is more frequently translated “in” than by any other word. But as it is translated “by” about a hundred and twenty times, and “with” almost exactly the same number of times, what is very plain is that no great stress can be laid upon it. It is also translated “through” more than forty times. I may give you a few examples to indicate the appropriateness of these translations. I scatter them along from Matthew to Revelation.

Matt. 5: 34-36: “Swear not at all, neither by heaven, nor by the earth, neither by thy head.”

Matt. 12:27, 28: “If I, by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast them out? But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God,” etc.

Luke 22:49: “Shall we smite with the sword?”

1 Cor. 16:20: “Salute one another with a holy kiss”; also, 2 Cor. 13:12.

Eph. 5:18: “Be filled with the Spirit.”

1 Thess. 4: 16: “The Lord shall descend with a shout, with the voice of the archangel; and with the trump of God.”

Rev. 6:8: “Power was given unto him to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death.”

Rev. 12:5: “And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron.”

It is obvious that no judicious translator would think of using “in” to convey the idea in any of these cases to an English reader. All the dictionaries accordingly recognize the fact that this preposition is used to express the instrument or means by, with, or through which an action is wrought. The Englishman’s Greek Concordance, of which I have spoken before, will give you no less than two hundred and eighty examples of the same sort as above in the New Testament.