Baptism, Christian

For a Catholic perspective on the dogma of Christ s sacrifice Daly, Ortons of the Christian Doctrine of Sacrifice (1978), 53 IT. Also, for the history of the sacraments of sacrifice and baptism in pagan and Christian rites, specifically the mass and baptism, see E. O. James, Sacrfice and Sacrament (London Thames and Hudson, 1962), 13-27, 104-25, 213-59. 

SCAIOLAE — are Spiritual Powers of the Mind, its properties and virtues, which are fourfold, according to the number of the elements, and the four wheels of fire which were part of the Chariot in which Elias was taken up to Heaven. They emanate from the soul in man. Fancy, imagination, speculative faculty, etc., are included under the term. It also embraces, in a special sense, the Articles of our Christian Faith in Jesus Christ, Baptism, partaking of the Eucharist, Charity towards our neighbour, manifesting the perfect Fruits of Faith, whereby we attain not merely prolonged but eternal life. 

The ceremony started at about 10 30 when Maria and her daughter took their positions before a small table that served as their altar. On this table, Wasson reported, were two holy pictures —one depicting Jesus as a child, the other his baptism in the Jordan River. This confirmed, if further proof were needed, that the Mazatecs viewed their ritual as linked in some basic way with Christianity. Furthermore, Wasson noted The Senora had asked us to take care not to invade the corner of the room on the left of the altar table, for down that corner would descend the Holy Ghost (Wasson and Wasson 1957). 

THREE BAPTISMS Rel, Siglls derived frcaa early Christian sources and recorded by TESTA 1962, as follows ... 

The emperor assisted the orphans in the second group by placing them in monastic schools. These children had no relatives in Constantinople, but they had received baptism and knew enough about the Christian faith that they could enter the capital s monasteries as students and potential members of these ascetic communities. 

According to Saint Cyril, Alexios expected the staff at the Orphan-otropheion to teach children such as those the emperor had brought with him from Asia Minor the doctrines of Christianity in preparation for baptism. Some of these children had come from Christian families, but because of the Turkish invasions they had never been given any rehgious instruction and prestrmably had not received baptism. Other children Alexios had taken from barbarian peoples. Cyril mentioned that the emperor had captured or ransomed children, especially from among the Scythians, that is, the Pechenegs and the Turks. ... 

With respect to the third question, concerning monasteries, here too Western sources indicate that monks of the Latin world took in orphans just as they did in the Greek Christian tradition. Saint Augustine referred to consecrated virgins in fourth-century North Africa who collected exposed infants and brought them to the church for baptism. Apparently these nuns near Hippo were practicing a disci-... 

Despite their authors best intentions, these passages only serve to underscore the fact that both Pauline Christianity and its opponents offered their adherents the same thing freedom from astral fatahsm. Paul s opponents chose as their path certain ascetic practices (hardly foreign to Pauhne Christianity) and propitiation of angehc beings in order not to remain, to borrow Beare s words, puppets of necessity. Pauline Christianity, on the other hand, presented Christ as the only tme savior from a life of spiritual bondage, and baptism as the only tme medium of salvation. 

Jewish Two Ways teachings these hsts are commonplace within Jewish and earfy Christian writings. They likely also formed an important part of baptismal catechesis. Incapable of combating the laws which govern the flesh, trapped into enslavement—this is the relentlessly nihilistic picture of the human condition which Paul presents to his listeners. Oh wretched man that I am, he cries, who will dehver me from this body of death (Rom 7 25). ... 

The secondary scholarship on this subject is voluminous. For scholarship on early Christian baptism, see Edward P. Myers, A Study of Baptism in the First Three Centuries (PhJ). Dissertation, Drew University, 1985) A. Benoit, Le bapteme chretien au second siecle (Paris Presses Unlversitalres de France, 1953) G.R. Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament (New York St. Martin s Press, 1962) G. Bomkamm, Early Christian Experience (New York Harper Row, 1969) O. CuIImatm, Baptism in the New Testament, trans. J.K.S. Reid (London S.C.M. Press, 1953). On Pauline baptism, see E. Fascher, Zur Taufe des Paulus, TLZ 80 (1955) 643-648 E. Klaar, Zum paulinisdien Taufverstandnis, ZNW 49 (1958) 278-282 ... 

Baptism, in the form of mystical participation in Jesus s death, releases the individual from the compulsion of the law. In Rom 7 6, then, Paul avers, but now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held [xax ix6p 0a] by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit [7TV 0pa] and not in the oldness of the letter [ypappa]. Similarly in Gal 2 19 Paul states he has died to the law in order that I might hve to God. He exhorts, If you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law (Gal 5 18). The Christian has been released from slavery to the law, and from the "body of death. ... 

Despite Christ s enthronement over the heavenly rulers, however, the author of Ephesians maintained that these beings still exerted an influence over people on earth. Dissolute behavior proved that people hve dominated by the aeon of this age. The archon of the authority of the air continued to rule the sons of disobedience, forcing them to act in the lusts of their flesh (2 3). After baptism, however, humans were no longer children of wrath by nature (2 3). God made Christians ahve with Christ, that is to say, he transmuted their beings into part of the body of Christ, or into the pleroma. 

It is perhaps significant that this shift in perception and concomitant devaluation of the cosmos came not at the moment of Justin s conversion to Christianity, but at the moment of baptism. In a sense, this distinction obviates A.D. Nock s early work (1933) on conversion and comparisons with Lucius s conversion to the Isiac mysteries in Book XI of Apuleius s MetamorpAoses.Justin sratherintellectualconversionandsubsequent changeofperception at baptism mirrors that of Tatian Ad Graec. 29.1). 

For a modern theological commentary on the context of this passage, see Cullen Story, Justin s Apology I 62-64 Its Importance for the Author s Treatment of Christian Baptism, FC16 (1962) 72-78. 

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