X Baptism And The Lord'S Supper

X Baptism And The Lord'S Supper

X

BAPTISM AND THE LORD'S SUPPER

SECTION 64. DIFFERENT DEFINITIONS OF BAPTISM

In the preceding chapters we have been struck time and again by the great significance Paul ascribes to baptism (as well as, though less frequently, to the Lord's Supper) as medium in the appropriation of the salvation given to the church in Christ. This proved to be the case particularly in the chapter¹ on the new life as dying and rising with Christ and as life through the Spirit. Baptism came into the discussion repeatedly as the way in which and as the means by which the church participates in the redemptive event that took place once for all in Christ and receives a share in the gift of the Spirit. The same can be said of what became apparent in the preceding chapter concerning the significance of the body of Christ. It holds for that body, too, that incorporation into it and participation in the pneumatic communion with Christ come about by baptism,² just as this communion with Christ and the church's being one body together are renewed and confirmed by the Lord's Supper.³

This is the place to go somewhat more deeply and more deliberately into the significance of baptism and the Lord's Supper as means of salvation. In so doing we can make use of what has already been discovered and shall try to avoid repetitions as much as possible. Nevertheless, we cannot confine ourselves to what has already been dealt with because the significance of baptism and the Lord's Supper came out there only in an indirect and incomplete way. This is particularly the case with baptism because in the epistles of Paul it is ascribed a more varied meaning than has been apparent in the foregoing chapters. Moreover, in addition to the passages where Paul explicitly mentions baptism there are others where this is not the case, but where even so one has good reason to inquire whether he does not implicitly intend baptism. The situation is somewhat simpler with respect to the Lord's Supper because the passages that may be cited for it are pretty much restricted to the two well-known pericopes of 1 Corinthians 10 and 11. Methodologically, therefore, a discussion of the Supper offers much less difficulty. For that reason we shall first attempt to form a summary picture of the pronouncements that bear on baptism, in order thereafter on the basis of a further analysis of 1 Corinthians 10 and 11 to treat separately the significance of the Lord's Supper.

In considering Paul's statements on baptism we shall have to realize that the apostle nowhere gives a detailed "treatment" of the meaning of baptism, but rather repeatedly presupposes an understanding of it.⁴ His pronouncements on baptism, therefore, frequently bear the character of an appeal to what the church knows, or ought to know, respecting it and a further explanation of what is to follow from baptism for the consciousness of its faith and conduct. Nevertheless, in these references to baptism a very important doctrinal element is also implied, and therefore the attempt has been made to arrive at a "Pauline" doctrine of baptism.⁵

When one examines the statements relating to it more closely, it becomes apparent that Paul denotes the redemptive significance of baptism in various ways, whereby, as we may suppose,⁶ he now makes use of more traditional formulations and then again employs descriptions that are to be interpreted out of the fundamental structures characteristic of his preaching.

(a) To the more traditional definitions undoubtedly belongs, in the first place, the typification of baptism as a cleansing bath. One finds this most clearly in 1 Corinthians 6:11 and Ephesians 5:26.

. . . but you allowed yourselves to be washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God (1 Cor. 6:11)

. . . . having cleansed it [the church] by the bath of water with the word (Eph. 5:26)

That the expressions "to wash" and "bath of water" refer to baptism cannot be doubted. In both we find baptism, in harmony with the whole of the early Christian proclamation,⁷ characterized as the symbol of and means of salvation for the washing away of and cleansing from sin, which is described in 1 Corinthians 6:11 both in the ethical and in the forensic sense. That the washing with water is attended with "the word" that comes from God to the one baptized is expressly added in Ephesians 5:26 and pertains to the bases of Christian baptism. We shall have to return in what follows to the relationship of the two as well as that of baptism and faith. It may simply be assumed in the meantime that faith is presupposed in all this even on the ground of the middle voice: "you allowed yourselves to be washed," as well as of the indissoluble link between faith and justification.⁸ The allusion in 1 Corinthians 6:11 to the baptismal formula is furthermore to be pointed out — "in the name of" (however difficult this may be to interpret⁹) — as well as the connection between baptism and the Holy Spirit (see below); and in Ephesians 5:26 the clear indication that Christ is the author of the cleansing that takes place in baptism and that baptism functions as the instrument.

In addition, baptism is mentioned as "bath of water" in Titus 3:5: "He [God] saved us, through the bath of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit."

In this pronouncement baptism is once again qualified as a cleansing bath; but then as a cleansing that, as is evident from the immediately preceding words, is to be understood in the context of the saving, eschatological activity of God ("the appearing" of his mercy, etc.) and which represents the total renewal of the life of man resulting from it. In that sense here again the mention of the Holy Spirit¹⁰ is to be understood: the washing with water of baptism represents the new birth¹¹ as the transition from the old mode of existence dominated and qualified by sin to that which derives its character from the Spirit as the eschatological gift of salvation.

(b) All this now leads us naturally, in the second place, to those pronouncements in which baptism is simply qualified as the baptism of the Spirit. Here again Paul concurs with the early Christian view of baptism (cf. Mark 1:8; Acts 2:38; John 3:5, et al.). In Paul's epistles this baptismal motif is directly mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:13, where a baptism in or with (not by¹²) the Holy Spirit is spoken of. As has already been observed, in the whole framework of Pauline (and early Christian) proclamation one must ascribe an eschatological significance to this bestowal of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of the promise (Eph. 1:13) is "poured out" by God in accordance with this promise concerning the last days (Joel 2:28; Acts 2:4, 17; Rom. 5:5; Tit. 3:6), and he therefore may be understood as "firstfruits" and as "earnest," namely, of the future inheritance (cf. Eph. 1:14; Tit. 3:6, 7; 2 Cor. 1:22; Rom. 8:16, 23). The connection between baptism and the Spirit thus does not consist specifically in an incidental outpouring of unusual gifts of the Spirit, but in the transition of the baptized to the new life that has been brought to light by Christ, in which not only are the guilt and uncleanness of sin washed away, but in which, positively, the new government of the Holy Spirit also prevails. Baptism is, likewise according to Paul, not only a preparatory sacrament — as for John the Baptist — but a sacrament of fulfillment as well. This becomes evident particularly through the relationship between baptism and the Holy Spirit.

The question still remains — a question to which various answers have been given — as to whether Paul alludes to baptism in the passages in which he speaks of sealing with the Holy Spirit:

Now he that establishes us with you in Christ ["in the Anointed"], and anointed us, is God; who also put his seal upon us, and gave us the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts (2 Cor. 1:21, 22).

In whom [Christ] you also, having heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom, having also believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is an earnest of our inheritance (Eph. 1:13, 14).

And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed unto the day of redemption (Eph. 4:30).

For many commentators it is definitely established that with this sealing by the Holy Spirit Paul intends baptism, just as very early in the Christian church (in conjunction with circumcision; Rom. 4:11?) this was explicitly qualified as a seal (cf. 2 Clem. 7, 6; 8, 6; Herm. Sim,VIII, 6, 13; IX, 16, 3ff.; 17, 4). They further couple this with the idea that is said to underlie the baptismal formula: "baptizing in(to) the name of . . . ," namely, that the one baptized is "stamped" by baptism as the property of Christ and placed under his protection. This sealing with the name (as sign of ownership and protection) would then coincide with the gift of the Spirit conferred in baptism.¹³ And baptism would be understood by the qualification "sealing" as an eschatological act in which the baptized passes over to the ownership of him in whose name the baptismal act takes place. Through the giving of the Spirit as the earnest the judicial action understood in this way would be completed.¹⁴ According to some, the expression "who anointed us" also has reference to baptism, whether what is intended by it is the anointing with the Holy Spirit, or an anointing that follows the baptismal act, as that is known to us from the ancient church.¹⁵ Others, however, are much more reserved in their judgment and consider it at the very least uncertain that "sealing" and "anointing" directly allude to baptism.¹⁶

To our mind one will with "anointing" have to think directly of the gift of the Holy Spirit (cf. Luke 4:18; Acts 10:38; 1 John 2:20, 27). And, as appears from Ephesians 1:13; 4:30, the same thing applies to "sealing." What is characterized here is not baptism in the first place, but the gift of the Spirit. The point of departure for the term "sealing" does not lie therefore in sacramental appropriation or "stamping" in behalf of Christ (because the one baptized is transferred to his name), but in the evidence that the gift of the Spirit itself produces in him who receives it. The latter is thereby furnished with the seal that he belongs to God, just as the gift of the Spirit may be accounted the firstfruits and earnest of the inheritance.

All this does not alter the fact that, given the connection between the Spirit and baptism, what applies to the Spirit can easily be transferred to baptism and that these Pauline statements on sealing by the Spirit can lie at the root of the later "technical" denotation of baptism as a "seal."¹⁷ That these pronouncements themselves already betray such a denotation of baptism is, in our opinion, incapable of being substantiated. In any case, the term seal or sealing in Paul does not yet have the general significance that the later ecclesiastical and confessional usage attributed to baptism by it; for him it denotes especially the sealing power of the Spirit, whether or not understood within the framework of baptism.

(c) The descriptions of baptism most characteristic for Paul are not those, however, which have reference to cleansing from sin and the gift of the Spirit, but those which denote baptism as the entrance of the order of life represented by Christ and at the same time as the incorporation into his body. It is this conception of baptism which we have met time and again in the preceding chapters and which now calls for further discussion.

It is not only a matter here of the statements that speak of being "baptized into Christ's death," or of being "buried with him by baptism into death" (Rom. 6:3, 4; cf. Col. 2:11, 12). These expressions are rather to be viewed as a very characteristic, but special, application of a more general idea, i.e., that baptism binds one to Christ and the order of life represented by him. It is this union with Christ by baptism that Paul intends when in Galatians 3:27 he describes baptism as "putting on Christ": "For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek," etc. Closely related to this is the pronouncement in Colossians 3:9-11: ". . . seeing that you have put off the old man with his doings, and have put on the new man . . . , wherein there is not Greek and Jew," etc.

Here again there is undoubtedly an allusion to baptism. We have already been able to determine that with this old and new ma one is not to think in the first place of the conversion of individual believers, but of the common mode of existence of "the many" in Adam and in Christ respectively.¹⁸ This "new man" is put on by baptism, and that can now be called "putting on" or "drawing on" Christ. Although the derivation of this expression and the idea of "putting on" to be judged by it are uncertain,¹⁹ the essential meaning of these pronouncements is not open to question: baptism makes one participate in Christ as him who, as the one seed of Abraham and as the "second man," represents and contains within himself those belonging to him. In that same sense one can speak of being "baptized into his body."²⁰

From this perspective the much discussed descriptions of baptism in Romans 6 and Colossians 2 may also be understood:

Or do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ were baptized into his death? (Rom. 6:3).

We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death (Rom. 6:4)

. . . . in whom [i.e., Christ] you were also circumcised . . . having been buried with him in baptism, wherein²¹ you were also raised with him through faith (Col. 2:11, 12).

What interests us now in these pronouncements, which we have discussed earlier in another context,²² is the peculiar connection Paul makes between baptism on the one hand, and dying, being buried and raised with Christ on the other, so that baptism can be qualified as a baptism into Christ's death, etc. That we should have to ascertain here the influence of the mystery religions²³ in which the initiates were brought into a specific relationship with the cultic deity who dies and comes to life again is, despite the lingering effects of this conception in some of the literature,²⁴ increasingly viewed as an undemonstrable and improbable thesis.²⁵ For regardless of what is to be said against this so-called analogy itself, not a single piece of evidence can be adduced that in these heathen cultic acts such a co-dying and rising took place as would be comparable to Christian baptism. One must assume, then, that Paul himself (or the gentile Christian church, with which he supposedly associated himself) attached this significance to baptism, although it did not occur in the mystery religions. But that does not explain precisely what it was intended to explain, namely, how Paul arrived at this special conception of baptism.²⁶

Entirely distinct from this is the symbolical interpretation given in many commentaries²⁷ of this connection between baptism on the one hand and the dying, being buried, and rising on the other.²⁸ This symbolism is said to lie in the going down of the one baptized into, and the emerging again out of, the water of baptism, which pictures dying on the one hand and resurrection on the other. But this whole symbolism — as we have already attempted to demonstrate at some length elsewhere²⁹ — appears to us to be a fiction. In Paul's statements themselves it has no support whatever.³⁰ So far as the water of baptism is concerned, its symbolical significance, as appears from the whole of the New Testament, is that it purifies, not that one can sink down into it and drown,³¹ to say nothing of being buried in the water. There is likewise no basis for the notion that the posture of the one baptized would suggest such a symbolism. Were one able still to think of a dying at the moment of immersion ("the waters" closing over the head, etc.), the single time that Paul speaks of "being baptized into his death" cannot really offer sufficient evidence for this conception. To see this moment of immersion especially as a symbol of burial, however,³² seems to us entirely absurd. For not only is one not buried in water, but it is also difficult to symbolize burial by immersing oneself for an instant under water. And so far as resurrection is concerned, if the only place where "being raised with him in baptism" is mentioned (Col. 2:12) were intended to denote coming up out of the water as a symbol of the resurrection, surely the preposition "out of" (ek) and not "in" (en) would have been used (as with dying and being buried with him in baptism). The more one goes into the matter, the more he is compelled to the conclusion that the symbolic connection thus made between baptism and the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, however frequently advanced, finds no support whatever either in the texts³³ or in the thing itself.

We can all be the more decided in our rejection of this symbolic view because there is no necessity whatever to explain in this way the relationship between baptism on the one side and the death, etc., of Christ on the other. Moreover, it contains within it the danger of diverting attention from the specific significance Paul here ascribes to baptism. For when he speaks of "being baptized into Christ" and describes this further as "being baptized into his death," the fact that baptism unites the one baptized with Christ as the second Adam is also at stake here, as may appear from the immediately preceding Adam-Christ pericope; thus that those who are baptized into him may now know that they are included in Christ's death, burial, and resurrection, and that they ought no longer to live in sin, as precisely that to which they have died in him. It is with this last application that Paul is concerned in the context of Romans 6 (cf. vv. 1, 2). The function of baptism therefore consists in this, that it incorporates or implants the one baptized into this corporate ("bodily") unity between Christ and his own (Rom. 6:5). For this reason the expression "to be baptized into Christ" in Romans 6:3 and Galatians 3:27 cannot simply be interpreted as an abbreviation of the formula, to be "baptized in the name of Christ," as is often assumed.³⁴ Rather, this compressed expression has a more pregnant significance, in that it is the denotation of the union of the one baptized with Christ in this corporate sense and thus with his death, burial, and resurrection. It is this meaning of baptism as incorporation into Christ which is denoted in verse 5 by the characteristic expression: "are implanted" (symphytoi gegonamen). Believers are implanted or incorporated by baptism into what has taken place with Christ, what is applicable therefore sui generis³⁵ to their own existence.

This last point can enable us at the same time to see that this baptism into the death of Christ, as also burial and resurrection with him in baptism, has for Paul a very comprehensive significance. The death, burial, and resurrection of which there is mention here are undoubtedly the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ; to be buried with him in baptism consequently means to participate by baptism in that death and in that grave. To be buried with him in baptism is to say that by baptism we are laid in Christ's grave, not that baptism would be the grave in which we, just as Christ once died, now die as well. This latter conception,³⁶ which looks on baptism therefore as spiritual death to and spiritual resurrection from sin, on the analogy and ground of Christ's death and resurrection, is to be firmly rejected. Baptism is not a grave and resurrection — there again the danger of the symbolical interpretation — but baptism incorporates us into, makes us participate in, Christ's death on Golgotha and resurrection in the garden. This does not alter the fact, however, that participation in that one death and that one grave has not only a once-for-all, einmalig, redemptive-historical, but also an actual significance, namely, that in this death of Christ the power of sin has been broken for those who belong to him, so that those who have once died to sin in him cannot and may not live any longer in it (Rom. 6:1, 2). And all this is appropriated to them by baptism into his death.

The same thing is meant, too, by putting off the old and putting on the new man in baptism. For the old man, too, has once been crucified with Christ (Rom. 6:6), and the laying aside of the old man in baptism signifies above all, therefore, participation in that unique event. At the same time it is not restricted to that, but this putting off in baptism also signifies an actual departure from this old mode of existence, a departure that goes on after baptism in the continuing "mortification of the members that are upon the earth" (Col. 3:5; cf. Gal. 5:24). And the same applies to putting on the new man. It can be linked with baptism (cf. Col. 3:10) because in baptism believers are raised together with Christ in the unique, redemptive-historical sense of the word (Col. 2:12). But this putting on is also a choice, an act, which is further carried on and realized throughout the whole life of the believer (cf. Eph. 4:24; Rom. 13:14). It is consequently to that continuing, actual condition of being dead to sin and alive to God that the whole admonition based on baptism in Romans 6:1-11 is directed (cf. v. 11). That is the comprehensive meaning of having been "baptized into the death of Christ." Baptism does not thereby become a parable of Christ's death and resurrection in the life of believers, a symbol of conversion. Baptism connects the believer with Christ's death and resurrection, and "to be crucified and raised with Christ in baptism" does not denote conversion. But the one is not without the other, for to have been baptized into Christ and to have been introduced into his body by baptism is also to have been baptized into his Spirit, and does not mean only to have died to sin, but also to live and serve in the new state of the Spirit (Rom. 6:12ff.; 7:4).

The whole of this conception of baptism lies at the root of the pronouncement of Colossians 2:11. Paul is engaged here in a polemic against those who wish to induce the congregation to submit to circumcision. This has become superfluous, however, for in believers the spiritual circumcision ("made without hands"), the circumcision of Christ, has been carried into effect.³⁷ For they participate by baptism³⁸ in the burial of Christ, and through it they have escaped the claim and power of sin. Here again, therefore, the connection between baptism and the burial of Christ: not as if baptism were a symbol of burial, nor either as if there were a specific relationship between baptism and the burial of Christ, but because both in Romans 6 and Colossians 2 the apostle wishes to bring home to his readers that they are no longer subject to the power of sin. In the burial of Christ "the body of the flesh, " the old man, has been laid aside once and for all. To be baptized means also to participate in an actual sense in what once took place in Christ.

This whole significance of baptism intended under sub-section c, which admits of the briefest possible formulation in the words "to be baptized into Christ" (Rom. 6:3; Gal. 3:27), is finally given a very illuminating explanation in the remarkable analogy of baptism that Paul introduces in 1 Corinthians 10:2 in another context. For there he compares the New Testament church with ancient Israel — as he does so often — and says of the latter that "our fathers were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea."³⁹ This, too, has nothing to do with symbolism, as though cloud and sea were in one way or another to denote a bath of water. For the cloud was a shining cloud, and Israel went through the sea on dry ground. Cloud and sea represent rather the redemptive event by which Israel escaped the tyranny of Pharaoh and the life of slavery in Egypt. And in this redemptive event the fathers all shared because they "were baptized into Moses." There is here no question of a real baptism. The expression is fashioned on the analogy and as a type of Christian baptism (Moses is Christ; cf. v. 4: "that rock was Christ"), and denotes again the many as being brought under the one and the many as being saved in and through the one. For just as God has baptized and incorporated the church in Christ, so Israel's salvation lay in the fact that it had received Moses as leader and head and was contained in Moses. That for this, in the instance of Moses, too, Paul employs the expression "were baptized into" (although there was no question of an actual baptism) demonstrates to what an extent the idea of incorporation forms the dominating element of the expression "to be baptized into Christ (Moses)." As, however, to have been baptized into Christ means for the church baptism into Christ's death and resurrection as well, so also the fathers were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, that is to say, they all participated in the discriminating and saving operation of the cloud and the sea that God accomplished for them by the ministry of Moses. The analogy is certainly very striking therefore, although the idea that underlies it in the context of 1 Corinthians 10ff. is developed in a somewhat different way from Romans 6 (cf. 1 Cor. 10:3 with 1 Cor. 12:13!). It is difficult to find a clearer and more authentic explanation for what Paul means when, as in those pronouncements already discussed under "c," he wishes baptism to be understood as becoming incorporated into Christ and the divine redemptive event represented by him.

SECTION 65. BAPTISMAS MEANS OF SALVATION

The question remains as to what is meant when baptism is defined in various ways as the means by which, or as the way in which, salvation is appropriated to the one baptized, regardless now of whether this salvation is defined as cleansing from sin, communication of the Holy Spirit, or incorporation into Christ or into his body. With all these additional qualifications of baptism the same question is at issue, namely, that of baptism as means of salvation; or in other words: what happens in or by baptism?

This question can be put still more sharply when one attempts to delimit it further on two sides. In the first place, the relationship must be established between what happens to the one baptized in or by baptism and what has already preceded it. For we have previously been able to ascertain repeatedly that, in addition to sacramental incorporation into Christ, there is already a predestinarian (cf. Eph. 1:4), and above all a redemptive-historical relationship between Christ and his people. The question is, therefore, how the sacramental aspect relates itself (in particular) to the redemptive-historical aspect of the participation of the church in Christ (I).

In the second place, in determining the appropriating character of baptism the significance of faith must be discussed. For while baptism is ascribed the significance of mediating salvation, the same can be said of faith. This compels us to further reflection on the relationship of the operation of baptism and that of the believing acceptance of the gospel (II).

(I) As far as the first point is concerned, it should be observed that in the epistles of Paul that have come down to us this relationship of having been included in Christ in the redemptive-historical and predestinarian sense and sacramental incorporation into (the body of) Christ and thus into his death and resurrection, is not expressly treated or explained. We are left to conclusions, therefore, which we must draw ourselves, with all the difficulties and dangers of such a procedure. We shall have to be on our guard in so doing against all sorts of constructions that originate in specific a priori dogmatic or philosophical conceptions of baptism (and the Lord's Supper), but which have no support whatever in the epistles of Paul. This is particularly the case with all kinds of speculations on the connection between the baptism of believers and the death of Christ that take Romans 6 as their point of departure. In the more recent Roman Catholic theology the so-called mystery theology has especially occupied itself with this connection. Its representatives speak thereby, in the footsteps of O. Casel, of Christ's death being made present time in the sacrament, in which event the one baptized is then said to be taken up and involved in mysterio. Moreover, while Casel thought primarily of a connection with the Hellenistic mystery cults, the present conception is that such a representation (Vergegenwärtigung) of the divine creative or redemptive activity in the cultus extends much further than the Hellenistic cultus, indeed, that it is a primitive phenomenon in the religious life of man and, in particular, formed the center of Old Testament worship as well,⁴⁰ Such a making-present of the unique redemptive event of Christ's death is now said to have been intended by Paul in Romans 6. One is not to think here of a new redemptive act of God or Christ in the sense of a repetition, but in baptism we have to do with the sacramental form under which the historical crucifixion of Christ appears present or becomes accessible to us, so that we "can co-accomplish this death, even die it."⁴¹ Although there is no intention of detracting from the once-for-all and definitive nature of Christ's death on the cross,⁴² yet the idea is evidently this, that the event of Christ's death (and not merely its redemptive significance) in one way or another extends to baptism, so that one can as yet die and be buried in it with Christ himself. And this sacramental "form" of the once-for-all death of Christ is then said to be denoted in Romans 6:5 by homoiōma.

But the fundamental error of this view is that baptism is not the moment or the place⁴³ of dying together, etc., with Christ. If this were so, Christ would continue to die, if not anew, yet in mysterio, for in the event that the dying, etc., of believers together with Christ takes place in baptism and does not have thereby, as Warnach (rightly) maintains, a metaphorical or pneumatic significance, Christ in consequence must die or continue to die in one way or another (sacramentally or in a mysterylike fashion) in baptism.⁴⁴ And it is out of the question that Paul would have intended this or "have pointed in that direction."⁴⁵ In baptism the death of Christ as an event is not made to be renewed in the present and represented as a death in which believers are to "die" with him, but believers are so involved in what took place once and for all that it can be said of his death that it is their death as well. To put it in more concise terms: the death of Christ is not prolonged in baptism and brought to believers, but believers are in baptism brought to Christ's death, that is to say, made to share in what has occurred once for all.

Another conception, in a certain sense opposite to the preceding one, is to be encountered in some Protestant exegetes and is described as the hypothesis of "contemporaneity."⁴⁶ According to this view the historical redemptive death of Christ is not (as with Casel, Warnach, and others) located in the present in baptism, but, conversely, the one baptized is made "contemporaneous" with Christ, so that the whole existence of the Christian is taken up into this redemptive event. The believer becomes "contemporaneous" with the cross and resurrection of Christ in the sense that he has a real share in this unique event with the elimination of all that separates him from this event spatially and temporally.

Although this conception certainly does greater justice to Paul's intent, insofar, that is, as it concentrates thinking entirely on the moment of Christ's death (on Golgotha) and resurrection, yet one can scarcely say that baptism fulfills the function of removing the temporal distance between Christ's death and the believer. One is obviously at work here with ideas that have been drawn from another theology than that of Paul.⁴⁷ The specific character of baptism into Christ's death is not that time falls away, or that the one baptized is made contemporaneous with Christ in his death, but that by baptism the believer becomes a sharer in what has taken place with Christ. Baptism does not make us die anew with Christ, but rather rests on the fact that he has died for us and we with him, because he is the second man, the last Adam, who when he died and rose substitutionally and representatively comprehended and united the many in himself. It is incorporation into this solidaric relationship, the "body" of the last Adam, which takes place in baptism and by which it becomes a baptism into his death.

We must conclude, therefore, that to have died and been buried with Christ neither comes about in baptism in the sense of the mystery theology, nor becomes an actual occurrence in baptism in the sense of the doctrine of contemporaneity, but that dying with Christ has been given with incorporation into Christ, and is thus appropriated to the one baptized as a given reality by baptism as the rite of incorporation. That is to say, therefore, that to have died once with Christ on the cross and to be baptized into his death do not coincide, but form two points of view. Both do have reference to the same matter, that is, to participation in the unique redemptive event. But even so one cannot allow them to coincide, either by bringing the death of Christ to baptism in the manner of the mystery theology, or by making baptism contemporaneous with that death. There are clearly two foci here, and not one. According to the first, believers are regarded as "the many," who were already included in the death and resurrection of the one; according to the second, by baptism they become incorporated into this solidaric relationship with the one and thus into his death and resurrection. It is not easy to define the relationship between these two viewpoints in the right way. Undoubtedly baptism has the important noetic significance of a personal confirmation and assurance of what once took place in a corporate sense in Christ. Paul again and again appeals to baptism as the evidence and cognitive ground of the church's share in Christ. Because believers have been baptized they know, or at least they must and may know, that they have once died, been buried, and raised with Christ (Rom. 6:3;⁴⁸ Col. 2:12⁴⁹). In that sense the later characterization of baptism as the seal of belonging to Christ — a qualification Paul uses for circumcision (Rom. 4:11) — is certainly not out of place.

On the other hand, the meaning of baptism is certainly not to be expressed exclusively in noetic categories. Baptism is also the means by which communion with the death and burial of Christ comes into being (dia tou baptismatos; Rom. 6:4), the place where this union is effected (en tō baptismati; Col. 2:12), the means by which Christ cleanses his church (katharisas tō loutrō; Eph. 5:26), and God has saved it (esōsen hēmas dia loutrou; Tit. 3:5), so that baptism itself can be called the washing of regeneration and of the renewing by the Holy Spirit (Tit. 3:5). All these formulations speak clearly of the significance of baptism in mediating redemption; they speak of what happens in and by baptism and not merely of what happened before baptism and of which baptism would only be the confirmation. On the other hand, it is plain from all his preaching that baptism, as means of salvation, does not have an exclusive significance. Thus what is here attributed to baptism can elsewhere be ascribed to faith (see below). And thus what is here represented as appropriated to believers by baptism can elsewhere be ascribed to them already in Christ's death as the proof of God's love and as the reconciliation with God accomplished in him (Rom. 5:8, 10). We can draw no other conclusion than that baptism accomplishes in its own way what already obtained in another way, and thus occupies its own place in the whole of the divine communication of redemption.

What that mode and that place are can only be viewed in the proper light when one does full justice to the various aspects of the divine appropriation of salvation. It is just as incorrect to say that the comprehension of the church in Christ takes place only by baptism, as it is that baptism merely symbolizes or confirms a posteriori what is already an accomplished fact. Nor can one say that in baptism there is a realization of the possibility that was already present in Christ's death and resurrection, or that baptism is to be termed the actualization of a more potential inclusion in Christ as the second Adam.⁵⁰ All such schemes detract from that which has already gained validity in Christ's death and resurrection, not merely as a possibility, but as an accomplished reality in Christ and on this account for the many comprehended in him. On the other side it is apparent — and here we approach the "Sitz im Leben" of baptism — that what in God's election and in the redemptive event in Christ has in a corporate sense already come to be reality is not effected apart from the preaching of the gospel and the individual choice of faith corresponding to it. It is in the framework of this individualizing application of what once happened in Christ that baptism has a place as the divine promise and appropriation of salvation, and as the believer allowing himself to be invested with it; but even so, always in such a way that this appropriation is the incorporation and entry into a solidaric relationship that is not first constituted by baptism, but is grounded in the antecedent good pleasure of God and forms the secret of the all-encompassing significance of Christ's death and resurrection.

(II) This understanding of baptism within the framework of the proclamation of the gospel and the faith corresponding to it can also make clear the relationship between baptism and faith. How close this connection is may appear already from the fact that everything ascribed to the members of the church in virtue of their baptism is represented no less clearly as the fruit of faith. That applies not only to the epistles of Paul, but to the whole of the New Testament.⁵¹ So far as Paul is concerned, he speaks, for example, in Galatians 2:19ff.; 6:14, of having died together with Christ, etc., without any allusion to baptism, and in Colossians 2:12 it is expressly said that being raised together with Christ in baptism takes place "by means of faith." In Titus 3:5 baptism is the means by which God has saved us; in Ephesians 2:8 it is faith; and the same applies to the relationship between baptism and the Spirit on the one hand and that between faith and the Spirit on the other (cf. 1 Cor. 12:13 with Gal. 3:2). 1 Corinthians 6:11 says that we are justified by baptism, while nearly everywhere else in Paul justification takes place by means of or on the ground of faith. There can consequently be no suggestion that in Paul baptism can in any sense whatever be detached from faith. Nor does faith have a merely preparatory significance with regard to baptism, in the sense that only baptism would bring us into full communion with Christ;⁵² nor, conversely, can one view baptism only as a visible preaching or promise that must awaken faith in the one to be baptized or would presuppose merely a preparatory faith in him.⁵³ Baptism is the baptism of believers, and the apostle's often repeated reminder of the moment when his readers submitted themselves to baptism is at the same time an appeal to their choice of faith that attended and preceded it. In all these statements faith is the implicit presupposition of baptism, and for this reason faith can be spoken of apart from baptism and one can even ascertain in the New Testament "the relative unimportance of the action [of baptism] as such."⁵⁴

This is not to say, however, that faith gives baptism its power, nor that baptism can be reduced to an act of faith or to a baptismal experience. ⁵⁵ For however much baptism derives its character from the fact that it is administered to believers and that the baptismal act can be described in terms of believers "submitting themselves to baptism," the subject of baptism is not faith, but God. Not only do the passive pronouncements point to this, those in which believers are clearly the object of the baptismal act, but also the explicit "he [God] saved us through washing with water" (Tit. 3:5), and "he [Christ] cleansed it" (Eph. 5:26). Baptism is the means in God's hand, the place where he speaks and acts. On the other hand, this last excludes every suggestion as though baptism were anything in itself and imparted salvation ex opere operato.⁵⁶ It is God who gives baptism its power, on the faith of the one baptized. For this reason, too, the admonitory figure can be held up before the church of the fathers, who were, to be sure, all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea and all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink, but with most of whom God was nevertheless not well pleased (1 Cor. 10:1ff.). Neither does this make the operation of baptism dependent on the condition of the recipient in the sense that only faith can make baptism effectual, but it says that baptism remains dependent on divine action, that God does not make himself dependent on baptism or surrender his control over baptism, but rather reserves this to himself and maintains the correlation between faith and baptism.

If the significance of faith for baptism admits of being clearly distinguished in this way, that is to say, from the point of view that God is the person who acts in baptism, it is from the same vantage point that the peculiar, independent significance of baptism with respect to faith can be better recognized. Baptism can add nothing to the content of faith. Baptism and faith are both means to the appropriation of the content of the gospel. However, while faith according to its nature is an act of man, baptism according to its nature is an activity of God and on the part of God. That which the believer appropriates to himself on the proclamation of the gospel God promises and bestows on him in baptism. One can therefore speak of a sequential order only in part. For although baptism presupposes faith, the place of faith is not only prior to baptism, but in and after baptism as well. Baptism, however, according to its essence is once for all, because it marks the transition from the mode of existence of the old man to that of the new. Baptism is a rite of incorporation, and as such expresses the corporate communal character of the salvation given in Christ. For this reason faith is not without baptism, just as baptism is not without faith. For faith responds to the call of God through the gospel, and in baptism God takes the one thus called under his gracious rule and gives him a share in all the promises of the gospel. Therefore the pronouncements of 2 Corinthians l:20ff., even though the formal denotation of baptism is uncertain here, can still apply to baptism materially. Because baptism is incorporation into Christ, God's promises that are yes in Christ are likewise yes in baptism, God establishes us in Christ by baptism, and baptism, in that it makes us participate in the sealing with the Spirit, itself has sealing power. This establishing and sealing and earnest-giving yes of God is the word that accompanies baptism as washing with water (Eph. 5:26). It is salvation by the washing of regeneration for everyone who with his mouth confesses Jesus as Lord and in his heart believes that God has raised him from the dead (Rom. 10:9;⁵⁷ Tit. 3:5)

A separate word ought still to be devoted in this context to the question as to whether the epistles of Paul offer support for infant baptism. In this connection very extensive discussions have long been carried on, but recently anew, as to the meaning of the somewhat obscure statement in 1 Corinthians 7:14. Here the unbelieving partner in a marriage is spoken of as sanctified in or by the believing partner. The question was whether, in a marriage in which one of the two partners had become a believer, the latter was obligated to leave the other, unbelieving, party. Paul denies this on the ground of the "sanctification" of the unbelieving through the believing party. The meaning is that the continuation of such a marriage is not objectionable as something taking place outside Christ. It is not the unbelief of the one, but the faith of the other that is determinative for the acceptability of the whole. "Sanctified" here implies being taken up into the relationship of life dedicated to God. Paul now appeals for this to the position of the children: "else were your children unclean; but now are they holy." All kinds of problems arise here: by "your children" is it the children of the mixed marriage who are intended, or the children who have gone over to Christianity with their parents, or the children who were born after this conversion, or the children of believers in general? This last is usually adopted, although there are those who decide for one of the other possibilities. Can anything be inferred from "but now are they clean" with respect to baptism? It has been possible to ascertain that the concepts "unclean" and "holy" were also used for the children of proselytes born before and after the conversion of the parents to Judaism. The former were baptized as "unclean" (with the parents), the latter were not, as born in "holiness." ⁵⁸ From correspondence with this usage some⁵⁹ have wished to conclude that in the earliest Christian church, too, children were only baptized on conversion of the parents, the children born afterwards were not.

But the question then arises as to what was done in the case of these children born later. Were they no longer required to be baptized at all? This, in view of the significance Paul attaches to baptism as means of salvation, is scarcely conceivable. But if they were baptized only later, after having made a confession of faith, were these children in the time between their birth and baptism (as adults) placed at a disadvantage as compared with the children born before conversion, a position that is most implausible? Although "unclean" and "holy" thus correspond to pre-Christian usage, one will hardly be able to draw conclusions from the pre-Christian baptismal practice (of proselytes). One may not forget that the baptism of proselytes was an additional ceremony (additional to circumcision), and thus not the real or only ritual of incorporation. The question remains whether one can conclude the baptism of all children from "but now are they holy." In view of the fact that in this same context it is also said of the unbelieving partner in the marriage that he is "sanctified," the qualification "holy" appears in itself too weak a basis for this conclusion. For the unbelieving marital partner was, though "sanctified," yet not baptized. In our opinion, it will have to be ascertained that in 1 Corinthians 7:14 baptism is not in view, and that solely on the ground of the terminology employed here one cannot reach conclusions that are at all dependable with respect to infant baptism. There is indeed an indication in the "holiness" of the children in 1 Corinthians 7:14, if one links this passage with the so-called "house" texts, from which it appears that on the conversion of believing parents their "household" was also baptized, that is to say, their family. From that it can be gathered that with children (otherwise than with the unbelieving husband or wife) this "holiness" also found expression in and in part rested on baptism. Paul speaks expressly of such a "household" baptism in 1 Corinthians 1:16 (cf. 16:15). This points clearly to infant baptism, therefore, and such can scarcely have remained confined to the children who were born while still "in heathenism" (see above). In accord with this Paul in his epistles addressed children as belonging to the church and to the Lord (Eph. 6:1; Col. 3:20). That the children "are holy" thus means that they, together with and belonging to their parents, were incorporated into the church by baptism and in this way participated in the gifts of Christ and in the liberating rule of his Spirit. This does not of course mean that faith would for them be superfluous — such would presuppose a magical operation of baptism detached from God himself — but rather that the way of faith is more plainly opened for them and the obedience of faith more emphatically demanded of them. To be sure, the criterion or human "point of contact" for infant baptism, otherwise than in the case of adults, does not lie in the personal faith of the one baptized, but in the fact that the children belong to the parents and to the solidaric relationship represented by them. The "implantation" ⁶⁰ takes place here on the ground of the bond that joins children to their parents, "natural" and "Christian," according to the rule of Romans 11:16. In view of the manner in which Paul and the whole of Scripture speak of this relationship between parents and children, one can quite rightly maintain⁶¹ that the absence of an express mention of infant baptism in the New Testament is rather to be explained from its "self-evidentness" than from its not yet having come into existence. On the other hand, it is no less apparent that Paul's pronouncements on baptism presuppose faith confessed before baptism and do not start from a situation for which infant baptism is characteristic. This is not to say that they would no longer be applicable to such a situation; but that in order not to lose the correct view of the Pauline (and New Testament) doctrine of baptism one must maintain faith as a co-constituting factor of baptism.⁶²

SECTION 66. THE REDEMPTIVE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER

Paul writes of the Lord's Supper in two passages in close proximity to each other, i.e., in 1 Corinthians 10:14-22 and 1 Corinthians 11:17-34. Both pericopes have a paraenetic significance and warn against abuses in Corinth. In 1 Corinthians 10 the Supper is introduced in connection with the freedom some permitted themselves of continuing to take part in heathen sacrificial meals. Paul declares this to be irreconcilable with the Lord's Supper and in so doing comes to a further explanation of what the Supper is. In 1 Corinthians 11 the occasion is even more direct: the Supper was celebrated with a shameful lack of a sense of Christian fellowship. Beforehand⁶³ (v. 21) everyone began to partake of his own meal, that is, of the food he had brought along himself, in the course of which the rich feasted on what they had with them and the less well supplied were left to look on. Whether this lack of solidarity was connected with a sacramentalistic conception, according to which all that mattered in the Supper was eating and drinking the elements, not the meal shared together,⁶⁴ can be left to the side. Paul calls these shameful abuses incompatible⁶⁵ with the Supper of the Lord and asks whether the Corinthians have no respect for the church. He then contrasts what took place in the congregation at Corinth with the Supper as it was intended and instituted by the Lord himself, as appears from the words of institution.

In view of the parallel train of thought in these two pericopes we wish to attempt to arrive at a synthetic treatment of the data presented in them. We take our point of departure in the words of institution recited by Paul in 1 Corinthians 11. The solemn traditional terminology he here employs not only indicates that he associates himself with an existing version of the words of institution, but also marks these words as authoritative apostolic tradition, and, as the words (received) "of the Lord" further deliberately accentuate, casts light on the revelational character⁶⁶ of this tradition. Likewise the words "in the night in which he was betrayed" are not to be taken as a mere historical reminiscence, but give to the content of the message the character of unimpeachable validity and sanctity.⁶⁷ The thus understood revelational character of the words of institution here recorded is confirmed by a comparison with the Synoptics. A detailed examination of the difference and agreement lies beyond the bounds of our design.⁶⁸ On the whole it can be determined that not only in the purport but also in the wording there is a great measure of agreement between Paul and the Synoptics, both so far as Mark (and Matthew) and particularly the longer text of Luke⁶⁹ are concerned. A closer examination of the contents leads us to the following viewpoints (whereby repeatedly 1 Corinthians 10:14ff. is also taken into consideration).

(a) The Lord's Supper as a sacrificial meal

In the detailed discussion that we have devoted elsewhere⁷⁰ to the words of institution in the Synoptics we reached the conclusion that the significance of these words and of the actions of Jesus accompanying them come to stand in the proper light only if one keeps clearly in view the peculiar character of the meal in the night in which Jesus was betrayed, that of a sacrificial meal. Not only does the whole ritual of the meal point to this, in which in many respects one can recognize that of the Passover meal, but it is in this way alone that the crucial words that speak of Jesus' body and blood can be understood in their proper significance. "Body" and "blood" do not speak generally of Jesus "himself" or of his "personality,"⁷¹ but, as has been demonstrated in particular by Jeremias,⁷² are to be taken as the terminology of sacrifice. They speak of the body of Christ given in death and of his blood shed sacrificially, as may appear from the fact that Christ's blood is related to the New Covenant, which recalls on the one hand the making of the covenant at Sinai, which was also accompanied with the shedding of sacrificial blood, and on the other hand the prophecy of the New Covenant in Jeremiah 31. In the framework of this sacrificial terminology the eating and drinking of Christ's body and blood now become perfectly clear. It is the eating and drinking of the sacrifice at the sacrificial meal. Christ does not appear at the Supper as the priest who offers his sacrifice to God, but as the Host who appropriates to his people the sacrifice that he would offer for them, or has offered for them. What is true in general of the sacrificial meal can thus be said in particular of the Supper: it: cannot be viewed as a sacrificial act or as a continuation of the literal occurrence at the altar or sacrifice. Participation in the sacrificial meal is not an active participation in the sacrificial act, but the appropriation coming about through the meal of the sacrificial act by the eating and drinking of the victima (that which was sacrificed).⁷³

That Paul intends the Supper to be understood to this effect is evident not only from the repetition of the words of institution and the manner in which he does this (express reference to the night in which Jesus was "delivered up,"⁷⁴ the further modification of "this is my body" by the words "for you," and the direct connection he makes in vv. 26 and 27 between the bread and cup and "the death of the Lord"⁷⁵), but also finds a very striking and convincing confirmation in the manner in which he appeals to the Supper in 1 Corinthians 10.⁷⁶ For here he sets the eating and drinking of the Supper over against participation in heathen sacrificial meals, and then, in verse 18, brings in by way of clarification the Jewish sacrificial meal as well ("behold Israel after the flesh," etc.). The fundamental idea is not only to show generally that one cannot at the same time have to do with idols or demons and with Christ, but very specifically this: that eating and drinking both at the one table and at the other is irreconcilable because they both are an eating of a sacrificial meal and thus signify fellowship with the demons and with the Lord, respectively.

Already in 10:6, where the apostle points to the warning example of Israel, specifically to their idolatry with the golden calf, he alludes particularly to the sacrificial meal held in connection with it: "the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play." Already then the heathen sacrificial meal was the antithesis of eating and drinking the "spiritual food and the spiritual drink" (v. 4). The same thing is the case with the eating of what had been offered to idols in Corinth. Not as though an idol were anything. But certainly, because whoever sits down at an idolatrous sacrificial meal enters the domain of the demons. Paul terms this becoming (table) "companions of the demons" (koinōnous tōn daimoniōn ginesthei), just as in the same context he speaks of the "cup of demons" and "the table of demons" (provisioned with food from the altar) (vv. 20, 21). The meaning is that at the heathen sacrificial meal one sits at table with the demons, eats and drinks from the table where they are host,⁷⁷ and thus exposes himself to a more than human temptation.⁷⁸

By way of elucidation Paul then points to the Jewish sacrificial meals: "Are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar?"⁷⁹ The general idea here again is that he who partakes of the sacrificial meal enters into fellowship with God himself.⁸⁰ But the point here is the special way in which this takes place, namely, by eating that which has lain on the altar (cf. 1 Cor. 9:13; Matt. 23:19ff.), and in this way having fellowship with that which has occurred on the altar. The basis of the meal lies in the sacrifice; the sacrifice, because of its atoning character, opens the way for the eating and drinking with rejoicing of heart in the favor of God.⁸¹ And this is represented by eating the offering of the altar.

In the light of all this no misunderstanding can remain with respect to the description of the Supper as "the communion in the blood and in the body of Christ." It is communion effected through the medium of the cup and bread with the sacrifice of Christ's body and blood given in death, just as those who in Israel ate the sacrifices had communion with the altar. It is eating and drinking, which presupposes this sacrifice, in the deliverance and joy Christ has obtained for his people. For this reason the Supper can be set over against the (table) "fellowship of the demons," and the "cup" and "table of the Lord" over against those of the demons. For at this table Christ is the Host who makes his people participants in his sacrifice. "Table of the Lord" unites both ideas, of sacrifice and of meal. The expression is reminiscent of Malachi 1:7, 12, where it has the meaning of altar. But here it denotes the place where one eats from the altar, that is to say, where participation in the redemptive significance of Christ's sacrifice of his life (body and blood) takes place.

In what has just been said an interpretation has been given in the most authentic fashion of the words of institution: "This is my body for you," and of the mariner in which one is to conceive of the praesentia realis of Christ in the Supper. The "is" places the link with Christ's selfsurrender in death in the bread and in the cup, connects the redemptive significance of his sacrifice to eating the bread and drinking from the cup. The reality of it is defined by the context in which bread and cup function here, namely, as the elements of the sacrificial meal, or, as Paul terms it in 1 Corinthians 10, of the table of the Lord. The gifts represent participation in the sacrifice, not in a magical operation detached from the Lord himself, but because he himself as the Lord of his table gives his table companions in the bread and wine a share in his body given up for them and in his blood shed for them. The bread and cup as communion in the body and blood of Christ are therefore not a means of salvation in the sense that they effect the presence of Christ, but, just the reverse, the presence of Christ as the Lord of his table, by means of bread and wine, effects communion with his body and blood, participation in his sacrifice. "Communion in the body and blood of Christ" means nothing other therefore than the participation of his people in Christ's death. Because this communion comes about at the table of the Lord, however, the Supper is not only a relation to what once has happened and been accomplished for the church on the cross, but also an entering into communion with the living Lord. For this reason Paul warns those who would by taking part in the heathen sacrificial meal become (table) "companions of the demons." It would, as Paul puts it, be no less than provoking or defying the Lord (cf. Deut. 32:21), who makes the church his table companions and does not allow it to become at the same time table companions of the demons.

In view of the Supper understood in this way, i.e., as sacrificial meal, we are also to understand the warning in 1 Corinthians 11:27ff. against "unworthy" eating and drinking, being "guilty of the body and blood of the Lord," and "not discerning the body." Whether one chooses to take these expressions as specific "sacral-judicial terminology,"⁸² or as qualifications bearing the stamp of Paul himself, it is again a matter of making oneself guilty of the body and blood of Christ as they are eaten and drunk, i.e., as they enable the church to participate at the table of the Lord in the sacrifice of Christ.⁸³

(b) Spiritual food and drink

The manner in which in 1 Corinthians 10:1-3 the privilege and disobedience of ancient Israel in the wilderness are described from the perspective and with the terminology of the sacraments of the New Testament still deserves separate attention in this context. In discussing baptism we have already encountered this phenomenon ("baptized into Moses," etc.); here in treating the Lord's Supper verses 3 and 4 are especially to be pointed out: ". . . and all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank of the spiritual rock that followed them; and the rock was Christ."

There is every reason to think that the words "spiritual food and drink" are borrowed from the terminology of the Supper. Not only does Paul in the preceding verse qualify the redemptive significance of the cloud and the sea as the "baptism" of old Israel, but, as we have seen, he also sets over against this eating and drinking of spiritual food and drink eating and drinking at the idolatrous sacrificial meal in the wilderness. He then says of all this that it has a typical significance (v. 11), and it serves him as the basis ("therefore, my beloved . . . " [v. 14] ) for the contention that sitting down to the heathen sacrificial meal is not to be reconciled with the table of the Lord. The Old Testament situation is thus clearly intended to serve as a (warning) example to the New Testament, and in order to give as cogent expression to this as possible Paul describes the Old Testament gift in New Testament terminology.

If we assume with good reason therefore that "spiritual food and drink" is the terminology of the Supper⁸⁴ (whether already current or coined in this manner by Paul), then so far as the Old Testament situation is concerned nothing more needs to be said than that this food and drink (the manna from heaven and water from the rock) bore a "spiritual," that is to say, a divine, miraculous character,⁸⁵ and one is under no necessity of having to attach to it the conclusion that according to Paul with the manna and water from the rock Israel received the gift of the Holy Spirit.⁸⁶ Yet the rock is thereby expressly called "Christ." What Israel was given to eat and to drink was not merely an incidental miraculous food and drink, but was taken up in the great context of the divine work of redemption in Christ. Considered in this light, the deliverance in Moses through the sea can be called Israel's baptism, and the feeding with manna and water from the rock, Israel's Supper, and the eating and drinking of spiritual food and drink, Christ (cf. John 6:31ff., 35, 51ff, where Jesus also calls himself the bread from heaven and further defines this as his flesh and blood, which are to be eaten and drunk).

Conversely, this redemptive-historical analogy also casts clear light on the New Testament Supper. As Israel was in Moses once led out of Egypt and further kept alive in the wilderness by God's miraculous power, so for the church not only does its once-for-all deliverance lie in Christ's death, but its continual food and drink as well. The Lord's Supper, as communion in the body and blood of Christ delivered up in death, is also spiritual food and drink. The sacrificial gift becomes sacrificial food, the receiving of bread and wine from the hand of the Lord, in liberation and rejoicing. Therefore this food and drink may also be called "spiritual," pneumatic, not only because it is from heaven, but because it makes us live out of Christ's self-surrender and thus imparts his Spirit (Rom. 5:5). The Supper is, also and precisely as sacrificial meal, a means of salvation with regard to all the gifts of Christ, and as spiritual food and drink (unlike baptism⁸⁷) has a significance that is repeated again and again and accompanies the whole Christian life. There is every reason therefore to understand the pronouncement of 1 Corinthians 12:13b: "and were all made to drink of one Spirit," after the reference to baptism in verse 13a, of the Lord's Supper. However much the Supper is communion with the body and blood of the Lord, i.e., with his self-surrender on the cross, it also makes the church share in the gift of the Spirit of the exalted Lord. One cannot here separate the one from the other. For he who gave himself up for his own as an atoning sacrifice is also the Lord of his own table who in the communion of his body and blood declares himself to his church as the living Lord, that is to say, as the Lord who is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17). (c) The anamnesis Further, the command to anamnesis in the words of institution: "this do in remembrance of me," stands in the closest relationship to the character of the Supper as a sacrificial meal. Others, to be sure, seek the background of this anamnesis in the like-named observance of the anniversaries of deaths in the Hellenistic world.⁸⁸ But in the first place, from a purely phenomenological point of view the anamnesis intended in the Supper is something different from and more than keeping in remembrance one deceased ⁸⁹ And so far as the terminology is concerned, there is much more to be said for a link with the element of anamnesis in the ritual of the Jewish feast days, especially in the Passover meal,⁹⁰ on the occasion of which after all the Supper was instituted.⁹¹ The Lord's Supper is herewith qualified as a redemptive-historical commemorative meal. It is not a question here only of the commemoration of what has once taken place in the past, but no less of its abiding, actual redemptive significance. Christ's self-surrender is now, as hitherto the exodus of Israel out of Egypt, the new and definitive fact of redemption which in the eating of the bread and in the drinking of the wine the church may accept as such again and again⁹² from the hand of God.⁹³

How this anamnesis is otherwise intended to be understood may appear further from verse 26: "as often as you eat this bread . . . you proclaim the Lord's death till he come." This verse no longer pertains to the Supper tradition, but serves to confirm the foregoing admonition. ⁹⁴ In accordance with the command to anamnesis the eating and drinking at the Supper take their start from the death of Christ, and the Corinthians are to remain conscious of this. Hence the indicative: you proclaim. By these words the character of the anamnesis is further described.⁹⁵ It is not merely a subjective recalling to mind, but an active manifestation of the continuing and actual significance of the death of Christ. "Proclaim" in this respect has a prophetic, declaratory significance. As often as the church observes the Supper, the preaching⁹⁶ of the redemptive significance of Christ's death goes out from it. And this proclamatory character of the Supper has an abiding significance; it is a proclamation "till he come." As it was instituted by Christ in the night in which he was delivered up, so it retains its power until his appearing in glory. It is a matter here not simply of the termini a quo and ad quem as chronological data, but of the redemptive character of the Supper that commenced with his death and obtains till his return. It spans the time between the great redemptive times, it is the connecting link between the last supper of Jesus and the glorified eating and drinking in the kingdom of God (Mark 14:25; Matt. 26:29; Luke 22:16). It characterizes not only the Supper, but also the time in which it is to be celebrated and the place of the congregation in it. Everything is directed not only toward the past, but also toward the future. It is the proclamation that in the death of Christ the new and eternal covenant of grace has taken effect, if still in a provisional and not yet consummated sense. It is that consummation toward which on the ground of Christ's death the church is reaching out and which in every observance of the Supper is, as it were, drawn nearer, because the certainty of that consummation has been given to the church in the death of the Lord.

(d) The Lord's Supper and the church

A separate aspect of the redemptive significance of the Lord's Supper — regarded by some⁹⁷ as the most typical of the Pauline doctrine of the Supper — is the close relationship established by Paul between the Supper and the church. In particular the remarkable transition in 1 Corinthians 10:16, 17 is pointed out, where the words "the bread which we break, is it not the communion with the body of Christ?" are followed by: ". . . because there is one bread, we who are many are one body; for we all partake of the one bread."

In the preceding chapter⁹⁸ we have already mentioned the, in our opinion, inadmissible identification of the church as the body of Christ with the body of Christ presented in the Supper. What function this pronouncement has in the course of the argument of 1 Corinthians 10:14ff. was also discussed there. In this context we have to pay heed particularly to the positive side of the matter, namely, to the close relationship that Paul establishes between the Supper and the church as the body of Christ, and then especially between the unity of the two.

In the whole Pauline (and New Testament!) doctrine of the Lord's Supper the general relationship between the Supper and the church is not something unusual, but rather is self-evident. The abuses surrounding the Supper in Corinth are therefore termed not only making oneself guilty of the body and blood of the Lord (1 Cor. 11:27), but also despising the church (v. 22). And what is more, the cup is called "the New Covenant in my blood." As in the making of the covenant at Sinai the shedding of blood was of foundational significance (Exod. 24:8), so the new relationship between God and his people, promised in prophecy, rests on the sacrifice of Christ in which the church receives a share in the Supper. In the Supper, therefore, the foundations of the church are laid bare. The Supper is no personal affair between the individual believer and Christ. It is the covenant meal, the congregational meal par excellence. And it points to the sacrifice made by Christ, the reconciliation that has taken place in his blood, as the only ground of this communion between God and his people and of the unity of the church. Only in the eating of the body thus understood and in the drinking of this cup representing the reconciling power of his blood is the church one. In that sense, therefore, the Supper is the foundation and criterion for the unity of the church as the new people of God.

When in the words of 1 Corinthians 10 quoted above Paul infers the unity of the church as the body of Christ from partaking of the one bread, it is fundamentally the same matter. The apostle undoubtedly expresses himself here in a way that is characteristic for him, and his special conception of the unity of "the many" in the one underlies the wording "we who are many are one body." But the bond and along with it the ground of this unity are here indicated in the Supper. This bond does not lie in the fact that the church in a mysterious fashion eats the physical body of Christ or receives a share in his divine-human nature and thus itself becomes this body of Christ.⁹⁹ It is the partaking of the one bread, in the one gift and blessing of the meal, that constitutes the unity.¹⁰⁰ That means here partaking of the offering, communion in the body of Christ delivered up to death. That this unity of the body does not only or first come into being in the Supper is, from all that we have already discussed with respect to baptism as the rite of incorporation, perfectly clear.¹⁰¹ But in the common eating of the bread the unity of "the many" in Christ is constituted, manifested, and experienced anew again and again, a unity that binds the diversity together within the one body, which keeps the "strong" and the "weak" together, and which is exclusive with respect to those who unite themselves about the idols. The continued observance of the Supper is the incomparable means for bringing the unity of spiritual Israel and of the body of Christ to revelation in its deepest and only ground: communion in the body and blood of Christ. It contains within it at the same time the imperative criterion for safeguarding the church, as in Corinth, against every alien and false unity.

(e) The Lord's Supper and baptism

All this brings us to the question as to the relationship of the Lord's Supper and baptism as means of salvation. How closely these two are linked together and what an entirely unique significance they have as means of salvation is evident from the manner in which Paul again and again occupies himself with them both in the same context of thought (1 Cor. 10:2, 3; 12:13), but especially from the specific significance he ascribes to both within the framework of his conception of the church as the body of Christ. With all their fundamental unity, however, the modal distinction emerges.

Both of them, baptism and the Lord's Supper, according to the nature of the means of salvation concomitant with preaching,¹⁰² establish contact with the death of Christ — baptism as baptism-into-his death, the Supper as communion with the body and blood of Christ. As such the unity of the church as the body of Christ attaches to both, baptism as entrance to and incorporation into the body, the Supper as the unity of the body repeatedly received and manifested afresh in eating one bread. Implicit in this are the distinct functions baptism and the Lord's Supper have as means of salvation, likewise with respect to the body of Christ. Baptism incorporates, represents the transition from "dead to sin" to "alive to God" (Rom. 6:11), and from the old to the new man; it is therefore once-for-all as the incorporating means of salvation and is not capable of repetition. The Supper is the continuing proclamation of the redemptive significance of Christ's death; it is spiritual food and spiritual drink for the time between the times, as manna and water from the rock after the exodus out of Egypt and before the entrance into Canaan; in its constant repetition it spans life in the present world, until he come. It represents both the "already" and the "not yet"; it is already celebrated as the fulfilled sacrificial meal of the New Testament with bread and wine, but is yet to be celebrated both in remembrance and in expectation, in unceasing care for abiding in the fellowship of Christ, for the holiness of God's people, and the eschewing of idols (1 Cor. 10:14). Baptism, therefore, opens up the way along which the church is to go with the Supper; incorporates into the communion that the church may celebrate in the Supper, as the communion of the New Covenant, of the body of Christ, under the dominion of his Spirit. But both have the same root, proclaim the same death, and enable participation in its redemptive significance. For this reason they also demand the same faith, the same "discerning of the body." Paul speaks of the latter in particular with respect to the Lord's Supper because in it the genuineness of the transition once effected by baptism must be confirmed and authenticated.

SECTION 67. THE CRITICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. SELF-EXAMINATION

The paraenetic purport of both pericopes in 1 Corinthians in which Paul speaks of the Lord's Supper involves the fact that along with the redemptive content of the Supper its critical significance is emphatically brought to the fore. This also takes place — it would be difficult to anticipate anything else in the same epistle to the same congregation — in both these pericopes in a manner that is in many respects the same, so that we are again able to combine the discussion. Once more we begin with the pericope of 1 Corinthians 11 as the more directly concerned with the observance of the Supper.

After having indicated the significance of the Lord's Supper according to the institution of Christ in the manner described above, Paul concludes that everyone who eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord in an "unworthy" manner will stand guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. The word "unworthy" here can scarcely reproduce the meaning. For every idea as though by merit or legal claim one would have to or were able to make himself "worthy" of eating the bread is to be excluded. The thought is rather that of inadequate, inappropriate eating and drinking, in a manner that is unsuited to it and not in harmony with it. It is a question of respect for the true character of what is here called the bread and cup of the Lord, i.e., the sanctity of his table fellowship (cf. 1 Cor. 10:21). In verse 29 this is expressed in a slightly different way, as "not discerning the body," that is to say, not recognizing the offering in its separatedness and sanctity and not recognizing the sacrifice of Christ itself.¹⁰³ Whether or not one chooses to see in these words a reflection of sacral legal terminology against desecration (and chooses to connect the punishment mentioned in v. 30 with the rooting out of the people¹⁰⁴), it is apparent here again how close the connection is between the bread and cup on the one band and the body and blood of the Lord on the other. This relationship does not rest — we may now say: of course — on the physical constitution of the elements of the Supper, but arises from the nature of the fellowship of the Supper as a sacrificial meal. Thereby the elements are the bread and cup of the Lord, i.e., by virtue of his institution and the living relationship in which Christ as Lord of his table stands to his own gifts. Whoever does not respect the sanctity of this table fellowship, therefore, will be guilty of Christ's body and blood, that is to say, sin against the sacrifice made by him (cf. Heb. 10:29; 6:6).¹⁰⁵ For this reason also he¹⁰⁶ eats and drinks judgment to himself; for by eating and drinking he enters into the holy presence of him whose self-surrender in death he evidently does not respect and who is not only the Savior, but also the judging Kyrios (cf. vv. 31, 32). However much everything is concentrated on bread and cup, body and blood, this does not mean that it is only a question of things and material relationships. He who enters into communion with the thing also enters into communion with the person. For the Crucified One is the Living One, and he who at the table of the Lord does not respect the sacrifice of the Crucified falls under the judgment of the exalted Lord. We have to do here with the same thought that we have already met above¹⁰⁷ in 1 Corinthians 10, that communion with the body and blood of the Lord means that one enters into Christ's holy sphere of life and power and that whoever therefore wishes to combine the table of the Lord with the table of the demons may wonder whether he does not wish to defy the Lord and fancy himself stronger than he.

Thus the use of the Supper in no way automatically communicates the salvation given in Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit to the members of the church,¹⁰⁸ and on the other side it is not vain or empty for those who partake of it in an apostate or "unworthy" manner. The fate of Israel in the wilderness, although they were all baptized into Moses and all received the same spiritual food and drink, is a (warning) example for the one as well as for the other. The origin of this judging power of the Supper does not, however, inhere in a magical or spiritual "potency" of the elements of bread and wine. There is no other gift in the sacrament than from the hand of the Giver, nor are the elements in themselves either for blessing or for judgment. But it is the living presence of Christ, in accordance with the arrangement established in his own words of institution, which in the elements effects communion with the sacrifice once made by him and which can transform the gift in the Supper into a judgment, and the blessing into a curse.

This does not mean, of course, that the nature and content of the sacrament are twofold, and that salvation and judgment both pertain to it in an equally essential way. The manducatio indignorum and the judgment to which they expose themselves do not abrogate the gracious character of the sacrament. The rock Christ, the sacrificial meal of ancient Israel, the Supper of the Lord, are in their essence and intent not to be understood otherwise than on the basis of the saving activity of God in Christ, and without this last they would not be. For this reason there is also differentiation in the judgment one can eat to himself in the Lord's Supper. Its purpose is not always nor immediately to condemnation. Paul points to the judgment of Christ within the congregation of Corinth in the great number of cases of sickness and death that had occurred in it (v. 30). These, however, do not serve to condemnation with the world, but are intended precisely to warn against it (v. 32). They serve now as the gracious pedagogy (paideuometha; 1 Cor. 11:32) of God who does not will to wreck the church, but to bring it back again from the wrong pathway. Here again blessing and curse are not automatically given with the elements nor are both joined to them in an equally essential way, but it is the living Lord himself who, also in the food and drink of his table, deals with the church according to his gracious and righteous redemptive will.

The conclusion for the church is that everyone should examine himself and so (that is, after having examined himself) eat of the bread and drink of the cup (1 Cor. 11:28). The purport of this self-examination is further elucidated by the play on words in verse 31 (cf. v. 29): "if we, however, rightly judged ourselves,¹⁰⁹ we should not be judged." It is a question here of self-examination before one eats and drinks. The intention is not that everyone institute an inquiry as to whether he will in fact eat and drink, but that he not do so before having examined himself. It is an examination that is to prevent "unworthy" eating and drinking, and is to clear away that which impedes the observance of the Supper. It is, in other words, an examination that is to lead to right eating and drinking: "but let a man examine himself, and so let him eat. . . ." The same thing is to be found in verse 31. Here, too, the apostle does not warn against the Supper itself, but against a lack of self-criticism in partaking of it. To discern the body of Christ, that is to say, to recognize it in its holy and saving significance, also means to discern oneself, that is, to make oneself pass through the judgment and criticism that are in conformity with the holiness of Christ's body. We are not to think here of a self-appraisal that even in the slightest degree would darken the gracious character of that which is given in the Supper, but rather of such a self-scrutiny as does full justice to the divine and holy character of this grace.

The conclusion with which Paul closes this pericope in verses 33 and 34 is accordingly not negative, but positive, that is, it does not keep back the church from the Lord's Supper, but stirs it up to the observance of the Supper as commanded by Christ and worthy of God.

1. See above, Chapter VI, Section 37.

2. See above, p. 372.

3. See above, p. 374.

4. Cf., e.g., the ē agnoeite in Rom. 6:3.

5. The literature is very extensive. Of the more recent special studies the following are to be mentioned: R. Schnackenburg, Baptism in the Thought of St. Paul: A Study in Pauline Theology, ET 1964; also his further reflections in the Mūnchener Theologische Zeitschrift, 1955; J. Schneider, Baptism and Church in the New Testament, ET 1957, pp. 30ff.; O. Kuss, "Zur paulinischen und nachpaulinischen Tauflehre," in Theologie und Glauben, 1952, pp. 401ff.; G. Bornkamm, "Baptism and New Life in Paul," in Early Christian Experience, pp. 71ff.; G. R. Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament, 1962, pp. 127ff.; E. Klaar, Die Taufe nach paulinischen Verständnis, 1961; M. Rissi, Die Taufe für die Toten, 1962; G. Wagner, Pauline Baptism and the Pagan Mysteries, ET 1967; G. Delling, Die Taufe im Neuen Testament, 1963, pp. 108ff.; E. Dinkier, "Die Taufterminologie in 2 Kor. 1,21f.," in Festschrift für O. Cullmann, 1962, pp. 173ff.; G. Braumann, Vorpaulinische Christliche Tauflehre bei Paulus, 1962; G. de Ru, De kinderdoop en het Nieuwe Testament, 1964, pp. 56-91.

6. Cf. for this especially Braumann, Vorpaulinische Christliche Tauflehre, pp. 1-13.

7. Cf. Schnackenburg, Baptism in St. Paul, pp. 3ff.; Delling, Die Taufe, pp. 96ff.; Bultmann, Theology, I, pp. 136ff.

8. Cf. Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament, p. 166.

9. Cf., e.g., Bietenhard, TDNT, V, p. 273.

10. The words pneumatos hagiou are only to be taken with anakainōseōs and not also with palingenesias.

11. For this conception see the detailed discussion above, pp. 226ff.

12. See above, pp. 372f.

13. Cf. Bultmann, Theology, I, pp. 137ff. In an earlier period it was thought that the expression sphragis as a denotation of baptism stemmed from the mystery religions (cf. J. Leipoldt, Die urchristliche Taufe im Lichte der Religionsgeschichte, 1928, p. 67). But this view no longer has much support (cf. Wagner, Pauline Baptism, p. 271).

14. See especially E. Dinkier, "Die Taufterminologie in 2 Kor. 1,21f.," in Festschrift für O. Cullmann; cf. also the article "Taufe" by Dinkier in RGG, 3rd ed., 1962, col. 630.

15. Cf. Dinkier, loc. cit., as well as Wendland, Cor., p. 112.

16. Cf., e.g., Schnackenburg, Baptism in St. Paul, pp. 86ff.

17. Cf. Bultmann, Theology, I, p. 137: "Even if Paul does not necessarily imply the actual use of the noun 'seal' [sphragis] for baptism, at any rate, behind the cognate verb used by him lies the idea that did lead to this terminology in later sources."

18. Cf. above, pp. 62ff.

19. Some choose here again to think of certain actions in the mystery cults, especially in the worship of Isis (Leipoldt, Die urchristliche Taufe, p. 60). But against this see, e.g., Wagner, Pauline Baptism, p. 273, n. 62; and Oepke, TDNT, II, p. 320. Old Testament parallels are also brought forward (cf. Oepke, loc. cit.); but the comparative materials for the "putting on of a person" are in our view not very convincing (cf. Judg. 6:34; 1 Chron. 12:18). Some have also thought of the taking off and putting on of clothing in connection with immersion (cf., e.g., W. F. Flemington, The New Testament Doctrine of Baptism, 1948, pp. 57ff.); or of being clothed with a uniform on induction into the army (so Cullmann, Baptism in the New Testament, ET 1950, p. 36). The gnostic myth is also in vogue here: "the Redeemer encloses the redeemed as a garment" (cf. H. Schlier, Gal., pp. 128ff.). There are also those who prefer to think of an independent coinage by Paul himself (cf. Wagner, Pauline Baptism, p. 273).

20. Cf. above, pp. 372ff.

21. En ho refers to baptism, not to Christ. See, e.g., the detailed argumentation of Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament, pp. 153ff.

22. Cf. above, pp. 206ff.

23. On this see what has already been said above, pp. 23ff.

24. E.g., in Bultmann's Theology, I, pp. 140ff.

25. See also Wagner, in Pauline Baptism; he has once again analyzed exhaustively all the materials and on this basis has come to an absolutely negative result.

26. Cf. further my Paul and Jesus, pp. 6ff.

27. See the quotations (from Greijdanus, Dodd, Lagrange, et al.) in my Rom., p. 132. Wagner, too, attempts to support this view (Pauline Baptism, pp. 288f.).

28. Undoubtedly as an a posteriori interpretation of baptism from the kerygma; cf., e.g., Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament, p. 133: "only because the kerygma gives this significance to baptism; its whole meaning is derived from Christ and His redemption — it is the kerygma in action," etc.; cf. also Wagner,

ibid., pp. 286ff.

29. Rom., pp. 132ff.

30. Dodd, e.g., also acknowledges that "Paul does not indeed draw out the suggestion of the symbolism," although he adds to this: "but it lies near the surface" (Romans, p. 87).

31. Lietzmann speaks explicitly of a symbolical death by drowning in baptism (Rom., p. 65).

32. As Wagner puts it, speaking as though the matter were perfectly clear: "Baptism is the image of a burial"; cf. Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament, p. 133: "The symbolism of immersion as representing burial is striking." But what on earth would lead one to think of such a burial at the moment of immersion?

33. The only thing that might be able to offer support could perhaps be the conception that by homoiōma tou thanatou (tes anastaseōs) autou in Rom, 6:5 baptism is meant. But this view is to be regarded as incorrect, as we have already discovered above (pp. 24f.); cf. the cogent arguments of Bornkamm against that (Early Christian Experience, pp. 77f.); Wagner, Pauline Baptism, pp. 283ff.; Beasley-Murray, ibid., pp. 134ff.; see also my Rom., p. 129, and the older literature mentioned there.

34. See also above, p. 207.

35. For this reason: symphytoi to homoiōmati tou thanatou autou, etc.; cf. above, p. 207.

36. For this conception, which is again presented in various ways, see, e.g., the survey in Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament, pp. 131ff.

37. For this exegesis see further my Col., pp. 179f.

38. In a certain sense, therefore, baptism has come in the place of circum cision, but nevertheless not in the sense that here the one sacramental act is set in the place of the other. Circumcision in the flesh has been replaced by circumcision of the heart. In that circumcision, in taking off the old mode of existence, baptism gives a share, because it gives a share in the burial of Christ.

39. Eis ton Mōūsēn ebaptisanto en te nephelē kai en tē thalassē.

40. Cf. Warnach, "Taufe und Christusgeschehen nach Römer 6," in Archiv. für Liturgiewiss., 1954, pp. 329ff.

41. Ibid., pp. 305, 306. This sacramental "form" of the once-for-all redemptive event would then be denoted by the homoiōma of Rom. 6:5 (ibid., p. 297), i.a., with an appeal to Kuss and in continuing polemic with the (likewise Roman Catholic) Schnackenburg, who will not hear of such a "cultic-mysterious representation of the act of salvation" in Paul and is of the opinion that it seems "to be excluded by the course of thought in Rom. 6" (Münchener Theologische Zeitschrift, 1955, p. 51; cf. his Baptism in the Thought of St. Paul: A Study in Pauline Theology, p. 132). Kuss, in Theologie und Glauben, pp. 310ff., thinks, on the other hand, that the thesis of a sacramental Gegenwärtigsetzung, or representation, of the redemptive event in baptism "can be denied only with great difficulty," although he cautiously adds to this concerning the nature and manner of this Gegenwärtigsetzung that "in particular the details are lacking and their determination if necessary must remain a task of speculative theology" (loc. cit.). Warnach, too, who defends this view with great force, acknowledges that Paul has not shown "how the cultic presence is to be explained more fully; but to my mind he has still, through the choice of the term [homoiōma], which one of course may not press, pointed to the direction in which the solution of the problem must be sought" (ibid., p. 321). One can conclude even from this how vague the boundaries are between exegesis and speculation. Against this conception of homoiōma, which has been adopted among Protestants, e.g., by J. Schneider, Baptism and Church in the New Testament, p. 32, see also Wagner, Pauline Baptism, pp. 206f.; for a detailed discussion of the older relevant literature also M, Barth, Die Taufe ein Sakrament?, 1951, pp. 187ff.

42. Cf. the formulations of Warnach, in Archiv, für Liturgiewiss., 1954, p. 324.

43. The "Ort" (ibid., p. 291).

44. Cf. Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament, p. 132.

45. That homoiōma denotes this is entirely without foundation. It does not speak of some "form" or other in which Christ dies in baptism, but of believers receiving a share sui generis in the death and resurrection of Christ. See above, p. 208.

46. The idea of "contemporaneity" was introduced in particular by W. Traugott Hahn, Das Mitsterben und Mitauferstehen mit Christus bei Paulus, 1937. One frequently meets with this terminology elsewhere as well (making Christ's death "contemporaneous," "the removal of the temporal distance between Jesus' death and the baptism of believers") (cf., e.g., Percy, Leib Christi, p. 28; Wagner, Pauline Baptism, p. 292, and literature cited there).

47. Cf. Schnackenburg, Baptism in St. Paul, pp. 149ff.; G. C. Berkouwer, The Sacraments, ET 1969, pp. 118ff.

48. Ē agnoeite.

49. Syntaphentes autō en tō baptismati: causal.

50. For similar formulations see, e.g., Warnach, who says that the "previous solidarity with Christ as the new Adam . . . merely fashions the basic possibility of our taking part in Christ's work of salvation" (in Archiv. für Liturgiewiss., 1954, p.

51. Cf. the extensive survey of the relevant pronouncements in Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament, pp. 272ff.

52. Cf. W. Mundle, Der Glaubensbegriff bei Paulus, 1982, pp. 123ff.

53. Cullmann appears to think along this line (Baptism in the New Testament, pp. 49ff.).

54. Oepke, TDNT, I, p. 540.

55. Cf. Bultmann, Theology, I, pp. 311f.

56. For the question of the (perhaps incorrectly so-called) "vicarious baptism" in 1 Cor. 15:29 see pp. 24f. above.

57. Cf. Bultmann, Theology, I, p. 312, according to whom it can hardly be open to question that Rom. 10:9 "is a reference to the confession made at baptism."

58. See the materials in J. Jeremias, Infant Baptism in the First Four Centuries, ET 1960, p. 46.

59. Jeremias, et al.

60. The symphytoi genesthai of Rom. 6:5

61. Cf. G. de Ru, De kinderdoop, pp. 258ff.

62. For the exegetical discussion on infant baptism, in addition to the literature mentioned above (n. 5), see the writings of O. Cullmann, Baptism in the New Testament; J. Jeremias, Hat die Urkirche die Kindertaufe geübt?, 2nd ed., 1949; P. H. Menoud, Le baptême des enfants dans l'Église ancienne, 1948; T. Preiss, "Die Kindertaufe und das Neue Testament," TLZ, 1948, pp. 651-660; J. Murray, Christian Baptism, 1952; J. Jeremias, Infant Baptism in the First Four Centuries; K. Aland, Did the Early Church Baptize Infants?, ET 1963; also the detailed discussion in Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament, pp. 306ff.; and now in particular G. de Ru, De kinderdoop en het Nieuwe Testament.

63. Many think hereby of an agape meal accompanying the Supper proper, as is known from the post-apostolic period (Tertullian, Apol. 39). There is no unanimity here, however. On the relation of the agape meal and the Supper cf., e.g., B. Reicke, Diakonie, Festfreude und Zelos, 1951, pp. 32ff., 252ff.; see also Bijbels Woordenboek (Romen, Roermond, Maseik), 1954, s.v. Agape.

64. Cf. Schweizer, RGG, 3rd ed., I, 1957, col. 11, s.v. Abendmahl; G. Bornkamm, "Lord's Supper and Church in Paul," in Early Christian Experience, pp. 123ff,

65. Ouk estin kyriakon deipnon phagein (v. 20). Some translate: "it is not possible [in this way] to eat the supper of the Lord." Others: "[this] is not eating the supper of the Lord."

66. So Käsemann, too, "The Pauline Doctrine of the Lord's Supper," Essays on New Testament Themes, p. 120. For this terminology of the tradition (parelabon and paredōka) see also O. Cullmann, "The Tradition," in The Early Church, pp. 55-99, and my The Authority of the New Testament Scriptures, p. 19.

67. Cf. Käsemann, ibid., p. 121.

68. The following elements we find only in the report transmitted by Paul: (a) the solemn introductory words: "the Lord Jesus in the night in which he was delivered up took bread," etc., to be taken not merely as chronological information, but (in view of the allusion to Isa. 53; cf. Rom. 4:25) as a liturgical expression of the redemptive significance of Christ's surrender; (b) the absolute: to hyper hymōn after soma; the textual witnesses have added various participles (klōmenon, thryptomenon, didomenon) in order to escape the harsh construction — see, however, the version of Luke; (c) the word of the cup which, in place of "this is my blood" (of the covenant), runs: "this cup is the New Covenant in my blood"; (d) the double command to anamnesis. For comparative analyses of the reports of the Supper see the survey of E. Schweizer, RGG, 3rd ed., I, col. 12ff., and earlier in TLZ, 1954, col. 579ff.; cf. also H. Lessig, Die Abendmahlsprobleme im Lichte der neutest. Forschung seit 1900, 1953, pp. 52ff.

69. On this at greater length see my The Coming of the Kingdom, pp. 407ff.

70. Ibid., pp. 406ff.

71. See also above, pp. 374ff.

72. J. Jeremias, The Eucharistie Words of Jesus, 3rd ed., pp. 222, 237.

73. So Sverre Aalen, "Das Abendmahl als Opfermahl im Neuen Testament," in [CHARIS KAI SOPHIA] (Festschrift für K. H. Rengstorf), 1964, pp. 128-152, especially p. 143.

74. Cf. above, n. 68.

75. For this reason the idea that the terminological incongruence between the words of the bread and the cup involves a differing significance of bread and Essays on New Testament Themes, pp. 130ff.); according to others (exactly the reverse!) the first ("this is my body") must be understood of the exalted ("this I am myself") and the second on the other hand has reference to the death of Christ (so Schweizer, RGG, 3rd ed. I, col. 14). All this is not only forced, but fails to appreciate the specific significance of the (sacrificial) terminology employed here.

76. The enduring merit of the article by Sverre Aalen is, in my opinion, to have demonstrated this with a profusion of comparative materials (especially from the Jewish world).

77. Cf. Aalen, [CHARIS KAI SOPHIA], p. 133.

78. Cf. above, pp. 303f.

79. The translation "altar" (thysiastērion, as the altar of the true God always in contrast with the heathen altar, bomōs) is established; cf., e.g., Behm, TDNT, III, p. 182.

80. Cf., e.g., Groenewald: "in the sphere of divine power" ([KOINONIA] [Gemeenskap] by Paulus, 1932, pp. 115, 116); cf. also Hauck, TDNT, III, p. 805.

81. On this at length cf. Aalen, [CHARIS KAI SOPHIA], pp. 133-141.

82. So Aalen, ibid., pp. 143ff.; cf. G. Bornkamm, "On the Understanding of Worship," in Early Christian Experience, pp. 174ff.

83. See further below, Section 67.

84. Thus, e.g., Käsemann, Essays on New Testament Themes, pp. 113ff.; also Goppelt, TDNT, VI, p. 146, i.a., with a reference to Did. 10:3, where in relation to the Supper pneumatikēn trophēn kai poton is spoken of. Others repudiate this conception (e.g., Schweizer, RGG, I, col. 589; Grosheide, 1 Cor., p. 261).

85. Cf. Grosheide, ibid., p. 261; Schweizer, TDNT, VI, p. 437 ("which comes directly from God's sphere and gives divine power").

86. Thus Käsemann, Essays on New Testament Themes, p. 113. On the other hand see Goppelt, TDNT, VI, p. 147, n. 17, and Schweizer, TDNT, VI, p. 437, n. 705.

87. See below, pp. 424f.

88. For the materials see, e.g., Lietzmann, Cor., p. 273; Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, 2nd ed., pp. 159f. (3rd ed., pp. 238ff.); B. Reicke, Diakonie, pp. 257ff.

89. Cf. Käsemann as well (Essays on New Testament Themes, pp. 120f.); and Schweizer, RGG, 3rd ed., I, col. 10. If one seeks the origin of this qualification in the Hellenistic remembrance of the dead, he must also question the genuineness of the anamnesis command as spoken by Jesus himself. The arguments of B. Reicke for nevertheless ascribing it to Jesus are not convincing. On the other hand, the fact that Paul relates the anamnesis specifically to the death of Christ (v. 26) need not argue in favor of this conception, as Reicke apparently supposes (ibid., p. 257). This finds sufficient explanation in the repeated mention of his body and blood (see above).

90. Cf. Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, 2nd ed., p. 161 (3rd ed., pp. 244ff.); cf. also Douglas Jones, "[Anamnesis] in the N.T.," The Journal of Theological Studies, VI, 1955, pp. 188f. The latter also points to the correspondence between katangellete and higgîd: "the recitation of the death of Jesus as act of redemption corresponding exactly to the recitation of the Exodus in the Passover Haggada" (p. 189); the same idea is found in W. D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, 2nd ed., 1955, p. 252.

91. See my The Coming of the Kingdom, Section 41, pp. 418-432.

92. That from hosakis ean pinēte (v. 25) one could infer that wine was not always used in the Supper and hosakis would therefore be an indication of the celebration with bread alone (cf. Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, 2nd ed., p. 29, n. 1; 3rd ed., p. 52, n. 3, following Schlatter), is foiled already by the repetition of hosakis in v. 26, where it goes as well with esthiēte as with pinēte.

93. That it is not the congregation but God who is thought of here as the subject of the anamnesis ("that God may remember me... by bringing the consummation to pass"), as Jeremias wishes (ibid., 2nd ed., pp. 163, 165; 3rd ed., pp. 252, 254), seems unacceptable in this context in which everything speaks of the redemptive significance of the Supper for the church (cf. also Exod. 12:14; 13:9; Deut. 16:3; Ps. 111:4; Jub. 49:15). Against this view see Douglas Jones, in The Journal of Theological Studies, VI, p. 190, and W. C. van Unnik, "Kanttekeningen bij een nieuwe verklaring van de Anamnese-woorden," Nederl. Theol. Tijdschr., 1950, p. 6.

For the development of the anamnesis element in such early church writers as Hippolytus and Justin see, e.g., N. A. Dahl, "Anamnesis," Studia Theologica, I, 1958, p. 83, which development may not, however, be projected back into the Pauline texts. Dahl describes the anamnesis as "a commemoration... of the death of Jesus and of his resurrection, when the history of salvation becomes present anew by the sacramental commemoration" (ibid., p. 83). Much depends on how one chooses to understand this "becoming present anew."

94. This is at least the most probable; cf., e.g., Grosheide, 1 Cor., p. 311.

95. One will therefore not have to see two distinct facets in the Supper in anamnesis and katangellein. Rather, the anamnesis consists in the katangellein. It is apparent from this, too, that analogy with the Hellenistic meals in remembrance of the deceased is fundamentally lacking; cf. also Lessig, Abendmahlsprobleme, p. 224.

96. There is a difference of opinion whether by this proclamation is meant the "actual act," the drōmenon of eating and drinking (so, e.g., Lietzmann), or specifically the accompanying, explanatory word (so, e.g., Schniewind, TDNT, I, p. 72). The latter is then related to the recitation of the Passover Haggadah during the Passover meal; cf. also Käsemann, Essays on New Testament Themes, pp. 120f., and Jones, in The Journal of Theological Studies, pp. 188f. In our view the one need not exclude the other. While katangellete makes one think of a proclamation with words, the sentence structure of v. 26, as well as the repeated touto poieite in vv. 24 and 25, certainly appears to include eating and drinking in the proclamation. The later development that increasingly made a drama of the Supper, in which the sacrifice of Christ on the cross was purportedly repeated in the actions with bread and wine or in mysterio was realized anew in the present (cf. also Lessig, Abendmahlsprobleme, p. 226), finds no support in the conception of katangellein mentioned above and conversely cannot be urged as an objection against it.

97. See, e.g., G. Bornkamm, "Lord's Supper and Church in Paul," in Early Christian Experience, pp. 123ff.; Käsemann, Essays on New Testament Themes, p. 110.

98. See above, pp. 373ff.

99. See above, Section 60.

100. Cf. Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, 2nd ed., pp. 153f. (3rd ed., p. 232).

101. See above, Section 64, under c.

102. Cf. above, pp. 409ff.

103. Here again some wish by "the body" to understand the church; so, e.g., B. Reicke, Diakonie, pp. 253, 254; Lietzmann-Kümmel, Cor., p. 186; H. M. Matter, De kerk als Lichaam van Christus, 1962, p. 29. But in view of the foregoing "body and blood" (v. 27), and considering the whole terminology oriented as it is to the sacrificial meal, this is highly improbable.

104. Cf. Aalen, [CHARIS KAI SOPHIA], pp. 144ff.

105. For this and other parallels see C. F. D. Moule, "The Judgement Theme in the Sacraments," in The Background of the N.T. (Studies in Honour of C. H. Dodd), p. 471.

106. Käsemann incorrectly posits (Essays on New Testament Themes, pp. 126ff.) that krima heauto esthiei must be applied to every communicant, because everyone has to do with the judgment of the Judge of the world present in the Lord's Supper. But it is a question here only of those who "do not discern the body." The absence of anaxiōs in v. 29 in the best mss. says little because the whole sentence is determined by mē diakrinōn to sōma; against the view of Käsemann cf. Kümmel in Lietzmann-Kümmel, Cor., p. 186, and Schweizer, TLZ, 1954, col. 589, n. 81.

107. See p. 417.

108. To what extent such a conception of the Supper as an automatic means of salvation of indefectible power was prevalent (as supposed by Käsemann, for Pharmakon athanasias[Essays on New Testament Themes, pp. 116f.; cf. Bornkamm, loc. cit.]) is difficult to decide for lack of clear data.

109. Diekrinōmen, the same word as in v. 29; in v. 31 it has the sense of a critical self-examination and has reference to (one's own) imperfection; in v. 29 it signifies: to appreciate rightly, to judge according to its unique significance, and has reference to the holiness (of Christ's body).

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