The One Baptism as a Category of New Testament Soteriology

Abstract

‘I Acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins’ ‘There is one body and one Spirit, … one Lord, one faith, one baptism’ (Eph. 4.4 f). What precisely is here the significance of the word ‘one’ ? It would clearly be inadequate to see this unity simply as a matter of Church order—though it may yet be more significant than we have allowed that, in spite of everything, divided Christendom still today recognises a single baptism. We should be nearer the heart of the matter to say that baptism is one because it makes one. Just as it is ‘because there is one bread’ that ‘we, who are many, are one body’ (I Cor. 10.17), so it is baptism which in the first place creates this unity: ‘In one Spirit were we all baptised into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free’ (I Cor. 12.13); ‘for as many of you as were baptised into Christ … are all one man in Christ Jesus’ (Gal. 3.27 f).Yet there are other elements in the NT doctrine of baptism which suggest that even this does not exhaust the meaning of the phrase. To be baptised ‘into Christ’ is not merely to find a new and given unity among ourselves. It is to be ‘baptised into his death’ (Rom. 6.3), to be ‘circumcised … in the circumcision of Christ’ (Col. 2.11).