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Paul's Reluctance to Baptise

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Josephine Massyngberde Ford
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It has often caused the present writer some admitatio that in 1 Cor 1 : 14-17 Paul appears to show such reluctance to baptise but upon reading Kildahl’s The Psychology of Speaking in Tongues an insight into the situation was suggested to her.

In 1 Cor 1 : 14-15 Paul declares:

I am thankful (or I thank God) that I baptised none of you except Crispus and Gaius; lest any one should say that you were baptised in my name.

Such a statement is not found elsewhere either in the Pauline Corpus or the rest of the New Testament, or to my knowledge in Christian writings: this would suggest that a special situation in Corinth warranted such reluctance. One main peculiarity of the Corinthian Church was its overenthusiasm and its stress on the gift of tongues. The Acts of the Apostles demonstrates that on extraordinary occasions the baptism of candidates was either preceded or followed by glossolalia. That ‘tongues’ might have accompanied baptism in Corinth also is suggested by the fact that Paul, after listing the spiritual gifts (1 Cor 12 : 4ff), emphasises the unity of the Body, which is the Church, by using a phrase occurring only once outside the Gospels and Acts ‘in one Spirit were we all baptised into one body’ (1 Cor 12:13).

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 55 , Issue 654 , November 1974 , pp. 517 - 520
Copyright
Copyright © 1974 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Not arising as Barrett suggests from lack of appreciation for the sacrament, C. K. Barrett, The Epistle to the Corinthians, Harper & Row, N.Y. 1968, p. 48.

2 John P. Kildahl, The Psychology of Speaking in Tongues, Harper and Row. 1972.

3 This is the only epistle where tongues are explicitly mentioned although one might conjecture that the gift was used at Ephesus because of the reference to it in Acts 19: 1-7.

4 But as F. D. Bruner (influenced by Dibelius) explains the gift of tongues in Acts:

on the three occasions where tongues occur, they come to an entire group at once, with prophecy, bringing complete Christian initiation, and occur, in all three cases, apart from recorded effort on the part of the recipients. Speaking in tongues in Acts is on all three occasions a corporate, church-founding. group-conversion phenomenon, and never the subsequent Spirit-experience of an individual.

(A Theoloqy of the Holy Spirit, Eerdmans, Michigan, 1970, p. 192.) This is quite different from the understanding of tongues at Corinth, which is seen as an individual gift for private devotion or, if there is an interpreter, in the prayer meeting.

5 Anthony A. Hoekema, Holy Spirit Baptism, Eerdmans, Michigan, 1972. pp. 17-20.

6 See the excellent article hy J. P. M. Sweet, A Sign for Unbelievers: Paul's Attitude to Glossolalia, N.T.S. 13 no. 3 (April, 1963, pp. 173-179. Especially interesting are Sweet's seven Pauline points for guidance with reference to the contemporary Pentecostal phenomena.

7 Sweet (ibid.) thinks that it was the Palestinian Petrine party who overstressed glossolalia (p. 247).

8 Spiriual Life, December, 1972.

9 Kildahl, op. cit., p. 40,

10 Ibid.. p. 44.

11 Cf. Ibid., pp. 66-75.

12 E.g. 1 Thess 3: 6-13; Rom 16: 17-20; 1 Tim 1: 3-7, the oppenents in Galatians and Romans and in the captivity Epistles. Contrast, however, 1 Tim. 1 :20.

13 Nowadays one frequently hears Neo-Pentecostals of various denominations saying. I received the,Spirit from N.N. or I was baptiscd (meaning the release of the Spirit) by N.N..

14 But Cf. Rom 1: 29: 13: 13; 2 Cor 12: 20; Gal 5: 20; Phl 1: 15; 1 Tim (.:4 and Tit 3:9.

15 Kildahl, op. cit., pp. 45-47.

16 Ibid., pp. 66-68.

17 Ibid., p. 69.

18 Kauchaomai occurs 21 times in 1 and 2 Corinthians against 11 ,times in the rest of the New Testament: kauchema 6 times against 5 and kauchesis 7 times against 4.

19 Cf. D. Daube, Re-creation and Beyond in Jesus and Man's Hope, vol. 11. Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, 1971, pp. 223-245.