Notes on Ch. 2, part 1, of Johnson, Rites of Christian Initiation

Pre-Nicene period, East

In the first half of ch. 2, Max summarizes the documentary evidence for Christian initiation in the East (that is, Syria and Alexandria) in the first three centuries. Syrian evidence: the Didache, Justin Martyr (included in Syria rather than Rome because of his background), the Didascalia Apostolorum, and the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. The Didache really gives very little information, but the other sources contain some characteristic emphases: the role of Jesus' experience in the Jordan, especially the descent of the Holy Spirit, as a model for Christian baptism; the textual variant Ps. 2:7 ("You are my son; this day I have begotten you") for the baptism is reflected in the rite of baptism for Christians; fire is a dominant symbol, especially referring to "fire in the water" at Christ's baptism; the pneumatological and ritual emphasis of the accounts tends to be on the anointing with oil before the water bath rather than on the bath itself; finally, the Spirit is often seen and imaged as feminine.

These characteristic emphases seem to actually all fall together: for example, in the Syrian liturgical year the Epiphany feast was originally a combined feast of Christ's birth and baptism (48), while the baptismal font is often referred to as a "womb" (of the Spirit "Mother"). The witness of Father and Spirit at the baptism is why this event and feast are the Theophany of the whole Trinity and reveal the intra-divine relationships.

A quote from the Acts of Judas Thomas: "This is the baptism of the remission of sins; this is the bringer forth of new men; this is the restorer of understandings, and the mingler of soul and body, and the establisher of the new man in the Trinity, and which becomes a participation in the remission of sins." (44) And one from Gabriele Winkler: "Christian baptism is shaped after Christ's baptism in the Jordan. As Jesus had received the anointing through the divine presence in the appearance of a dove, and was invested as the Messiah, so in Christian baptism every candidate is anointed and, in connection with this anointing, the gift of the Spirit is conferred . . . . The description of Christ's baptism culminates in the appearance of the dove and the divine voice . . . . In the process of ritualization, therefore, it was the anointing that became, in Syria, the first and only visible gesture for the central event at Christ's baptism: his revelation as the Messiah-King through the descent of the Spirit." (47)

Regarding initiation in Egypt, Max again asserts that the Jordan event/John 3 provide the structure for theological interpretations there, but there seems to be a difference. Rather than referring to the Jordan baptism of Christ proper, Clement and Origen are motivated by that event to develop Old Testament tropes into baptismal symbols. Both use Israel's crossing the Jordan under Joshua's leadership as a primary symbol, and Origen expands it to cover all of Exodus: the Red Sea is the entrance into the catechumenate; the Jordan is baptism. Origen, however, also alludes to Romans 6 in his interpretations, a move that is probably motivated in part by the Alexandrian reading of the "Secret Gospel," a extra-canonical passage in the Gospel of Mark (which was the one read in Alexandria during this early period) which tells the story of Jesus raising a Lazarus-like figure from the dead and then initiating him: "...Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God. And thence, arising, he returned to the other side of the Jordan." (55)

Origen is also a witness to threefold questioning at baptism: "Do you believe in the Father... Do you believe in the Son... etc." and to infant baptism.

Overall, I have some questions about interrelationships here. Granted the close relationship between Egypt and Syria, it is not long after this point that the differences between then start to cause tension, as well. Does the seeming Alexandrian emphasis on OT passages arise merely from coincidental selection of excerpts for this book? Is it relevant that the Syrian witness seeming to bear the closest similarity to Clement's theology of baptism (53) is Justin Martyr, whose testimony as a "Syrian" witness is problematic (though his testimony as a "Roman" witness is even more problematic)?