Andrew Meredith’s Reviews > Rites of the New Humanity: Essays on Sacramental Theology > Status Update

Long overlooked in theological works and scholarship until around the last 150 or so years, baptism needs to be understood as the Jews of John's day would have understood it. In other words, we must relentlessly seek to ground our understanding of baptism in the Old Testament if we are to rightly understand it at all.

This observation brings many implications, but for Leithart's purposes in this chapter, baptism, rooted in the history of Israel, is public, historical, and material. And, as it is the beginning of the Gospel, it implies that the Gospel is public, historical, and material as well, defying our modern, secular-minded attempts to render it internal, other-worldly, and spiritual. He who proclaims the Gospel is making a very political claim, "Christ is Lord."

But many accounts of Christianity ignore this, most bypassing it altogether by claiming any material or this-worldly element of the faith (baptism included) is merely a symbol, a (disposable) "husk" that we must penetrate to find the "kernel" of eternal, spiritual truth within, or a material step-ladder by which we can ascend into the mystical (and perhaps kick it away afterward).

In this paradigm, redemptive history can and has been presented as a movement from an earthly, physical, rigid, and ritualistic form of religion (the Old Covenant), upwards towards a heavenly, spiritual, free, and mystical form of piety (New Covenant). This has also been construed as a movement inward: from outward-focused, ritualistic, law-based, works-righteousness salvation (OT), towards inward-focused, mystical, grace-based, pious salvation (NT).

An ascent to spirit, a descent into the heart, or both at once, either way, both aspire to a divine-human encounter beyond signs.

Hugh of St. Victor speaks for medieval theology when he designated the sacraments as "containers" which hold the "medicine of grace." Those rituals of the OT pointed to this grace, but did not themselves contain the grace as the NT sacraments did. Luther agreed. According to him, though the NT sacraments were "sacraments of justification," the sacraments of the Mosaic order were "only sacraments of works." Calvin did not agree, but he perpetuated the problem by all but ignoring the OT background when laying out his own theology of baptism, more than implying that the Old Covenant had nothing to do or say about the practice.

Practically speaking, what can be done?

First, we must renounce the temptation to "ascend beyond signs." Communication with God through signs is emphatically NOT some sort of "second best" form of fellowship, "it is instead the necessary form of any communication from God to embodied creatures." Seen from this angle, it is apparent that this temptation is of the essence of the original sin, to transcend our creatureliness, and to be as God.

Second, the Christian faith must embrace its Hebraic roots by recognizing that it is just as "political, public, embodied, verbalized, and ritualized" as the form the same faith took in the Old Testament. There is no redemptive-historical movement from earth to heaven or from outward to inward. The NT is just as earthly and outward focused as the OT, and the OT is just as heavenly and inward focused as the NT.

Third, we must learn to read the whole Bible typologically to grasp the redemptive-historical significance of water, bread, and wine. Specifically, we must look to the sacraments of the Old Law (especially the sacrificial meals and the various washings and sprinkling) to understand both the purposes of the NT sacraments and their significant alterations.