will take.
But while John, as the natural man, baptizes—symbolically buries or clothes the divine spark or soul in the “tomb” of matter—so in turn the Christ figure is proclaimed as the element or agent by which the natural man will now be baptized or endowed with the divine Holy Spirit. This is why John the Baptist is made to say: “I baptize you with water but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” Significantly, Luke says here: “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” The fire symbols the divine flame of intelligence and of potential Christhood. That is why, incidentally, baptism in water is accompanied by anointing with oil in some major branches of the Christian church, for example in the Orthodox Church. Oil (“thou anointest my head with oil,” the Psalmist says) symbolizes this same reality. It is highly flammable and gives off a shine even when not ignited. It floats on water, that is, it rises to the top or the head, where reason and self-reflective consciousness were believed primarily to be embedded—and oil will even burn in the midst of the waters. In the watery “grave” of our material bodies, the “fire” burns on and nothing can ever put it out. This may be what the Gospel of Thomas’s Jesus (Yeshua) means when he reportedly says: “I have thrown fire upon the world, and look, I am watching ’till it blazes.”7 Or again: “Yeshua said, Whoever is near me is near the fire . . .”8
In any case, St. Paul, whose thoughts and arguments can be extremely complex and at times virtually incomprehensible to an average reader, goes on at considerable length in Romans using the imagery of death, burial and resurrection in relation to our oneness with the mystical Christ. For example, in chapter 6 of Romans, Paul says: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” None of this, by the way, implies that Paul took any of this literally. His Jesus Christ is supremely a spiritual ray from the Father, as was Horus before him. All the action he describes takes place on a spiritual rather than an earthly plane.
In adult baptism, where there is a total submersion of the person under the waters, this burial and resurrection symbolism is of course more vividly portrayed than in the sprinkling of infants, though the symbolism remains the same. Once, long ago when we were going through one of my family’s phases of attending a Gospel Hall form of worship (where the “whole Bible” was said to be preached and believed in), I took my place, at age twelve or thirteen, in the baptismal lineup at a tank at the very front of the church one Sunday evening. There, I had to endure the embarrassment of being nearly suffocated in front of some of my wide-eyed friends who had come along to observe the proceedings. The overzealous pastor got carried away and held me under unduly long as he simultaneously harangued the congregation. I emerged sputtering and half drowned. But as the proponents of infant baptism have always stoutly maintained, it’s not really the amount of water that counts. This is true, if only they truly understand what the fundamental symbolism actually represents.
Put as simply as possible, the Christian rite of baptism is not about forgiveness of sins, original or not; nor, obviously, is it about enrolment in a certain exclusive, ecclesiastical “club.” It’s at the same time much more universal, much grander and yet simpler than any of that. The sacrament is one of celebrating and ritually expressing the basic datum of all religion, that of Incarnation of spirit in flesh. As St. Paul triumphantly exults: our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. When a baby, for example, is baptized in the presence of all the congregation, what is really happening is that a fresh, incarnated soul is being symbolically welcomed into the whole human family. It’s an occasion for all present to share in the rejoicing at our common, God-given inheritance.
That is truly the theme of the account of Jesus’ baptism in the Gospels. As he comes up out of the water in the drama, he experiences a vision. The heavens are “torn apart” and the Spirit, in form like a dove, descends on him. Then the voice “came from heaven” saying that he was “my son, the beloved.” Instead of the negativity inherent in the mention of sin, the voice says, “with you I am well pleased.” The allegorical sense is crystal clear. The whole event is a claiming of our own divine descent. We are each declared to be the child of God, beloved by the very ground and source of all life. Instead of the pejorative, soul-killing labels the Church was to devise and pin on all its followers for centuries to come—of our “total depravity,” our unworthiness even “to pick up the crumbs” under God’s table—the pronouncement comes loud and clear of God’s infinite pleasure in us.
This contrasts radically with the view of our humanity once elucidated by Reverend John Wesley, the great Methodist reformer. In Sermon 45 in the 1872 edition of The Sermons of John Wesley, he thunders: “This then is the foundation of the new birth—the entire corruption of our nature . . . everyone born into the world now bears the image of the devil in pride and self-will.” That is really a classic statement of the dogma of original sin, the notion that, because of Adam’s alleged “fall,” humanity is forever tainted by that act of disobedience. Humanity, according to St. Augustine, was a “massa damnata,” and only the death of the sinless Son of God could ever set that right. This theology gave the Church enormous power and control over people’s lives, and it still looms large in too much Christian preaching today.
Nearly two thousand years of controlling people by constantly harping on their ungodliness and sin has produced predictably poor results. One can only speculate about how differently millions upon millions would have felt and behaved in countless generations had they been told from the very beginning: “You are my much-loved offspring with whom I am pleased indeed.” To create loving people, you need to have children who are told of their true nature and potential—and then are truly loved. The implications of this more spiritual understanding of baptism for the churches are potentially transformative on a grand scale. There really is some very Good News to proclaim! But new baptismal liturgies or services have to be created to replace the negative formulae of the past.
Nazareth
When Mark says that Jesus came from Nazareth and was baptized by John, it’s the only time he explicitly mentions the place that has come to be universally regarded as Jesus’ hometown. A few verses later, an unclean spirit is said to have addressed him as “Jesus, the Nazarene” (and Jesus is referred to as a Nazarene three more times in this Gospel), but there the meaning is quite different. It probably has nothing to do with a place name. As Professor G.A. Wells, in a lengthy and detailed discussion, points out, the term “Nazarene” is used in some extant documents as “the title of a sect.” It is thus the equivalent of saying “George the Methodist” or “Tom the Anglican.”9 Notice that Mark does not tell us that Jesus actually came from or grew up in Nazareth. According to Luke, Mary and Joseph lived there—they went to Bethlehem for the birth—but Matthew’s birth narrative differs sharply at this point. In Matthew’s version, their “house” was in Bethlehem. To keep the Nazareth connection, however, Matthew has the whole family go there after the highly symbolic return from Egypt following the death of Herod. In his usual formula, Matthew says this was to fulfill an Old Testament prophecy that “He will be called a Nazorean” (the King James Version again translates the Greek here as “Nazarene”). But there is no such prophecy in the entire Old Testament!
I will not weary the reader with the incredibly detailed and complex discussion and debate over the possible significance of the fact that Mark and Luke call Jesus “the Nazarene” while Matthew, John and Acts always call him “Jesus the Nazorean.”10 In any case, early Jewish followers of the Christian way were called by both terms. In none of the Gospels, however, does Jesus apply either term to himself. He is depicted rather as an itinerant prophet who called no town or village his home. He is Everyman.
Today in modern Nazareth, the Roman Catholics, with their huge Basilica of the Annunciation, allegedly built over the site of the grotto that was Mary’s home, are still engaged in a long-running dispute with the Greek Orthodox Church. The latter claim to have the true site of the Annunciation
