The Teaching of the Church Regarding Baptism. Karl Barth
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eternal Kingdom and therefore in its glory; so that he can now no more die, but can only live, even though he will one day die. Therefore, according to Romans 6 he is now dead to sin, but has become alive unto God for an existence in His service.
This is what happens for him and to him in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ; in very truth for him and to him, in the power of the Holy Spirit which is poured out upon him. For it is the Holy Spirit, proceeding from Jesus Christ and moving this particular man, which unites him to Jesus Christ like a body to its head, making him belong to Jesus Christ and making everything that Jesus Christ is and does belong to him. This happens in such a manner that he can no more be without Jesus Christ because Jesus Christ can no more be without him; he is no more outside but in Jesus Christ and with Him to the end of all things, standing with Him at the dawn of a new heaven and a new earth. “Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away: behold, they are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17).
As the Holy Spirit is the agent of this union of man with Jesus Christ, therefore the work of the Holy Spirit belongs inseparably to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and to the happening portrayed in baptism. As the Holy Spirit is the agent of this union, what happens is “baptism with the Holy Spirit” and it is so described by all four gospels and by the Acts of the Apostles, to distinguish it from water baptism as such. Thus it is that water baptism is the μυστήριον ἀναγεννήσεως,1, the sacramentum regenerationis. What befalls a man in that participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit, which is set forth in baptism, is indeed his rebirth to new life in the Age to Come. It is accomplished through his full justification before God, through the full forgiveness of his sins, through his full consecration to God’s service.
The Reformed theology of the 17th century meant and said nothing other than this when, in accordance with its central point of view, it2 described this reality as the admission of a man to the foedus gratiae Dei, which was established by God’s eternal decree of election in Jesus Christ and which was realised in time in the coming, the death and the resurrection of the same Jesus Christ. As a partner in this covenant and therefore a brother of Jesus Christ, man is born again as a child of God and a citizen of the new Age. He is moreover righteous before God, because declared free from his sins and therefore consecrated to Him. These things a man becomes because he believes in Jesus Christ and in his own renewal as a child of God through Him, and because he confesses this his faith, becoming by reason of his confession a responsible partner in the divine grace, a living member of the Church of Jesus Christ. All this—that is, everything accomplished in the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, right up to and including the last thing of all, namely, the praise of God which breaks from the lips of the forgiven sinner and is accepted by grace—is the reality which is portrayed in water-baptism.
According to John 1, the water baptism of John witnesses to the baptism of the Spirit which is to be directly accomplished by Jesus Christ Himself. According to the foundation passage Romans 6:5, it is the ὁμοίωμα (likeness) of His death. Therefore and in this sense we call baptism a representation (Abbild). We might instead call it a seal (σφραγίς), following a usage which was widespread in the second century, or a sign (signum), according to the terminology of Augustine which later came to prevail. So far as I know, there is no teaching about Christian baptism which would directly contest the view that water baptism itself is also, and indeed primarily, to be understood as a symbol, that is, as a type (Entsprechung) and a representation (Darstellung), or, according to Gregory of Nyssa, a copy μίμησις—of that other divine-human reality which it attests. One can obscure this by expressions which appear stronger or more definite, but one cannot contest it.
Baptism is holy and hallowing, though we have yet to see why and how far. But it is neither God, nor Jesus Christ, nor the covenant, nor grace, nor faith, nor the Church. It bears witness to all these as the event in which God in Jesus Christ makes a man His child and a member of His covenant, awakening faith through His grace and calling a man to life in the Church. Baptism testifies to a man that this event is not his fancy but is objective reality which no power on earth can alter and which God has pledged Himself to maintain in all circumstances. It testifies to him that God has directed all His words and works towards him and does not cease so to do. It testifies to him what has already been declared in the signum audibile of the word of Christian teaching and instruction, and has already come to pass in fact after the latter, because it occurs also at his baptism and will occur again after his baptism. It testifies this to him, however, as signum visibile: as the speaking likeness of that threat of death and deliverance to life, in the midst of which he is concerned with no one but himself as the one who is threatened and delivered; in which also he is not only dealt with but, by yielding himself to this threat and deliverance, finds himself taking an active part. Baptism then is a picture in which, man, it is true, is not the most important figure but is certainly the second most important.
This is the essence of baptism: to be this picture, this witness and sign. That it is only a picture is evident, apart from anything else, from the inadequacy with which the threat and deliverance—ultimately harmless even in the most pointed form of the representation—correspond to the actual death and actual eternal life of man, with which it deals objectively.
What John 1:8 says of John the Baptist: “He was not the light but came that he might bear witness of the light”; what the Baptist according to John 1:20; 3:28, so confessed of himself: “I am not the Christ,” and Jesus conversely said of Himself: “The witness which I have is greater than that of John” (John 5:36); all this holds good also of baptism and points to a limiting principle which in a sound doctrine of baptism must be neither put on one side nor rendered ineffective. One does no honour to baptism by interpreting it as if it were in its essence more than the representation of the sacred history (Heilsgeschichte) which comes to pass between God and man in Jesus Christ. It has its full honour precisely in being in fact the most living and expressive picture of that history: the visible sign of the invisible nativitas spiritualis at the entrance gate of the Church and at the beginning of every Christian life.
II
THE power or potency (Kraft) of baptism consists in this—that as an element in the Church’s message it is a free word and deed of Jesus Christ Himself.
Baptism is no dead or dumb representation, but a living and expressive one. Its potency lies in the fact that it comprehends the whole movement of sacred history (Heilsgeschichte) and that it is therefore res potentissima et efficacissima. All that it intends and actually effects is the result of this potency. It exercises its power as it shows to a man that objective reality to which he himself belongs (and of which it is a sign) in such a way that he can only forget or miss it per nefas; in such a way, at all events, that he becomes by its marks himself a marked man, by its portraiture one who is himself portrayed. We next ask therefore: whence comes this potency?
We begin from the fact that baptism is in any case a part of the Church’s proclamation and that it is plainly a human act. Like the Lord’s Supper, preaching, prayer, the whole worship of the Church, pastoral care, works of charity, church order and Christian education, it is a part of the Church’s proclamation. One is accustomed to distinguish it from the other activities of the Church as, like the Lord’s Supper, a “sacrament.” But whilst being clear about baptism and the Lord’s Supper, it is even more important to realise that all the activities of the Church are in their way sacramental. That is to say, they are activities involving signs and symbols; moreover, they are dependent for their effectiveness on certain fixed signs and symbols. Baptism (as we have said) is in any case, like all the Church’s acts, plainly a human act. If in fact it has the potency of a living and expressive representation, able to represent and denote man, then it owes this to the fact that it is, together with all the other parts of the Church’s proclamation, in itself and in its complete humanity, still indirectly and mediately a free word and act of Jesus Christ Himself. It is this which gives life to all parts of the Church’s proclamation and to baptism along with the others. The Church stands under the government of her Lord, an instrument at His disposal. When she expresses herself in human words and deeds, she lays hold of the promise that whoever listens to her listens