Water, Blood, and Spirit

And what will you decide about a man who is still only hearing the word, who has perhaps been arrested in the name of Christ, has confessed at once, and has been put to death before he could be granted baptism in water? Will you declare that he has perished, because he was not baptized in water? Or will you allow that there may be something outside the water that helps him toward salvation, even though he has not been baptized in it? If you think he has perished, the Lord’s own sentence stands against you, who says, “Whoever confesses me before men, I will also confess him before my Father in heaven.” For it makes no difference whether the one who confesses for the Lord is a hearer of the word or a believer already, so long as the Christ he confesses is the Christ he ought to confess. The Lord, confessing him in turn, himself honors the one who confessed him before his Father with the glory of his martyrdom, exactly as he promised. [a]

But this must certainly not be taken too broadly, as though it could be stretched far enough to cover any heretic who confesses the name of Christ while denying Christ himself — a man who believes in a different Christ, when Christ says plainly that it can do him no good at all. For the Lord said that he himself must be brought to confession by us before men, and that cannot be done apart from him, or without honoring his name. So both of these must stand by the one who confesses — sound, honest, uncontaminated, unbroken — and no sorting is to be done on the confessor himself: whether he is righteous or a sinner, a finished Christian or an unfinished one, so long as he has not been afraid to confess the Lord at the greatest risk to himself. This does not contradict the earlier argument. There, time is still left for many bad things to be corrected, and certain things are granted to the mere name of our Lord by itself; but martyrdom cannot be completed except in the Lord and by the Lord himself. So no one can confess Christ without his name, and the name of Christ cannot make anyone’s confession count without Christ himself.

So the whole of this discussion has to be gone over, to make it clearer. Calling the name of Jesus over someone is of use only if it is afterward properly completed, and both the prophets and the apostles say so. For James says in the Acts of the Apostles: “Men and brothers, listen. Simon has told how God first visited the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name. And the words of the prophets agree with this, as it is written: After this I will return and will build again the tent of David, which has fallen down. I will build its ruins again and raise it up anew, so that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord — and all the Gentiles over whom my name is called — says the Lord, who does these things.” So the rest of mankind, that is, some of the Jews and all the Gentiles over whom the name of the Lord is called, both may and must seek the Lord, because that very calling of the name gives them the opportunity, or even lays on them the necessity, of seeking him. And with such people one can appeal to the holy Scriptures — all of them, or at least some — and argue about the truth far more boldly than with Gentiles over whom the name of the Lord Jesus, the Son of the living God, has never been called, or with Jews, who accept only the Scriptures of the Old Testament. And so men of both kinds, Jews and Gentiles, once they believe as they ought, are baptized in the same way. [e]

But heretics who have already been baptized in water in the name of Jesus Christ need only to be baptized with the Holy Spirit. In Jesus, which is “the only name given under heaven by which we must be saved,” death is rightly despised — though if they stay as they are they cannot be saved, because they have not sought the Lord after his name was called over them. It is the same with people who, because of false Christs, have refused to believe. Of them the Lord says, “Take care that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, I am Christ, and will lead many astray.” And again he says, “Then if anyone says to you, Look, here is Christ, or look, there — do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so that even the chosen would be deceived, if that were possible.” And there is no doubt that they will do these wonders under the name of Christ — the very name in which some men even now appear to work certain wonders and to prophesy falsely.

But it is certain that such men, because they are not themselves of Christ, do not belong to Christ. It is the same as when a man leaves Christ and keeps only his name: it does him little good, and in fact the name becomes a weight on him — however faithful he may have been before, or however righteous, or honored with some office among the clergy, or holding the standing of a man who confessed Christ under trial. For all such men, by denying the true Christ and bringing in or following another — though there is no other at all — leave themselves no hope and no salvation. They are no different from those who denied Christ before men and must therefore be denied by Christ. No allowance is made for their earlier way of life, or their feeling, or their rank. Since they themselves have dared to do away with Christ, that is, with their own salvation, they are condemned by one short sentence, because the Lord said plainly, “Whoever denies me before men, I will also deny him before my Father in heaven.”

That word “whoever,” in the sentence about confessing as well, shows us as fully as possible that no circumstance of the confessor’s own can stand in his way. He may have been a denier before, or a heretic, or a hearer of the word, or someone only beginning to hear, not yet baptized or brought over from heresy to the truth of the faith. Or he may have left the church and afterward come back, and then, on his return, before the overseer’s hands could be laid on him, been seized and forced to confess Christ before men. And in the same way, for a man who denies Christ a second time, no old and special rank can do anything toward his salvation.

Any one of us will hold it to be necessary that whatever is found last in a man on this matter is what he must be judged by, everything he did earlier being wiped away and blotted out. And so, although in martyrdom there is so great a reversal of things in a single moment that in a very quick case everything can be changed, still let no one flatter himself who has thrown away the chance of a glorious salvation, if by his own fault he has shut himself out of it — like Lot’s wife, who in the same way, in a time of danger only, looked behind her against the angel’s command, and became a pillar of salt. [k]

On the same principle, a heretic who is put to death for confessing the name of Christ can correct nothing afterward, if he has thought anything wrongly about God or about Christ. By believing in another God or another Christ he has deceived himself. He is not a confessor of Christ, but only of the name of Christ. For the apostle goes on to say, “And if I hand over my body to be burned with fire, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” A man gains nothing by that act if he does not have love for the God and the Christ who are proclaimed by the law and the prophets and in the Gospel this way: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your mind, and with all your thought; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commands hang all the law and the prophets.” It is as John the evangelist said, “And everyone who loves is born of God and knows God, for God is love.” It is as God also says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

So it plainly appears that a man who does not have this love in him — the love of loving us and of being loved by us — gains nothing from an empty confession and an empty death. All it does is show, and make plain, that he is a heretic who believes in another God, or takes some Christ other than the one whom the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament plainly declare; and those Scriptures announce, without any obscurity, the Father Almighty, the Maker of all things, and his Son. What happens to them will be what happens to a man who looks for salvation from a different God. In the end, contrary to their notion, they are condemned to everlasting punishment by Christ, the Son of God the Father Almighty — the Maker whom they have blasphemed — on the day when God begins to judge the hidden things of men, according to the Gospel, through Christ Jesus, because they did not believe in him, although they were washed in his name.

And up to this point the whole of that heretical baptism can still be put right, after some space of time has passed, if the man lives and corrects his faith — as our God said to his disciples in the Gospel according to Luke, “But I have another baptism to be baptized with.” And in Mark he said, with the same thing in view, to the sons of Zebedee, “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” For he knew that these men had to be baptized not only with water but also in their own blood — so that men baptized in this second baptism alone might still reach the sound faith and the plain love that the washing gives, and men baptized both ways might reach, just as fully, the baptism of salvation and of glory. [r]

For when the Lord said, “I have another baptism to be baptized with,” he did not mean a second baptism in this place, as though there were two baptisms. He was showing that there is besides a baptism of another kind given to us, running together toward the same salvation. And it was fitting that both these kinds should first be begun and made holy by our Lord himself, so that either one of the two, or both kinds together, might give us this one twofold baptism that saves and glorifies; and that certain ways of the one baptism should be opened to us in such a manner that at times one of them might be missing and no harm done. So it is with martyrs who are still hearing the word: the baptism of water is missing, and no evil comes of it — and yet we are sure that if these men had been given any leave, they too would have been baptized with water. And for those who have been made believers in the regular way, the baptism of their own blood is missing, and no harm done, because, having been baptized in the name of Christ, they have been bought back with the Lord’s own most precious blood.

For both of these rivers of the Lord’s baptism come out of one and the same spring, so that everyone who is thirsty may come and drink, as the Scripture says: “Out of his belly flowed rivers of living water.” Those rivers were shown first of all in the Lord’s suffering, when from his side, pierced by the soldier’s spear, there flowed blood and water — so that the one side of the one man let out two rivers of different kinds, and whoever should believe and drink from both rivers might be filled with the Holy Spirit. For in speaking of these rivers the Lord set this out, meaning the Holy Spirit whom those who believed in him were to receive: “But the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” And when he had said in this way how baptism may be brought about — the baptism the apostle declares to be one — it is surely clear on that principle that there are different kinds of one and the same baptism, flowing out of one wound into water and blood; since there are there the two baptisms of water we have spoken of, that is, of one and the same kind, although the baptism of each kind ought to be one, as we have said more fully.

And since we seem to have divided all spiritual baptism into three, let us come to the proof of what has been proposed, so that we do not appear to have done it on our own judgment and rashly. For John, teaching us, says this of our Lord in his letter: “This is he who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who bears witness, because the Spirit is truth. For three bear witness: the Spirit, and the water, and the blood — and these three are one.” From these words we may gather that water usually confers the Spirit, that a man’s own blood usually confers the Spirit, and that the Spirit himself also usually confers the Spirit. For since water is poured out just as blood is, so the Spirit too was poured out by the Lord on all who believed. Men may certainly be baptized in water, and no less in their own blood, and then above all in the Holy Spirit. For Peter says: “But this is what was spoken by the prophet: It will happen in the last days, says the Lord, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and their sons and their daughters will prophesy, and their young men will see visions, and their old men will dream dreams; and on my male servants and on my female servants I will pour out of my Spirit.” [y]

We find that this Spirit was given in the Old Testament as well — not everywhere, and not at large, but along with other gifts; or else that he sprang of his own will into certain men, or clothed them, or rested upon them. So we see the Lord saying to Moses about the seventy elders, “And I will take of the Spirit that is upon you, and will put it upon them.” And so, according to his promise, God put on them a share of the Spirit that had been on Moses, and they prophesied in the camp. Moses, being a spiritual man, was glad it had happened this way, although Joshua son of Nun tried to persuade him to stop it, and did not move him. Further, in the book of Judges and in the books of Samuel and Kings too, we see that on a good many men the Spirit of the Lord either was, or came to them: on Othniel, Gideon, Jephthah, Samson, Saul, David, and many others.

All of which comes to this: that by them the Lord has taught us as plainly as possible the freedom and the power of the Holy Spirit, who comes of his own will, saying, “The Spirit breathes where he wills, and you hear his voice, but you do not know where he comes from or where he is going.” So the same Spirit is also found at times upon men who are unworthy of him — certainly not for nothing or without reason, but for the sake of some work that has to be done. So it was with Saul, upon whom the Spirit of God came, and he prophesied. And later, after the Spirit of the Lord had left him, and after an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him, he came himself, following the messengers he had already sent ahead with such care, meaning to kill David; and they fell in among the band of the prophets and prophesied, so that they were neither able nor willing to do what they had been ordered to do. And we believe that the Spirit who was upon all of them brought this about by an admirable wisdom, by the will of God.

This same Spirit also filled John the Baptist from his mother’s womb, and it fell on those who were with Cornelius the centurion before they were baptized with water. So the Holy Spirit, keeping close to the baptism men give, either goes before it or comes after it; or, where the baptism of water is lacking, he falls on those who believe. The counsel we are given is this: either we ought to keep baptism whole and entire, as we should, or, if baptism happens to have been given by someone in the name of Jesus Christ, we ought to complete it — guarding the most holy calling of the name of Jesus Christ over a person, as we have set out at length, and guarding as well the custom and the authority that have so long a claim on our reverence, and through such great men.

But since the first part of this argument seems to be unfolded, we ought to touch on the part that comes after it, on account of the heretics; for it is very necessary not to pass over a discussion that has once fallen into our hands, in case some heretic should dare, in his subtlety, to go after those of our brothers who are simpler. Because John said that we must be baptized in the Holy Spirit and in fire, and because he went on to add and in fire, certain desperate men have dared to carry their depravity so far, and so very crafty men look for how they may corrupt and violate and even cancel out the baptism of holiness. [ag]

They draw the beginning of their notion from Simon Magus, and practice it with many kinds of perversity through many kinds of error. It was to Simon that Simon Peter said, in the Acts of the Apostles, “May your money perish with you, because you thought the grace of God could be got with money. You have no part and no share in this work, for your heart is not right with God.” And men like these do all of this out of a desire to deceive those who are simpler, or more curious. Some of them try to argue that they alone administer a sound and complete baptism, and that ours is mutilated and cut short; and they are said to mark theirs out in this way, that the moment they have gone down into the water, fire at once appears upon the water.

Now this may be brought off by some trick, since several tricks of the kind are credited to Anaxilaus; or there may be something natural by which it can happen; or they may only think they see it; or the work and the magical drug of some malignant being may be able to force fire out of water. Whichever it is, they still declare that such a deceit and contrivance is a perfect baptism — and if faithful men have been forced to receive it, there can surely be no doubt that they have lost what they had. It is just as if a soldier, after taking his oath, should desert his camp, and in the enemy’s camp, so very different, should want to take an oath of a wholly different kind: it is plain that in this way he is discharged from his old one.