Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The Cost of Discipleship
Revised Edition, 1949 (German 1937)
Chapter 28, Baptism
IN THE Synoptic Gospels the relationship between the disciples and their Lord is expressed almost entirely in terms of following him. In the Pauline Epistles this conception recedes into the background. In the first place St Paul has far less to say about the earthly life of our Lord, and far more about the presence of the risen and glorified Christ and his work in us. He therefore needs a new set of terms peculiar to himself. It is born out of his particular subject and aims to stress the unity of the gospel of one Lord who lived, died and rose again. The terms St Paul uses confirm those of the Synoptists, and vice versa. Neither set of terms is intrinsically preferable to the other. After all, we are not “of Paul, or of Apollos, or of Cephas, or of Christ.” Our faith rests upon the unity of the scriptural testimony. It is destructive of the unity of the Scriptures to say that the Pauline Christ is more alive for us than the Christ of the Synoptists. Of course such language is commonly regarded as genuine Reformation and historico-critical doctrine, but it is in fact the precise opposite of that, and indeed it is the most perilous kind of enthusiasm. Who tells us that the Pauline Christ is as alive for us to-day as he was for St Paul? We got this assurance only from the scriptures. Or are we talking about a presence of Christ which is free and unbound by the Word? No, the scriptures are the only witness we have of Christ’s presence, and that witness is a unity, which also means that the presence they speak of includes the presence of Jesus Christ as he is presented in the Synoptic Gospels. The Jesus of the Synoptists is neither nearer nor further from us than the Christ of St Paul. The Christ who is present is the Christ of the whole scripture. He is the incarnate, crucified, risen and glorified Christ, and he meets us in his word. The difference between the terminology of the Synoptists and the witness of St Paul does not involve any break in the unity of the scriptural testimony.1
Where the Synoptic Gospels speak of Christ calling men and their following him, St Paul speaks of Baptism.
Baptism is not an offer made by man to God, but an offer made by Christ to man. It is grounded solely on the will of Jesus Christ, as expressed in his gracious call. Baptism is essentially passive-being baptized, suffering the call of Christ. In baptism man becomes Christ’s own possession. When the name of Christ is spoken over the candidate, he becomes a partaker in this Name, and is baptized “into Jesus Christ” (Etc;, Rom. 6.3; Gal. 3.27; Matt. 28.19). From that moment he belongs to Jesus Christ. He is wrested from the dominion of the world, and passes into the ownership of Christ.
Baptism therefore betokens a breach. Christ invades the realm of Satan, lays hands on his own, and creates for himself his Church. By this act past and present are rent asunder. The old order is passed away, and all things have become new. This breach is not effected by man’s tearing off his own chains through some unquenchable longing for a new life of freedom. The breach has been effected by Christ long since, and in baptism it is effected in our own lives. We are now deprived of our direct relationship with all God-given realities of life. Christ the Mediator has stepped in between us and them. The baptized Christian has ceased to belong to the world and is no longer its slave. He belongs to Christ alone, and his relationship with the world is mediated through him.
The breach with the world is complete. It demands and produces the death of the old man.2 In baptism a man dies together with his old world. This death, no less than baptism itself, is a passive event. It is not as though a man must achieve his own death through various kinds of renunciation and mortification. That would never be the death of the old man which Christ demands. The old man cannot will his own death or kill himself. He can only die in, through and with Christ. Christ is his death. For the sake of fellowship with Christ, and in that fellowship alone a man dies. In fellowship with Christ and through the grace of baptism he receives his death as a gift.3 This death is a gift of grace: a man can never accomplish it by himself. The old man and his sin are judged and condemned, but out of this judgement a new man arises, who has died to the world and to sin. Thus this death is not the act of an angry Creator finally rejecting his creation in his wrath, but the gracious death which has been won for us by the death of Christ; the gracious assumption of the creature by his creator. It is death in the power and fellowship of the cross of Christ. He who becomes Christ’s own possession must submit to his cross, and suffer and die with him. He who is granted fellowship with Jesus must die the baptismal death which is the fountain of grace, for the sake of the cross which Christ lays upon his disciples. The cross and death of Christ were cruel and hard but the yoke of our cross is easy and light because of our fellowship with him. The cross of Christ is the death which we undergo once and for all in our baptism, and it is a death full of grace. The cross to which we are called is a daily dying in the power of the death which Christ died once and for all. In this way baptism means sharing in the cross of Christ (Rom. 6.3 ff; Col. 2.12). The believer passes under the yoke of the cross.
Baptismal death means justification from sin. The sinner must die that he may be delivered from his sin. If a man dies he is justified from sin (Rom. 6.7; Col. 2.20). Sin has no further claim on him, for death’ s demand has been met, and its account settled. Justification from ( c:hc) sin can only happen through death. Forgiveness of sin does not mean that the sin is overlooked and forgotten, it means a real death on the part of the sinner and his separation from ( c:hl:) sin. But the only reason why the sinner’s death can bring justification and not condemnation is that this death is a sharing of the death of Christ. It is baptism into the death of Christ which effects the forgiveness of sin and justification, and completes our separation from sin. The fellowship of the cross to which Jesus invited his disciples is the gift of justification through that cross, it is the gift of death and of the forgiveness of sins. The disciple who followed in the fellowship of the cross received exactly the same gift as the believer who was baptized after he had heard the teaching of St Paul.
Although for the candidate baptism is a passive event, it is never a mechanical process. This is made abundantly clear by the connection of baptism with the Spirit (Matt. 3.11; Acts 10.47; John 3.5; I Cor. 12.11-13). The gift of baptism is the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit is Christ himself dwelling in the hearts of the faithful (II Cor. 3.17; Rom. 8.9-11, 14 ff; Eph. 3.16 f). The baptized are the house where the Holy Spirit has made his dwelling ( otKE’l). The Spirit is the pledge of the abiding presence of Jesus, and of our fellowship with him. He imparts true knowledge of his being (I Cor. 2.10) and of his will. He teaches us and reminds us of all that Christ said on earth (John 14.26). He guides us into all truth (John 16.13), so that we are not without knowledge of Christ and of the gifts which God has given us in him (I Cor. 2.12; Eph. 1.9). The gift which the Holy Spirit creates in us is not uncertainty, but assurance and discernment. Thus we are enabled to walk in the Spirit (Gal. 5.16, 18, 25; Rom. 8.2, 4), and to walk in assurance. The certainty which the disciples enjoyed in their intercourse with Jesus was not lost after he left them. Through the sending of the Spirit into the hearts of the believers that certainty is not only perpetuated, but strengthened and increased, so intimate is the fellowship of the Spirit (Rom. 8.16; John 16.12 f).
When he called men to follow him, Jesus was summoning them to a visible act of obedience. To follow Jesus was a public act. Baptism is similarly a public event, for it is the means whereby a member is grafted on to the visible body of Christ (Gal. 3.27 f; I Cor. 12.13). The breach with the world which has been effected in Christ can no longer remain hidden; it must come out into the open through membership of the Church and participation in its life and worship. When he joins the Church the Christian steps out of the world, his work and family, taking his stand visibly in the fellowship of Jesus Christ. He takes this step alone. But he recovers what he has surrendered -brothers, sisters, houses, and fields. Those who have been baptized live in the visible community of Christ. We shall endeavour to draw out the full import of this statement in the next two chapters, the first of which deals with the “Body of Christ” and the second with the “Visible Community.”
Baptism and the gifts it confers are characterized by a certain finality. The baptism of Christ can never be repeated.4 It is just this finality and uniqueness which the Epistle to the Hebrews is trying to express in that obscure passage about the impossibility of a second repentance after baptism and conversion ( Heb. 6.4 ff). By baptism we are made partakers in the death of Christ. Through our baptismal death we have been condemned to death and have died, just as Christ died once and for all. There can be no repetition of his sacrifice, therefore the baptized person dies in Christ once and for all. Now he is dead. The daily dying of the Christian life is merely the consequence of the one baptismal death, just as the tree dies after its roots have been cut away. Henceforth the law which governs the life of the baptized is: “Likewise reckon ye yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin” (Rom. 6.11). From now on the baptized can know themselves only as dead men, in whom everything necessary for salvation has already been accomplished. The baptized live, not by a literal repetition of this death, but by a constant renewal of their faith in the death of Christ as his act of grace in us. The source of their faith lies in the once-and-for-allness of Christ’s death, which they have experienced in their baptism.
This element of finality in baptism throws significant light on the question of infant baptism. 5 The problem is not whether infant baptism is baptism at all, but that the final and unrepeatable character of infant baptism necessitates certain restrictions in its use. It was certainly not a sign of a healthy church life in the second and third century when believing Christians deferred their baptism until they reached old age or were on their death beds, but all the same it shows a clear insight into the nature of baptismal grace, an insight which we sadly lack to-day. As far as infant baptism is concerned, it must be insisted that the sacrament should be administered only where there is a firm faith present which remembers Christ’s deed of salvation wrought for us once and for all. That can only happen in a living Christian community. To baptize infants without a Church is not only an abuse of the sacrament, it betokens a disgusting frivolity in dealing with the souls of the children themselves. For baptism can never be repeated.
The call of Jesus was no less final and unrepeatable for those who heard it in the days of his earthly life. When men followed him they died to their previous life. That is why he expected them to leave all that they had. The irrevocable nature of the decision was thus put beyond all doubt. But it also showed how complete and entire was the gift they had received from their Lord. “If the salt have lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted?” No clearer expression could be given to the finality of the gift of Jesus than this. Having taken their life from them, he sought to confer on them a new life, a life so perfect and complete that he gave them the gift of his cross. That was the gift of baptism to the first disciples.
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1 The direct testimony of the scriptures is frequently confounded with ontological propositions. This error is the essence of fanaticism in all its forms. For example, if we take the statement that Christ is risen and present as an ontological proposition, it inevitably dissolves the unity of the scriptures, for it leads us to speak of a mode of Christ’s presence which is different e.g. from that of the synoptic Jesus. The truth that Jesus Christ is risen and present to us is ilien taken as an independent statement with an ontological significance which can be applied critically to oilier ontological statements, and it is thus exalted into a theological principle. This procedure is analogous to ilie fanatical doctrine of perfectionism, which arises from a similar ontological misunderstanding of the scriptural utterances on the subject of sanctification. In this instance the assertion iliat he who is in God does not sin is made a starting-point for further speculation. But this is to tear it from its scriptural context and raise it to ilie status of an independent truth which can be experienced. The proclamation of ilie scriptural testimony is of quite a different character. The assertion that Christ is risen and present, is, when taken strictly as a testimony given in the scriptures, true only as a word of ilie scriptures. This word is ilie object of our faith. There is no oilier conceivable way of approach to this truth except through this word. But this word testifies to the presence of both the Synoptic and the Pauline Christ. Our nearness to the one or to the other is defined solely by the Word, i.e. by the scriptural testimony. Of course this is not to deny the obvious fact that the Pauline testimony and that of the Synoptists differ in respect both of their object and their terminology, but both have to be interpreted in the light of the scriptures as a whole.
This conclusion is not merely a piece of a priori knowledge based on a rigid doctrine of the canon of scripture. The legitimacy of our view must be put to the test in every instance. Thus in the ensuing argument, our purpose is to show how St Paul takes up the Synoptic notion of following Christ and subjects it to further development.
2 Even Jesus himself referred to his death as a baptism, and promised that his disciples would share this baptism of death (Mark 10.39; Luke 12.50).
3 Schlatter also takes I Cor. 15.29 as a reference to the baptism of martyrdom.
4 Contrast the baptism of John, which must be renewed through baptism into Christ (Acts 19.5).
5 To the usual passages quoted as evidence for the practice of infant baptism in New Testament times, we may perhaps add I John 2.12 ff. The use of the three forms of address-children, fathers, and young men-would seem to justify our taking TEKvia in verse 12 not as a general term for the Christian community, but as a reference to “children” in the literal sense of the word.