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Jumpstarter 2 of 10

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Question 2

Several quotations describe candidates going down into the water “full of sins” and rising “alive,” and Tertullian calls baptism “happy…by washing away the sins of our early blindness”—what do these writers seem to assume about a person’s pre-baptism spiritual state, and how does that challenge common evangelical language about already being saved before baptism?

Another way to ask: When these writers say people go into the water “full of sins” and come out “alive,” what do they think a person is like before baptism? How does that conflict with saying someone is already saved before they are baptized?

Direct Answer The transcript presents early writers assuming candidates are still “dead” in sins prior to baptism and that baptism is the moment God normally grants remission and life. That challenges evangelical habits of speaking as if a person is fully saved already, and baptism is only a later symbol.

Support from Transcript:

Barnabas: “We indeed descend into the water full of sins and defilement… we come up bearing fruit in our heart.”
Hermas: “Before a man bears the name of the Son of God, he is dead… This seal then is the water. They descend into the water dead, and they arise alive.”
Tertullian: “Happy is our sacrament of water in that by washing away the sins of our early blindness, we are set free and admitted into eternal life.”
Cyprian: “All sins are put away in baptism… In the baptism of water, there is received the remission of sins.”
Bercot explicitly links their meaning: “we receive the new birth in the water of baptism… a person’s sins are washed away… and he is born anew.”
He contrasts his earlier evangelical experience: baptism “wasn’t considered essential to salvation or intricately connected with salvation.”

Discussion Follow-ups How would your conversion testimony sound if you described baptism as the point of washing and new birth rather than a later public symbol? What Bible phrases in Acts or 1 Peter 3:21 become harder to sidestep with the “already saved” language?

Jumpstarter 2 of 10