Augustine's Theory.—St. Augustine is complimented by the same critics for formulating the first strict scientific theory of the nature and effects of baptism. He drew a sharp distinction between what he called "the outward sign"—water baptism—and the inward change of heart resulting from the operation of the Holy Ghost. Yet even he is charged with laying too much stress upon the value of "the outward sign," which he held to be essential to salvation.
Protestant theologians have been commended for keeping the "sign" in due subordination to "the thing signified," for justifying themselves by faith, and ignoring to a great extent outward ordinances.
But the Greek Christians, whatever their defects, were nearer right than St. Augustine; and the Catholic St. Augustine was nearer right than the Protestant theologians who followed him. Baptism, as taught in the New Testament, is not the mere "outward sign of an inward grace." The action of the water and the action of the Spirit are not to be separated in any analysis of the nature and effects of baptism. Both are essential in the soul-cleansing, soul-enlightening, process, modern critics to the contrary notwithstanding.
CHAPTER VII.
Mode and Meaning of Baptism.
Use of the Figurative.—When Jesus told Nicodemus that a man must be born again—born of water and of the Spirit—he virtually declared the meaning of the ordinance and prescribed the mode of its administration. Our Savior was not a mere rhetorician, ornamenting his speech for the mere sake of ornament. A true son of the Orient, naturally given to the use of figurative language, he was not a flourisher of phrases, a flaunter of vain show. His parables are poems, but they teach the truth in plainness to the wise; and because he recognized, as all great teachers do, the power of poetic symbolism to illustrate and impress the truth, he used it as a medium of instruction. But symbols are not arbitrarily invented by those who use them. They are already in existence, awaiting recognition. Poetic genius recognizes and applies them—that is all. God has built his universe upon symbols. In every department of creation the lesser symbolizes the greater and leads up to its comprehension.
Like Suggests Like.—What said the Lord to Moses? "All things have their likeness, and all things are created and made to bear record of me, both things which are temporal, and things which are spiritual; things which are in the heavens above, and things which are on the earth, and things which are in the earth, and things which are under the earth, both above and beneath: all things bear record of me" (Moses 6:63).
Man is a symbol of God, and is destined to become God; Earth is typical of heaven, and will yet be converted into a heaven. "If two things exist, and there be one above the other, there shall be greater things above them" (Abraham 3:16). Plato grasped the idea: "All things are in a scale, and begin where we will, ascend and ascend, and what we call results are beginnings."
The Resurrection Foreshadowed.—It was to prepare the way before a greater and higher principle, that Christ taught and exemplified the principle of baptism. That greater and higher principle was the resurrection, a doctrine difficult for even the apostles to comprehend, and one that he repeatedly impressed upon them, both before and after he arose from the dead. Hence he compared baptism to a birth—the entry, and the only one, into mortal life; and this pointed forward to the resurrection—the entry, and the only one, into immortal glory. Men should therefore be prepared for something suggestive of a birth, of a resurrection, in the ordinance prescribed by him as the means of admittance into his kingdom. That suggestion is fully realized in the true form of the baptismal ordinance—immersion.