Tertullian on baptism and resurrection

In his treatise on the resurrection of the flesh, Tertullian makes an intriguing connection between the phenomenology of baptism and the resurrection of the body. Baptism, he points out, is a corporeal rite, and this washing of the body points ot a resurrection of the body: “unless it were a bodily resurrection, there would be no pledge secured through this process of a corporeal baptism.” The soul, he argues, is not “sanctified by the baptismal bath.” Rather, the sanctification of the soul comes through the “answer,” an appparent allusion to 1 Peter 3:21 (ch 38). I’m not particularly taken with the body/soul problematic that Tertullian introduces here, but the connection of corporeal washing to corporeal resurrection is important. It is the same connection Paul makes in Rom 6, and there Paul includes the “bodily” practices of the Christian life as part of the death and resurrection achieved in baptism. Perhaps also 1 Corinthians 15:29.

Next
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Notes on Anosmia

John Wilson

One morning several years ago, as my wife, Wendy, and I were having breakfast together, I had…

Empire of Unreality

Algis Valiunas

Shiva Naipaul (1945–1985) was the author of three novels and two books of mordant dispatches from places…

The Dreadful Christ of Pär Lagerkvist

Peter J. Leithart

It’s dangerous to meet a god,” says the disgraced Pythia in Pär Lagerkvist’s The Sibyl. Her observation…