Guys,
This is where the discussion grinds to a halt, all the time, every time. Hate to say it. But it's true.

It isn't "simple" for our side to talk about baptism. Because, in passages like 1 Cor. 12, our first question is NOT "what kind of baptism is this--is it Spirit baptism, or is it water baptism?" As if getting that right, will then help us then to interpret the passage properly. That's what I would call the "simple" approach, and its simply inadequate.

Our first question comes along well before we come to that passage, and it makes answering that question irrelevant, or at least a matter of little interpretive significance to Paul's thrust. Here it is: what is the relationship between what Holy Spirit does to baptize an individual, and the behavior of the church? How do these two things--one done in the invisible, eternal, eschatological reality; the other done in history, in a world that is visible, temporary, and passing away--speak together with respect to one reality?

One's manner of coming at the question in part determines the kind of answer he will get, or expect to get. Or as I have written, and as I recently read RSC writing the same thing: Is baptism fundamentally Man's speech, or God's? My testimony, or God's testimony? We Reformed and Presbyterian say, decisively, the latter.

As a human institution, the church can say something that later it retracts. We don't err when we baptize the "wrong" person, as long as we spoke for God in a human and fallible, yet divinely authorized way. Nevertheless, Holy Spirit may speak where the church does not, and the church may speak where Holy Spirit does not. But we know that when God does speak pro nobis, he never takes it back.

1 Cor. 12 is a useful passage to show how a "simple" view of baptism (see my 2nd paragraph) is inadequate to address the passage. For what sounds profoundly spiritual at the beginning of the chapter, sounds just as profoundly mundane at the end of the chapter, in discussing the BODY, the SOMA of the church, and its membership. So, to answer Bill, I disagree that v13 is only relevant to the mystical body. It also describes that body in its visible, earthly expression.

__________________
Rev. Bruce G. Buchanan
ChainOLakes Presbyterian Church, CentralLake, MI


When posting friends, kindly bear those words of earthly wisdom in mind:
Oh, that God the gift would give us
To see ourselves as others see us.
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