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  • Response to Contributors
  • Everett Ferguson (bio)

The authors of these papers honor me by the time and attention they have given to responding to my "big book."1 Their contributions advance the study of the subject and begin to fulfill my hope that the book would be a point of departure for further study of baptism, a topic central to the history of Christianity as well as contemporary Christian life and ecumenical concerns.

Since preparing this response, I have had opportunity to examine Ablution, Initiation, and Baptism: Late Antiquity, Early Judaism, and Early Christianity, ed. David Hellholm et al., of which readers of these papers should be made aware.2 Fifty-eight scholars (two of whom also contributed to this symposium) produced a three-volume work comparable in scope to my book, but with more explicit attention to methodological issues. The planners of the work and I were initially unaware of each others' project, but the editors in the preface generously say my work is "not to be regarded as a competitive but rather as a complementary opus" (p. xlvi).

Reply to Carl Holladay

Carl Holladay offers an astute analysis of methodology, keen exegetical observations, and significant supplements to the content of the book and the bibliography employed. He provides much for me to respond to. [End Page 467]

My aims were historical and doctrinal. These are certainly distinguishable aspects of the study, but I see in the sources an interaction between them, as Holladay notes concerning the accounts of Jesus' baptism in the canonical gospels; they are "theologically weighted interpretations of an historical event." It may show a doctrinal bias and appear to be an artificial separation to treat Jesus' baptism in the New Testament and John's baptizing in the antecedents to Christian baptism, but the historical basis of this treatment is the way the early church looked at the two baptisms.

I actually gave some consideration to the proper arrangement of the material. My conclusion that John's practice was the most important antecedent to the Christian practice of baptism dictated that it go in the unit on antecedents. I think that if I were composing the book now, I would treat the baptism of Jesus separately. This would make more sense of it as an event sui generis and would better accord with my somewhat awkward, and at least unchronological, treatment of the interpretations of his baptism in the early church apart from the context of those interpretations.

Treating the New Testament material (apart from John the Baptist) discretely in Part Two is an acknowledgement of the doctrinal principle of canon. Organizing the main parts of the book according to century is somewhat artificial, but I intended to give a sense of structure without appearing arbitrary. The centuries obviously overlapped, and people did not consciously move into other eras to abide by the calendar.

As to John's motivation that embarked him on his baptizing mission, the best we can do is say that he responded to a divine call and commission, however he may have perceived this. Luke himself provides this interpretation: "All the people who heard this, including the tax collectors, acknowledged the justice of God, because they had been baptized with John's baptism. But by refusing to be baptized by him, the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected God's purpose for themselves" (Luke 7.29-30; NRSV). Jesus himself implicitly provides the same interpretation. Again, according to Luke, when the chief priests, scribes, and elders asked Jesus, "By what authority are you doing these things?" he replied, "Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?" (Luke 20.2, 4; NRSV).

We do have an independent, non-Christian source for John's baptizing activity, the Jewish historian Josephus. He explains the meaning of John's baptism differently than do the Synoptic Gospels, which say it was "a baptism of repentance for forgiveness of sins" (Mark 1.4, Luke 3.3; NRSV). Josephus contradicts this purpose for baptism (Ant. 18.116-17). There are some who prefer Josephus's account over the gospels, thus making him, in [End Page 468] effect, a witness to a modern day Evangelical...

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