Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009. Pp. 975, hardcover. $60.00.
It would be difficult to commend highly enough the work that Everett Ferguson’s Baptism in the Early Church represents. Here we have a comprehensive examination of the texts, history, and developments of baptism in the Christian tradition during the first five centuries. Just like Ferguson’s earlier volume, Backgrounds of Early Christianity, readers will find the immense benefit of this book to be in the synthesis of ideas, not innovation.
After surveying the scholarly landscape with regard to studies on baptism (pp. 1-22), Ferguson begins his own undertaking by exploring antecedents to Christian baptism. Included in this section are explorations of Greco-Roman washings for purification and Jewish ritual washings. Because the use of water as a means for purification is “widespread in the religions of the world” (p. 25), it should come as no surprise that many have drawn parallels between Christian baptism and pagan religious ceremonies which pre-date baptism. Addressing this common correlation, Ferguson notes that such comparisons rest on blending the “preliminary baths with effects of the initiation itself…or…on late Christian writers who Christianized the significance of the ceremonies” (p.29). In his detailed chapter on the use of the Bapt- root in Classical and Hellenistic Greek, Ferguson concludes that the primary meaning of baptizō is “to dip” implying submersion or a thorough overwhelming of the object by an element (p. 59). This section concludes with a study of the meaning and manner of John’s baptism in the New Testament and Josephus. Interestingly, Ferguson asserts two functions of John’s baptism which are (admittedly) provocative and contested: initiation into “true Israel” and protestation of the current temple establishment (p. 93).
Part two explores Christian baptism throughout the New Testament by examining each of the relevant texts within their canonical framework. The treatment begins with the baptism of Jesus, which he sees as a transition between John’s baptism and Christian baptism (p. 99) and continues to examine early textual interpretations (pp. 113-123) and artistic representations (pp.123-131) of that baptism. Ferguson’s analysis of the Pauline baptism texts concludes by emphasizing the role of the association established in baptism with the death and resurrection of Christ which draw out the themes of forgiveness of sins and new life in the Spirit (p. 164). The book of Acts provides numerous texts to survey which aid in discussing the manner of baptism in the early church. Ferguson concludes that baptism was performed “in Jesus’ name” and was always accompanied by gospel proclamation (p. 185). Further, human response was typically required and a confessed faith was called upon. Thus, Ferguson asserts that paedobaptism should not be inferred from any New Testament text (p. 198).
In Ferguson’s exploration of baptismal practices in the late second and third centuries, he explores the roots of paedobaptism and offers an explanation of its’ origin by appealing to various cases of emergency baptisms of sick children (p. 378-79, 856-57). The primary evidence he cites in favor of this conclusion are Christian inscriptions (often gravestones) which often have a close correlation between a date of baptism and a date of death (p. 372). Although infant baptism is not well-attested as a normal practice in the first centuries, by the fourth century it appears to have emerged as a more routine practice (p. 379, 627).
Although a book of this size and learnedness does not make for light reading, the depth and breadth of detail make it an incredibly useful reference tool for understanding the nature and development of baptism at various stages in early Christian tradition. The book is logically laid out–section divisions by century–with chapters on specific corpora of literature. Most sections conclude with summary remarks, drawing together all the information gleaned in a helpful format. This text will surely find it’s place as the “go to” volume on Christian baptism in earliest Christianity.
You can buy it here.
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