The Creed's Articles on Christ's Humanity; John's Baptism: Why It Continued and Why Its Recipients Were Baptized Again

Orientation #

He begins by returning to the articles of faith in the Creed as divided according to Christ’s divinity and humanity (“it’s kind of funny to come back to the distinction here”), then moves to ST III q. 38, a. 5, and finishes a. 6. The previous class worked through the earlier articles of q. 38 on John’s baptism.

The class, in order #

1. Dividing the articles of the Creed (“two sevens… and another one into two sixes”) #

Thomas gives two enumerations of the articles: two sevens and two sixes. Seven is the symbol of wisdom; six is the first perfect number.

• The six on the divinity he would himself divide 1–2–3: one article on the divine nature, two on the Trinity, three on the activities (creation, sanctification, glorification) — “those are the parts of six that add up to six, right? That’s why it’s perfect number.”
• For the six on Christ’s humanity a student says “two”; he answers with his rule: “now it’s two or three or both” — he divides both ways.

2. The division into two: descent and ascent (“the three articles of descent”) #

Starting from Psalm 8, which praises God’s name in the heavens and then asks “what is man and the son of man?… a little less than the angels,” referred by Paul and John to Christ.

• Three articles of descent, three of ascent.
• Thomas himself says explicitly that the suffering and death in a way merits the Resurrection, and the descent into hell the Ascension; incarnation and second coming correspond, since he came humbly and returns gloriously.
• Fits “he humbles himself to be exalted” and the Magnificat: because he regarded her lowness, he does great things for her.

3. The division into three, from the Te Deum (“I’m kind of influenced by the Te Deum”) #

The Te Deum’s first part praises God with angels, apostles, prophets, martyrs, the whole Church — the divinity. Its second part recalls the Son of God, names the Incarnation, and then says that when he had suffered he opened the kingdom of heaven, without listing the three separately; then it names the second coming.

• So: (1) Incarnation; (2) suffering and death with its three consequences; (3) second coming — and within the middle part, one against three, keeping the rule of two or three.
• The three consequences follow the Greek division of man’s goods into goods of soul, body, and exterior goods: the descent into hell gave the holy ones the beatific vision (good of soul); the Resurrection the good of the body (though of the person, not the body alone); the Ascension the exterior good, a good place to be. He calls this “kind of an Anaxagorean division.”
• The two divisions bring out different things: the first, Christ’s own humbling-and-exaltation; the second, the purpose of his coming.
• Aside: the last part of the Te Deum reenacts the order of the Our Father, as does the Anima Christi; Augustine says everything you can reasonably ask for, in the right order, is in the Our Father. The Te Deum moves from faith in divinity and humanity to hope, which is tied up with prayer. Attributed to Ambrose and Augustine, “not regarded as authentic now,” but of great prestige. A student notes an English hymn paraphrase set to the traditional music.

4. Article 5, the objections: should John’s baptism have ceased? (“ought to have ceased after Christ was baptized”) #

1. John 1:31 — “that he might be made known to Israel… I have come baptizing in water”; Christ was sufficiently made known by John’s testimony, by the dove, and by the paternal voice. (He notes: “you got the Trinity there.”) He predicts Thomas’s reply: not sufficiently manifested — not everybody was there.
2. Augustine on John: Christ being baptized, John’s baptism ceased. (He predicts: “not right away though.”)
3. John’s baptism was preparatory for Christ’s, but Christ’s began at once, since by the touch of his most clean flesh he gave regenerative power to the waters, “as Bede says” — he checks himself: “I think it’s Bede.” A student notes Bede is later than Augustine; aside on books circulating without the printing press, copied by monks, some beautifully.

Sed contra: John 3 — Christ came into Judea and baptized, and John also was baptizing; Christ did not baptize before he himself was baptized.

5. The body of a. 5: four reasons John kept baptizing (“if John ceased… it would be thought by zeal or anger”) #

1. Chrysostom: had John stopped just as Christ was baptized, it would be thought he did it out of zeal or anger. He ties this to Aristotle’s/Thomas’s point that the good man avoids not only the evil action but the appearance of it.
2. If he had ceased, he would have put his disciples into greater zeal for him (against Christ).
3. By persisting in baptizing he sent his hearers to Christ.
4. Bede: the shadow of the old law still remained, nor should the precursor cease activity altogether until the truth is manifested.

Digression on human weakness: John’s disciples came saying “the one you baptized is baptizing over here” — trying to get him going; like Paul’s “I was baptized by Apollos.” In the academic world one gets attached to a professor and never gets out of it, even if someone else is greater. He does not think John himself was in doubt when he sent disciples to Christ; the reasonable tradition in Thomas and the Fathers is that he sent them for their own sake.

Aside on the old law being allowed to continue for a time: the manna did not cease immediately when Joshua’s people entered the promised land (a student’s example). “Because it’s hard for men to adjust to change” — the woman who had argued with Protestant neighbours about Latin and lost her whole argument when the Mass went vernacular, as if Latin belonged to the essence of the Mass; French families in New England sending children to Quebec lest they lose the faith unless educated in French. “And so I just wonder about myself sometimes… certain prayers I learned in Latin, I can’t see them in English.”

6. Replies of a. 5 (“not right away, but when he was jailed”) #

1. Christ was manifested by his baptism but not fully; so John still had to baptize.
2. John’s baptism did cease with Christ’s baptism, as Augustine says — not at once, but when John was jailed. Chrysostom: God permitted John’s death, so that with him taken out of the middle Christ might most of all begin to preach, the whole affection of the multitude being transferred to Christ, and the people no longer divided. He remarks on how strong this is — “we got to get him out of the way” — “at least send him into exile or something… but strange.” Note on sources: the first three reasons in the body from Chrysostom, the fourth from Bede; Thomas would have traded the city of Paris for Chrysostom’s commentary (on John or on Matthew).
3. John’s baptism was preparatory not only for Christ’s being baptized but for others’ acceding to the baptism of Christ, which was not yet fulfilled when Christ was baptized.

7. Article 6, the objections: must John’s baptized be rebaptized? (“among those born of woman there has not arisen a greater”) #

1. John is not less than the apostles; those baptized by the apostles are not rebaptized, only given imposition of hands — as those baptized by Philip in the name of the Lord Jesus, on whom Peter and John laid hands to receive the Holy Spirit.
2. The apostles were baptized by John’s baptism (some were his disciples, John 1), and do not seem to have been baptized by Christ’s, since John 4:2 says Jesus did not baptize but his disciples.
3. The one baptized is less than the one baptizing; it is not read that John was baptized with Christ’s baptism, so much less those baptized by John. “That’s kind of a tough argument.”
4. Acts 19: Paul found disciples who had not heard whether there is a Holy Spirit, baptized in John’s baptism, and they were baptized again — so (with Jerome on Joel and on the epistle about the man of one wife, and Ambrose On the Holy Spirit) the need was from ignorance of the Trinity; those with full knowledge of the Trinity need not be rebaptized.
5. Romans 10, gloss of Augustine: whence this power of the water that it touches the body and washes the heart, except by the word making it — not because it is said but because it is believed; so baptism’s power depends on faith, and John’s form signified the faith in which we are baptized (Acts 19: he baptized in the baptism of penance, telling the people to believe in him who was to come).

Aside on the gloss: even for an infant’s baptism, those who present the little one must have the faith. Aside/joke: trying to make out a text of Albert with crazy Latin, they brought it to Kasurik (name uncertain), who looked at it, put on his coat, said “I can see why you have difficulty with that,” and walked out. “Glad we got Thomas around here.”

Sed contra: Augustine on John — those baptized with John’s baptism had necessarily to be baptized with the Lord’s.

8. The body of a. 6: against the Master’s second half (“penitus irrationabile”) #

Peter Lombard, Sentences IV (then the standard text for centuries): those baptized by John who did not know the Holy Spirit and placed hope in his baptism were afterwards baptized by Christ’s; those who placed no hope in John’s baptism and believed the Trinity were not rebaptized but only received imposition of hands from the apostles.

• Thomas: true as to the first part, confirmed by many authorities; but as to the second, what is said is “penitus irrationabile” — wholly unreasonable.

1. John’s baptism neither conferred grace nor impressed a character; it was only in water, as John himself says (Matt. 3). Hence the faith or hope the baptized had in Christ cannot supply this defect.
2. When in a sacrament what is of the necessity of the sacrament is omitted, it is not enough to supply the missing part: the whole must be renewed. It is of the necessity of Christ’s baptism that it be not only in water but in the Holy Spirit (John 3: unless you are reborn of water and the Holy Spirit, you cannot enter the kingdom of God). Hence those baptized only in water by John had not only to have the Holy Spirit supplied by imposition of hands but to be wholly baptized again in water and the Holy Spirit.

His gloss: the Holy Spirit is named here by appropriation — the giving of grace is appropriated to the Holy Spirit, as in the Creed the Holy Catholic Church, communion of saints and forgiveness of sins are put under the Holy Spirit. So that John’s baptism gives no grace fits with the Holy Spirit not being there.

9. Reply 1 and the discussion of defective understanding (“the baptism is such as it is in the one in whose power it is given”) #

Augustine on John: John gave not Christ’s baptism but his own; what is given by Peter, or by Jude, is Christ’s — so those Jude baptized are not rebaptized, since the baptism is such as it is in him in whose power it is given, not such as the minister. Hence those baptized by Philip the deacon, who gave Christ’s baptism, were not rebaptized but received imposition of hands through the apostles, “just as those baptized by priests are confirmed by bishops” (confirmantur per episcopos).

• He finds the reply “a little obscure.” A student proposes that this is the sacrament of confirmation, joined to baptism in the East, a second sacrament performed at the same time in the West. He resists: the text doesn’t seem to be speaking of a different sacrament, but of the first sacrament being registered and confirmed.
• A student raises the scholastic question of Acts’ “baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus” against the Trinitarian form; he answers that Thomas says elsewhere that by a special dispensation they could baptize in the name of Christ.
• The point he draws: an imperfect understanding does not invalidate the sacrament. Examples: in the Eucharist one receives the body and blood but also the soul and divinity, though one may not realise it; a man who insisted that if the priest says “the body of Christ” you receive only the body, to whom he replied, “then he’s dead — his body was separated”; someone saying “the priest forgave my sins” rather than Christ — still forgiven, but with a defect of understanding.
• Matrimony: did the priest marry you, or did you marry yourselves? Catholics married before a justice of the peace — a student says lack of canonical form invalidates it; whether they are married, and how it is rectified (“validation”), is left unresolved: “I have to look that up. We’re not doing marriage cases.” A student recalls a couple called up during Mass to have their marriage blessed, back in the pew before anyone noticed.

10. Reply 2: were the apostles baptized? (“or what is more believable, by the baptism of Christ”) #

Augustine to Seleucianus: we understand Christ’s disciples to have been baptized either with John’s baptism, as some think, or — more believably — with Christ’s; nor was the ministry of baptizing lacking, since he had servants baptized by whom others would be baptized, he who was not lacking in the service of washing their feet.

• He notes a Syriac father who takes the washing of feet on Holy Thursday to have been Christ’s baptizing of them; the argument is that baptizing would not be below Christ’s dignity, since washing feet is more humble.
• John 4:2 does not mean Christ baptized nobody, but that he was not going on baptizing the multitudes, leaving it to the apostles. Parallels: the apostles appointing deacons so they could give their time to prayer and the ministry of the word — which does not mean they had not fed people before; Moses judging all the cases himself before judges were appointed (a student: seventy); a bishop in Malaysia, awarded the Galen Award from Human Life International, who personally hears each woman coming to confess an abortion, and might one day have to appoint others.

11. Replies 3–5 (“sine modo — let it be for now”) #

3. Chrysostom on Matthew: when John said “I ought to be baptized by you,” Christ answered sine modo, showing that afterwards he baptized John — this being in some apocryphal books. But it is certain, as Jerome says on Matthew, that as Christ was baptized in water by John, so John was baptized by Christ in the Spirit. He adds: “I should think John would have been baptized by Christ — but maybe he didn’t let his disciples know,” given human weakness.
4. Ignorance of the Holy Spirit is not the whole reason those were baptized after John’s baptism, but that they were baptized with Christ’s baptism. “You must see that, says Thomas.” Aside: the story of the young student pouring out objections, to the scandal of the bystanders, whom Thomas calmly talked to and showed all his mistakes.
5. Augustine Contra Faustum: our sacraments are signs of a present grace, the sacraments of the old law signs of a future grace — “that’s a nice little distinction.” Hence that John baptized in the name of the one to come shows he did not give Christ’s baptism, a sacrament of the new law; his was, in a sense, like a sacrament of the old law.

His words #

• “two or three or both” — his rule for dividing a set of articles or parts.
• “Anaxagorean division” — his name for the division of the three post-passion mysteries by the three goods of man.
• “descent” / “ascent” — his labels for the two halves of the six articles on Christ’s humanity.
• penitus irrationabile — Thomas’s verdict on the Master’s second clause; he renders it “wholly unreasonable.”
• “appropriation” — the Holy Spirit named as giver of grace, as in the Creed’s third section.
• sine modo — Christ’s “let it be for now” to John at the Jordan.
• confirmantur per episcopos — the text he presses on against reading reply 1 as the sacrament of confirmation.
• “sacraments of the old law / of the new law” — signs of a future vs. of a present grace.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 38, a. 5 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 38, a. 6 (five objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Within these: John 1:31; John 3; John 4:2; Matthew 3; Acts 8; Acts 19; Romans 10 with the gloss of Augustine; Peter Lombard, Sentences IV; Augustine on John, to Seleucianus, Contra Faustum; Chrysostom on Matthew; Bede; Jerome on Matthew, on Joel, and on the epistle about the man of one wife; Ambrose, On the Holy Spirit

Mentioned

• Psalm 8; the Magnificat; the Te Deum; the Anima Christi; the Our Father with Augustine’s praise of it; the Apostles’ Creed; a Syriac father on the washing of feet; a text of Albert with difficult Latin

His questions #

• Would you divide the six articles on Christ’s humanity into two or three? — Both: descent/ascent, and Incarnation / passion-and-its-fruits / second coming.
• Why did John not stop baptizing as soon as Christ was baptized? — It would have looked like zeal or anger, would have inflamed his disciples against Christ; by continuing he sent his hearers to Christ; and the shadow of the old law still remained.
• When did John’s baptism cease? — Not at Christ’s baptism, but when John was jailed; and God permitted his death so the multitude’s affection could pass wholly to Christ.
• Must those baptized by John be baptized again with Christ’s baptism? — Yes, all of them: John’s baptism gave neither grace nor character, and what is of the necessity of the sacrament being missing, the whole must be renewed.
• Is the Master right that those who believed the Trinity needed only imposition of hands? — No — penitus irrationabile; faith cannot supply what the rite lacked.
• Is reply 1 speaking of the sacrament of confirmation? — He doubts it; he takes it as the first sacrament being confirmed, not a second — left unsettled against the student’s proposal.
• Did Christ himself baptize anyone? — More believably he baptized his disciples; John 4:2 means only that he left the baptizing of the multitudes to them.
• Was John the Baptist baptized by Christ? — In the Spirit, certainly (Jerome); in water, only on apocryphal report (Chrysostom).
• Are Catholics married before a justice of the peace married? — Left open: “I have to look that up.”