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SACRAMENT OF
BAPTISM
I. DEFINITION AND
HISTORY
• Authoritative Statement
of Doctrine
1. The positive document:
"The Decree for the
Armenians”

3. The negative document:

"De Baptismo"
 B. Etymology

GREEK WORD:
βαπτω = bapto
βαπτίζω = baptizo
“to wash or to immerse”
 C. Definition

General Definition:
•“A rite of washing with water as a sign of religious purification and consecration.”

•the universal rite of initiation of an individual into the community of faith.

St. Thomas Aquinas

"Baptism is the external ablution* of the body, performed with the prescribed
form of words.“
Code of Canon Law
Canon 849

“Baptism, the gateway to the sacraments and necessary for salvation by

actual reception or at least by desire, is validly conferred only by a
washing of true water with the proper form of words. Through baptism
men and women are freed from sin, are reborn as children of God, and,
configured to Christ by an indelible character, are incorporated into the
Church.”

Catechism of the Catholic Church

CCC 1214. This sacrament is called Baptism, after the central rite by
which it is carried out: to baptize (Greek baptizein) means to "plunge" or
"immerse"; the "plunge" into the water symbolizes the catechumen's
burial into Christ's death, from which he rises up by resurrection with him,
as "a new creature.”
Catechism of the Catholic Church
CCC 1214. This sacrament is called Baptism, after the central rite by which it is
carried out: to baptize (Greek baptizein) means to "plunge" or "immerse"; the
"plunge" into the water symbolizes the catechumen's burial into Christ's death,
from which he rises up by resurrection with him, as "a new creature.”

CCC 1215. This sacrament is also called "the washing of regeneration and
renewal by the Holy Spirit," for it signifies and actually brings about the birth of
water and the Spirit without which no one "can enter the kingdom of God.“

CCC 1216. "This bath is called enlightenment, because those who receive this
[catechetical] instruction are enlightened in their understanding . . . ." Having
received in Baptism the Word, "the true light that enlightens every man," the
person baptized has been "enlightened," he becomes a "son of light," indeed, he
becomes "light" himself:

Baptism is God's most beautiful and magnificent gift. . . We call

it gift, grace, anointing, enlightenment, garment of immortality, bath of
rebirth, seal, and most precious gift. It is called gift because it is conferred on
those who bring nothing of their own; grace since it is given even to the guilty;
Baptism because sin is buried in the water; anointing for it is priestly and royal
as are those who are anointed; enlightenment because it radiates light;
clothing since it veils our shame; bath because it washes; and seal as it is our
guard and the sign of God's Lordship
CCC 1263. By Baptism all sins are forgiven, original sin and all
personal sins, as well as all punishment for sin. In those who have
been reborn nothing remains that would impede their entry into the
Kingdom of God, neither Adam's sin, nor personal sin, nor the
consequences of sin, the gravest of which is separation from God.
D. Pre – Christian History of
Baptism

Baptism – A Passage from Darkness to

Light

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the
surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over
the waters. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was
light. (Genesis 1:1-3)
CCC 1218. Since the beginning of the world, water, so humble and
wonderful a creature, has been the source of life and fruitfulness.
Sacred Scripture sees it as "overshadowed" by the Spirit of God:

At the very dawn of creation your Spirit breathed on the

waters, making them the wellspring of all holiness.

Notice the pattern:

1) Darkness
2) The Holy Spirit & water
3) Light
Noah’s Flood – The First Baptism (Genesis 6 –
9)
God's patience waited in the days of Noah, during the building
of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through
water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a
removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a clear
conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into
heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and
powers subject to him. (1 Peter 3:20-22)
Noah’s Flood – The First Baptism (Genesis 6 –
9)
CCC 1219. The Church has seen in Noah's ark a prefiguring of salvation by
Baptism, for by it "a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water":

The waters of the great flood you made a sign of the waters of Baptism,
that make an end of sin and a new beginning of goodness.

CCC 1220. If water springing up from the earth symbolizes life, the water of the
sea is a symbol of death and so can represent the mystery of the cross. By this
symbolism Baptism signifies communion with Christ's death.
Noah’s Flood – The First Baptism (Genesis 6 –
9)
Pattern:

•Spiritual darkness (the world is covered in evil)

•2) Water (the flood . . . also called "baptism")
3) Spiritual light (the new world begins with 8 people in covenant with
God)
The Baptism of the Israelites
For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers
were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all
baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual
food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock
that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. . . . Now these things
occurred as examples . . . . (1 Corinthians 10:1-6)

CCC 1221. But above all, the crossing of the Red Sea, literally the liberation of
Israel from the slavery of Egypt, announces the liberation wrought by Baptism:

You freed the children of Abraham from the slavery of

Pharaoh, bringing them dry-shod through the waters of the Red Sea,
to be an image of the people set free in Baptism.
The Exodus
Now consider the Israelites' exodus from Egypt, which is also
explicitly called "baptism" in 1 Corinthians 10:2. Notice the pattern:

•Bondage in Egypt (this is what I am calling their "darkness“)

•Crossing the Red Sea (water baptism)
•Freedom from Egypt (this is what I am calling their "light")
Crossing of the Jordan River
CCC 1222. Finally, Baptism is prefigured in the crossing of the Jordan
River by which the People of God received the gift of the land promised
to Abraham's descendants, an image of eternal life. The promise of this
blessed inheritance is fulfilled in the New Covenant.

•The crossing of the Jordan River which was a type of entering the
Kingdom of God followed by pulling down the strongholds of the enemy
(Joshua 3:15-17; IICor 10:4).
OTHER BIBLICAL ACCOUNTS
•The Bathing of Namaan in the Jordan (Old Testament)
→ the Syrian cured of leprosy by a "baptism" in the Jordan River
→Elisha commanded the Syrian commander Naaman to dip himself in the
Jordan River to be cleansed of leprosy (see 2 Kings 5)

•In the Blood of the Paschal Lamb (Old Testament)

•In ancient Babylon, according to the Tablets of Maklu, water was important as a
spiritual cleansing agent in the cult of Enke, lord of Eridu.

•In Egypt, the Book of Going Forth by Day contains a treatise on the baptism of
newborn children, which is performed to purify them of blemishes acquired in the
womb.

Water, especially the Nile's cold water, which was believed to have
regenerative powers, is used to baptize the dead in a ritual based on the Osiris
myth. Egyptian cults also developed the idea of regeneration through water. The
bath preceding initiation into the cult of Isis seems to have been more than a
simple ritual purification; it was probably intended to represent symbolically the
initiate's death to the life of this world by recalling Osiris' drowning in the Nile.
 E. Background in Jewish
Ritual

Before the 1st century AD, converts to Judaism were required

to bathe (or baptize) themselves as a sign of entering the covenant
(tebilath gerim). Some of the later prophets envisaged that Jewish
exiles returning home would cross the Jordan and be sprinkled with
its water to cleanse them of sins prior to the establishment of the
kingdom of God (see Ezekiel 36:25).
Circumcision
•Toward the beginning of the Christian era, the Jews adopted (as a custom unrelated to
Divine guidance) the custom of baptizing proselytes seven days after their circumcision.

•This procedure or sacramental system is performed in the Old Law by the Jews and
Gentiles.

•Some of the Fathers called it as the washing of the blood.

•A series of specific interrogations made it possible to judge the real intentions of the
candidate who wished to adopt the Jewish religion.

•After submitting to these interrogations, he was circumcised and later baptized before
witnesses. In the baptism, he was immersed naked in a pool of flowing water; when he
rose from the pool, he was a true son of Israel.
The mikveh can be any body • Orthodox and Conservative rabbis
of natural water, though the require both male and female
term usually refers to a
specific pool that is built for
conversion candidates to immerse
the purposes of ritual themselves in a ritual bath called a
purification. mikveh. This ceremony is called
tevillah.
• Reform and Reconstructionist rabbis do
not require the use of a mikveh, but
some highly recommend it. The
equipment used varies according to the
mikveh.
• The immersion ceremony usually starts
with cleaning the body as by a shower.
The person is covered and the covering
removed as the person enters the
warm mikveh waters, which are usually
about four feet deep. (When the
ceremony is done in a public place
such as a lake the candidate wears a
loose-fitting garment).
•Blessings are recited and the
person goes bends into the water.
According to traditional Jewish law,
three male witnesses must be
present, although this rule has been
reinterpreted so that, in some
movements, Jewish females can be
witnesses.

•When there are male witnesses and

the candidate is female, the
witnesses wait outside the mikveh
room and are told by a female
attendant that the immersion has
been completed and the blessings
recited.
 F. Baptism of Christ

CCC 1224. Our Lord voluntarily submitted himself to the baptism of

St. John, intended for sinners, in order to "fulfill all righteousness.“
Jesus' gesture is a manifestation of his self-emptying. The Spirit who
had hovered over the waters of the first creation descended then on
the Christ as a prelude of the new creation, and the Father revealed
Jesus as his "beloved Son.”
• When John the Baptist came on the scene in the first century
Jewish world, his teaching included the necessity of baptism.
• John's baptism was not based on or authorized by the Jewish law
or pagan religious customs and traditions.
• John was called to preach by God, armed only with the Word of
God (Luke 3:2).
• When John preached a baptism for the remission of sins, the
people heard and obeyed. John's baprosm is known as "baptism of
repentance"
• Jesus was baptized by John at the beginning of his public ministry
(see Mark 1:9-11).
• Jesus tells us that the baptism that John taught was from heaven,
not from men ( Matt 21:25).
 G. Baptism by Christ

CCC 1223. All the Old Covenant prefigurations find their fulfillment
in Christ Jesus. He begins his public life after having himself baptized
by St. John the Baptist in the Jordan. After his resurrection Christ
gives this mission to his apostles: "Go therefore and make disciples of
all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have
commanded you."
CCC 1225. In his Passover Christ opened to all men the fountain of Baptism.
He had already spoken of his Passion, which he was about to suffer in
Jerusalem, as a "Baptism" with which he had to be baptized. The blood and
water that flowed from the pierced side of the crucified Jesus are types of
Baptism and the Eucharist, the sacraments of new life. From then on, it is
possible "to be born of water and the Spirit" in order to enter the Kingdom
of God.
See where you are baptized, see where Baptism comes from,
if not from the cross of Christ, from his death. There is the whole mystery:
he died for you. In him you are redeemed, in him you are saved.
• When John the Baptist came on the scene in the first century Jewish world, his
teaching included the necessity of baptism.
• John's baptism was not based on or authorized by the Jewish law or pagan
religious customs and traditions.
• John was called to preach by God, armed only with the Word of God (Luke 3:2).
• When John preached a baptism for the remission of sins, the people heard and
obeyed. John's baprosm is known as "baptism of repentance"
• Jesus was baptized by John at the beginning of his public ministry (see Mark
1:9-11).
• Jesus tells us that the baptism that John taught was from heaven, not from men
( Matt 21:25).