Children often ask me, you’re a vicar – have you read the whole Bible? Hand on heart – I can’t say that I definitely have although I probably have. I’ve not read it, all the way through, starting from Genesis and finishing in Revelation, as I know some people have.
However as part of my daily prayers I follow a lectionary, which is a set reading for every day of the year. It makes sure that I read all the Bible and not just my favourite bits. Every now and then it throws up something like this: “What do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf” (1 Cor. 15:29)?
Now I know that this is a very important passage for the Church of Latter Day Saints, the Mormons: it’s why they have the world’s largest genealogical collection. They continue what they believe was the church in Corinth’s practice. Their founder, Joseph Smith instituted the practice in 1840 . Today, these baptisms are also performed as an act of love for unrelated persons selected from their vast archives.
Paul doesn’t condemn whatever the Corinthians were doing. If baptism for the dead actually perverted the gospel, Paul would have denounced it: he never pulls his punches.
I’m not convinced that what the Mormons do is what the church in Corinth was doing: but there is a more fundamental point.
The first thing to do when trying to work out what a puzzling passage of the Bible means is to look at the context. The whole of this chapter is about the resurrection of the dead: Christ’s and ours. It’s also about how faith in the resurrection changes our lives: what follows is a list of Paul’s sufferings for the sake of the Gospel. If Christ isn’t raised from the dead, Paul says, all of this would be useless. It isn’t because Christ is raised.
The second thing we can do is get help: whatever the passage people with a lot more brains will have gone over it before. You don’t need to learn Greek, the language which Paul wrote in, because others have. The phrase “on behalf of” translates the Greek word “hyper” which can mean “for”. It can also mean “above” (it’s where we get words like hyperactive or hypermarket) Martin Luther interepreted it in this way, considering that the people Paul was talking about were being baptised “above” the dead in graveyards.
Tertullian in the early second century, clearly had no idea what “baptism for (or above) the dead” actually meant. If he didn’t then it’s unlikely that we can discover it now. He wrote that Paul’s only aim in referring to the practice of baptism for the dead, “whatever it may have been”, was “that he might all the more firmly insist upon the resurrection of the body, in proportion as they who were vainly baptized for the dead resorted to the practice from their belief of such a resurrection.” In other words again, it is the context that gives us the meaning: baptism of the dead is not what’s important. Jesus’ resurrection and the Christian hope that we will share in it is.