1 Corinthians 15:29 Baptism for the Dead

1 Corinthians 15:20-32

This is probably on everybody's list of really strange passages that just make you scratch your head. And be comforted if that's you because I'm going to give a statistic in a moment here that will tell you very clearly that you're not alone. Scholars have really wrestled very hard—very frequently—with this passage. You're not going to believe the statistic I give you, but I'm actually going to get you access to the materials that will show you that no, it's not an exaggeration as to how many views there are of this passage.

Article resource: James E. Patrick, “Living Rewards for Dead Apostles: ‘Baptised for the Dead’ in 1 Corinthians 15.29,” New Test. Stud. 52 (2006): 71–85.

Now Patrick himself notes in this article that there are over 40 views as to what this verse means, and he cites articles that add to that number. The 40 are the ones that he has counted himself. Those 40 are documented in a series of five articles that push the number beyond 40, but the 40 that Patrick is thinking of are documented in a series of five articles by Bernard Foschini in Catholic Biblical Quarterly, beginning in 1950 and extending into 1951. So Foschini wrote a series of five articles that totaled well over a hundred pages just on this verse and how it has been understood historically—its interpretive history. So the challenge for us isn't that there's nothing to say. The challenge is winnowing the wheat from the chaff, as far as plausibility.

There's no shortage of guesses or speculation as to what in the world is going on here.

History of Scholarship

Literal Baptism??

Is the baptism spoken of literal baptism? In other words is this water baptism or is this metaphorical? You’ve got to think about both. You’ve got to ask that.

Who are “the dead”??

In the baptism for the dead, are the dead martyrs from the church at Corinth? Are they martyrs from elsewhere outside the church? Are the dead literally dead people, or is this some kind of metaphorical death that's being referred to?

Why are they doing this?

If this is actual water baptism and if it's really dead people in view that living people are being baptized on behalf of, why are they doing this?

So why are they doing this?

Is this penance for the Purgatorial relief of the dead? In other words, are people being baptized for the benefit of the dead, like to get the dead out of Purgatory or so that the dead can still be saved, or is it purely memorial and doesn't really do anything for the dead? “It's just a memorial.” What about that option?

Does the phrase merely refer to the ritual washing of dead bodies? People have proposed that, therefore, it has nothing to do with a sacramental view of baptism or even believers’ baptism.

If we have water baptism that isn't for the benefit of the dead, then the benefit must be for the person being baptized, right? That would seem reasonable. So what is that? Is it some kind of symbolic identification with the persecuted dead person to hasten the second coming, maybe, or for some other purpose?

I'm going to give a brief overview of issues that give us an idea of what I think are the most necessary components that need to be really be thought about when it comes to this, because obviously we're not going to go through all 40 views in one sitting. So let's just start with defining some terms.

Baptism

The first term to define is “baptism.” What are we talking about here? Now Patrick, in his article, notes that Foschini divided the options on this term to three alternative explanations: metaphorical baptism, literal baptism that had nothing to do with some sacramental effect, and then sacramental baptism. Sacramental baptism (for those who might not be familiar with that kind of terminology) is that it has something to do with the dispensing of grace, whether it's saving grace or something else. There are those who connect those ideas with baptism and those who don't, but it’s water baptism in either respect. So you’ve got two “brands” of water baptism and then the metaphorical, so that's what Foschini did. He winnowed the options down to those three and then he discussed them.

Now Foschini is writing in Catholic Biblical Quarterly. Where do you think he's going to land? Foschini landed on the sacramental view, reasoning that in every other passage where Paul speaks of baptism it is in reference to sacramental baptism. I don't agree with that—the “every other passage” idea. I would say 1 Corinthians 12:13, for instance, is not water baptism.

13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

That's what most theologians call “Spirit baptism”—a reference to being put into the body of Christ.

1 Corinthians 15:29 is referencing a water baptism practice, so I'm buying that part of it. That seems to me the most natural reading, and Patrick follows the same trajectory. He writes:

In my proposed explanation, the baptism being carried out is the standard Christian sacramental baptism of new believers, consistent with Paul’s use of the word elsewhere.

So Patrick is connecting it to believers’ baptism. He uses the sacramental terminology, but he's not talking about what Foschini was talking about. And I tend to not use sacramental terminology because I think it's confusing, and honestly, I think it adds to what baptism is.

“the dead”

Next term: “the dead.” Who are the dead? Now this seems to clearly point to people who are actually dead. They've literally died. That just seems to me to be the most natural reading of the passage. Patrick, again, looks at this the same way. He says:

While Paul does use the word ‘dead’ metaphorically elsewhere…

For instance, Rom 8.10:

10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.

So Paul does use reference “death” and “dead” metaphorically elsewhere, but despite that he's using the literal meaning, not only here in 1st Corinthians 15, but even in the second half of verse 29. It's linked directly to the first half because of the language: “If the dead are not raised at all, why are they baptized for them?” So it's pretty obvious that the dead there are in connection with the talk of resurrection, which in First Corinthians 15 is quite bodily. He's talking about dead people.

That doesn't seem too difficult. Now again, that immediate context undermines the metaphorical interpretations that other scholars have offered. Some of those go all the way back into Early Church Fathers. They tried to argue for a metaphorical view. Again, I'm not buying it. Lots of people don't buy it. So I'd agree that Paul is talking about people who are actually dead.

Who are they?

Third, what about the identity of the dead? Well, who are they? This is an issue that requires a little bit of thought.

This question (who are the dead?) gives rise to a couple of sub-questions. Were the dead (whoever they were) previously baptized? See, that's a sub-question because you might be thinking, “Wow, maybe living people are being baptized in view of this dead person that wasn't baptized before they died and maybe the Corinthians are thinking that baptism helps them in some way in the afterlife. So maybe that's why they're doing it.” So that's a sub-question. Related to that, were these dead (whoever they were) believers or unbelievers when they died?

And you can see where this is going—where this would sort of drift into a sacramental idea of baptism. If you held that view of baptism and you knew somebody, whether they had professed faith in Christ or not, and they die and you're thinking, “Oh, well, I better go get baptized for them to help them out on the other side.”

Now Patrick directs our attention on these questions (both the question of who they are and then these sub-questions) to the work of Jeremias, a very famous New Testament scholar.

“necroi” and “ho nekroi”.

He is a Second Temple Jewish scholar who noticed that in this chapter there is a consistent distinction between nekroi, which is the Greek plural term for dead… There's a distinction between necroi and ho nekroi. That would be the same word with a definite article in front of it. So Jeremias said that it's kind of interesting that in this chapter, the word nekroi (“dead” with or without the definite article—the word “the”)…that seems to matter. Patrick quotes Jeremias' conclusion that nekroi without an article denoted dead people in general, whereas with the article ho nekroi denoted deceased Christians. So Patrick writes in response to that (I'm not going to give you the whole Jeremias quote:

Thus the context again undermines interpretations such as that of Richterus, who included the preceding phrase ‘what will they do’ to arrive at the meaning, ‘What will those being baptised gain beyond the (unbaptised) unbeliever?’, and likewise the practice of the Mormons, who are baptised vicariously for dead ancestors not of the Mormon religion.

Now what Patrick is saying is there is that those kind of views really don't work. Well, they don't really work because there's a distinction of “dead” and "the dead." And "the dead" are deceased Christians. Again, he's depending on the scholarship of Jeremias there who noticed this pattern. So this seems like a good text-driven position—that the dead are, in fact, deceased Christians so they don't need somebody living to be baptized for them to get them into heaven or do anything else. If this pattern is meaningful, then that sort of wipes off the table the notion that a living person can be baptized to spiritually benefit a dead person, because according to this verse and this pattern, the dead people that the living are being baptized for are already believers. So that just sort of wipes that out.

So if you follow Jeremias' data and the conclusion that “the dead" are deceased Christian believers, the next question is,

If the dead are already believers, then why are people at Corinth being baptized for those dead believers?

If we're looking at dead Christian believers, then why were the people at Corinth being baptized for those dead believers?

It just seems like this is nonsensical to do this. Now, the normal practice of the Early Church (I'm sure this isn't going to surprise anybody) was to baptize someone immediately after conversion. That was the norm. That would mean that dying before baptism, if you had professed your faith in Christ, would be pretty unusual.

That's not impossible, obviously, but it would be uncommon, and you could go that direction that maybe 1 Corinthians 15:29 is sort of aimed at the exception here. So you can go that way, presuming that the practice in that that verse was rarely performed. The question that remains, then, is how the practice connects to Paul's rhetoric.

So even if you want to be in the camp that says, “I think the Corinthian believers were being baptized for people who accepted Christ, but they died before baptism, so the Christians in Corinth are being baptized for those people, even though they were already believers and it was pretty rare, but that's what they were doing…” Not only doesn't that really answer “why” (because what does it do for them?), but if you go that direction, then you still have to not only ask the why question, but it might be helpful… You might get clarity if we could sort of identify those people—the ones who were dead—more specifically.

But being able to identify the dead a little bit more actually sort of helps connect this verse to Paul's overall discussion, not only of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, but some other things in 1 Corinthians 15.

“hyper”

Now we've defined a few terms, and some of that we'll come back to. So the next issue we need to tackle is what is the meaning of the Greek preposition hyper in verse 29? There are mainly two translation choices that you'll see in English translations. What do people mean by being baptized for (hyper) the dead or what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of (hyper) the dead? The second option there is the one that's in the ESV. Now think about those two options for a moment. The Greek preposition hyper is being translated as “for” (baptized for the dead), and then the other option is baptized on behalf of the dead. Now the first option sort of creates the impression that the dead benefit from the baptism: baptized for the dead, like the dead are getting something out of it. And this is where you get the idea of getting the dead out of Purgatory or some sort of sacramental benefit. If that's what's in your head, then you might prefer to translate hyper as “for,” because in English it conveys that there's some benefit going on. The second option can do that, too: on behalf of the dead. In other words, the dead get something out of it. But it includes the nuance of sort of taking responsibility for, or doing something in the place of, or because of the dead. So the second one adds a few interpretive options. Both of those translation choices are possible, but the intended semantic still needs articulation.

They're both possible. But really, the semantics of the whole thing still needs articulation. We still haven't figured that out. We still haven't decided anything. A grammatical case is something that helps you pair a noun with an adjective, or even prepositions in this case. It's a grammatical thing. So in Greek, the case of a noun is going to influence the semantics of prepositions.

Philemon 13

Let's just give you some other examples of hyper with a genitive noun and you'll see what I'm talking about here. In Philemon 13, Paul writes to Philemon that Onesimus “served me” (hyper) on behalf of you. In other words, instead of looking at something that's sort of like getting a getting a benefit (that Philemon's getting some benefit), the idea was taking responsibility. Onesimus was taking responsibility for or doing something in the place of Philemon. So we can look at this example and say that hyper… Rather than just picking an English gloss like "for" or a phrase like “on behalf of,” what does it actually mean? Well if in Philemon 13, hyper means “to take responsibility for” or “do something in the place of,” that gives you a little bit more grist for the mill—a little bit more in the way you would talk about what's going on with the preposition.

16 For I will show him how much he must suffer (hyper)for the sake of my name.”The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Ac 9:16). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.

In Acts 9:16, Jesus says that he will show Paul that Paul must suffer (hyper) for his name—on behalf of or for the sake of his name. The sense is that the name (which is the noun in the genitive) receives some benefit. In other words, the name is glorified or exalted. But the verse could also be read that Paul would have to suffer because of the name of Jesus. Now, those are two different things. Think about it. Why is Paul suffering? Is he suffering so that the name would be exalted—suffering for the sake of the name—or is he suffering because of the name, like the name is what gets him in trouble. And it could be a little bit of both.

6 If we are afflicted, it is [hyper] for your comfort and salvation;

Here's the third one: the combination might lead you to think of a goal. And you'd likely use “for the sake of” in English, meaning “with the goal of” in a verse like 2 Corinthians 1:6. Paul’s sufferings have the goal of the comfort and salvation of the Corinthians. He writes:

This is the exercise of exegesis or interpretation (one of them, anyway). I mean, you have to look at examples where you have the word hyper, in this case and what are the nuances are that this combination (preposition + genitive noun)could lead you to? This is how exegesis is done and what should be done. You’ve got to think.

One of the best pieces of advice is, that good Bible study is not following a rote method. It's not jumping through hoops. It's not following a list of ten steps and then spitting out something. There's no substitute for thinking about the text.”

What I'm trying to say with this, is that translation choices don't resolve the issues. Translations are just words. Behind translation choices are the semantics of those translation choices, and that's really what matters. So the semantics options of this word is really important, “baptized hyper the dead…” What might that mean?

Our options could be summarized 4 ways:

1. “for the benefit of”

I think this one can sort of be ruled out if what we're talking about is that the act of baptism somehow gets somebody over the hump in the afterlife. We're not talking about that benefit. So we want to be careful about using “benefit” terminology here, even though it's on the table.

2. “vicariously in the place of”

“in the place of.” Same problem as that last one: why do they need a substitute?

3. “for the sake of”

In other words, with a goal in mind. It gets you away from the problems we just talked about, but what the goal is still needs answering, too.

4. “on account of”

Does this mean “because of” or “in honor of?” I like the phrase “in honor of” because it gets away from “the benefit of.” It gets away from that benefit language. So this is another way in English that we can express this idea of “on account of,” or having a relationship to

the dead. You could say in English (I'm just making up a sentence here), “I donated to that organization on account of you.” In other words, I like you so much or I respect you so much that it prompted me to donate to this organization that you're connected with. So it's kind of an honorific thing. Now, it doesn't benefit you directly. The organization is who is benefited, but I just want you to know that this act in my mind honors you. We're going to come back to that because I actually think that's the trajectory we need to track on when it comes to 1 Corinthians 15:29.

Those last two (“for the sake of” and “on account of" or "because of" or "in honor of”) have the dead in view, not the one being baptized. And that's important because we're dealing with real dead people.

I'm hoping that you're seeing why I'm angling toward this honorific idea, because that's actually where I land on this passage, and Patrick lands there, too. Patrick lands in a place that I think is the most coherent option. He says,

“The verse can be translated either baptism “on behalf of” the dead [that's what he prefers] or baptism “for” the dead, meaning…

…meaning that people were being baptized in honor of the dead. And you could also say “because of” the dead—because of something that the dead did that that makes you want to honor them.

His article title, and he actually has the word “apostles” in it. He believes that what's going on in 1 Corinthians 15:29, and I do think this covers all the bases in the chapter—in the context… In other words, the immediate context is that people were being baptized in honor of dead apostles, specifically the “more than 500 witnesses” mentioned in the same chapter. This becomes part of Paul's defense of the resurrection. People were getting baptized to honor these witnesses to the resurrected Jesus. It would make no sense to do that if there was no resurrection. Patrick says in his conclusion:

“New believers were receiving baptism after conversion through the testimony of these dead apostles, and in doing so were baptized into their name, an expression of allegiance in order to bring them greater honor. Thus, they effectively became living rewards for dead apostles.”

So I think that is probably the most coherent way to look at the passage. It keeps it in the context of 1st Corinthians 15. It keeps the resurrection in view. In other words, it makes Paul's rhetoric coherent, because if you don't believe in the resurrection, why would you do this? It's because you do believe in the resurrection, you do believe that that that guy who was dead is still alive in the resurrection, and you're becoming a living testimony to his legacy to honor him because it was through his testimony you came to the Lord. So if you don't believe any of that's going on, why would you do this? It doesn't make any sense. So it keeps the discussion orbited around the issue of the resurrection.

References:

1.James E. Patrick, “Living Rewards for Dead Apostles: ‘Baptised for the Dead’ in 1 Corinthians 15.29,” New Test. Stud. 52 (2006): 71–85

2. Naked Bible Podcast Transcript, Episode 221, Baptism for the Dead, June 23, 2018

3. http://www.nakedbiblepodcast.com/naked-bible-221-baptism-for-the-dead/