27 July 2023
The companion website for Heiser's The Unseen Realm covers a lot of territory. Chapter 38 of that site looks at baptism.
If all you get from it is a review of the famous Reformed creeds, you will understand just how thoroughly the mainstream churches have messed up the distinction between the Two Realms. How does a ritual that gets your body wet change your spirit? Yet the creeds, and a lot of evangelical teaching in general seem to assert this very thing. The verbiage of the creeds will leave you very confused on this point, because they do not properly distinguish between flesh and spirit.
They also seem to have zero concept of the Covenant. Furthermore, they confuse earthly election with eternal election. I've already explained the difference between Old Testament election as an earthly nation versus New Testament election as an eternal spiritual kingdom.
I get Heiser's association of circumcision and baptism. Still, the ritual washing of the Old Testament had its own meaning. It began as simply bathing, a ritual washing, and the Hebrew word is represented as mikveh. In every case, it was regarded as removing some ritual defilement. It made someone fit to take their place in the Tabernacle/Temple courts for worship. By extension, it made you fit to be present within the covenant camp.
Thus, with certain defilements you weren't supposed to be too close to other covenant folks. You couldn't go about your daily life as usual. Your social contact was hindered; you couldn't go inside the residence with other people, never mind the symbolic "residence" of God. It was typical that you would take a bath and wait until sundown -- thus, the beginning of a new day.
At some point, it became clear that a mikveh was also a symbol of repentance. In New Testament times, it had long been common for men to stop at one of a dozen or so public baths to repent of any accidental/unknown ritual defilements on the way to the Temple. But there was a strong influence from both Essenes in the towns, and the separatist communities out in the wilderness places, both of whom practiced frequent mikveh to mark repentance from the sins of the historical and social sins of the nation, very specifically in preparation for the coming of the Messiah. John the Baptist was hardly unique in his ministry, in that sense.
Most of the noise made in the various church creeds seems aimed at maintaining the hierarchy of the institution, and the necessity of the prescribed rituals, on the grounds that you'll go to Hell with them, in so many words.
By linking circumcision and baptism, Heiser affirms what I've said already: Rituals symbolize loyalty to some ruler and his kingdom. The covenant law was what defined your community and was your testimony of the worth of the ruler. Thus, the change of heart defines the ritual, not the other way around.
If you want to read Colossians 2:11-12 as linking baptism and circumcision, you should understand that it does not limit baptism to just that linkage, but that baptism sweeps it in as part of something larger. Meanwhile, circumcision was very distinctly a mark of national election. Historically across the Ancient Near East, it was required by some wandering tribes of Aramaeans and Egyptians (in various forms and at various times), but otherwise widely regarded as barbaric and ugly. On the balance of things, God's requirement of it as part of His covenants with people made them oddballs, particularly the practice of circumcising infants. Greeks, Persians, Canaanites, and Mesopotamians in general all looked down on it.
Still, one thing is for certain: Child baptism cannot serve any good purpose unless the parents are fully conscious of the Covenant and its feudal demands on their lives. Unless you are tagging your child with a tribal human identity, there's really no point. It's best to wait for someone to become an adult and use it as a ritual declaring their feudal loyalty to Christ as Lord.
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