How Many Baptisms are There?

The Church has taught from the beginning that there is only one baptism, namely that baptism in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit that Jesus tasked his apostles with spreading to the four corners of the earth.  The Nicene Creed affirms that there is just one baptism and that it is the initiating sacrament for the forgiveness of sins.  St. Paul will sometimes reference our being baptized into Jesus Christ, being baptized into the one body of the Church, and one time of being baptized into the Spirit—all of which is consistent with the manner and significance of baptism.  Since authentic Christian baptism is performed with water and in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, that baptism is indeed a baptism into the Son as well as into the Spirit.  Since being made members of Jesus makes us members of one another, that baptism also inaugurates us into his Body, the Church.  That baptism accordingly also opens the pathway for us to partake of his body in the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.  But these are not multiple different baptisms, but one and the same Baptism, a Baptism that performs multiple functions.

In the earliest years of the Church, while the Gospel was only just advancing outside of Jerusalem, we find some variation in how baptism is recorded as being practiced.  In a few cases as the Gospel advanced to a new group of people who were either partly Jewish or entirely non-Jewish, baptism in the name of Jesus was offered to them but then the Spirit fell on them separately.  This “falling of the Spirit” produced one of the same signs that happened on Pentecost, namely the ability to speak in foreign languages unknown to them, what people loosely call “the gift of tongues.”  St. Peter explained on Pentecost that these abilities to speak in foreign languages and to prophesy, as well as the other signs of the Spirit’s coming—the tongues of fire on one’s head and the thunderous wind that rushed through Jerusalem as the Spirit descended—were all given in fulfillment of the Jewish prophet Joel’s prophecy that in the Last Days the Spirit would fall on the sons of Israel and they would prophesy and speak in foreign languages, as a sign, St. Peter explained, of God’s messianic mission of offering salvation to all.  As we saw in our last Question from the Unsettled Mind on the Last Days, the Last Days is the entire age of the Church beginning with Pentecost.

In the years following Pentecost, as the Church centered on Jerusalem and Judea, only full Jews converted to the Christian faith and were baptized.  But then St. Luke records in his Acts of the Apostles how first the partly-Jewish Samaritans, then those who had been baptized with the baptism of John the Baptist, and finally even a Gentile Roman officer named Cornelius and his family all believed in the Lord and were baptized.  In each of these inaugural cases of the expansion of the Gospel to a new group, the Apostles arrived and laid hands on them to receive the Holy Spirit in a visible sign of the authenticity of their inclusion in the Church.  In these cases, the new believers in question spoke in foreign languages (though they did not experience the full set of Pentecost signs I mentioned earlier).  This is not to suggest that they were not baptized with the same one baptism Jesus authorized and then had to be re-baptized in the Holy Spirit.  They were baptized once and then their reception of the Holy Spirit was physically demonstrated through the gift of foreign languages to authenticate to the Jews that the Gospel of Christ was for all.  Keep in mind that this was a sign to Christian Jews too!  Some Christian Jews had been under the impression that Christianity was solely Jewish, that the Messiah was for Israel alone.  Other Christian Jews thought that if half-Jews or non-Jews became Christians, then they would have to become Jews too.  Neither idea was correct, because both Jew and Gentile were being baptized into one new Body, Christ’s Body, the Church.  Because there was so much resentment between Jews and non-Jews at the time, the visible sign of the authority of the Holy Spirit through the gift of foreign languages made clear to all the truth of St. Peter’s apostolic teaching that the Church was for all human beings equally.

As the Church expanded far into the Gentile territories of the Roman world, the Holy Spirit provided additional gifts to some people, gifts that we would now probably describe as paranormal, because they included abilities outside the normal spectrum of human experience.  These included many of the abilities that we see the Apostles possess: the ability to instantaneously and completely heal the sick with just a word or a touch, the ability to cast demons out of people immediately and entirely with one command, the ability to do other kinds of miraculous signs (St. Paul, e.g., cast blindness on a false prophet one time, and another time he survived a snake bite, and still other times he was either badly beaten or killed and just got up later and walked back into the cities), the ability to prophesy about the future, the ability to pronounce detailed information for the church concerning some dispute or doctrinal question, and the ability to speak or to understand unknown foreign languages.  These signs were given to the Apostles and to some members of very early Christian churches for the purpose not just of authenticating the gospel to the Jews, but of authenticating the authority of the Apostles per se, as the book of Hebrews explains:

Therefore, we must attend all the more to what we have heard, so that we may not be carried away. For if the word announced through angels proved firm, and every transgression and disobedience received its just recompense, how shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation? Announced originally through the Lord, it was confirmed for us by those who had heard. God added his testimony by signs, wonders, various acts of power, and distribution of the gifts of the holy Spirit according to his will (Hebrews 2:1-4 NABRE).

Thus, God wanted the world to know that the Church was his authentically created institution for distributing the salvation of his Son to the world.  He showcased his divine authorization first in the astonishing cluster of signs that Jesus performed, and then again by the significant signs that the Apostles performed, and then finally by some further signs that were present here or there in the very earliest Christian churches.

Are these abilities present today?  That is the big question.  Let’s face it: many people are kind of curious about acquiring paranormal powers, right?  Imagine moving objects with your mind like the Jedi of Star Wars?  Knowing the future just by thinking about it?  Being able to speak in foreign languages without multiple years of study?  Being able to walk through cancer wards and healing everyone?  That might seem kind of cool, right?  Being an X-man, in effect.  Many people originally attracted to Scientology, for example, have admitted upon leaving the cult that one of their main drives was to acquire the paranormal powers that L. Ron Hubbard promised his advanced followers!

Except, of course, that we do not see evidence of these powers today.  We hear people claim to possess all of these abilities, but when those claims are examined, they do not appear anything like the powers exhibited by Jesus and his Apostles.  Even in cases where the Church investigates and concludes that, yes, a miracle does seem to have happened, or yes, this is likely a case of demonic possession and we require an exorcist, even in these cases, we don’t see power like what Jesus and his Apostles commanded.  Miracles seem to happen (rarely) but not through an empowered person who like Jesus completely and instantaneously healed people all day long and then was so tired, he had to go rest.  Miraculous healings today happen through prayer and sometimes seem concentrated around specific holy places.  But these are not located in a specifically empowered person.  Again, exorcists do confront real demons who sometimes possess people, but they do not simply command the demon in Jesus’ name to leave and it instantly runs off—which was the effect that Jesus’ word had on the demonic.  Contemporary exorcists describe their activity as “praying the demon out.”  Exorcisms are lengthy, grueling, and often, repeated affairs.

And in the case of the gift of foreign languages, they definitely died out very early in Church history.  Which really isn’t a surprise since St. Paul specifically talked about the gift of foreign languages as “ceasing of itself” (his use of the Greek middle voice in 1 Corinthians 13:8 means that tongues will cease of themselves, i.e., just fade out).  When the early Church Fathers discuss these gifts of the Holy Spirit, they aren’t even sure what they mean anymore.  St. Augustine specifically mentions a dispute among his fellow bishops about whether the gift of foreign languages meant that the gifted person actually spoke in a foreign language or whether he spoke in his own language and people heard a foreign language.  And this is fascinating, because it implies that their knowledge of the gift of foreign languages derives solely from St. Luke’s description in the Book of Acts where he references foreigners saying that they “heard” their own languages and from St. Paul’s descriptions in his letter to Corinth where it seems the speaker is speaking in a foreign language.  The bishops are having a textual interpretation discussion, because they can’t just run down to Corinth (or any other Christian church city) and watch the gift of foreign languages in action!  It had ceased, of itself.  It was gone, long gone.

Now, in our previous Question from the Unsettled Mind about the Last Days, I sketched the history of the heretical Montanists with two false prophetesses who were using ecstatic speech as though it were the gift of foreign languages, in order to lay claim to the authority of the Holy Spirit for their cult.  But ecstatic speech is actually of pagan origin and purports to be some kind of divine speech.  However, it is not human language, and it is not of God but the demonic.  So, it is not the gift of foreign languages given by the Holy Spirit.  Moreover, the Church easily recognized that the teaching of Montanus was in direct opposition to what the Apostles and Bishops had taught from the beginning, that it was just a heretical cult trying to take advantage of the gullible.

We don’t find anything purporting to be the gift of foreign languages again until the early 19^th century when Joseph Smith claims to have revelations from a divine being he calls “heavenly father” (he calls this being “God” but also says that this “God” is a physical being and has always had a body).  The followers of first Smith, and then Bringham Young, claimed a wide variety of supernatural activity to convince people that theirs was a new outpouring of divine revelation and the establishing of a new church of latter-day (Last Days) saints.  These are popularly known as the Mormons, and among their many “revelations” was the doctrine of polygamy in which men were encouraged to take many women as wives.  You’ll recall from our look at the history of the Last Days apocalyptic cult movements that many of them endorsed weird sexual and marital practices.  The actual Church, the Roman Catholic Church, condemns polygamy as being unnatural to human beings and especially caustic to women and children.  It’s a very bad idea.

What’s important to understand about the milieu of Joseph Smith in early 19^th century New York is that it was a hotbed of what we might now describe as experiential Christianity.  The Great Awakening of the late 18^th century had seen fire and brimstone preachers such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield draw people toward an experience of conversion that went beyond what the mainline churches were teaching.  Methodism, started by John Wesley, codified this experientialism, insisting that some kind of experience of God had to authenticate sacramental activity such as baptism.  Joseph Smith’s family had deep Methodist connections, so his walking about the woods and having “religious experiences” made a lot of sense to him (even if his fantastical theological conclusions should have raised some doubts).

Methodism inaugurated a whole plethora of evangelical Christian Protestant movements that saw a conversion experience ratified by a second authenticating experience as required for full Christian life.  Some groups taught perfectionism, for example, that sometime after conversion a person would receive a gift of perfect holiness from God and would never sin again.  As these ideas developed, disputes sprang up and different denominations formed about what the secondary authenticating experience actually was.  The American Pentecostal movement embraced the notion that the secondary experience was an act of the Holy Spirit, a second baptism, and that this “Baptism of the Holy Spirit” should be attended to by the ancient gift of tongues.  Some Pentecostal theologians tried to interpret the original books of Acts and Corinthians to vouch for these new doctrines, while others made a broader move toward the idea that a second Pentecost was afoot and that the Holy Spirit was in the process of a new awakening, much like Edwards, Whitefield, Wesley, and Smith had been saying earlier.  For Pentecostals “speaking in tongues” became the identifier of those who truly inhabited this second authenticating status, this Baptism of the Spirit.  It became necessary for people associated with these groups to showcase this experience, to “speak in tongues.”  It really became a dividing line between the ordinary Christian and these new super-Christians who were allegedly receiving supernatural, paranormal powers!  The unity of the Church that St. Paul emphasized to the church at Corinth again gave way to the haves and the have-nots of supposed spiritual gifts.

But something else began to be noticed too—the sort of “tongues” that were being employed in these religious services were not unknown foreign languages at all, but more akin to the ecstatic speech of the Montanists. People who desperately wanted to receive this second “baptism of the Spirit” but honestly had no idea how to speak in tongues were instructed in what to do, in how to just “open their hearts to God” and then open their mouths and make sounds.  Those sounds, however strange and garbled they might be, were then declared to be this less-linguistic form of the gift of tongues that the Spirit was apparently now distributing: “Voila, you’re now special!  You’re one of the new super-spiritual elites!”

Linguists have carefully studied recordings of Pentecostal worship services in order to analyze the noises made by people purporting to be exhibiting the gift of tongues.  They concluded without question that not only are they not foreign languages, but there is no evidence that they are supernatural either, because the structure, cadence, and particular sounds employed by the speaker fit into the speaker’s natural first language.  You would think that if the Holy Spirit wished to launch a second Pentecost with a second Baptism and a second authenticating sign of the gift of tongues that he could do a bit better.

I speak facetiously, of course, because from the get-go none of these are authentic.  There is no second Pentecost, just as there is no second Baptism (of the Spirit or anyone else), just as there is no new giving of the Holy Spirit in the gift of tongues.  As St. Paul said, they would and did die out of themselves.  And why?  Because their mission has been accomplished for nearly 2000 years!  Judaism as a structured sacramental religion based on ancient Israel ended in AD 70 when the Romans wiped out Jerusalem and with it the temple and the priesthood.  What remained of Judaism changed completely from a institutionalized sacramental system of sacrifice with a priesthood under the Law to a religion of prayer and readings from that Law—more a religion of remembrance.  The need to offer a sign to the Jews ended, because the sacramental reality of Judaism concluded.  Moreover, as the gospel spread like wildfire throughout the gentile Roman world and then beyond, Christian Jews became less and less a percentage of the Church.  The sign had already been given.  Messiah had come.  The Church was instantiated by the Holy Spirit to include all people, Jew and Gentile.  God’s love is for all.  Which is why it really is so aggravating to have people 2,000 years later haul out spurious paranormal powers and claim that they possess them in the name of the Holy Spirit, and then to employ them to claim to be more spiritual or authentic or serious than people who do not have them!  Or, again, to use these counterfeit “gifts of tongues” and wed them to supposed prophetic powers to speak for God and, then, in God’s name to authoritatively lord it over others, as Joseph Smith and Bringham Young did throughout the 19^th century Mormon history. 

Of course, the Holy Spirit can do what he likes.  He is God, after all, and Jesus sent him into the world to spread his love through the Church.  The Spirit can act miraculously in the world, but always consistent with what he has already said and done, for God never breaks his word.  If the Spirit wants to equip someone to heal the sick like Jesus did, then he can do that.  If he wants to give prophecy for a specific purpose through a specific person, he can do that, too.  But the determination of whether this is real or fake comes solely through the Church that the Spirit himself established.  Only the Church can recognize any supernatural event as divinely valid.  The Blessed Virgin herself has from time to time revealed herself in the world for some specific purpose and offered authenticating signs of her involvement.  In Mexico in 1531 she appeared to Juan Diego several times, speaking to him in Nahuatl, the language of the recently overthrown Aztecs, his own native language.  Mary was ratifying the spread of the love of her Son to the people of the Americas, asking him, “Am I not here, I who am your mother?”  She offered him a sign to authenticate her visitation and urged him to present what had happened to the archbishop who, after some initial and not unreasonable hesitation, determined that it was real.  Through her intercession a miraculous healing occurred as well.  Mary insisted that Juan Diego take the sign, the cloak of roses, to the Archbishop of her Son’s Church, because Mary always points to Jesus.  When the Archbishop saw the cloak full of roses, an image of Mary appeared as well, the now famous image of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

But what we usually see in the world today is not the practice of our dear Mother but instead those laying claim to spiritual powers assiduously avoiding the critical eye of the Church.  A true prophet of God would present himself to the Church to vouch for or to condemn what he thinks he has received from God, an act of humility before the authority that God imbued in his bishops through the Apostles.  But false prophets form small cliques of followers who believe them before anyone else is even aware that something suspicious is occurring.  This secrecy is typical of all the Gnostic cults that we reviewed in our recent Last Days Question from the Unsettled Mind whose interest is not the good of Christ’s Church but instead of their own status as the chosen ones to judge and replace that Church.

For all that the Spirit might do in the world today, we can assert with great confidence that he will not restore the Pentecost-era gift of foreign languages, because he already revealed through St. Paul’s apostleship that it would cease of itself, just as it did.  The Spirit doesn’t go back on what he has already said.  Thus, all those who lay claim to this ancient spiritual gift are either quite out of their minds or they are frauds and cultists of the worst sort, seeking to gain influence and control over the spiritually gullible.  They should be condemned and we should warn people not to be taken in by their deceit.  Any group that refuses to submit itself for review by the Church, that tries to conceal its teaching, activities, membership, leadership, and alleged prophetic or otherwise paranormal capabilities demonstrates its hostility to the historic faith of Jesus.  You cannot love the Head and reject the Body.  The Church is the Body of Christ, and only the Church can ultimately render judgment on any alleged activity of God in the world.

Unfortunately, the Mormons, the Pentecostals, and the Scientologists are not the only ones supposedly employing paranormal powers to claim the religious authority to speak for God and create new institutions that displace the Church.  This heretical infection is alive and well on the frontier of the Roman Catholic Church too.  If you conduct an internet search on “the baptism of the Spirit,” you will discover that concept present not only throughout Pentecostalism but also in so-called “charismatic Catholic” websites and retreats.  These groups of Catholics have bought into this Protestant Pentecostal heresy of a second baptism, distinct from the real trinitarian one authorized by the Church, an experiential “baptism” that allegedly includes these same so-called “spiritual gifts.”  Like their Pentecostal friends, these “charismatic Catholics” also employ non-liturgical lighting, music, and dramatic settings in their worship events designed to induce a highly emotive, suggestive psychological state, a state that one participant described to me as “hypnotic.” The person about to be “baptized by the Spirit” is then surrounded by people already allegedly so baptized.  Those people then place their hands on the baptism-receiver and ritualistically invoke the Holy Spirit to be released inside this baptism-receiver.  Notice that this event is quasi-sacramental, using the official apostolically sanctioned “laying on of hands.”  But all Catholic laying on of hands in this way requires an apostolically appointed person, namely a Bishop or a Priest.  In these “Baptism of the Spirit” rituals, the apostolic authority is entirely skipped to effect what is essentially an eighth sacrament on the receiver.  For it cannot be baptism, because the person is already baptized.  It likewise cannot be confirmation, because the person is already confirmed.  So, what is this new enactment that requires both the physical laying on of hands and the spiritual invocation of the Holy Spirit?  The only possible answer is a brand new sacrament, not sanctioned by the Church and not delivered by those with apostolic ordination.  The baptism of the Spirit is accordingly an act of Protestant Pentecostal hubris, and when it is conducted by Catholics, it is a direct act of repudiation against the Apostolic succession and the Magisterium of the Church.

By contrast, our historic and authentic Catholic sacraments are rooted in an understanding of the whole human person that respects not only the emotions but also the understanding and the will.  Our Masses likewise appeal to every element of the human person: the imagination, the desires, the intellect, the aspiration, the emotions, and the body.  We never employ reductivistic models of the human soul that sidestep our God-given critical faculties.  And why would we?  The Catholic Church is not a cult, not preying on the gullible in an attempt to manipulate them into some sort of apocalyptic “Last Days” madness.  The Church continues its Christ-authorized mission of teaching what he gave us, and that begins with our King’s teaching on baptism.  There is no second baptism, and for a converted Baptist like myself whose ancestors in the lunatic anabaptist cults of the 1530’s were widely condemned for their bizarre practices of rebaptizing people, it is quite a shock to find experience-focused Catholics toying with a toxic protestant theology that divides people all the while claiming it as a great unifier.  Remember: there is only one Baptism.  That Baptism, the real one, is trinitarian, meaning it is already done in the full name of God—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  There is accordingly no need for a second baptism of the Spirit when the real Baptism is already “of the Holy Spirit.”