Our Thursday posts focus on material from the New Testament. As part of our fourfold priority of history, integrity, truth, and Scripture we consider it important to read and review significant scholarly work with both the Old and New Testaments. Today we see the development of the idea of baptism throughout Matthew’s Gospel. As Dr. Scaer has observed before, we see that the idea is not articulated in much detail near the beginning of the work, but as the reader gains understanding of the Christian message, the detail given to baptism is much fuller.
Scaer, David P. Discourses in Matthew: Jesus Teaches the Church. St. Louis: Concordia, 2004. Kindle Electronic Edition.
Chapter 4, “The Development of Baptism in the Gospel of Matthew” Loc. 3100-3183.
“Along with its highly developed trinitarian theology, Matthew is the most sacramentally satisfactory of the New Testament writings, including the Gospels, because it alone contains institutions for both Baptism and the Eucharist that make clear the necessity of these sacraments for the life of the Christian community” (Scaer 2004, Loc. 3100). Scaer discusses the way Matthew alone shows baptism as the command of Jesus. The sacramental view of baptism is necessary to understand the many references to new life throughout the New Testament. This clarity is present in Matthew (Scaer 2004, Loc. 3123). An early date of composition also may be indicated by the prominence of John the Baptist and the lack of extensive information about the conception and birth of Jesus or John. Those details would have been known, while baptism would need more spelling out (Scaer 2004, Loc. 3134). Scaer distinguishes between John’s baptism and Christian baptism, the entry into the Christian community (Scaer 2004, Loc. 3146).
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