Baptism: A Guide to Life from Death

Peter Leithart
Baptism: A Guide to Life from Death
Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2021.

Reviewed by Rhys Bezzant

I couldn’t agree more with Leithart more: he argues in this small book that to understand what baptism is about we first have to understand what the church is for. I say this to students in class every year. We atomise debates about baptism by isolating particular verses, often out of context. No matter your position on baptism, it is so easy to approach the issue reductionistically by ignoring the verses that don’t fit comfortably with your view, whatever it is. We have to use all the texts that are given to us in Scripture, both concerning baptism and the nature of the church.

And Leithart does more. For he sets his exploration of the purpose of baptism within its setting in biblical theology. Chapters on creation, Noah, Abraham, Joshua, then chapters on the nature of the people of God as prophets, priests and kings, altogether present some overarching themes of the Scriptures, into which our doctrine of baptism must be set. Passing through the waters is a sustained image in the Bible that shapes profoundly our expectations of what baptism achieves or even pictures. Essentially, biblical theology like this highlights eschatology, the grand purposes of God. Call me needy, but there is nothing more likely to warm my heart or encourage feelings of awe than a demonstration of the beautiful connections between parts of the history of redemption. Baptism is not an optional extra for those who like institutional ritual, but instead is a concrete way that God makes his promises clear. It is not about my experience in the end. In more systematic language, baptism is a sacrament of the Gospel, not of conversion. As Leithart says: “Baptism is the gospel with your name on it” (p103).

In such a brief compass, Leithart traverses a lot of ground, for he wants to explain how baptism relates to belonging in the local church, and to patterns of discipleship, and to preparation for glory. It is comprehensive. And poetically written. His prose gleams with the imagery of water. It is everywhere. I suspect he overdoes it, actually. It is true that language connected to water can be found on most pages of the Scriptures, but does this kind of phrase add clarity: “Born of water, we are water” (p.86)? Or: “Plunged in God’s water, you become God’s water. Imitate the fish” (p104)? Am I the water in which the fish swims, or the fish submerged in it? This aside, Leithart’s own immersion in patristic writers, who had much to say about baptism which made them distinct in the world, or his engagement with Luther, for whom baptism was one of the great sacraments of the church untainted by late medieval compromise, make this book rich and rewarding.

Each chapter picks up themes in the great baptismal collect by Luther, and some beautiful illustrations, together forming a mosaic as baptism does of biblical themes, make this book or 105 pages, an easy page-turner. It won’t answer all your systematic questions, but it will set them within a healthy biblical and historical framework. And surely the practice of baptism has such deep roots with the expectation of integrating shoots.

Rhys Bezzant is Dean of the Anglican Institute at Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia.