Lesson 12 – Where is Baptism in the Bible?

Baptism is the very first sacrament that we receive, the sacrament that launches us into a whole series of sacraments through which Jesus Christ extends His salvation to us.

Baptism addresses the fundamental problem of alienation: alienation from God, alienation from each other, alienation from our very selves. All of this alienation, and the self-destruction that comes with it, is caused by sin – both the sins of our ancestors and our own personal sins.

Course Reading

Summa Theologiae III, q. 66, a. 1 | St. Thomas Aquinas

Summa Theologiae III, q. 65, a. 2 | St. Thomas Aquinas

Excerpt from Summa Theologiae III, q. 66, a. 2:

Baptism received this power when Christ was baptized. Consequently Baptism was truly instituted then, if we consider it as a sacrament. But the obligation of receiving this sacrament was proclaimed to mankind after the Passion and Resurrection. First, because Christ's Passion put an end to the figurative sacraments, which were supplanted by Baptism and the other sacraments of the New Law. Secondly, because by Baptism man is "made conformable" to Christ's Passion and Resurrection, in so far as he dies to sin and begins to live anew unto righteousness. Consequently it behooved Christ to suffer and to rise again, before proclaiming to man his obligation of conforming himself to Christ's Death and Resurrection.

Course Listening

'If we have died with Christ’: Christian Life and the Death of Jesus | Fr. Jonah Teller, O.P.

The Death of the Lord | Fr. James Brent, O.P.