Following on from yesterday's post about water, comes Paul Fiddes and an essay on which he reflects on the meaning of water in baptism. The whole essay explores each of the five water motifs mentioned below in detail, here I can only draw attention to them, and encourage you to think about how they are found in the Bible and how they might help us see a thicker meaning of why we are baptised in water.
I want to affirm that the Baptist practice of believers' baptism does make possible a recovery of the sense of the baptismal water as an actual element of the natural world, as well as the metaphor of God's redemptive activity ...
The contact with the element of water in baptism should arouse a range of experiences in the person baptized and in the community that shares in the act. Immersion into water – with both its shocking and pleasurable sensations – can evoke a sense of descent into the womb, a washing away of what is unclean, an encounter with a hostile force, a passing through a boundary marker, and reinvigoration. In all these aspects, water is a place in the material world that can become a “rendezvous” with the crucified and risen Christ …
The five water motifs I have survey indicate some of the range of experiences through God enters into relationship with us in life – experiences of new beginning, cleansing, conflict, crossing boundaries, and refreshment of spirit. These experiences that comes from living in God’s creation are “focused” in the event of baptism.
Paul S. Fiddes, 'Baptism and Creation' in Reflections on the Water; Understanding God and the World through the Baptism of Believers (Regent's Study Guides 4; Smyth & Helwys, 1996), pp.47-67. Reprinted in Paul S. Fiddes, Tracks and Traces (Paternoster, 2003).
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Posted by: Lutterworth Press | March 04, 2016 at 12:22 PM