Here comes a reflection on baptism in the Syriac Christian tradition from Eugene Rogers and his book on the Holy Spirit, After the Spirit. The Syriac tradition looks at the meaning of baptism in a different light.
The Syriac tradition does not portray baptism as a grim moment in which sinners grit their teeth and try to wrest their redemption from the cold and unforgiving water. The tone is entirely different: one of praise, thanksgiving, and wonder, as befits a glimpse into the trinitarian relations and a share in the feasting at the wedding of the Lamb:
How fearful and full of awe is this moment when the supernal beings stand in silence upon this baptismal water - thousands upon thousands of angels, ten thousands of Seraphim hover over this new mother, holy baptism, the spiritual mother who gives birth to spiritual sons who enter into the bridal chamber of life that is full of joys … They stand by the river Jordan to receive the Son of God who has come to perfect baptism. The Holy Spirit descends upon him from the uppermost heights, not to sanctify him, but to bear witness to him.
The Syriac tradition can see the entire history of salvation and the entire Christian life in terms of the wedding parable of Matthew 22, in which putting on the wedding garment is putting on the Spirit. In both cases the wedding feast is the eschatological banquet at the end of time for which God has been preparing the human race since the beginning. Baptism washes human beings not primarily because of sin, but for the feast. Baptism is the great washing before meals. Bathing is already part of the joy of preparation even for the clean; so much the more so for those who are dirty. Consummation is logically prior to redemption, as the goal specifies the species of an act.
Furthermore, the wedding feast is the consummation for which all human beings were created. The Spirit who hovered over the waters at creation is bringing up her creation over time, when she hovers also over the waters of the font. The wedding garments are prepared already. The guest who was cast into the outer darkness for the lack of a wedding agreement was not one who had never had one, but one who had been given one and lost it.
Christ came to baptism, he went down and placed in the baptismal water the robe of glory, to be there for Adam, who had lost it.
That applies to all children of Adam:
You [Christ] who were without need were baptised in the river Jordan and left into the garment of divinity for those who were naked that they might be clothed with it.
The children of Adam become children of the Father by being clothed again in the Spirit:
You have clothed us in the robe of glory of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and you have granted that we should become spiritual children to the Father in the second birth of baptism.
Eugene F. Rogers, Jr., After the Spirit: A Constructive Pneumatology form Resources Outside the Modern West (SCM, 2006), pp.137-139. (The use of italics represents where Rogers is quoting).
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