Reading Saving Paradise: Chapter 5, Part I

The Portal to Paradise: Baptism

The restored baptistry at Dura-Europos, Syria, c. 230 AD

The earliest surviving images outside the catacombs

Baptism was the portal to paradise.  Through this ritual, Christians gained entrance into the garden of God, which stood beyond the open doors of every church.  The church dipped initiates into lakes, immersed them in rivers, or drenched them from urns to wash them in the living waters of the Jordan, the great river of paradise that flowed throughout the earth and blessed all its waters….    

Christians had begun to use baptistries, instead of natural bodies of water, by the third century.  The oldest surviving Christian baptistry dates from around 230 and was uncovered among ruins in Dura-Europos, Syria.  The frescoes on the walls around the pool are the earliest surviving Christian images outside the catacombs.  (from Brock and Parker - Saving Paradise, p. 115)

Applying for admission to baptism  

In considering an initiation ritual such as baptism, ancient people … would have asked, “Where has this ritual taken people I know, and do I want to join them?”  Completing this ritual process required physical and intellectual effort, and ethical and spiritual discipline.   

The baptismal practices we describe … come from Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem, who used them in the second half of the fourth century.  An educated, fourth-century Christian lay woman from Spain named Egeria spent a year in Jerusalem and observed the rituals.  (Saving Paradise - p. 117-118)

 The pilgrim Egeria 

Her journal had great influence on liturgical practice

For three years, Egeria traveled to holy sites from Sinai to Constantinople, keeping a journal as she participated in worship services.  Egeria’s journal describes a Holy Week service:   

Now as soon as the first cock has crowed, the bishop [Cyril of Jerusalem] arrives and enters the cave at the Anastasis (Resurrection); all the doors are opened and the whole multitude enters the Anastasis, where countless lights are already burning… After these three psalms and three prayers are ended, lo! censers are brought into the cave of the Anastasis so that the whole basilica of the Anastasis is filled with odors.  And then the bishop, standing within the rails, takes the book of the Gospel, and proceeding to the door, himself reads the narrative of the Resurrection of the Lord.  And when the reading is begun, there is so great a moaning and groaning among all, with so many tears, that the hardest of heart might be moved to tears for that the Lord had borne such things for us…  Egeria’s Pilgrimage, 24:9-10 – see p. 121)

 Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem 

A great teacher of catechumens

Born in 315, Cyril was raised a Christian in Jerusalem. His instructions to catechumens are still source documents for the Church's early teachings. From his catechetical instruction to those preparing for baptism and confirmation:    

Through a sincere faith prepare yourselves so that you may be free to receive the Holy Spirit. My brothers, this is truly a great occasion. Approach it with caution. You are standing in front of God and in the presence of the hosts of angels. The Holy Spirit is about to impress his seal on each of your souls. You are about to be pressed into the service of a great king. And so prepare yourselves to receive the sacrament. The gleaming white garments you are about to put on are not the preparation I am speaking of, but rather the devotion of a clean conscience.

Training the flesh

In Christian thinking, the body’s intimate connection to the soul required that it be treated with care.  So training for baptism was designed to teach lifelong ethical and spiritual practices… The disciplines learned for baptism were encouraged as lifelong practices of faith.  Study, prayer, fasting, sexual control, voluntary poverty, and non-violence were methods by which the gifts of God to humanity – first given in the Garden of Eden – were restored to human beings and humanity drew close to God… They were the ways of paradise.  (Saving Paradise - p. 122-125)

Fasting and other austerities can be misunderstood as a negative attitude toward the ‘sinful’ body or as a symbolic identification with Christ’s suffering.  These interpretations are, however, typical only of medieval Christian spirituality.  In the fourth century, Cyril opposed those who taught that the material world was evil and that only the spiritual realm was holy.  He taught, instead, that fasting was a positive thing: it prepared Christians to feast on God’s goodness experienced in earthly life (See p. 123-124)

A circular, waist-deep marble pool dominates the center of the small, octagonal, fifth-century Arian Baptistery in Ravenna.  It has channels where fresh water once flowed from a nearby stream.  Anyone who stood in that pool and looked up into the dome would have seen an image of Jesus being baptized in the Jordan, the harbinger of their own dousing.  (See p. 116)  

 Looking up at the dome in the Arian Baptistry, Ravenna

The apostles surround Jesus and John the Baptist

Empowering the psyche

From their enrollment for baptism until their immersion, the catechumens underwent rituals of healing and exorcism.  These physical, psychological, spiritual rituals helped candidates stay healthy.  ‘If anyone is conscious of wounds, let him seek healing!  If anyone has fallen, let him get up!’ Cyril enjoined the candidates.  (Saving Paradise - p. 125)

 Jesus heals the paralytic 

Mosaic in St. Appollinaire Nuovo, Ravenna

In late antique society, people believed that spirits inhabited many aspects of life; humans lived under the sway of powerful forces.  Christians did not think that they had moved from an unbelieving world into a world of faith; they believed they had moved from being subject to the powers of demons to being free of their powers.  Jesus Christ had demonstrated God’s power over the demonic forces that inflicted human life.  His disciples carried on these miraculous power, and the bishops continued this legacy when they prepared candidates for baptism….

Today… therapists struggle to alleviate the compulsions of sexual offenders, the entrenched cycles of domestic violence, and the suffering of post-traumatic stress.  Scientists search for genetic causes of such behaviors, and social scientists study the sexism, racism, and homophobia that spread harm through every society.  Demons were the symbol of such forces in ancient times.  The usual treatment was not punishment, but exorcism…  Exorcism was a way to recognize that social change required social rituals to transform communities.  (Saving Paradise - p. 126-130)

Training the mind

According to Egeria, instruction involved extensive discussion:  

God knows, ladies and sisters, that the faithful who have come in to hear the catechesis which is explained by the bishop raise their voices [in questioning] more than when the bishop sits and preaches [in church] about each of the things being explained. … 

The hottest debate in Cyril’s time was about the divinity of Jesus and what it meant for the identity of baptized Christians.  … Another controversy in Cyril’s community was whether the crucifixion of Christ was shameful.  Cyril argued that the Crucifixion was not shameful because the Resurrection had dispelled its ignominy. 

… Bishops in Cyril’s time were engaged in a struggle over whether baptism should primarily be interpreted in relation to Jesus’ death and resurrection or to his baptism in the Jordan River. During Christianity’s first centuries, most theologians in the east and the west focused on birth and rebirth, interpreting baptism as imitating Jesus’ own baptism in the Jordan.  (See p. 130-135)

Russian Orthodox Church Gospel Book

with catechist and catechumen

Paradise is not a private realm of personal spirituality – only communal practices and shared endeavors in ritually organized communities can open its gates.  To believe in Christian ideas without committing to a community and living out those beliefs would be like believing regular exercise is the key to good health and determining the very best regimen for optimal well-being – but doing nothing physical.  A privately and personally held belief that was not lived out in community and society would be equally useless.  (Saving Paradise - p. 135)

Please continue reading on the next post,

Chapter 5, Part II -

‘The night of transformation’