More Pre-Reformation Disagreements Over Baptism And John 3:5

I've written a lot over the years about how diversely John 3:5 was interpreted prior to the Reformation, contrary to the popular suggestion that there was more agreement about the passage. For example, it's sometimes claimed, falsely, that everybody or almost everybody thought the passage teaches baptismal regeneration. I've discussed many examples of Christians who rejected baptismal regeneration before the Reformation, like here. Those who assigned some kind of high efficaciousness to baptism widely disagreed with each other about the sort of efficaciousness involved. Go here for a discussion of some examples. People often lowered their view of baptism in order to heighten their view of something else (prebaptismal faith, prebaptismal anointing with oil, postbaptismal anointing with oil, the laying on of hands, etc.). Such tradeoffs would inevitably affect the sort of efficaciousness assigned to baptism in an interpretation of John 3:5. Some people held a highly efficacious view of both prebaptismal faith and baptism. To the extent that they were consistent in maintaining those views, there would have to be a tradeoff. Heightening your view of prebaptismal faith lowers your view of baptism in some contexts, as I've discussed elsewhere. And there were many other issues that influenced how people understood John 3. As I've discussed elsewhere, there was widespread disagreement before the Reformation about types of baptism other than water baptism, such as baptism of desire. And there were disagreements over whether Jesus' comments in John 3:5 were in effect at the time when he spoke the words in that passage or wouldn't go into effect until later. Those who thought John 3:5 wouldn't be applicable until later disagreed over which later point in time that was.

As an illustration of some of the themes mentioned above, see my post about Cyprian here. As I discuss in that post, Cyprian thought there were two sacraments in John 3:5, not just one: water baptism and the laying on of hands. And he mentioned a disagreement he had with other people in his day on another matter related to John 3. Apparently, they interpreted John 3:5 differently than he did and didn't believe in the concept of a baptism of blood. Issues like those would continue to be disputed for hundreds of years prior to the Reformation, even throughout the medieval era.

I'm not bringing up these topics just to address baptismal regeneration. I'm also bringing them up to address the claims we often hear about the alleged unity of Christians before the Reformation, how we need a church to interpret scripture for us, to settle disputes for us, etc. What we often see in history, including before the Reformation, is widespread disagreement among professing Christians accompanied by a widespread failure to provide scripture interpretation, unity, etc. by the institutions that are supposed to be giving us those things.

I want to quote some of Marcia Colish's remarks on some of the relevant issues. You can get more details by reading her book, if you're interested:

The doctrine of baptism by desire is one which he [Otto of Freising, a twelfth-century bishop] cannot bring himself personally to accept. Otto recognizes that this doctrine has its contemporary defenders. They are mistaken, in his view. Their error, as he presents it, stems from their inadequacy as literary critics. He declines to indicate any of their other positive arguments, contenting himself with John 3:3-5 as a sufficient refutation of them....

Bonaventure also sees that the simplest way to deal with the objection to his desired solution raised by John 3:3-5 is to assert, without further ado, that what "baptism" means in that text includes baptism by blood and by repentance as well as by water....

The single most problematic text in this connection [in disputes over when Christian baptism was instituted], as we have also seen, was John 3:3-5, which inspired a range of creative exegeses in the light of a master's desired conclusions....

A diverse number of ingenious readings of John's text are developed with the common goal of relativizing it. Some masters content themselves with the nude countercitation of other biblical texts, notably Matthew 28:19. But others offer their own imaginative exegeses of John himself, whether or not they read him in the light of when they think Christ instituted ritual baptism.

(Faith, Fiction & Force In Medieval Baptismal Debates [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2014], 55, 78, 80, 88)