What more? Verily, our opponents are well
equipped with arguments. We are baptized, they urge, into water, and of course
we shall not honor the water above all creation, or give it a share of the
honor of the Father and of the Son. The arguments of these men are such as
might be expected from angry disputants, leaving no means untried in their
attack on him who has offended them, because their reason is clouded over by
their feelings. We will not, however, shrink from the discussion even of these points.
If we do not teach the ignorant, at least we shall not turn away before evil
doers. But let us for a moment retrace our steps.
The dispensation of our God and Savior
concerning man is a recall from the fall and a return from the alienation
caused by disobedience to close communion with God. This is the mason for the
sojourn of Christ in the flesh, the pattern life described in the Gospels, the
sufferings, the cross, the tomb, the resurrection; so that the man who is being
saved through imitation of Christ receives that old adoption. For perfection of
life the imitation of Christ is necessary, not only in the example of gentleness,
lowliness, and long suffering set us in His life, but also of His actual death.
So Paul, the imitator of Christ, says, "being made conformable unto his
death; if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead."
How then are we made in the likeness of His death? In that we were buried with
Him by baptism. What then is the manner of the burial? And what is the
advantage resulting from the imitation? First of all, it is necessary that the
continuity of the old life be cut. And this is impossible less a man be born
again, according to the Lord's word; for the regeneration, as indeed the name
shews, is a beginning of a second life. So before beginning the second, it is
necessary to put an end to the first. For just as in the case of runners who
turn and take the second course, a kind of halt and pause intervenes between
the movements in the opposite direction, so also in making a change in lives it
seemed necessary for death to come as mediator between the two, ending all that
goes before, and beginning all that comes after. How then do we achieve the
descent into hell? By imitating, through baptism, the burial of Christ. For the
bodies of the baptized are, as it were, buried in the water.
Baptism then
symbolically signifies the putting off of the works of the flesh; as the apostle
says, ye were "circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in
putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ;
buried with him in baptism." And there is, as it were, a cleansing of the
soul from the filth that has grown on it from the carnal mind, as it is written,
"Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." On this account
we do not, as is the fashion of the Jews, wash ourselves at each defilement,
but own the baptism of salvation to be one. For there the death on behalf of
the world is one, and one the resurrection of the dead, whereof baptism is a
type. For this cause the Lord, who is the Dispenser of our life, gave us the
covenant of baptism, containing a type of life and death, for the water
fulfills the image of death, and the Spirit gives us the earnest of life. Hence
it follows that the answer to our question why the water was associated with
the Spirit is clear: the reason is because in baptism two ends were proposed;
on the one hand, the destroying of the body of sin, that it may never bear
fruit unto death; on the other hand, our living unto the Spirit, and having our
fruit in holiness; the water receiving the body as in a tomb figures death,
while the Spirit pours in the quickening power, renewing our souls from the
deadness of sin unto their original life. This then is what it is to be born
again of water and of the Spirit, the being made dead being effected in the
water, while our life is wrought in us through the Spirit. In three immersions,
then, and with three invocations, the great mystery of baptism is performed, to
the end that the type of death may be fully figured, and that by the tradition
of the divine knowledge the baptized may have their souls enlightened. It
follows that if there is any grace in the water, it is not of the nature of the
water, but of the presence of the Spirit. For baptism is "not the putting
away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience towards
God." So, in training us for the life that follows on the resurrection the
Lord sets out all the manner of life required by the Gospel, laying down for us
the law of gentleness, of endurance of wrong, of freedom from the defilement
that comes of the love of pleasure, and from covetousness, to the end that we may
of set purpose win beforehand and achieve all that the life to come of its
inherent nature possesses. If therefore any one in attempting a definition were
to describe the gospel as a forecast of the life that follows on the
resurrection, he would not seem to me to go beyond what is meet and right. Let
us now return to our main topic. 
Through the Holy Spirit comes our restoration to
paradise, our ascension into the kingdom of heaven, our return to the adoption
of sons, our liberty to call God our Father, our being made partakers of the
grace of Christ, our being called children of light, our sharing in eternal
glory, and, in a word, our being brought into a state of all "fullness of
blessing," both in this world and in the world to come, of all the good
gifts that are in store for us, by promise hereof, through faith, beholding the
reflection of their grace as though they were already present, we await the
full enjoyment. If such is the earnest, what the perfection? If such the first
fruits, what the complete fulfillment? Furthermore, from this too may be
apprehended the difference between the grace that comes from the Spirit and the
baptism by water: in that John indeed baptized with water, but our Lord Jesus Christ
by the Holy Ghost. "I indeed," he says, "baptize you with water unto
repentance; but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am
not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with
fire." Here He calls the trial at the judgment the baptism of fire, as the
apostle says, "The fire shall try every man's work, of what sort it is."
And again, "The day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire."
And ere now there have been some who in their championship of true religion
have undergone the death for Christ's sake, not in mere similitude, but in
actual fact, and so have needed none of the outward signs of water for their
salvation, because they were baptized in their own blood. Thus I write not to
disparage the baptism by water, but to overthrow the arguments of those who
exalt themselves against the Spirit; who confound things that are distinct from
one another, and compare those which admit of no comparison.
Source: https://archive.org/stream/St.BasilLettersAndSelectedWorks
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