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The Bible and Baptism: The Fountain of Salvation
00:17:21
Dr. John Sehorn, Academic Dean of the Augustine Institute Graduate School of Theology, sits down with Fr. Isaac Morales, OP, a Dominican friar of the Province of Saint Joseph and Associate Professor of Theology at Providence College, to discuss Fr. Isaac’s book The Bible and Baptism: The Fountain of Salvation (Baker Academic). This episode dives into how Baptism is the fountain of salvation for the Christian.
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- [00:06]
A
Hello, everybody, and welcome to this special formed book study. My name is Dr. John Seehorn. I'm the academic dean here at the Augustine Institute Graduate School of Theology. And I'm Also, along with Dr. Tim Gray, our president and editor of a new series from Baker academic on Catholic biblical theology of the Sacraments. And I'm delighted to have with me here Father Isaac Morales, who is the author of the first volume to be released in that series, which is called the Bible and Baptism. So over the next few episodes, we're going to be discussing Father Isaac's book, talking about the mystery of Christian baptism and how a deeper reading of sacred Scripture can illumine our understanding of this great gift of God. So, Father Isaac, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?
- [00:58]
B
Okay. I was born and raised in the northern suburbs of Chicago. And when I got to be college age, I decided to go off to Duke University in North Carolina, and I was going to study civil engineering because I was a math science person and I didn't like to write and I thought I was bad at it. Oh, wow. Kind of funny.
- [01:15]
A
He's not. He's very good at writing.
- [01:17]
B
And about halfway through my time there, I realized I didn't like engineering. And it was a little bit too late to switch majors, but so I decided to just make some plans to switch to do. I was getting more interested in my faith, getting more interested in theology. So I thought, I want to do this. I want to teach at the college level. So after I graduated, I worked for a couple of years, then I went back to graduate school, did my master's at Notre Dame, went back to Duke, where I did my doctorate in New Testament. And then from there I went to Marquette University, where I got my first job teaching in their theology department. And all the while, for about 10 or 15 years, in the back of my mind, there was this nagging suspicion that maybe God was calling me to the priesthood and I wanted nothing to do with it. But eventually he got me. This isn't about.
- [02:02]
A
He has a way of doing that.
- [02:03]
B
Yeah, he does. He's good at that. This was probably. No, definitely. This was March of 2011. It just became clear to me, A, that this was what he wanted from me, and B, that finally this is what I wanted. And so I decided to look into the Dominican order. And, yeah, I went and saw they have these come and see weekends. So I went and I saw and I thought, this is it. But I had to go to Germany first because I had. The previous fall, I had Received a research fellowship from the German government to spend the year in Munich. Oh, wow. So I went over to Munich. I was intending to work on a project on baptism in the Letters of Paul, and. And so I did a little bit
- [02:43]
A
of work on that.
- [02:43]
B
I did a lot of traveling and not as much research as I probably could have or should have, but I spent the year there, got to know the Dominicans there. I flew back from Europe, and a couple weeks later, I was in Cincinnati, Ohio. This was actually 10 years ago this summer that I went to Cincinnati and began formation as a Dominican friar. And six years later, I was ordained. And since 2018, I've been teaching at Providence College.
- [03:11]
A
Fantastic. Yeah. I have a kind of treasured memory, Father, from when you were a baby priest. I think you'd been ordained in the last couple days, and you and I were together at a conference, and I remember kneeling down on the sidewalk for a blessing, because it's always wonderful to get a blessing from a new priest. So that's wonderful. So you're a Dominican friar. You teach New Testament at Providence?
- [03:35]
B
Among other things. Among other things. Providence College is a small liberal art school, arts college, so we can teach widely. So I've taught New Testament. I've taught our Foundations of Theology class. We have a Development of Western Civilization program that I teach in. I've taught a course on CS Lewis, so it's fun to be able to teach a wide variety of things.
- [03:53]
A
That's fantastic.
- [03:54]
B
Great students there.
- [03:55]
A
That's great. Well, I am so happy that Father was able to write for this series and this kickoff volume on baptism. The title, again, is very simple. The Bible and Baptism. We'll actually talk a little bit more about that in a future episode. It has a very attractive subtitle, though, too. The Fountain of Salvation. And where did you get that subtitle, Father?
- [04:19]
B
I got that subtitle from Isaiah 12. Isaiah 12, where he speaks about, you will draw water joyfully from the wellspring of salvation.
- [04:27]
A
Yeah, that's beautiful. So kind of baked into the subtitle is what the whole series is about, right? The Bible and the sacraments. And how do we understand the sacraments in light of the Bible and your kind of experience as a priest, as a New Testament scholar? How do you kind of see, I don't know, kind of where we are as a church in our understanding of kind of the role of the Bible in the life of the church? And maybe especially with respect to the
- [04:56]
B
sacraments, I think we could do better in general.
- [04:59]
A
Well, that's what we're trying to do with this series.
- [05:01]
B
I hope I can contribute to that a little bit. It's funny, actually. So I mentioned how at Duke, I was getting interested in theology, and so I thought I wanted to do that. And actually, I knew Dr. Tim Gray way back before he was famous. We were both at Duke at the same time. He was doing a degree at the divinity school there.
- [05:16]
A
You're telling me there was a time when Dr. Grey wasn't famous?
- [05:18]
B
That there was. I can attest I learned something every day. And so he led a Bible study for us that. That year. And so I was talking to him about my interest in theology, and he said, yeah, you should do scripture. We need people to do scripture. There aren't enough people doing scripture. And so I blame him. That's why I am where I am. In part.
- [05:38]
A
Yeah, I believe it. Yeah, I believe it. Well, that's great. Okay. And then how has that informed. I don't know, your priesthood now that you're celebrating the sacraments on behalf of the faithful?
- [05:49]
B
Well, it's great because I make a point of my homilies. Always focus on the scriptures, on the text for the day. I mean, they're not there as window dressing.
- [05:59]
A
Right.
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B
They're actually meant to feed us. And my job as a preacher is to feed the flock with. With the word and to bring them into an encounter with Christ, whom we encounter in the scriptures.
- [06:11]
A
Oh, that's beautiful. All right, well, okay. So that's. That's scripture. And I think, probably, for the most part, formed viewers understand the importance of the Bible and want to go deeper into it. And so we'll have some opportunities to do that over the next few episodes. This is just the first of a series of episodes. And in the next few, what we'll be doing is actually getting into Father Isaac's book, the Bible and baptism, and kind of giving you a taste of what's going on in that book and getting into how a deeper appreciation of the Bible can help us more deeply understand and appreciate the gift of baptism. But maybe in some of the time that we've got left here in this first episode, we could talk more about baptism. I mean, you know, it's sort of something everyone's familiar with. We baptize our children. I will say, in my case, it's a little bit different. I was not raised Catholic. I was raised in a Baptist church. So I can actually.
- [07:15]
B
You actually remember your baptism?
- [07:16]
A
I can actually remember my baptism, Yeah. I was 7, almost 8 years old. So I can remember that. But that's probably not true of most. Okay. It's not just probably. It's certainly not true.
- [07:28]
B
I don't remember mine.
- [07:29]
A
Of most Catholics. That's right. So, yeah, kind of. What's your sense of how, I don't know, the average Mass going Catholic thinks or doesn't think about baptism?
- [07:40]
B
Well, let's talk first about the experience. As you mentioned, there are very rare occasions, occasions, excuse me, when Catholics do encounter baptism. And when they do, it's usually seeing a baby, have water poured over their head, or maybe every now and now and then at the Easter, visually, you might have an adult being baptized. So for that reason, I suspect, among others, Catholics probably don't think very much about their baptism, which is really a shame. And I'm a little bit embarrassed to say that I was like that even as recently as a few years ago. I was writing this book that really gave me a much deeper appreciation for the beauty and the significance of baptism. There's a great quotation from St. Gregory of Nazianzus or Nazienson in one of his homilies. He says, illumination is the most beautiful and most magnificent of the gifts of God. And illumination was actually one of the most popular terms used by the Fathers to refer to baptism was one of the names for the sacrament.
- [08:43]
A
Well, why was that?
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B
Well, because the idea was that through our baptism our minds are enlightened with faith. We come into this relationship with God, we come to know him experientially. And there are lots of texts in the New Testament that refer to being enlightened.
- [08:57]
A
Yeah, that's a really powerful quotation. So for viewers who might not be familiar with St. Gregory of Naziensis, he's one of the greatest fathers of the Church, lived during the 4th century. He's one of the great Cappadocian fathers who are especially to be thanked for some things that we almost take for granted, some of the things about how we talk about the mystery of the Trinity. But Gregory in particular was a really spectacular preacher, and that's a really powerful line to hear from him. In fact, in the east, he's frequently referred to simply as Gregory the Theologian, Gregory the man who talks about God and does so as adequately as a human being can do. But I suspect that you're right that by and large, we're not accustomed to thinking about baptism as a great gift. We think of maybe the Eucharist more often. Right. Which is the sacrament we probably receive most frequently as a great gift from God. But we don't necessarily think about baptism. It's almost like, what, a check mark that.
- [10:06]
B
Right, exactly. Well, and there's kind of an analogy there with our birth. I don't remember my birth. I'm pretty sure I came out of my mother's womb. She told me I did, but I don't think about it every day. But without it, you wouldn't have anything else. And similarly, without baptism, you wouldn't have any of the gifts of the Church.
- [10:23]
A
That's really right. It's interesting you compare it then to. To birth. That is an image that the New Testament uses to talk about what happens in baptism. And I don't know, is there some things we should think about? Kind of getting ready to dive into the book about baptism again, as a beginning, as a new birth, as an entry into not just a new kind of individual life, but a new, I don't know, set of relationships.
- [10:52]
B
Yeah. But I would actually want to say there's a lot that we should think about, not just new birth. One of the beautiful things about the Rite of Baptism is how saturated it is with Scripture. And this is true of all the sacraments. The sacraments are wedded to Scripture. There's a beautiful passage from the Catechism. Give me a second to look it up. Paragraph 1154. For those of you who are following along at home. The Catechism says the Liturgy of the Word is an integral part of sacramental celebrations. To nourish the faith of believers, the signs which accompany the Word of God should be emphasized. The Book of the Word, a lectionary or a book of the Gospels, its veneration, procession, incense, candles, the place of its proclamation, lectern or ambo, its audible and intelligible reading, the minister's homily, which extends its proclamation and the responses of the assembly, acclamations, meditation, psalms, litanies, and profession of faith. Now, that paragraph, it might make it seem like it's only speaking about the liturgy itself, about the Mass, but this is true of all of the sacraments when they're celebrated in their fullness. There is so much Scripture. In fact, I got many of the ideas for this book from the Rite of Baptism because it uses so much scriptural imagery. The waters of creation, Noah and the flood passing through the Red Sea. I could go on. And we will, you know, to some extent. But Scripture is. It's the foundation. It's one of the foundations of the sacraments, and it's how we really come to understand what the sacraments are about.
- [12:29]
A
Yeah, yeah. I love, too, the. Just the. The. The emphasis in that Passage from the Catechism on the ways that we express our veneration for. For the Word. Right. We, of course, process with the Blessed Sacrament and incense it and so on and so forth. But I was really struck by this one time at a Mass a few years ago, and it was just a Sunday Mass at my parish. It must have been Easter season or a solemnity, because they were using incense, which they'll do on occasion there. And I just remember it really striking me, it was time for the Gospel. And so we stood up to. To sing alleluia. And our deacon went and took this ornate book off of the altar.
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B
It would be beautiful. Yeah, yeah.
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A
With the silver and the gold and the kind of jewels in it. And held it up and the smoke from the incense was rising. And we're singing. And it just hit me, this sort of beautiful expression of our love and our veneration and our humility before the words that are contained in the Gospel, especially, but in all of Scripture.
- [13:39]
B
Yeah. Well. And I love that image of the deacon or the priest carrying the book of the Gospels. The Dominicans have a variation on that. When we carry the book of the Gospels, we kind of hug it to our chest, which is particularly fitting for an order of preachers. Right. We should keep the Gospels close to our heart, and it's from there that our preaching springs. But again, it's all of the sacraments, not just the Mass, not just the Eucharist, that have scripture. And maybe an important thing to say would be that, as I said, in their fullest celebration, you'll have all sorts of scripture. You'll have. The prayers, of course, are saturated with scripture. There's frequently a reading, even, for example, the rite of anointing. There's a little. There are options from the gospel readings, and there's a space for the minister to preach. That's not always possible.
- [14:25]
A
Right.
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B
Somebody's on their deathbed, you get the oils on. Right. So I don't want to suggest that it's invalid or deficient if you don't do it all. But if you have the time and the setting, it can be a beautiful thing. The sacrament of penance. There are readings that are recommended, and you rarely hear them because frequently there will be 40 people in line. You can't do that for every penitent. But occasionally, when you have the time, it's a beautiful way to enter more deeply into scripture as part of conversion.
- [14:54]
A
That's great. Well, good. Well, I hope this sort of provides you with a little bit of an introduction to kind of what we're up to, not just in this book that Father Isaac has written, but in the series that it's inaugurating and, you know, getting to know Father Isaac a little bit. Just to give you a sense of kind of where we're going from here. As I said, we're going to dip into the book itself and start next time, actually, by talking about the Old Testament, which might seem a little bit counterintuitive at first. I mean, Father already gave a bit of a teaser about that, which is perfectly fine. But of course, baptism is something that we only encounter explicitly in the New Testament. And so it might not be immediately obvious that we have anything to learn from the Old Testament about the Christian sacrament of baptism. But if you're tempted to think that, don't, because it's wrong.
- [15:48]
B
I have 70 pages to show you.
- [15:50]
A
Don't worry, we're not going to read all 70, but so give you a sense of what's going on there. And then in the later episodes, we'll be getting into the New Testament, into the life of Jesus, his own baptism, and then the sacrament that he has entrusted to his bride as this great gift of his love and mercy. And we'll just be exploring that. And then at the end, we'd really like to invite you to think about how you can go deeper in your understanding of baptism, whatever your role is that God's called you to in the church. If you're a priest or deacon who celebrates baptisms, if you're a catechist or someone who's involved in sacramental prep, or even if you're just regular Joe or Jane, Catholic like me, who wants to appreciate your own baptism and the baptism of your loved ones and your children at a deeper level. We'll talk about that a bit more before we close. I do also want to mention that this book, if you're interested, the Bible and Baptism, the Fountain of Salvation, is available at Catholic Market. So if you click over to Catholic Market, you should be able to find it very easily, and I'd very much encourage you to check it out. So, Father, any parting words for this first episode?
- [17:06]
B
No, I don't think so.
- [17:07]
A
All right, sounds good. All right, well, thank you all so much for joining us and hope to see you in the second episode. God bless.