And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying out, “Abba! Father!” (Galatians 4:6)
You have received the spirit of Son-ship. When we cry out, “Abba! Father!” it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God. (Romans 8:15–16)
This ecstatic cry at baptism, signifying the coming of the Spirit of Christ into the candidate, was viewed as a guarantee of the legitimacy of the “Son-ship.” Twice Paul tells the Corinthians:
But it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us; he has put his seal upon us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee. (2 Corinthians 1:21–22)
He who has prepared us for this very thing [i.e., the transformation to Spirit] is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. (2 Corinthians 5:5)
Paul uses a particular Aramaic word here (arrabon) translated as “guarantee.” Literally, it refers to a first installment—much like “earnest money” put down on a purchase.
Still standing in the water, the person administering the baptism would put his hands on the head of the candidate and ask God to confirm the presence of the Spirit openly as a witness to all present by giving the person his or her spiritual “gift.”17 These were specific manifestations of the Spirit given to those “baptized by one Spirit into one body” according to God’s choosing (1 Corinthians 12:4–13). Some would begin to speak ecstatically in languages (glossolalia) they had never learned, whether human or angelic; others would utter prophecies, demonstrating supernatural wisdom, knowledge, or insight; while others were given the power to work miracles or to perform healings.
As the candidate came up out of the water he or she would be clothed in a new white garment, picturing the new spiritual body they would receive at the resurrection. Each member of the group would then greet the newest member with a familial kiss on the mouth, referred to in several of Paul’s letters. He calls it “the kiss of holiness,” presumably to avoid any connotation of sexual impropriety or indecency.18
This imaginary attempt to sketch a scene of baptism in Paul’s churches is based on evidence that comes directly from Paul. These powerful and evocative Aramaic words—Maranatha, Abba, and Amen—are each attested as formulaic utterances in Paul’s letters. To Paul’s Greek-speaking converts these would have a foreign, magical sound. It is likely that baptisms were done in secret and at night, as we will see below, so the atmosphere of mystery and intrigue would have been all the more heightened. As vital as baptism was, it was initiatory and done only once for each new Christian, whereas the ongoing power of Christ’s Spirit was sustained by a mystical meal that Paul introduced to his churches as the “Lord’s Supper.”
EATING THE LORD’S SUPPER
Reading the New Testament backward could hardly be more critical than when it comes to examining the sacred meal that Paul calls the “Lord’s Supper.” This most central of all Christian rites, the Eucharist or Holy Communion, involving eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Christ, however understood, is at once as familiar as it is strange. Here is what Paul writes to the Corinthians around A.D. 54:
For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is [broken] for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” (1 Corinthians 11:23–25)
Mark, our earliest gospel, written between A.D. 75 and 80, has the following scene of Jesus’ Last Supper:
And as they were eating, he took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it. And he said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.” (Mark 14:22–24)
The precise verbal similarities between these two accounts are quite remarkable, considering that Paul’s version was written at least twenty years earlier than Mark’s. Where would Paul have gotten such a detailed description of what Jesus had said on the night he was betrayed? The common assumption has been that this core tradition, so central to the original Jesus movement, had circulated orally for decades in the various Christian communities. Paul could have received it directly from Peter or James, on his first visit to Jerusalem around A.D. 40, or learned it from the Christian congregation in Antioch, where, according to the book of Acts, he first established himself (Acts 11:26).
What Paul plainly says is easy to overlook: “For I received from the Lord what I handed on to you.” His language is clear and unequivocal. He is not saying, “I received it from one of the apostles, and thus indirectly it came from the Lord,” or “I learned it in Antioch, but they had gotten it by tradition from the Lord.” Paul uses precisely the same language to defend the revelation of his gospel and how it came to him. He says he did not receive it from any man, nor was he taught it, but swears with an oath, “I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:11–12). This means that what Paul passes on here regarding the Lord’s Supper, including the words of Jesus over the bread and the wine, comes to us from Paul and Paul alone!
We have every reason to take him at his word. Though it might sound strange to us that anyone would claim to have received by revelation a narrative of Jesus’ last meal with his disciples years after the event, Paul considered that sort of thing a normal manifestation of his prophetic connection with the Spirit of Christ. One of the gifts of the spirit was a “word of knowledge,” and such a revelation could apply to the past, the present, or the future. In the same way Paul claims to have received a detailed scenario of precisely what will happen in the future when Jesus returns. He prefaces his revelation with the claim “For this I declare to you by the word of the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:15). Paul says that he hears from Jesus. To speculate as to where Paul derived the ideas he claims were given to him by revelation is to enter into his personal psychology to a degree to which we have no access. To try to do this would be outside the realm of historical inquiry.
Since Paul’s account is the earliest we have of the Last Supper, we have to be very careful in reading the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke, all of which record a similar account but were written decades later. In other words we can’t begin with Mark, our earliest gospel, and assume that Jesus actually said these words at the Last Supper, and then go to Paul, who comes after Jesus, as if he were just echoing the primary account. Things are precisely the other way around. We have every reason to believe that Mark got his tradition of the words of Jesus at the Last Supper from Paul. Matthew and Luke, who then use Mark as a source, also repeat what Paul had said decades earlier.19
One way of sharpening this inquiry is to ask two questions that take us beyond Paul and back to Jesus. Is it historically probable that Jesus held a Last Supper with his disciples on the night before his death? Is it historically probable that Jesus uttered words about the bread being his body and the cup of wine his blood?
For the first question we have two independent ancient sources: Mark (who is echoed by Matthew and Luke) and the gospel of John. Both report that Jesus ate such a meal and it is reasonable to assume such is the case. For the second question Paul is our only source reporting that Jesus spoke of the bread as his body and the wine as his blood—assuming that Mark, Matthew, and Luke derive their accounts from him. John reports an intimate meal Jesus had with his disciples but never says anything about words such as these spoken over bread and wine. It is difficult to imagine John, who was aware of the other gospels, leaving such an important tradition out of his gospel except by intention. His silence is essentially his “no” vote on the historical reliability of our single source—Paul.