Circular Arguments, Plagiarism, and Dubious Extrapolation: The Patristic Evidence for Baptism for the Dead and its Misuse by LDS Apologists and General Authorities.

By Ronald V. Huggins, Th.D.

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There is evidence that some form of baptism of or for the dead was practiced by three early Christian heresies: the Marcionites, the Cerinthians, and the Montanists. But the mishandling of the evidence by Mormon apologists and General Authorities has resulted in a great deal of confusion concerning the matter. In the present article I shall discuss and evaluate both the Patristic evidence (i.e., the evidence of the Early Church) relating to baptism for the dead, and the Mormon mishandling of it.

Apologists are motivated by a desire to defend a point of view. That’s what makes them apologists. They want to, in a sense, weaponize the evidence they are working with in the way that best supports the case they are making. As Austin Farrer wrote of C. S. Lewis:

There are frontiersmen and frontiersmen, of course. There is what one might call the Munich school, who will always sell the pass in the belief that their position can be more happily defended from foothills to the rear. Such people are not commonly seen as apologists . . . They are too busy learning from their enemies to do much in defence [sic] of their friends. The typical apologist is a man whose every dyke is his last ditch. He will carry the war into the enemy’s country; he will yield not an inch of his own.¹

And all that’s fair enough, so far as it goes. But there’s a line between favorably reading evidence and distorting or twisting it to make it say something it doesn’t want to. In my experience the apologetic impulse toward crossing that line is a very ecumenical one: Evangelical, liberal Protestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Hindu, Moslem, Buddhist, even Atheist apologists, are all too often guilty of this particular species of transgression. Really, it gives apologetics a bad name.

For some reason the literature of the early Church has proved a particularly fertile field of harvest for evidence-distorting apologists. Part of the explanation for this, no doubt, lies in a desire to have writers of that early period—writers much closer in time to the founding of Christianity—agree with them, or at least disagree with those they want to refute. The level of distortion increases where apologists, before reading a single line or page of early Church writings, already feel sure their practice of Christianity today mirrors exactly what Jesus intended it to be from the beginning. Many churches hold this perspective to some degree, but none so categorically as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons).

I believe that as a prerequisite for using the writings of the early Church in a credible way apologetically one must first learn how to read them disinterestedly, that is to say, one must be able to read them on their own terms, allowing them to develop their own theological language to express their own thoughts in their own way. Otherwise it becomes too easy for apologists to merely exploit, plunder, or mine the ancient texts for what they want to get out of them. Such persons can never really come to know the ancient writers in this way. And, as a result, they frequently distort and misrepresent them, sometimes without even knowing it.

Even though, as I said, apologists of all stripes have been guilty of this, it is a simple fact that Mormon apologists are more likely to be guilty of it because they actually believe, as part of their “dogma,” if you will, that Mormonism is now precisely what early Christianity was in its original founding. This presupposition provides what they mistakenly believe will be a helpful grid for reading the writings of the early Church. Traditionally Mormons have imagined that to whatever degree any early text differs from current LDS teaching, to that very same degree it was corrupted in a process of falling away from the truth they call the Great Apostasy. Conversely, they imagined that to whatever degree something agrees with current LDS teaching, to that same degree they imagine it retains a glimmer or remnant of original pre-apostasy Christianity. In other words, if one wants to know if a certain ancient Christian teaching is corrupted or not, all one has to do is see if it lines up with current LDS teaching. If it does not, then it can be safely regarded as corrupt. As incredible as it may sound, this grid of judgement was actually authoritatively proposed in the LDS “First Presidency Statement on the King James Version of the Bible” (1992), where it is applied to evaluating places where modern translations differ from the King James: “The most reliable way to measure the accuracy of any biblical passage is not by comparing different texts [i.e., in different Bible translations], but by comparison with the Book of Mormon and modern-day revelations.” In reality, of course, the Book of Mormon and modern-day LDS revelations are going to agree with the King James Version where it differs from other modern versions, simply because both are cribbed from or based on the King James Bible. The same grid is also glowingly articulated by Mormon scholars and apologists Daniel C. Peterson and Stephen D. Ricks, though somewhat more cautiously:

Latter-day Saints, though, are in an enviable position here. Given our belief in an apostasy, we fully expect there to be differences, even vast differences, between the beliefs of the Fathers and Mormon doctrine. Any similarities that exist, however, are potentially understandable as survivals from before that apostasy. When any similarities, even partial ones, exist between Latter-day Saints beliefs and the teachings of the Fathers but are absent between contemporary mainstream Christendom and the Fathers, they can be viewed as deeply important.²

But what may appear to Mormons as a helpful grid, that allegedly puts them in “an enviable position,” actually fits them with blinders that keep them from being able to see what actually lies before them in the ancient texts.

All this brings us uncomfortably near to a story told by Moslem historians about how Caliph Umar allegedly commanded the burning of the books in the Alexandrian library on the grounds that “[I]f what was in them agrees with the Book of God [the Qur’an], they are not required: if it disagrees, they are not desired.”³

At the end of the day, if a methodology produces results that appear too good to be true, it is likely a flawed and dubious one withal. In this case we discover the methodology’s refutation in the fact that it can as easily be turned on its head to be used to prove Mormonism always wrong no matter what (i.e., by saying that wherever the early Church evidence agrees in any way with Mormonism, to that extent it had gone apostate, etc.). And there is also the fact that other groups, Evangelicals, Roman Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, can use, and in fact have used, the same methodology, each with equally satisfactory results in defending their own versions of early Christianity.

Mishandling of the Evidence Relating to the Baptism of the Dead

In the present article we will focus our investigation on the Mormon apologetic appeal to patristic evidence in support of its controversial doctrine of baptism for the dead. There are a number of passages Mormons resort to when trying to argue that the practice of baptism for the dead, referred to obliquely by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:29, was actually a divinely instituted practice which the ancient Church had fallen off performing as it slipped into black apostasy, but which God reestablished when he restored the Church to its original primitivity through the prophet Joseph Smith.

Marcion and Cerinthus among the Mormon Plagiarizers

We mentioned at the beginning that there was some evidence that the Marcionites, the Cerinthians, and the Montanists might have practiced a baptism of or for the dead. Very often, as we shall see, Mormons get confused between the first two groups, the Marcionites and the Cerinthians, so that they commonly mention one when actually speaking of evidence relating to the other. It is this error in fact that has been perpetuated due to plagiarism. But before getting into that let us first deal briefly with the evidence relating to the Marcionites, which though sparse, is some of the most straightforward.

One of the earliest and best attested examples of a practice of baptism for the dead relates, as we said, to the followers of the mid-second century heretic Marcion. Their practice is referred to by the late 2nd/early 3rd century North African writer Tertullian,⁴ and actually described by the 4th century Greek theologian John Chrysostom. “[W]hen any [Marcionite] Catechumen departs among them,” Chrysostom writes, “having concealed the living man under the couch of the dead, they approach the corpse and talk with him, and ask him if he wishes to receive baptism; then when he makes no answer, he that is concealed underneath saith in his stead that of course he should wish to be baptized; and so they baptize him instead of the departed.”⁵ When challenged about the practice, Chrysostom went on to say, the Marcionites quoted 1 Corinthians 15:29.

In addition to Tertullian and Chrysostom, Mormons also regularly cite a passage from the 4th century writer Epiphanius of Salamis claiming that it too refers to the Marcionite practice of baptism for the dead. But this is an error. In the passage cited below Epiphanius was actually discussing the practices of a group called the Cerinthians not the Marcionites.⁶ In due course we shall evaluate what Epiphanius had actually said about that other group. But for now, we need to pause and trace the source and origin of the Mormons’ mistake. Those making the mistake obviously hadn’t read Epiphanius. They simply copied the mistake out of other Mormon books, but usually without crediting their actual sources, thus becoming guilty of plagiarism. The following paragraph, for example, appears virtually verbatim in the writings of LDS authors George F. Richards,⁷ Mark E. Petersen,⁸ Albert Zobell,⁹ and LeGrand Richards,¹⁰ with only the last mentioned actually crediting any source beyond Epiphanius:

Epiphanius, a writer of the fourth century, in speaking of the Marcionites, a sect of Christians to whom¹¹ he was opposed, says: “In this country—I mean Asia—and even Galatia,¹² their school flourished eminently; and a traditional fact concerning them has reached us, that when any of them had died without baptism, they used to baptize others in their name, lest in the resurrection they should suffer punishment as unbaptized.”

And it should be said that the above passage is only an excerpt of a larger block of text Mormons have copied out of one another’s books for well over a century. Had the above authors read the passage in its original context they would have seen it was a mistake.

Such “research” required no real knowledge of the subject being discussed, no familiarity with Epiphanius or the Marcionites. It only required the ability to mindlessly copy out somebody else’s work. It was only the original author of the frequently plagiarized passage who had to do any real research in non-Mormon sources. But which of the above authors (if any) actually first introduced and perhaps even composed the widely plagiarized passage? As we said, only LeGrand Richards tells us his source, and he says he got it from an article by Mark E. Petersen in the April 1933 issue of the Utah Genealogical and Historical Magazine.¹³ But it was not ultimately Petersen who composed and introduced the passage, nor was he the one who originally confused the Marcionites with the Cerinthians. That honor on both counts most likely goes to Brigham Henry [B. H.] Roberts (1857-1933), who included the oft-copied passage in several of his books.¹⁴

How Roberts likely came to confuse the Cerinthians with the Marcionites can be seen by comparing the passage as he wrote it with his probable source, namely J. Jacobi’s entry on baptism for the dead in Kitto’s Cyclopaedea of Biblical Literature.¹⁵

Where Jacobi had said that Epiphanius had written about the followers of Cerinthus, who in their turn were “much opposed” to the Marcionites, Roberts, by skip of eye or thought, seemed to imagine it was Epiphanius himself who was opposed to the Marcionites. It is a reasonable assumption, since Epiphanius was “much opposed” to the Marcionites, but it is not what the passage was about. The very fact of the confusion suggests Jacobi/Kitto as Roberts’s ultimate source for the quotation, since there is no mention in the original context of the passage in Epiphanius’s work of the Marcionites. In addition this passage from Epiphanius is often referenced as being found not at xxviii 7, as Jacobi and Roberts both have it, but as xxviii 6, which is actually the correct reference.¹⁸

There is an irony in the fact that it was B. H. Roberts who became the victim of widespread Mormon plagiarism in this instance since it was also he who delivered a very stern warning specifically directed at Mormon leaders engaging in plagiarism in his Seventy’s Course on Theology:

I desire to say one more thing, and to say it as emphatically as it is possible for it to be said. Let every speech, lecture, or discourse by a Seventy be an honest one. Let it be his own, good, bad, or indifferent. A poor speech that is one’s own is more to one’s credit than a good one stolen, and repeated as his. Plagiarism . . . is always dishonest and not in harmony with the Spirit of truth, which is the Spirit of the gospel.¹⁹

One interesting feature of all the copied versions of the Roberts passage, is the variant numbers included as the alleged reference in Epiphanius where the passage supposedly appears.

One would be hard pressed finding one’s way from the reference given in any one of the plagiarized sources to the actual passage in Epiphanius. This is because the reference numbers given usually make no sense. Once one sees a few of the plagiarized versions together, however, it becomes clear what is going on. Jacobi gave as reference 28:7, which Roberts accurately repeats. Of the four mentioned who copied the Roberts passage, only one, LeGrand Richards, managed to retain the full reference (28:7). Petersen and Zobell inadvertently dropped the 2 from 28, referencing the quote instead to “8.7”. The most mysterious change of reference, however, appears in George F. Richards, who directs the reader to “Heresies, p. 383.”²⁰ Are we to suppose that G. F. Richards had in mind the page number of some obscure edition of Epiphanius, or was he giving the page number of Jacobi’s article in Kitto? As to the former, since G. F. Richards felt satisfied simply copying his material out of someone else’s book, it seems unlikely he would have then troubled himself hunting down an edition of Epiphanius and finding the page number where the quote occurred. The fact that he repeats Roberts’s mistake also militates against this. As for the Kitto reference, we know what page that was on, and it wasn’t 383. What seems most likely to have happened was that Richards has given us the page number of his true source, namely B. H. Roberts’ New Witness for God [Vol. 1], where the passage in question appears on page 383.²¹

Until now we have been dealing with Mormons who copied the Roberts passage verbatim. But there were also those who repeated Roberts’s mistake closely enough to still be committing plagiarism but without copying the whole of it word for word. For example, John A. Tvedtnes, a professor at BYU who wrote a number of articles, reviews, and papers on baptism for the dead in early Christianity, repeats Roberts’s mistake about Epiphanius and the Marcionites, but he does so without copying verbatim.

Thus in one of his more recent efforts Tvedtnes declares: “Two of the early church fathers, Epiphanius (AD 315-403) in Panarion 1.28.6 and Tertullian (AD 145-220) in Against Marcion 5.10, note that the Marcionites, an early Christian group, baptized others in the name of the dead.”²² Here at last, Tvedtnes gives the correct reference to the passage in Epiphanius, the place where one could actually look it up in, say, Frank Williams’s familiar English edition of the Panarion, published by E. J. Brill.²³ In his earlier writings, Tvedtnes did not give the correct reference but simply copied the wrong reference (Panarion 8.7) out of another Mormon’s book, and, typical of those who went before him, did so without properly crediting his source.

In giving this incorrect reference, Tvedtnes inadvertently revealed that he didn’t get the passage from Epiphanius, nor even from B. H. Roberts, but rather from one of Roberts’s many plagiarizers. This detail alone causes us to doubt that Tvedtnes ever read the passage in context in Epiphanius—since there was no way to get from the erroneous reference to the passage itself—but was content to take his place in line as a copiest of the copiest of the copiest of Epiphanius. As we saw, J. Jacobi repeated the passage but gave the reference not as 28.6 but as 28.7 (see discussion above). B. H. Roberts, in his turn, copied Jacobi’s form of the passage, including his 28.7 reference. Then Mark E. Petersen and Albert Zobell copied Roberts, or one another, or some other Roberts plagiarizer, but in the process muddled the reference, inadvertently dropping the 2 from Roberts’s 28.7, reducing it to 8.7. Finally Tvedtnes, in his earlier works, copied the passage from Petersen or Zobell or some other Roberts plagiarizer, again repeating the muddled 8.7 reference.²⁴

Posthumous Baptism for Marcionite Catechumens

Even granting that Epiphanius was not speaking of the Marcionites, we still have the statements from Tertullian and Chrysostom saying they practiced a form of baptism for the dead, and in the case of the latter the practice is described as a baptism by proxy. When a catechumen—someone already engaged in a course of preparation for baptism—dies, someone gets under the bed to request baptism on behalf of the dead person, and then is afterward baptized in the dead person’s stead.

Chrysostom’s description as likely as not provides the explanation of the practice’s origin. Where baptism is counted essential for salvation, the death of someone in process of preparing for it must have seemed particularly tragic. Could not some way be found to justify baptizing the dead catechumen? Wasn’t he or she faithful and, as it were, almost there! Under such unhappy circumstances we can easily imagine 1 Corinthians 15:29 being seized upon as suggesting a positive way forward.

If this explanation is correct it nullifies the Mormons’ appeal to Marcionite baptism for the dead as a way of justifying their own more elaborate practice. In addition, in order for it to be of any use to Mormon apologists the practice would need to be viewed as a remainder of authentic, original Christian practice, not as a later innovation by Marcionites. Such was the attempt of Tvedtnes when he wrote: “Some dismiss this evidence on the grounds that the Marcionites were heretics. Latter-day Saints, believing that the great apostasy was already well under way by Marcion’s time and that no Christian group then possessed the full truth, see the practice as a remnant of an earlier rite dating from the time of the apostles.”²⁵ And yet even laying aside the fact that Marcionites were heretics, where is there any proof to support Tvedtnes’s assertion of the practice’s primitivity? We recall that Chrysostom himself says that when the Marcionites were challenged about the teaching they appealed to 1 Corinthians 15:29. He mentions no claim on their part that they were adhering to a traditional practice, although, to be sure, they may or may not have made such a claim. But however that may be the Marcionite practice really does reflect a situation later than the New Testament period. In the New Testament there was no concept of an extended period of preparation prior to baptism. You simply heard, believed, and were baptized. We see this, for example, in the fact that those responding to Peter’s Pentecost sermon were baptized the same day (Acts 2:38-41).²⁶ The same is true in the case of the Philippian jailer in Acts 16:30-33:

He then brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.” Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his family were baptized.

It was only later that baptism came to be delayed to make way for an extended period of preparatory instruction. The Marcionite practice therefore makes more sense as a response to contingencies arising from the later situation.

Yet for the sake of argument let us suppose for a moment that the Marcionites were following some sort of traditional, long-established practice. If they were, whose practice was it? Was it Christ’s practice? The Apostles’? One of the ironies of the Marcionite practice is that Paul’s appeal in 1 Corinthians 15:29 to the practice of baptism for the dead is part of his defense of the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead—“If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized for them?” But the Marcionites not only practiced baptism for the dead, they also denied the resurrection.²⁷ The question then becomes: did those who practiced baptism for the dead at Corinth also deny the resurrection? In the context of 1 Corinthians we notice that Paul refers to baptism for the dead indirectly rather than as something he himself would want to endorse: “why are they then baptized for the dead?” Who are they? As we read through 1 Corinthians we discover a number of things going on at Corinth that Paul most definitely did not endorse. A man there was having sex with his father’s wife (5:1), and some at Corinth were boasting about it, apparently considering it a healthy exercise in Christian freedom (5:2). At the communion table there was social and economic separatism as well as too much wine, some people getting drunk, others going away hungry (11:20-21). Believers were suing one another in court before the secular authority (6:1). Paul even has to remind the Corinthians that they ought not go to prostitutes (6:14), and that if in the course of prophetic speech someone says “Jesus be cursed” he is not speaking by the Spirit of God (12:3). Finally, in defending the centrality of the resurrection, Paul reveals that there are actually people in the Corinthian church who denied the resurrection: “if it is preached,” he wrote, “that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” (15:12).

Something had gone dreadfully wrong at Corinth, and it appears to have featured an unhealthy reading of the saying “everything is permissible” (1 Corinthians 6:11, 10:23). Many recent translations often place those words in quotation marks, implying that Paul was treating it as coming from some other written or spoken context, as, for example, something he or Apollos or somebody else might have written, or said, but that had been interpreted entirely wrong, or perhaps something that the Corinthians had said in their letter to Paul (see 7:1), or that Paul had heard from Corinthian visitors to Ephesus from Chloe’s household (see 1:11). In either case some of the particulars as to how something had gone morally wrong over the statement are clear enough. But how all that might relate to the rejection of the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead by some at Corinth is uncertain. Perhaps they were arguing something along the lines, for example, of later libertine Gnostics, who held that since it is the soul rather than the body that is raised, it doesn’t matter what one does with one’s body, such that all the traditional morals become passé. In view of this possibility it is interesting that when Paul addresses the problem of sexual immorality in the letter the issue of the body stands at the center of his argument:

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? . . . Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body . . . You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body (6:15-20).

Notice that Paul does not simply say, “honor God,” but, “honor God with your body,” making it clear that it is possible to dishonor God by what one does with/to one’s body. He also makes it clear that one can sin against one’s own body. Such argumentation would answer very well a teaching that said it didn’t matter what one did with one’s body because it is the soul rather than the body that survives death.

Was it possible, then, that the Marcionite teaching about baptism for the dead might have had some genetic connection with the practice of baptism for the dead at Corinth? Yes, it is possible. But that alone scarcely implies it was something Christ or the apostles taught and approved of. The best case that can be made would trace Marcionite baptism for the dead back to the Corinthian faction Paul was writing against, not to Paul himself.

There is indeed another case where Marcion held to a teaching that went back to the New Testament era. It is referred to in 1 John 2:7: “For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist.” Marcion was “such a one,” as is seen, for example, in the remark of the 3rd century writer, Hippolytus who writes: “Marcion repudiates altogether our Saviour’s Birth, thinking it out of the question that a creature of destructive Strife [i.e., of the ruler or creator of this world] should become the Logos fighting on the side of Love, that is of the Good.”²⁸ But this merely shows, as in the previous case, that just because a teaching is old, doesn’t mean it is good, nor that it ever enjoyed apostolic endorsement.

Baptism for the Dead and Mormonism as “Christian”?

Ancient references to baptism of/for the dead have also played into another apologetic strategy used by Mormons in recent years as part of their attempt to assert Mormonism’s right to be considered Christian. This strategy consists of taking individual Mormon teachings and practices separately one by one and then scouring early Church history in hopes of finding some similar teaching and practice associated with someone, somewhere, who was traditionally described at one time or another as Christian. It is then asserted that if whoever it was, could be in any way considered “Christian,” so too should the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This is what Peterson and Ricks were doing when they wrote:²⁹

The argument that Latter-day Saints cannot be Christians because they practice baptism for the dead presumes that it has been definitely established that 1 Corinthians 15:29 has nothing to do with an early Christian practice of baptism for the dead. The argument ignores the fact that such second-century groups as the Montanists and Marcionites—who are invariably referred to as Christians—practiced a similar rite.

It is simply false to say that Marcionites are “invariably referred to as Christians.” Typical of the Early Church’s view of Marcion and his followers is the following story of an encounter between Marcion and Polycarp, the disciple of the Apostle John the Evangelist:

And Polycarp himself, when Marcion once met him and said, “Knowest thou us?” replied, “I know the first born of Satan.” Such caution did the apostles and their disciples exercise that they might not even converse with any of those who perverted the truth.³⁰

In contrast, Mormon writer Alexander B. Morrison readily admits that the Marcionites were regarded as heretics, but he does so in the context of making the outrageous assertion that it was for the practice of baptism for the dead that Marcion was “accused of heresy, and condemned by ‘orthodox’ Christians.”³¹ But, again, that simply isn’t true either.³² Marcion was condemned for rejecting the God of the Old Testament and much of the New Testament. He was condemned as well for repudiating a number of central Christian teachings including the resurrection of the dead.

Christians might feel comfortable using the term “Christian” to describe Marcion, so long as the term is an adjective modifying the noun “heresy.” Marcion was the founder of a “Christian” heresy in the sense that he cobbled together his system largely from Christian sources in a Christian context. Hence it would be wrong to say he founded, for example, a “Buddhist” heresy. His was a Christian heresy. In the same way most Christians would be happy to speak of Mormonism as Christian in the same sense, i.e., as a Christian, as opposed to say, a Buddhist, or Jewish, or Moslem heresy. To be sure Mormons are perfectly within their rights to call themselves Christians if they want to: ’Tis a free country. But as soon as they begin insisting that other people call them Christians they run into problems of the sort that always arise where ancient cherished words are co-opted and given new and foreign meanings.

Baptism for the Dead Among the Cerinthians

A while ago we were discussing a rather widespread Mormon misunderstanding concerning who the 4th century writer Epiphanius had accused of practicing baptism for the dead. As the reader will recall, they were saying it was the Marcionites, when in reality it was another heretical group known as the Cerinthians. Here is what Epiphanius said about them:

For their school reached its height in this country, I mean Asia, and in Galatia as well. And in these countries I also heard of a tradition which said that when some of their people died too soon, without baptism, others would be baptized for them in their names, so that they would not be punished for rising unbaptized at the resurrection and become the subjects of the authority that made the world.³³

Cerinthus’s heresy differed at points from that of Marcion. For example, Cerinthus is not thought to have denied the resurrection outright, as Marcion did, but rather is credited with saying that Jesus would not rise until the general resurrection.³⁴ By the fourth century, when Epiphanius was writing, some Cerinthians were denying the resurrection, while others continued in the teachings of their founder.³⁵

When Mormon apologists seek to exploit the teaching of early heretics in support of their own, they often place the words heretic or heretical in quotation marks as a way of casting doubt over the designation. They often further underscore this with some reference to the teacher or the group being condemned by the “orthodox,” again in quotation marks. The idea is to minimize the significance of the negative characterization: How is a church that called itself “orthodox,” but which we know through latter-day revelation was already caught in the deep slide of apostasy, really fit to decide who is and who isn’t a heretic? In the case of Cerinthus, however, the Mormons are in a bit more difficult situation in terms of being able to deploy this particular strategy of dismissal.³⁶ This is because Cerinthus lived at an early enough time for a comment of actual apostolic appraisal to have survived about him. This was passed down by the apostle John’s eminent disciple, Polycarp of Smyrna, who recounts how the apostle went to bathe one day in the baths at Ephesus, but, upon seeing Cerinthus within, quickly left, exclaiming: “Let’s get out of here lest the place fall in: Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is inside!”³⁷ Now to be sure this does not imply a particular comment upon the validity of any single teaching or practice of Cerinthus, much less any evaluation of his, or his followers’, practice of baptism for the dead. But it does show quite clearly that he was poorly regarded by at least one of the original twelve apostles, a fact that in itself ought to give pause to anyone later trying to establish their own doctrine as validly Christian on the grounds that Cerinthus had endorsed it.

Having said that, we still need to ask what Cerinthian baptism for the dead actually consisted of? Clearly it was, again, a form of proxy baptism. Cerinthians were being baptized “when some of their people died too soon, without baptism.” Epiphanius does not say what “too soon” means. It may be the Cerinthians had a practice of catechumen baptism similar to that of the Marcionites. His reference to the practice being done on behalf of “their people” might suggest this. Or it might suggest something more generally applied to unbaptized Cerinthian believers who had died. The words “their people” would seem to restrict the application of the rite to Cerinthians in any case.³⁸

Baptism for Dead among the Montanists

We mentioned above that Peterson and Ricks had suggested that the “anti-Mormon claim that those who baptize for the dead cannot be Christian . . . ignores the fact that such groups as the Montanists—whom we have already seen to be universally recognized as Christians—practiced a similar right.”³⁹ The claim that the Montanists were “universally recognized as Christians,” is incorrect, as it was in the case of the Marcionites. What Peterson and Ricks have done is look in a handful of recent dictionaries and encyclopedias where the adjective Christian was used to describe these two movements.⁴⁰ Naturally such a superficial approach to research is inadequate for arriving at a true sense of how both ancient and modern Christians have viewed these two movements. As it happens the teachings of Marcion have almost always been deemed heretical, but there are those in the modern Church who are more willing to entertain the possibility that Montanus and his followers were Christians, and to see a parallel to Montanism in the modern prophetic or charismatic movements, where, although a lot of good things happen, some people have been a bit too quick to declare the time of the end, make prophesies that don’t pan out, or fake miracles, tongues, or other spiritual gifts. Unhealthy? Certainly! Ill advised? Indubitably! But heretical? Well, maybe, maybe not. In addition the fact that the great theologian Tertullian ultimately became a Montanist has also been a mitigating factor in hesitancy to write the whole movement off as heretical. By way of contrast to modern Christian feelings, the ancient Church was largely agreed on the heretical character of Montanism.⁴¹

But however that may be, evidence that can be cited for a Montanist baptism for the dead is slender and late, consisting primarily of a single reference from the late 4th century writer Filaster (Filastrius/Philastrius), who claimed without elaboration concerning the Montanists, that “They baptize the dead” (Hi mortuos baptizant).⁴² Yet even granting the brevity of Filaster’s statement, notice that we are not talking, apparently, of proxy baptism, i.e., the baptizing a live person in a dead one’s stead, i.e., a baptism for the dead. Rather we are talking about baptism of the dead, i.e., the baptism of a corpse. Hugh Wimber Nibley, that late great Father Patriarch of Mormon apologetics, recognized the lack of direct parallel here, yet still attempted to make the passage relevant for the Mormon cause by representing it as a corrupted form of the earlier, and allegedly more pristine, practice of the Marcionites. Thus for Nibley the Marcionite practice represented “a half-way point between baptism for the dead and the later rite of baptism of the dead . . . in their need to find some official condemnation of baptism for the dead, churchmen have had to resort to citing those instances which deal with condemnation of its opposite, namely baptism of the dead” (my italics). Therefore, whenever the early Church spoke of baptism of the dead, Nibley wants to regard it as “a deliberate confusion.”⁴³ As to Filaster’s description of the Montanist practice, Nibley deftly dismisses it as one of “a number of false and exaggerated charges against the Cataphrygians [Montanists] in the fourth century.” Nibley was very sure of himself in what he says here (as he was in all things), but there is really no reason to claim that the Montanists were being slandered by Filaster when he said that they baptized the dead. Nor can Nibley establish that things developed in the way he described. The weakness of his argument is rendered conspicuous by his need to resort there to a stock ad hominem attack on the supposedly sinister intents and motives of the early Christian church.

The Condemnation of Post-Mortem Baptism at the Synod of Hippo (393)

John A. Tvedtnes is very typical of Mormon scholars and apologists when he remarks:

That baptism for the dead was indeed practiced in some orthodox Christian circles is indicated by the decisions of two late fourth-century councils. The fourth canon (fifth in some lists) of the Synod of Hippo, held in 393, declares, “The Eucharist shall not be given to dead bodies . . . nor baptism conferred upon them.” The ruling was confirmed four years later in the sixth canon of the Third Council of Carthage.⁴⁴

Tvedtnes is mostly right, except for one thing. The canon he quotes reads: “The Eucharist shall not be given to dead bodies, nor baptism conferred upon them.”⁴⁵ The error is calling what was condemned baptism for the dead, which he does at the beginning of the passage. As in the case of Filaster’s remark about the Montantists, so here too, we are dealing with a baptism of not for the dead. The point is brought out rather sharply by the fact that apparently the Eucharist was being placed into the mouths of corpses as well.

This claim that the Synod of Hippo/Council of Carthage had condemned baptism for the dead is an oft repeated one in Mormon apologetics, again largely because B. H. Roberts said it⁴⁶ and many others simply copied what he said either verbatim or nearly so.⁴⁷ In this case as well Roberts was apparently relying on Jacobi’s article in Kitto. And once again he misread his source:

It is curious that Roberts leaves out any reference to what Jacobi says soon after: “Here baptism by proxy is not alluded to, and we must therefore assume that the Councils had no ground for its prohibition, the custom having, as it seems, not then existed in those parts.”⁴⁸ Interestingly when the Mormon Moroni Snow appealed to this same passage from Kitto in his 1880 sermon, “Redemption and Regeneration,” he managed to notice that the article spoke of baptism of not for the dead, and so he too remarked upon the fact that “baptism by proxy is not alluded to.”⁴⁹

The context in which baptism of the dead as condemned in these late 4th century ecclesiastical gatherings might arise is not hard to imagine. Indeed it dovetails nicely with the fact that some people had been putting off their baptisms until they were about to die. The rationale for that practice being that one was supposed to avoid all sin after baptism. Already more than a half-century earlier the first Christian Emperor, Constantine, had waited to be baptized until he was on his deathbed.⁵⁰ It doesn’t take a strong imagination to see how a practice of baptism of the dead, could come along to supplement baptism of the dying in cases where the dying had waited just a bit too long.

An Exercise in Reaching

Given the paucity of early evidence in which someone, somewhere, was said to have practiced baptism of or for the dead, it is hardly surprising to find more intrepid Mormon apologists searching further afield for potentially useful evidence for defending their practice of proxy baptism. And in the process they have managed to turn up a few tidbits that are interesting, even though not ultimately very helpful to their case. Here our focus continues on John A. Tvedtnes and the late Hugh Nibley, who seem to be the two who have worked hardest at this.

It should be noted before we proceed further that in almost every case we have looked at so far those who are said to practice baptism for or of the dead were being described by others and not by themselves. Happily, we do have a passage from an early Gnostic teacher named Theodotus who does venture an interpretation of 1 Corinthians 15:29 on his own: “And when the Apostle said, ‘Else what shall they do who are baptised for the dead?’ . . . For, he says, the angels of whom we are portions were baptised for us. But we are dead, who are deadened by this existence, but the males are alive who did not participate in this existence.”⁵¹ In other words baptism for the dead refers to angels being baptised for us. Such a passage is understandably of limited use to Mormon apologists and they have not featured it. Of some interest however is the passage appealed to by Tvedtnes from the Gnostic Pistis Sophia 3.128, where Mary asks Jesus what to do if a pious relative of an unrepentant, definitely outer-darkness-bound person dies, and Jesus responds by recommending that “the one mystery of the ineffable which forgives sins at all times,” should be performed, promising a positive outcome. Tvedtnes adds words and excludes them in order to make the passage sound more Mormon. He does this first of all, by equating what the text called mysteries with ordinances, and one mystery of the ineffable with baptism. While both substitutions may be reasonable surmises, they are by no means obvious from the immediate context, and Tvedtnes made no attempt to provide evidence indicating that his surmise in each case was correct. Then secondly, he uses ellipsis points to pass over mention that the passage appears to involve a process of post mortal progress that involves reincarnation. The latter can be seen plain enough by simply reproducing Mary’s question to Jesus with the words Tvedtnes excludes printed in bold:

“My Lord, if a good man has fulfilled all the mysteries [ordinances], and he has a relative, in a word, he has a man and that man is an impious one who has committed all the sins which are worthy of the outer darkness; and he has not repented; or he has completed his number of cycles in the changes of the body, and that man has done nothing profitable and has come forth from the body; and we have known of him certainly that he has sinned and is worthy of the outer darkness; what should we do to him so that we save him from the punishments of the dragon of the outer darkness, so that he is returned to a righteous body which will find the mysteries of the Kingdom of the Light, and become good and go to the height, and inherit the Kingdom of the Light?”⁵²

And yet despite Tvedtnes’s Mormonizing touches, there is no question that the passage is dealing with some sort of liturgical rite aimed at delivering souls from outer darkness. In addition to the above, Tvedtnes also references in footnotes (but does not describe) several interesting practices by contemporary Middle Eastern Mandaeans, another heretical group, including one in which, when a baby dies during their lengthy baptism ritual, an image of the child is made out of dough and the rest of the ceremony is performed to completion, thus rendering it valid, even though the child has died,⁵³ as well as an actual example of the practice of baptism for the dead.⁵⁴ But of course contemporary examples are of limited value when trying to establish the precise character of ancient practice.

At points however both Nibley and Tvedtnes become too creative in their attempts at molding the evidence in the direction they feel it needs to go. Let me demonstrate this with one example from each.

In the case of Tvedtnes, one of the most interesting claims he puts forward is that the Egyptian Coptic Church practiced and continues to practice baptism for the dead. He even dedicated a paper to the topic entitled “Baptism for the Dead: The Coptic Rationale.”⁵⁵ One of the interesting things about that paper is that in the course of his argument he gives no actual evidence. He does mention the decision of Hippo and Carthage and then says that “The monophysitic church of Egypt was not represented at these minor councils and hence did not feel bound to discontinue the practice.”Tvedtnes is right in regarding these councils as merely regional rather than ecumenical, but beyond that he speaks of them anachronistically in using the adjective monophysitic to describe the Church in Egypt. That term has no relevance in the present case, it only really comes into play after the mid-fifth century Council of Chalcedon. More deeply problematic is Tvedtnes’s claim that the Egyptian Church continued to practice baptism for the dead due to it not being under the jurisdiction of Hippo and Carthage. The difficulty there is that he provides no evidence that the Egyptian church ever started practicing baptism for the dead in the first place. Nor could he have done so, since there is none. Naturally one cannot continue to baptize for the dead unless one has started doing it in the first place. Despite this Tvedtnes includes a footnote in which he claims that “there is abundant textual evidence for this practice among early Christians in Egypt.”⁵⁶ Actually there isn’t.

When it comes time to support his claim of an ongoing practice of baptism for the dead in Egypt, Tvedtnes writes: “I have, to date, found no documentation for its existence in the modern Coptic Church. Nevertheless, some of my Coptic friends have assured me that it is still practiced in the case of family members who die unbaptized.” Tvedtnes goes on to point to one printed source which is supposed to provide evidence of the continuation of the practice in the modern Coptic Church: “the Coptic story of the girl who was baptized after her death,” (Tvedtnes’s words). The story is found in S. H. Leeder’s Modern Sons of the Pharaohs: A Study of the Manners and Customs of the Copts of Egypt (1918).

When we go to that work, however, and turn to the page indicated by Tvedtnes, we discover that it provides evidence neither of baptism for the dead’s continuing existence in the modern Coptic Church, nor of its having ever been practiced. Rather it describes a story attributed to the fourth century that dealt with a miraculous divine action relating to a girl who died without baptism:

There is a Coptic story of the fourth century (which might have come from a village to-day) illustrating not only the importance attached to baptism, but also the infinite hope these Eastern people have in the mercy of God. A certain man living remote from the world had a little daughter, who died before she could be baptized. Her father distributed among the poor the portion that came to her; and he never ceased to make entreaty to God on behalf of his daughter because she had departed without being baptized. As he prayed one day, he heard a voice, which said, “Have no sorrow; I have baptized thy daughter”; but he lacked faith. And the voice spake again, saying, “Uncover her grave, and thou wilt find she is no longer there.” And he did so, and he found her not, for she had departed, and had been laid with the believers.⁵⁷

Not only does this story fail to provide evidence for a practice of baptism for the dead, it indicates the opposite, namely that one was not in place. When his little daughter died without baptism, all the father could do was pray and hope in God. Had such a practice been in place, there would have been no reason for the anxious prayer, nor the miraculous sign in answer to it, nor even for the story itself.

In advance of its appearance, Tvedtnes promised concerning his article “Baptism for the Dead in the Early Church,” published in 1999, that it would “put to rest any doubts about the widespread belief in baptism for the dead among early Christians.”⁵⁸ This ambitious claim naturally leads the reader familiar with this earlier paper on baptism for the dead in the Coptic Church to wonder whether Tvedtnes would do anything in the new article to improve his case on that point. Given the fact that Tvedtnes’s earlier assertion about the Coptic Church’s ongoing practice of baptism for the dead was based on nothing better than hearsay—“my Coptic friends have assured me”—would he now in his more definitive study firm up his evidential base, or at least delete his unwarranted claim? As it happened he did neither. Indeed he again appealed to hearsay and to the story in Leeder’s book, this time more inaccurately than before: “To date, I have found only one modern story of an Egyptian girl who was baptized by proxy after her death.” The key distorting addition is the word “proxy.”

Ironically, in his “final-word” article, Tvedtnes further raises the possibility that the Syrian Orthodox Church practices baptism for the dead as well, but again on the basis of nothing better than hearsay: “A Syriac Orthodox priest recently told me that his church still recognizes baptism for the dead, but I have not yet received the promised documentation to support that claim.”⁵⁹

Naturally since Tvedtnes’s claims came to be posted on the Internet, it was only a matter of time before someone from the Coptic Church would respond. In the Question and Answer section of the website for the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of the Southern United States, one of the questions takes note of the Mormon claim and then asks: “I know our church does not practice baptism for the dead now, but did it ever?” To which an extended answer is given beginning with the statement: “Baptism for the dead is a false practice never observed by the Church.”⁶⁰

We turn then to Hugh Nibley. It is hard to read very far in Nibley before getting the feeling (legitimately or not) that he is trying to make it hard for his readers to check out his claims from his sources. He does this, as I have noted elsewhere, by “featuring obscure editions in other languages instead of the widely available, and often more up-to-date and authoritative, English ones.”⁶¹ This is true in the present case, in addition to which he confounds things further by not referring to his source by its usual name.

In the course of his 1946 sequence of articles on “Baptism for the Dead in Ancient Times,” quoted here from his collected works, Nibley quotes a work he calls “Discourses to the Apostles” in which the Lord tells his disciples that they will be called “Servants [diakonoi] because they [the dead] will receive the baptism of life and the forgiveness of your⁶² sins from my hand through you, . . . and so have part in the heavenly kingdom.”⁶³ By placing the word “the dead” in brackets Nibley is indicating that in the larger context it was the dead that were clearly in the author’s mind. But how do we discover whether or not that is the case?⁶⁴ Nibley provides a footnote that directs us to pages 133-35 of a German volume by Carl Schmidt entitled Gespräche Jesu mit seiner Jüngern nach der Auferstehung (1919). The actual passage quoted is on page 135 and we see that Schmidt, unlike Nibley, uses the familiar title in the top left heading of the pages cited: Epistula apostulorum, known in English as the Epistle of the Apostles. Both the Latin and English forms are the familiar names by which scholars refer to this well-known work. Nibley uses neither, but inappropriately gives as the name of the work a title derived from the title of Schmidt’s book. This makes it unnecessary for him to cite the chapter and verse he is quoting from the Epistle of the Apostles. It would have been nice had Nibley helped his readers evaluate his claim by informing them that at the time he wrote the passage he quotes, it could have easily been consulted in section 42 of the English edition of the Epistle of the Apostles⁶⁵ in Montague Rhodes James’s popular The Apocryphal New Testament.⁶⁶ Had he done that, however, it would have become clear to every English reader who cared to check the reference that his insertion of “the dead” into the phrase “they shall receive the baptism of life and the remission of their sins at my hands through you,”⁶⁷ was entirely illegitimate. The occasion of the statement in the larger context is Jesus’s meeting with his disciples after his resurrection and teaching them about their upcoming task of world evangelism. The baptism being referred to, therefore, is the baptism they will be performing on living people as they go out and preach the Gospel. It has nothing to do with baptism for the dead.

Conclusion:

Early orthodox Christianity never had a practice of baptism for the dead, 1 Corinthians 15:29 notwithstanding. Very possibly in that context Paul was alluding to the practice of a faction in the Corinthian Church that had departed substantially from early apostolic teaching in other crucial areas as well (they may have, for example, also been denying the resurrection). Two additional heretical groups, the Marcionites and the Cerinthians, did practice forms of proxy baptism—the former for catechumens who had died during preparation for baptism, and the latter for fellow Cerinthian believers who had “died too soon,” whatever that means. In addition to these examples of baptism for the dead, there is also evidence of a practice of baptism of the dead, i.e., a baptism of corpses. The Montanists were accused of this by one 4th century author, although when Tertullian, writing as a Montanist at the beginning of the 3rd century, refers to the practice in Against Marcion 5.10 he does not affirm it, nor does he even seem to know what Paul was speaking about in 1 Corinthians 15:29. In addition, the Synod of Hippo (393) forbid the practice of baptizing dead bodies as well as the placing of the Eucharist in their mouths. This practice, baptism of not for the dead, although frequently appealed to by Mormon apologists, really does not relate to their own practice at all. This leaves them only the Marcionite and Cerinthian practices to appeal to for explicit support, although in each of these cases we are probably dealing with a rite whose inner logic is entirely foreign to the one underpinning the current Mormon practice.

Thus the case Mormon apologists put forward for a baptism for the dead endorsed by Jesus and the apostles is not impressive. But then, given the methodology endorsed by the First Presidency and Peterson and Ricks at the beginning of this article, it doesn’t have to be, so long as the only ones they hope to persuade are Mormons. Still, it is interesting that even being given to such dubious methodology, the language of legitimately using evidence and making valid arguments still persists, as in the case of Tvedtnes’s prediction that his 1999 article on the subject would “put to rest any doubts about the widespread belief in baptism for the dead among early Christians.”⁶⁸ And while it is possible that in making that declaration Tvedtnes was only engaging in rhetorical bluster, a more disturbing possibility exists. Did he actually believe what he said, and should we regard his overconfidence as a consequence of following the flawed methodology? And does he not imply this himself when he says: “Latter-day Saints, believing that the great apostasy was already well under way by Marcion’s time and that no Christian group then possessed the full truth, see the practice as a remnant of an earlier rite dating from the time of the apostles”?⁶⁹

What we would have in that case is a methodology that actually fosters an insensitivity toward the weight of evidence, and which in turn breeds overconfidence, a vicious cycle that calls to mind what Karl Mannheim said in another connection about those who “become so intensely interest-bound to a situation that they are simply no longer able to see certain facts which undermine their domination,” or, in this case, their sense of being “in the right.”⁷⁰ Such a situation makes it extremely difficult for Mormons to dialogue with and/or be taken seriously by outsiders who expect the early evidence to be handled in a credible and respectful manner. Since this has not been the case, the best outsiders can perhaps do in a sense is to regard such authors as objects of study rather than partners in scholarly interaction.

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Footnotes:

1. Austin Farrer, “The Christian Apologist,” in Light on C. S. Lewis (ed. Jocelyn Gibb; London: Geoffrey Bles, 1965), 23-24. ↩︎
2. Daniel C. Peterson & Stephen D. Ricks, Offenders for a Word: How Anti-Mormons Play Word Games to Attack Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City, UT: Aspen Books, 1992), 76 (italics original). ↩︎
3. Quoted in Rodney Stark, God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades (New York: HarperOne, 2009), 64 (brackets Stark’s). ↩︎
4. Tertullian, Against Marcion 5:10. ↩︎
5. Chrysostom, Homily 40.1 (NPNF¹ 12:244). ↩︎
6. See e.g., John A. Tvedtnes: “Two of the early church fathers, Epiphanius (AD 315-403) in Panarion 1.28.6 and Tertullian (AD 145-220) in Against Marcion 5.10, note that the Marcionites, an early Christian group, baptized others in the name of the dead.” John A. Tvedtnes, “Baptism for the Dead in Early Christianity” in The Temple in Time and Eternity (eds. Donald W. Parry & Stephen D. Ricks; Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies [FARMS], 1999), 56. ↩︎
7. George F. Richards, “Genealogy and Temple Work,” Utah Genealogical and Historical Magazine 13.3 (July 1922): 98. ↩︎
8. Mark E. Petersen, “Early Christian Historians Tell of Baptism for the Dead,” Utah Genealogical and Historical Magazine 24 (April 1933): 63, and “Your Family Tree—A Sign of the Time,” in Handbook of the Restoration (Salt Lake City, UT: Zion Printing and Publishing, 1944), 511. ↩︎
9. Albert L. Zobell, JR. “If the Dead Rise Not: The Story of 100 Years of Baptism for the Dead,” Improvement Era 43.9 (Sept. 1940): 530. ↩︎
10. LeGrand Richards, Marvelous Work and a Wonder (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1950), 180. ↩︎
11. Mark E. Petersen has “which” here rather than “whom”. ↩︎
12. Albert L. Zobell, Jr. and LeGrand Richards misspell “Galatia” here as “Galatea”. ↩︎
13. L. Richards, Marvelous Work, 180. ↩︎
14. E.g., B[righam] H[enry] Roberts, The Gospel: An Exposition of Its First Principles and Man’s Relationship to Deity (rev. and enlg. ed.; Salt Lake City, UT: George Q. Cannon & Sons, 1893), 289; Outlines of Ecclesiastical History (Salt Lake City, UT: George Q. Canon & Sons, 1893), 430; New Witness for God [Vol 1] (Salt Lake City, UT: George Q. Cannon & Sons, 1895), 383. ↩︎
15. Roberts’s source in this case is strongly suggested in his clear and acknowledged dependence on this entry in the same context. The same passage from Kitto is also found in Moroni Snow “Redemption and Regeneration,” Latter-day Saints Millennial Star 42.24 (June 14, 1880): 370. There the source is noted, although Snow mistakenly has “Meronites” instead of “Marcionites.” ↩︎
16. Roberts, The Gospel, 289. ↩︎
17. J. Jacobi, “Baptism for the Dead,” A Cyclopaedea of Biblical Literature (2 vols; ed. John Kitto; Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black, 1845), 1:289. ↩︎
18. See, for example, Daniel Whitby, Additional Annotations to the New Testament with Seven Discourses (London: W. Bowyer for A. & J. Churchill, 1710), 92, and The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis Book I (Sects. 1-46) (Nag Hammadi & Manichaean Studies 63; 2nd ed; trans. Frank Williams; Leiden: Brill, 2009), 120. ↩︎
19. B.H. Roberts, The Seventy’s Course in Theology: First—Fifth Year (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret News 1907-12), 1st year, 166-67. ↩︎
20. George F. Richards, “Genealogy and Temple Work,” 98. ↩︎
21. Roberts, New Witness for God 1, 383. In the same context where Richards cites another passage as coming from “Heresies, p. 290” we actually find the words on page 290 of Roberts’s The Gospel. ↩︎
22. Tvedtnes, “Baptism for the Dead in Early Christianity,” 56. See also Question 26 of SHIELDS 42 Questions List: http://www.shields-research.org/42_Questions/ques26 Tvedtnes.htm. Although his plagiarism was much more direct in his “Proxy Baptism,” Ensign Magazine (Feb. 1977): 86: 
    
    “But historical records are clear on the matter. Baptism for the dead was performed by the dominant church until forbidden by the sixth canon of the Council of Carthage in A.D. 397. Some of the smaller sects, however, continued the practice. Of the Marcionites of the fourth century, Epiphanius wrote:
     
    ‘In this country—I mean Asia—and even in Galatia, their school flourished eminently and a traditional fact concerning them has reached us, that when any of them had died without baptism, they used to baptize others in their name, lest in the resurrection they should suffer punishment as unbaptized.’” ↩︎
23. Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis Book I (Sects. 1-46), (trans. Frank Williams), 120. ↩︎
24. See for example John A. Tvedtnes, “Proxy Baptism,” Ensign (Feb. 1977): 86, and “Baptism for the Dead: The Coptic Rationale,” Special Papers of the Society for Early Historic Archaeology 2 (Sept. 1989) (paper originally given 5 June 1981). The online edition made available at FAIR’s website: http:www.fairmormon.org/archive/publications/baptism-for-the-dead-the-coptic-rationale. ↩︎
25. Tvedtnes, “Baptism for the Dead in Early Christianity,” 56. ↩︎
26. See also the baptisms of the Ethiopian Eunuch (Acts 8:38), and of Cornelius, along with his relatives and friends (Acts 10:47). ↩︎
27. See, e.g., Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.27.3; Tertullian, Against Marcion 5.10; Epiphanius, Panarion, 3.42.3.5. ↩︎
28. Hippolytus, Philosophumena 30 (p. 383) (ET: Hippolytus, Philosophumena or Refutation of All Heresies [2 vols.; trans. F. Legge; London: SPCK/New York: Macmillan, 1921], 2:89-90). See also Tertullian, Against Marcion, 10-11. ↩︎
29. Daniel C. Peterson & Stephen D. Ricks, “Comparing LDS Beliefs with First-Century Christianity,” Ensign (March 1988): 8. See also Peterson & Ricks, Offenders for a Word, 109. ↩︎
30. Eusebuis, Church History 4.14.7 (ET: NPNF² 1.187) ↩︎
31. Alexander B. Morrison, Turning from Truth: A New Look at the Great Apostasy (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2005), 151. ↩︎
32. See the sections on Marcionites and Montanists in Justo L. Gonzalez and Catherine Gunsalus Gonzalez, Heretics for Armchair Theologians (illust. Ron Hill; Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2008), 45-61, 63-76. ↩︎
33. Epiphanius, Panarion 1.28.6.4-5. ↩︎
34. Epiphanius, Panarion, 3.42.6.1. ↩︎
35. Epiphanius, Panarion, 3.42.6.6. ↩︎
36. One of the most striking features of Mormon apologetics is how many of its strategies have been crafted to be used in dismissing evidence, as opposed to weighing it. ↩︎
37. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.3.4, quoted in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 4.14.6 (ET: Paul M. Mater, Eusebius: The Church History [Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic & Professional, 2007], 129). ↩︎
38. Although one can easily imagine some Mormon apologist interpreting “their people” creatively to mean, not fellow Cerinthians but ancestral kin, as a way of being able to claim the passage as evidence for their own elaborate practice of baptizing their own non-Mormon relatives. So far as I am aware no Mormon apologist has made this claim as yet. However, since trading on ambiguity is a major feature of Mormon apologetics, we would not be surprised to find this interpretation to be adopted somewhere by some Mormon apologist or other in the future, if only because I have mentioned its possibility as an interpretation here. ↩︎
39. Peterson & Ricks, Offenders for a Word, 109. ↩︎
40. Ibid., p. 52. ↩︎
41. As is clear from a perusal of the ancient evidence collected in Ronald E. Heine’s The Montanist Oracles and Testimonia (Patristic Monograph Series 14; Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1989). ↩︎
42. Filaster, Book of Heresies 49. For English and Latin versions of the extended passage see Heine, Montanist Oracles, 138-39. The case of the sometimes appealed to Epitaph of Domnos is obscure, and in any case Tabbernee is certainly correct in saying that in it “[t]here is no hint that someone else was baptized on his [Domnos’s] behalf,” William Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions and Testimonia: Epigraphic Sources Illustrating the History of Montanism (North American Patristic Society Patristic Monograph Series 16; Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1997), 417-18. ↩︎
43. Hugh Nibley, “Baptism for the Dead in Ancient Times” in Mormonism and Early Christianity (Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 4; eds. Todd M. Compton & Stephen D. Ricks; Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book/Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies [FARMS], 1987), 129-30. ↩︎
44. Tvedtnes, “Baptism for the Dead in Early Christianity,” 57. ↩︎
45. Karl Joseph von Hefele, A History of the Councils of the Church. Vol. 2 (trans. Henry Nutcombe Oxenham; Edinburgh: T. &. T. Clarke, 1876), 397 (italics mine). ↩︎
46. Roberts, The Gospel, 290; Outlines of Ecclesiastical History, 430; New Witness for God 1, 384. ↩︎
47. E.g., G. F. Richards, “Genealogy and Temple Work,” 98; L. Richards, Marvelous Work, 180; Zobell, “If the Dead Rise Not,” 530; Peterson, “Your Family Tree,” 511; Matthias F. Cowley, in Cowley and Whitney on Doctrine (comp. Forace Green; Salt Lake City, UT: Bookcraft, 1963), 127. ↩︎
48. Jacobi, “Baptism for the Dead,” in Kitto 1:289 (italics original). ↩︎
49. Snow, “Redemption and Regeneration,” 370. ↩︎
50. As historian Michael Grant has written:
    
    “Surprise has often been expressed . . . that Constantine, who had displayed his adherence to Christianity so much earlier, postponed his baptism until what was virtually his death-bed. Some members of the Church deplored the lateness of the decision. But in fact late, last minute baptism—like adult baptism in general—was not an infrequent phenomenon, because it was strongly felt that after baptism one ought not to commit a sin, and the only way to ensure this was to become baptized when one was not going to live very much longer” (Constantine the Great: The Man & His Times [New York: Scribner’s, 1994], 212). ↩︎
51. The Excerpta Ex Theodoto of Clement of Alexandria (trans. and ed., Robert Pierce Casey; London: Christophers, 1934), 57. ↩︎
52. Cf. Tvedtnes, “Baptism for the Dead in Early Christianity,” 70, and Pistis Sophia 3.128 (ET: Violet McDermot; Leiden: Brill, 1978), 322, 324. ↩︎
53. See E. S. Drower, The Mandaeans of Iraq & Iran: Their Cults, Customs, Magic, Legends, and Folklore (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1962), 46. ↩︎
54. The extent to which Tvedtnes’s example departs from the simplicity of the ancient baptismal liturgies is seen in the following excerpt in The Mandaeans of Iraq & Iran by Drower (pages 215-16):
    
    “Then, without speaking, the proxy descends into the water, and repeats voicelessly, ‘I, N. son of N. (the name of the dead person) am baptized with the baptism of [216] Bahram the Great, son of the mighty [ones]. My baptism shall protect me and cause me to ascend to the summit.’ He submerges thrice, and on emerging puts on a completely new rasta. As in the case of the dead person, a piece of gold (athro) and a piece of silver (kesva) must be sewn to the right and left side respectively of the stole. The proxy then comes and sits before the ṭoriana facing the North Star (House of Abathur), while the ganzibra, who wears a klila (myrtle wreath) on the little finger of his right hand, goes, together with the priests and shganda, to perform another rishama at the yardna.
    
    “They return and stand in a row facing the north, the ganzibra to the extreme right and the shganda at the extreme left, and repeat the ‘Sharwali ‘treṣ’, &c., touching each part of the rasta.
    
    “They then repeat:
    ‘My Lord be praised! The Right heal ye! In the name of the Great Primal Strange Life, from sublime worlds of light, who is above all works; health and purity (or victory), strength and soundness, speaking and hearing, joy of heart and a forgiver of sins may there be for my soul, mine, N. of N. (the name of the reciter), who have prayed this prayer of rahmia, and a forgiver of sins may there be for N. son of N. (the name of the dead person) of this masiqta (ascension) and dukhrana (mention, remembrance), and a forgiver of sins may there be for our fathers, and teachers, and brothers and sisters, both those who have left the body and those still in the body, and a forgiver of sins may there be for me.’” ↩︎
55. Published in Special Papers of the Society for Early Historic Archaeology 2 (Sept. 1989), The online version made available at FAIR’s website: http://www.fairmormon.org/archive/publications/baptism-for-the-dead-the-coptic-rationale. I follow the unpaginated online version. ↩︎
56. Ibid., n. 1. ↩︎
57. S.H. Leeder, Modern Sons of the Pharaohs: A Study of the Manners and Customs of the Copts of Egypt (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1918), 101. ↩︎
58. John A. Tvedtnes, “The Dead Shall Hear the Voice,” FARMS Review of Books 10.2 (1998): 197, n. 11. ↩︎
59. Tvedtnes, “Baptism for the Dead in Early Christianity,” 74, n. 6. ↩︎
60. See, http://suscopts.org/q&a/index.php?qid=1110&catid=45. ↩︎
61. Ronald V. Huggins, “Hugh Nibley’s Footnotes,” Salt Lake City Messenger 110 (May 2008): 11. ↩︎
62. It should be “their sins” (Schmidt: “ihrer Sünden’’). See also, M. R. James below. Apparently, Nibley simply made a mistake here since the mistranslation does not appear to forward his argument. ↩︎
63. Nibley, “Baptism for the Dead,” in Mormonism and Early Christianity, 123. ↩︎
64. Also note that where Nibley has “forgiveness for your sins,” it ought to be, and Nibley probably actually intended, “forgiveness for their sins.” ↩︎
65. Sec. 33.1 in Schmidt’s translation of the Coptic Version. ↩︎
66. Montague Rhodes James, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1924), 500. ↩︎
67. Quoted here from the edition of James. ↩︎
68. Tvedtnes, “The Dead Shall Hear the Voice,” 197, n. 11. ↩︎
69. Tvedtnes, “Baptism for the Dead in Early Christianity,” 56. ↩︎
70. Quoted in Lyman Tower Sargent, Utopianism: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 120. ↩︎

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