Our opponents say further: even if some are baptized into the Spirit, that does not prove that the Spirit should be ranked with God. After all, some “were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea,” and Scripture even says that “the people believed God and his servant Moses.” Why, then, they ask, should faith and baptism cause us to exalt the Holy Spirit so far above creation when similar language has been used of a human being?
Our answer is that faith in the Spirit is the same faith in which we believe in the Father and the Son, and the same is true of baptism. Faith in Moses and baptism in the cloud, however, belong to shadow and type. Divine realities are often represented beforehand by rough outlines and shadows. The fact that great divine things are prefigured by small human things does not make the divine reality small. A type exhibits what is expected and gives an imitative anticipation of what is to come.
Adam was a “type of the one who was to come.” “The rock was Christ” in type, and the water was a type of the living power of the Word, as he says, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” The manna was a type of the living bread that came down from heaven; the serpent lifted on the standard was a type of the saving Passion accomplished through the cross, which is why those who looked upon it were preserved.
Likewise the history of Israel’s exodus was recorded to prefigure those who are saved through baptism. The firstborn of Israel were preserved, like the bodies of the baptized, by grace given to those marked with blood. The lamb’s blood was a type of Christ’s blood, and the firstborn a type connected with the first-formed man. Since the first-formed Adam necessarily continues in us through the succession of human nature, “in Adam all die,” and “death reigned” until the fulfillment of the law and the coming of Christ. The firstborn were preserved by God from the destroyer in order to show that we who are made alive in Christ no longer die in Adam.
For that time, the sea and the cloud led the people toward faith through wonder; for the future, they typologically prefigured grace. “Who is wise and will understand these things?” The sea typifies baptism because it brings about the departure of Pharaoh, just as the washing of baptism brings an end to the devil’s tyranny. The sea killed the enemy within itself; in baptism our enmity toward God dies. The people came out from the sea unharmed; we too rise from the water as though alive from the dead, “saved by grace” through the one who called us. The cloud is a shadow of the gift of the Spirit, cooling the flame of our passions through the “putting to death” of our earthly members.
What follows? Because those Israelites were baptized into Moses in a type, is the grace of our baptism therefore insignificant? If every reality lost its dignity because something lesser prefigured it, none of our saving gifts could be called great.
The love of God, who gave his Only-begotten Son for our sins, would cease to be astonishing because Abraham did not spare his own son. The Lord’s Passion would lose its glory because a sheep prefigured the offering in Isaac’s place. His descent to Hades would cease to be fearful because Jonah had already portrayed the three days and three nights of death.
Those who judge reality by its shadow make the same mistake about baptism. By comparing the fulfillment with its type, they use Moses and the sea to belittle the entire Gospel economy. But what remission of sins was there in the sea? What renewal of life? What spiritual gift came through Moses? Those people did not die with Christ, and therefore they were not raised with him. They did not bear the image of the heavenly one; they did not carry in the body the dying of Jesus; they did not put off the old human being; they did not put on the new, who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of the Creator.
Why, then, compare baptisms that share little more than a name, when the realities differ as dream differs from waking reality, or a shadow and outline from the substantial thing itself?
Nor does belief in Moses make our faith in the Spirit worthless. If we followed our opponents’ method of argument consistently, it would instead weaken our confession of the God of the universe. Scripture says, “The people believed the Lord and his servant Moses.” Moses is thus joined in the sentence with God, not with the Spirit. Yet Moses was a type not of the Spirit but of Christ, for in the ministry of the Law he prefigured “the mediator between God and humanity.”
When Moses mediated for the people in matters concerning God, he was not acting as a minister of the Spirit. The Law was given “through angels by the hand of a mediator,” namely Moses, in accordance with the people’s request: “You speak to us ... but do not let God speak to us.” Faith in Moses is therefore referred onward to the Lord, the true Mediator between God and humanity, who said, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me.”
Is our faith in the Lord therefore something small because it was prefigured through Moses? Certainly not. In the same way, even though people were “baptized into Moses,” the grace given by the Spirit in baptism is not therefore small. Scripture commonly says “Moses and the Law,” as in, “They have Moses and the prophets.” Thus, when it wishes to speak of the baptism belonging to the Law, it says, “They were baptized into Moses.”
Why, then, do these slanderers of the truth use shadows and types to pour contempt on “the rejoicing of our hope” and on the rich gift of our God and Savior, who through regeneration renews our youth like the eagle’s?
It is childish, like an infant still needing milk, to fail to understand the great mystery of salvation. God educated us by stages toward perfection in godliness. First he gave elementary and easier lessons suited to our capacity, while the Dispenser of our lot gradually led us upward. He dealt gently with our weakness, like someone slowly accustoming eyes raised in darkness to a great light. In the depth of his wisdom and in the unsearchable judgments of his understanding, he trained us first to see the shadows of things and to look at the sun reflected in water, lest we rush upon the vision of pure, unmixed light and be blinded.
Thus “the Law, having a shadow of the good things to come,” and the typological teaching of the prophets, which presents truth in obscurity, were devised as exercises for the eyes of the heart, so that the transition from them to “the wisdom hidden in mystery” might be made easier. Enough concerning the types. If we remained longer on this subject, the incidental discussion would become many times larger than our main argument.